The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: Ace Barlow the Amazing Boy

  • FASCIST GOON CLEARING HOUSE 011

    The fools! The fascist fools.

    the Steel Guard: 

    The Steel Guard are a home-grown fascist group in the Balkan country of Murania, who plot to sell out their country and its oil wells to the Nazis. They fail to recognize the threat inherent in leaving a camera in the hands of crack magazine photographer Fran Frazer and she ruins their entire setup with a few evidence-heavy snaps. (Top-Notch Comics 010, 1940)

    the Redshirts: 

    The Redshirts are a homegrown US fascist group whose ideology is unexplored in their sole appearance, as some of their members have already been captured as the story begins and thus their focus is on freeing them via a quick gubernatorial kidnapping. The Dart, as can be seen above, does not take this lying down. (Weird Comics 006, 1940)

    the Termania Bund:

    Yet another German-American Bund stand-in, the Termania Bund has the temerity to appropriate the flag of Switzerland (or possibly the Red Cross) as their symbol before being destroyed by the Flame. (Wonderworld Comics 018, 1940)

    the Gnatzis: 

    It’s not quite the same as our usual collection of subversives and bundists, but I simply had to highlight one of the most dismissive stand-ins for the Nazi Party I have ever encountered. Gnatzis, heh. Plus a lot of them get beaten up by Captain Marvel, which you always like to see. (Whiz Comics 012, 1941)

  • FASCIST GOON CLEARING HOUSE 011

    The fools! The fascist fools.

    the Steel Guard: 

    The Steel Guard are a home-grown fascist group in the Balkan country of Murania, who plot to sell out their country and its oil wells to the Nazis. They fail to recognize the threat inherent in leaving a camera in the hands of crack magazine photographer Fran Frazer and she ruins their entire setup with a few evidence-heavy snaps. (Top-Notch Comics 010, 1940)

    the Redshirts: 

    The Redshirts are a homegrown US fascist group whose ideology is unexplored in their sole appearance, as some of their members have already been captured as the story begins and thus their focus is on freeing them via a quick gubernatorial kidnapping. The Dart, as can be seen above, does not take this lying down. (Weird Comics 006, 1940)

    the Termania Bund:

    Yet another German-American Bund stand-in, the Termania Bund has the temerity to appropriate the flag of Switzerland (or possibly the Red Cross) as their symbol before being destroyed by the Flame. (Wonderworld Comics 018, 1940)

    the Gnatzis: 

    It’s not quite the same as our usual collection of subversives and bundists, but I simply had to highlight one of the most dismissive stand-ins for the Nazi Party I have ever encountered. Gnatzis, heh. Plus a lot of them get beaten up by Captain Marvel, which you always like to see. (Whiz Comics 012, 1941)

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 059

    You thought that I couldn’t keep doing it but I can. MORE SUPER-HEROES 

    the Dart: 

    On the one hand, the Dart is just another guy with cape and a mask who fights crime alongside his kid sidekick, but on the other, he has a few interesting twists on what is already a tried-and-true formula:

    In the first place, the Dart was originally an Ancient Roman named Caius Martius who was magically sealed in a block of stone by his enemies, only to reemerge in the 20th Century. While this is only a moderately unusual origin for a super-hero, what is neat is that Caius Martius was effectively already a super-hero before he got cursed: he had his signature super-power of flight (referred to a “darting through the air,” hence the name) and was using it to fight “Roman racketeers.”

    Basically the first thing that Caius sees when he leaves the museum is a drive-by shooting, as the Ricarno Gang wipes out the Mariotti Gang, and more pertinently to his origin the parents of…

    Ace Barlow, the Amazing Boy: 

    Ace’s tragic orphaning at the hands of the Ricarno Gang leave him free to join up with Caius Martius as a crime-fighting team. Caius teaches Ace how to scrap, Roman-Style, and even more impressively goes to the trouble to teach him to fly rather than simply having an unpowered teenaged boy tagging along on all of his adventures like so many of his peers. (Weird Comics 005, 1940) 

    The Dart later gets a job as a teacher of Ancient Roman history at the school that Ace attends, and while this may seem like a good idea on the face of it, we must keep in mind that he slightly predates Julius Caesar, and so every time a kid asks a question about the Roman Empire, Caius is going to bug out his eyes and say “the Roman WHAT?”

    Also please note that while Caius Martius had the forethought to change his weird Roman name to something more modern to fit in, the change he made was to add “Wheeler” to the end, like having the last name “Martius” was the problem. (Weird Comics 006, 1940) 

    After their initial appearance, the Dart and Ace spend the rest of their 1940 appearances as nonsuper, nonflying vigilantes, but someone must have realized that that was the more boring option because the Dart was back to darting through the air in 1941.

    Finally, the creators of the Dart either vastly over-estimated the cutting power of a Roman short sword or intend for the Dart’s signature weapon to be magical in some way, because he sure does spend a lot of time carving through things that would stymie the vast majority of handheld tools.

