The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: Fawcett Comics

  • DIVINE ROUND-UP 023

    The gods they just keep on coming. 

    Osiris: 

    Ibis the Invincible’s power levels get a bit of a nerf in 1941 when the caveat that his Ibistick is ineffective, variously, against magic, evil magic and in areas of ambient magic (just which is the case depends on the dramatic needs of the story). This forces him to come up with creative solutions to his problems, such as during this attack by a storm demon summoned by his arch-foe Trug, in which he summons the Ancient Egyptian god Osiris to act as divine muscle.

    Osiris is one of the more humanoid of the Egyptian gods, so the only major critique to levy about his appearance (other than all of the stuff that any Egyptology nerds who read this are yelling about of course), aside from the fact that he’s supposed to be green. I’m not sure if Osiris is the go-to god for demon-battling either. Maybe Horus would be a better choice?

    Regardless, Osiris defeats the demon and then takes off. I’m sure that the above panel is meant to represent him returning to the land of the gods, but I get a real kick out of the image of him just wandering off into the California countryside, inspiring religious mania in the locals. 

    God Style: Real (Whiz Comics 016, 1941)

    Thoth: 

    After yet another magical attack by his enemy Trug, Ibis again turns to the gods of Egypt for aid, this time appropriately from the ibis-headed god of wisdom, Thoth.

    I appreciate that the artist made an effort, but while this version of Thoth looks reasonably cool that is absolutely not an ibis head. It’s more like an angry and disturbingly flesh-toned duck. Duck head or no, Thoth comes through and supplies Ibis with a divination spell capable of locating the magically-shielded Trug.

    God Style: Real (Whiz Comics 017, 1941)

    the Man of the Mountain:

    Once Ibis locates Trug he also has to contend with the Man of the Mountain, a guy with four arms who, appropriately, lives on a mountaine. 

    While Ibis calls the Man of the Mountain an evil spirit, Trug insists that he is a “Great God of Revenge.” The being in question remains silent, which is a shame because he really could have cleared up this taxonomic problem for us with a few words.

    Whatever the Man of the Mountain is, he is also unable to withstand the fall off of his home mountain after Ibis tabletops him. He shatters at the bottom, revealing (to me at least) that he is in fact made of stone. RIP, Man of the Mountain.

    God Style: Real (Whiz Comics 017, 1941)

    the Snake-God: 

    The subject of cult worship and human sacrifice in a cavern somewhere under NYC, this particular snake seemingly has a bit more of the divine about it than its fellow animal subjects of worship in comics. At the very least it is bulletproof, though this does not avail it against the raw might of Dr Occult’s mitts. And as a bonus, its entire cult is crushed in its death throes!

    God Style: Animist (Real?) (More Fun Comics 027, 1937)

  • DIVINE ROUND-UP 023

    The gods they just keep on coming. 

    Osiris: 

    Ibis the Invincible’s power levels get a bit of a nerf in 1941 when the caveat that his Ibistick is ineffective, variously, against magic, evil magic and in areas of ambient magic (just which is the case depends on the dramatic needs of the story). This forces him to come up with creative solutions to his problems, such as during this attack by a storm demon summoned by his arch-foe Trug, in which he summons the Ancient Egyptian god Osiris to act as divine muscle.

    Osiris is one of the more humanoid of the Egyptian gods, so the only major critique to levy about his appearance (other than all of the stuff that any Egyptology nerds who read this are yelling about of course), aside from the fact that he’s supposed to be green. I’m not sure if Osiris is the go-to god for demon-battling either. Maybe Horus would be a better choice?

    Regardless, Osiris defeats the demon and then takes off. I’m sure that the above panel is meant to represent him returning to the land of the gods, but I get a real kick out of the image of him just wandering off into the California countryside, inspiring religious mania in the locals. 

    God Style: Real (Whiz Comics 016, 1941)

    Thoth: 

    After yet another magical attack by his enemy Trug, Ibis again turns to the gods of Egypt for aid, this time appropriately from the ibis-headed god of wisdom, Thoth.

    I appreciate that the artist made an effort, but while this version of Thoth looks reasonably cool that is absolutely not an ibis head. It’s more like an angry and disturbingly flesh-toned duck. Duck head or no, Thoth comes through and supplies Ibis with a divination spell capable of locating the magically-shielded Trug.

    God Style: Real (Whiz Comics 017, 1941)

    the Man of the Mountain:

    Once Ibis locates Trug he also has to contend with the Man of the Mountain, a guy with four arms who, appropriately, lives on a mountaine. 

    While Ibis calls the Man of the Mountain an evil spirit, Trug insists that he is a “Great God of Revenge.” The being in question remains silent, which is a shame because he really could have cleared up this taxonomic problem for us with a few words.

    Whatever the Man of the Mountain is, he is also unable to withstand the fall off of his home mountain after Ibis tabletops him. He shatters at the bottom, revealing (to me at least) that he is in fact made of stone. RIP, Man of the Mountain.

    God Style: Real (Whiz Comics 017, 1941)

    the Snake-God: 

    The subject of cult worship and human sacrifice in a cavern somewhere under NYC, this particular snake seemingly has a bit more of the divine about it than its fellow animal subjects of worship in comics. At the very least it is bulletproof, though this does not avail it against the raw might of Dr Occult’s mitts. And as a bonus, its entire cult is crushed in its death throes!

    God Style: Animist (Real?) (More Fun Comics 027, 1937)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 903: SMASHER SPY

    (Whiz Comics 015, 1941)

    As seen in his recent update, Spy Smasher’s arch-foe the Mask eventually gets a bit too good at villainy for his own sake. While he succeeds at warping Spy Smasher’s mind and turning him against the US government that he once sought only to defend, the Mask’s enthusiasm means that he is a bit too loose with his commands to “Kill! Kill! Kill!” meaning that the first that Spy Smasher does is to kill the Mask.

    Spy Smasher’s fervour for his new mission is intense, driven as it is by the Mask’s mind control. He starts blowing up arsenals and machine gunning defense meetings across the country, much to the despair of his erstwhile allies Eve and Admiral Corby.

    Though he is mostly still called Spy Smasher throughout the four issues in which he is evilized, there are a couple of instances of “Smasher Spy” instead and so we shall be using that name for clarity’s sake.

    There’s a lot of cool and interesting stuff happening with regard to Smasher Spy: having a hero become a villain, having such a huge change to the status quo persist over several issues, plus the fact that Smasher Spy is technically a Captain Marvel villain due to the fact that Whiz Comics 016-018 are in fact a crossover event! How very exciting! 

    So: from Whiz Comics 016 to 018, both the “Captain Marvel” and “Spy Smasher” features are concerned with the ongoing efforts of the former to capture the latter and restore him to his heroic ways. A lot of it plays out like the above, with Captain Marvel showing up in time to foil but not capture Smasher Spy. Rather than detail each individual plot, here’s a list of Smasher Spy’s nefarious undertakings:

    – Organizing a mass breakout of Federal Penetentiary

    – Stealing plans from a defense committee meeting and leaving a bomb to kill the committee members

    – Delivering those plans to a fascist submarine (and then sinking that submarine when Captain Marvel turns out to be on board)

    – Stealing a super poison gas and attempting to wipe out the US Army with it

    – Kidnapping and hypnotizing a busload of factory workers into helping him develop super-weapons 

    – Building a fleet in order to conquer and destroy all national governments 

    – Attempted murders: Admiral Corby x2, Captain Marvel x5, Eve Corby x4, Sterling Morris x1

    – Misc destruction: one aircraft factory, two arsenals, two bridges, one dam, one train derailment, one warship sunk

    Captain Marvel eventually allows himself to be captured by Smasher Spy as an intelligence-gathering exercise and so finds out about the Mask’s hypno-chair/brain-o-graph when it is unsuccessfully used in an attempt to turn him evil too. (Whiz Comics 016, 1941) 

    Smasher Spy is also the inventor of the nefarious Banana Bomb, which he uses in one of his attempts to murder Eve Corby. (Whiz Comics 016, 1941)

    Perhaps the Smasher Spy’s greatest creation, this giant motorized lawnmower vehicle was intended to shred whole armies. Truly a magnificent entry into the ranks of the giant superweapon. (Whiz Comics 017, 1941)

    There’s only so long that even a crafty fellow like Smasher Spy can escape the World’s Mightiest Mortal, however, and after a quick Billy Batson trip up the Gyro-Sub’s torpedo tube he is in super-custody.

    In a last-ditch effort to stay true to his programming, Smasher Spy destroys the hypno-chair, but Captain Marvel’s determination to restore him is such that he unlocks a hitherto-unknown power of super-hypnosis and restores his mind by pure will alone.

     Smasher Spy is no more! A symbolic sunrise occurs as our heroes share a manly handshake! Huzzah!

  • GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 032

    A more fantastical bunch of genericos than usual! How fun!

    Benjie Frazier: 

    This mysterious cloaked figure hires femme fatale Sonia, aka Princess Cleo, to help him drive all of the inhabitants out of “center of New York society” Formal Park (99% certain that this is a substitution for former real-life society hub Tuxedo Park). To that end, the pair deploy such tools as squads of hooded goons, a mysteriously appearing brand to indicate that their victims have suffered “the Pharaoh’s Curse”, and a drug that drives regular people into a murderous frenzy. 

    Things come to a head when the socially prominent Dudley “Mr Satan” Bradshaw and his scornful love interest Doris O’Day are invited out to a Formal Park event and end up unmasking their host Benjie Frazier as the mastermind behind the scheme. And just why has he been murdering people in such elaborate ways? A damn land grab, the most boring possible motivation for supercrime. He wanted to get rich by selling land to the state for a reservoir, folks. Shaking my damn head over here. (Zip Comics 008, 1940)

    Unnamed Brain-in-Jar Men: 

    Another cover illustration with no bearing on the story inside – very very sad. Are these headless men with their brains in little glass backpacks the creations of a mad scientist? Some sore of weird aliens? A transhumanist mafia? We shall never know. (Zip Comics 009, 1940)

    the Lion-Man: 

    This were-lion is remarkable not only for being in the Amazon (which I can only assume is way out of its natural range if we can apply such concepts to supernatural beings) but also because it only appears in the first half of a six-page story as an unrelated distraction while some crooks to steal diamonds from Doctor Voodoo’s home village. Just tremendous disrespect on the writer’s part for the gravity of a lycanthropic* foe. (Whiz Comics 014, 1941)

    *yes I’m aware that the lycan part of the word is referring specifically to wolves but I’m being lazy about my language, okay? The footnote is still lazy because most of the words in it are short.

    Queen Zoe: 

    Queen Zoe is the ruler of a lost kingdom called El Casa del Oro deep in the Amazon whose culture appears to be a mixture of Inca and Conquistador and who is not overtly evil but who for instance threatens to throw someone into a volcano for interfering in her proposed seduction of Dr Voodoo.

    Queen Zoe’s secret is that she is actually thousands of years old thanks to the fact that she has the Fountain of Youth in her basement. She tries to sweeten her seduction of Dr Voodoo with the promise of eternal life but the Fountain is evidently a big prude because it chooses to stop working the exact second that Zoe makes her pitch and instead of getting some action she instead crumbles to dust. (Whiz Comics 015, 1941)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 044 UPDATE: THE MASK 1941

    Some highlights of the Mask‘s career c. 1941.

    The Mask starts off 1941 with a bag, quite literally, as he attempts to blow up a munitions factory with FDR inside of it. (Whiz Comics 012, 1941)

    He’s at it again in the next issue, with another plot to kill FDR – this time by dropping a time bomb on the roof of the White House. He’s an ambitious guy, the Mask. Fortunately for the President, he is also a guy who sets his bomb timers way to long, giving Spy Smasher plenty of time to defuse. (Whiz Comics 013, 1941)

    In his second-to-last appearance, the Mask uses mind control technology in concert with a huge goon named Grosso, to capture US officials and force them to divulge government secrets before sending them off to kill themselves. 

    This scheme is fairly air-tight and the Mask might have gotten away scot-free with a pocket full of secrets if he hadn’t gotten too greedy and kidnapped Eve Corby in an attempt to learn Spy Smasher’s secret identity from her. Spy Smasher shows up to prevent this and in the subsequent scuffle Grosso ends up in the hypno-chair, where he is given two commands: “kill Spy Smasher” and “Spy Smasher is the one in the white mask.” The Mask is then seemingly flung to his death. (Whiz Comics 014, 1941)  

    The next issue, however, we learn that he is alive after all! He is just very, very hurt! Despite this, the Mask captures Spy Smasher via ruse and finally learns his secret identity as Alan Armstrong! This is also incidentally the first time that we the reader learn that Armstrong is Spy Smasher, though as I have mentioned before he is literally the only possible suspect, assuming that he’s not just some guy.

    The Mask’s next move must have felt like a real no-brainer at the time: using the new and improved mind control device (the Brain-o-Graph, natch) he turns the former champion of the US Government into its enemy. This works, and Spy Smasher becomes the wicked Smasher Spy (something he is only actually called a couple of times, but a useful way to differentiate the good and evil versions of the character so I’m using it), and will remain that way for a while. The Mask’s triumph is tarnished somewhat by the fact that he went a little too hard on the brainwashing, meaning that he is the first victim of Smasher Spy’s murderous rampage. Proper safety procedures while creating unstoppable killing machines: they’re important. (Whiz Comics 015, 1941)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 902: MAGNIFICUS SIVANA

    (Whiz Comics 015, 1941)

    After Captain Marvel foils a scheme to be described further in the next Dr Sivana update, he finds himself battling a beefcake named Magnificus.

    Though Magnificus is ultimately not a match for Captain Marvel, he is powerful enough to duke it out with him for several minutes, which is frankly just as impressive. Since they are doing so on the side of a mountain, however, this starts a landslide that seem like it might just spell the end of Dr Sivana for good after he is beaned by a particularly accurate boulder. 

    Since at the time it seems likely that Sivana will finally meet his end, his long-suffering aide Beautia now feels able to share the reason why she has stuck by him all this time despite her increasingly clear desire not to, which is incidentally also the origin of not only Dr Sivana but of her and Magnificus as well.

    This is of course when we learn that both Magnificus and Beautia are in fact Dr Sivana’s children who he brought with him to Venus after being disillusioned by cold-hearted capitalists who saw his attempts to better humanity as nothing but lost profits. Where Sivana became twisted and embittered over the years, his children instead grew up to be fundamentally good-hearted people who only help him out of a sense of filial affection. This is of course a fun bit right up until Dr Sivana’s other two children are introduced to bedevil Captain Marvel Jr and Mary Marvel and a real ugly = evil/ beautiful = good morality system is established.

    One thing about Magnificus that I had not expected was the fact that this is his only Golden Age appearance and that we will next see him during the integration of the Marvel Family into the DC multiverse. I guess that he is just better at establishing boundaries with his toxic parent than his sister is.

  • ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 025

    We’re going heavy on the ape-man content this time. 

    Ape-Men: 

    These Ape-Men, like most ape men, are some sort of human offshoot population or remnant of another species of homo living in the isolated depths of, in this case, the Amazon jungle. They come into conflict with Doctor Voodoo after breaking their long-held peace treaty with his allies the Blancas and abducting many of them for human sacrifice. Also they use silver arrows for some unexplained reason. (Whiz Comics 013, 1941)

    Ape-Men: 

    These particularly wooly-looking Ape-Men briefly vex adventurer Cotton Carver in one of the various lands beneath Antarctica before learning about firearms the hard way, as so many of their fellow sub-Antarcticans do during Carver’s travels. (Adventure Comics 048, 1940)

    Apemen:

    More cave- than ape-men in my estimation, these fellows ambush Bill Dale and his guide Dagoo as they traverse the cheerily-named River of Skulls in Africa on their way to find Bill’s long-lost twin Steve. Notably, these are the Apemen who worship the crocodile swam god the Creeping Death. (Nickel Comics 001, 1940)

    Link Men: 

    Encountered by Zatara while searching for a missing biologist in modern-day Tanzania, the Link (for Missing Link, natch) Men are the most ape-like in appearance of all of our entries today. They live in a small city atop a plateau and are generally hostile to strangers.

    For all that they are literal ape-men, the Link Men are just as weirdly obsessed with the nuances of human race as so many other nonhuman intelligences: their leader is the ever-popular Random Blonde Lady, in this case one named Kara whose presence on the plateau is never really explored. They are also weirdly invested not in human sacrifice but in the sacrifice of a white man to their deity, the Sun-God. Zatara’s aide Tong isn’t even considered as a sacrifice.

    The potential sacrifice above is coincidentally also missing biologist Raoul d’Armand, who Kara has fallen in love with and thus reconsidered being the leader of a society of religious apes. Thankfully Zatara is on hand to foster true love by turning an entire intelligent species into marble statues. One would hope that he would turn them back before leaving but as with so many of the occasions in which Zatara transforms someone into an inanimate object the final fate of the Link Men is left to the reader’s imagination. (Action Comics v1 027, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 901: XYZ

    (Whiz Comics 014, 1941) 

    Dan Dare exists in a world rife with crime in which he is seemingly the only person capable of solving an moderate-to-difficult mystery. Thus, he and his assistant/lover Carol Clews constantly fly from city to city capturing crooks, while Carol fruitlessly attempts to steal Dan away for a much-needed vacation.

    In this particular installment, Dan and Carol have been summoned to Chicago by TL Thornton, Publisher of the Daily Clarion and subject of a terror campaign by the city’s mysterious crimelord, known only as XYZ. 

    XYZ’s reach is such that a minion captured during an attempt to blow up Dare, Clews and Thornton is assassinated under the very nose of Thornton’s secretary Miss Holmes. Is there no crime too audacious for this mastermind?

    Upon walking Miss Holmes home, Dare learns the truth: though he and Thornton had been looking for a male crime boss, XYZ is in fact a woman. Yes, Miss Holmes was conducting her criminal enterprise out of the front office of one of the men trying to expose her and that audacity, plus preconceived notions of the masculine nature of criminality, helped her do it.

    Just kidding: Dare cottoned on to the possibility that Miss Holmes was XYZ when she killed that captured henchman. He arranged for Carol to follow them and call the police to their location after a suitable interval – Dan Dare is a feminist after all!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 900: TRUG

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 900: TRUG

    (Whiz Comics 013, 1941) 

    Trug is a student of magic and of Ibis the Invincible specifically who creeps out of the shadows after Ibis and Taia’s ward Tommy has defeated his school’s boxing champion and tempts the despondent youth into stealing the Ibistick for him (the sad boy is then turned into a tree and then never mentioned again – very sad).

    Trug’s Ibis scholarship extends beyond kind of dressing like him and knowing where his extended family hang out into important topics like how not to kill yourself while using the Ibistick. Unlike every poor chump who has gotten their hands on it before him, Trug is aware that it will visit any harm intended for Ibis back on its wielder and so deals exclusively in barriers, crevasses and other nonlethal means of keeping his rival at bay.

    Where Trug fails is in not being a creep and kidnapping Taia as he leaves to enjoy his newfound power. Quite aside from any moral implications, this is a sure way to make Ibis just that much more determined in his quest to defeat his foe.

    Fore reasons of his own, Trug heads north, subjugates the local peoples and builds a palace, and here I notice that he has kidnapped Taia not as a creepy “I will make you my queen” kind of thing but as a hostage, which I would still not call a good idea but which at least has a bit of logic to it.

    One thing that Trug has clearly not considered is that Ibis still has access to magical items that he used the Ibistick to create and that using two of these – the crystal ball and super-plane, specifically – he is able to locate and travel to Trug’s new kingdom in swift order. Trug thus makes the mistake of summoning an air force to deal with whoever might be encroaching on his airspace, only for them to turn on him and cause a piece of his own palace to fall and bonk him unconscious.

    Trug ends his days as a decorative statue as part of the compensation offered by Ibis to his former subjects. (Whiz Comics 014, 1941) 

    Trug isn’t a statue for very long before he is carried off by slavers and worshipped as an idol. When Ibis is then asked for help, he restores Trug to human form as part of a scheme to show that he is a mere mortal.

    Turning Trug back and forth from statue to man to show that he is in fact powerless swiftly convinces his erstwhile worshippers to abandon him, and somehow also that they should give up their warlike ways and make peace with their former enemies. Trug, meanwhile, is left at liberty and feeling vengeful, though he is under-dressed in the Arctic. (Whiz Comics 015, 1941)

    Undaunted by his circumstances, Trug hops on a log and starts paddling his way South, and has the good fortune to encounter a helpful man with a magic bag of wind, who he promptly robs and murders. He makes an opportunistic and unsuccessful attempt to kill Ibis and Taia by summoning a storm demon, then composes himself and… (Whiz Comics 016, 1941)

    … kidnaps Ibis and Taia’s ward Tommy and uses him as bait in yet another attempt to kill Ibis, and while the first part of that plan works like a charm, his trapping game is pretty haphazard. His ace in the hole is clearly the god-monster the Man of the Mountain (the four-armed guy above) but he also blows up the ship that Ibis is crossing the Pacific on (ineffective) and places fairly obvious traps like a clearly-carnivorous tree and a demon disguised as a pretty lady on the path leading to his cave hideout. (Whiz Comics 017, 1941) 

    The Man of the Mountain, though imposing, is not too bright and is lured off of a cliff with relative ease, after which Trug just kind of gives up. There is a small amount of tension as the ambient magical energies of the area render the Ibistick powerless and thus Ibis and Taia are trapped on the side of a mountain, but that barely counts as a deathtrap. (Whiz Comics 018, 1941)

    We now enter that phase of any recurring villain’s career in which they go from being a legitimate threat to a bit of a joke, and in Trug’s case this begins when he is rejected by a loser named Mudge who himself is looking to get revenge on Ibis for foiling his plans. Trug might have fallen on hard times but he knows how to size up a fool, and Mudge is exactly the kind of guy to fall for the old Fake Satan trick. Where he was unwilling to team up with an unsuccessful magician he is more than happy to sell his soul for a chance at revenge, the dope.

    Mudge and Satan/Trug attempt to kill Ibis and Taia with a magic bomb, but fail as Ibis saw them coming a mile away and substituted a couple of magical duplicates for them. He afflicts Mudge with donkey ears for his trouble, which only redoubles his commitment to revenge.

    The duo next attempt to harm Ibis by killing Taia and are fooled by the same magical duplicate trick, upon which Ibis reveals that he was not only on to them but that he know that “Satan” was actually Trug the whole time. Mudge and Trug are then sealed up in a wall to die, which is pretty tough justice, but we must remember that Ibis is from another time.

    Though Mudge’s fate is sealed, Trug will return in 1942. (Whiz Comics 020, 1941)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 900: TRUG

    (Whiz Comics 013, 1941) 

    Trug is a student of magic and of Ibis the Invincible specifically who creeps out of the shadows after Ibis and Taia’s ward Tommy has defeated his school’s boxing champion and tempts the despondent youth into stealing the Ibistick for him (the sad boy is then turned into a tree and then never mentioned again – very sad).

    Trug’s Ibis scholarship extends beyond kind of dressing like him and knowing where his extended family hang out into important topics like how not to kill yourself while using the Ibistick. Unlike every poor chump who has gotten their hands on it before him, Trug is aware that it will visit any harm intended for Ibis back on its wielder and so deals exclusively in barriers, crevasses and other nonlethal means of keeping his rival at bay.

    Where Trug fails is in not being a creep and kidnapping Taia as he leaves to enjoy his newfound power. Quite aside from any moral implications, this is a sure way to make Ibis just that much more determined in his quest to defeat his foe.

    Fore reasons of his own, Trug heads north, subjugates the local peoples and builds a palace, and here I notice that he has kidnapped Taia not as a creepy “I will make you my queen” kind of thing but as a hostage, which I would still not call a good idea but which at least has a bit of logic to it.

    One thing that Trug has clearly not considered is that Ibis still has access to magical items that he used the Ibistick to create and that using two of these – the crystal ball and super-plane, specifically – he is able to locate and travel to Trug’s new kingdom in swift order. Trug thus makes the mistake of summoning an air force to deal with whoever might be encroaching on his airspace, only for them to turn on him and cause a piece of his own palace to fall and bonk him unconscious.

    Trug ends his days as a decorative statue as part of the compensation offered by Ibis to his former subjects. (Whiz Comics 014, 1941) 

    Trug isn’t a statue for very long before he is carried off by slavers and worshipped as an idol. When Ibis is then asked for help, he restores Trug to human form as part of a scheme to show that he is a mere mortal.

    Turning Trug back and forth from statue to man to show that he is in fact powerless swiftly convinces his erstwhile worshippers to abandon him, and somehow also that they should give up their warlike ways and make peace with their former enemies. Trug, meanwhile, is left at liberty and feeling vengeful, though he is under-dressed in the Arctic. (Whiz Comics 015, 1941)

    Undaunted by his circumstances, Trug hops on a log and starts paddling his way South, and has the good fortune to encounter a helpful man with a magic bag of wind, who he promptly robs and murders. He makes an opportunistic and unsuccessful attempt to kill Ibis and Taia by summoning a storm demon, then composes himself and… (Whiz Comics 016, 1941)

    … kidnaps Ibis and Taia’s ward Tommy and uses him as bait in yet another attempt to kill Ibis, and while the first part of that plan works like a charm, his trapping game is pretty haphazard. His ace in the hole is clearly the god-monster the Man of the Mountain (the four-armed guy above) but he also blows up the ship that Ibis is crossing the Pacific on (ineffective) and places fairly obvious traps like a clearly-carnivorous tree and a demon disguised as a pretty lady on the path leading to his cave hideout. (Whiz Comics 017, 1941) 

    The Man of the Mountain, though imposing, is not too bright and is lured off of a cliff with relative ease, after which Trug just kind of gives up. There is a small amount of tension as the ambient magical energies of the area render the Ibistick powerless and thus Ibis and Taia are trapped on the side of a mountain, but that barely counts as a deathtrap. (Whiz Comics 018, 1941)

    We now enter that phase of any recurring villain’s career in which they go from being a legitimate threat to a bit of a joke, and in Trug’s case this begins when he is rejected by a loser named Mudge who himself is looking to get revenge on Ibis for foiling his plans. Trug might have fallen on hard times but he knows how to size up a fool, and Mudge is exactly the kind of guy to fall for the old Fake Satan trick. Where he was unwilling to team up with an unsuccessful magician he is more than happy to sell his soul for a chance at revenge, the dope.

    Mudge and Satan/Trug attempt to kill Ibis and Taia with a magic bomb, but fail as Ibis saw them coming a mile away and substituted a couple of magical duplicates for them. He afflicts Mudge with donkey ears for his trouble, which only redoubles his commitment to revenge.

    The duo next attempt to harm Ibis by killing Taia and are fooled by the same magical duplicate trick, upon which Ibis reveals that he was not only on to them but that he know that “Satan” was actually Trug the whole time. Mudge and Trug are then sealed up in a wall to die, which is pretty tough justice, but we must remember that Ibis is from another time.

    Though Mudge’s fate is sealed, Trug will return in 1942. (Whiz Comics 020, 1941)