    Dynamo **UPDATE**:

    I don’t know if it’s a new power per se, but in his first appearance in Weird Comics Dynamo continues his long habit of really expanding the limits of what you can do via control over electricity by employing it as a long-range listening device. (Weird Comics 008, 1940)

    Similar but unrelated: he can also hear radio broadcasts through his fingertips. (Weird Comics 009, 1940) 

    the Eagle **Update**: 

    The Eagle just can’t resist the lure of a new costume. Or Perhaps it’s the Eagle’s colourist, since as with several of his previous changes in outfit this one could just be some whimsical palette swap action. (Weird Comics 009, 1940)

    More importantly, that kid up there is the Eagle’s new sidekick:

    Buddy, the Daredevil Boy: 

    Buddy is a kid who was presumably doing a little track-and-field when he saw the Eagle’s archfoe the Beast about to murder him with a poisoned dart and jumped in to save the day. The Eagle proceeds to adopt Buddy in such an abbreviated and perfunctory fashion that it almost serves as a parody of the idea of the kid sidekick – he doesn’t even bother to establish that he’s an orphan first.

    Buddy might just be the most hard-done-by sidekick in Golden Age comics, at least as far as costumes go, as he’s stuck in that track suit until Weird Comics 017, while the Eagle just keeps on trying new outfits the whole time. I can only imagine how galling that must have been for him. (Weird Comics 009, 1940) 

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 059

    MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 059

    You thought that I couldn’t keep doing it but I can. MORE SUPER-HEROES 

    the Dart: 

    On the one hand, the Dart is just another guy with cape and a mask who fights crime alongside his kid sidekick, but on the other, he has a few interesting twists on what is already a tried-and-true formula:

    In the first place, the Dart was originally an Ancient Roman named Caius Martius who was magically sealed in a block of stone by his enemies, only to reemerge in the 20th Century. While this is only a moderately unusual origin for a super-hero, what is neat is that Caius Martius was effectively already a super-hero before he got cursed: he had his signature super-power of flight (referred to a “darting through the air,” hence the name) and was using it to fight “Roman racketeers.”

    Basically the first thing that Caius sees when he leaves the museum is a drive-by shooting, as the Ricarno Gang wipes out the Mariotti Gang, and more pertinently to his origin the parents of…

    Ace Barlow, the Amazing Boy: 

    Ace’s tragic orphaning at the hands of the Ricarno Gang leave him free to join up with Caius Martius as a crime-fighting team. Caius teaches Ace how to scrap, Roman-Style, and even more impressively goes to the trouble to teach him to fly rather than simply having an unpowered teenaged boy tagging along on all of his adventures like so many of his peers. (Weird Comics 005, 1940) 

    The Dart later gets a job as a teacher of Ancient Roman history at the school that Ace attends, and while this may seem like a good idea on the face of it, we must keep in mind that he slightly predates Julius Caesar, and so every time a kid asks a question about the Roman Empire, Caius is going to bug out his eyes and say “the Roman WHAT?”

    Also please note that while Caius Martius had the forethought to change his weird Roman name to something more modern to fit in, the change he made was to add “Wheeler” to the end, like having the last name “Martius” was the problem. (Weird Comics 006, 1940) 

    After their initial appearance, the Dart and Ace spend the rest of their 1940 appearances as nonsuper, nonflying vigilantes, but someone must have realized that that was the more boring option because the Dart was back to darting through the air in 1941.

    Finally, the creators of the Dart either vastly over-estimated the cutting power of a Roman short sword or intend for the Dart’s signature weapon to be magical in some way, because he sure does spend a lot of time carving through things that would stymie the vast majority of handheld tools.

    Dynamo **UPDATE**:

    I don’t know if it’s a new power per se, but in his first appearance in Weird Comics Dynamo continues his long habit of really expanding the limits of what you can do via control over electricity by employing it as a long-range listening device. (Weird Comics 008, 1940)

    Similar but unrelated: he can also hear radio broadcasts through his fingertips. (Weird Comics 009, 1940) 

    the Eagle **Update**: 

    The Eagle just can’t resist the lure of a new costume. Or Perhaps it’s the Eagle’s colourist, since as with several of his previous changes in outfit this one could just be some whimsical palette swap action. (Weird Comics 009, 1940)

    More importantly, that kid up there is the Eagle’s new sidekick:

    Buddy, the Daredevil Boy: 

    Buddy is a kid who was presumably doing a little track-and-field when he saw the Eagle’s archfoe the Beast about to murder him with a poisoned dart and jumped in to save the day. The Eagle proceeds to adopt Buddy in such an abbreviated and perfunctory fashion that it almost serves as a parody of the idea of the kid sidekick – he doesn’t even bother to establish that he’s an orphan first.

    Buddy might just be the most hard-done-by sidekick in Golden Age comics, at least as far as costumes go, as he’s stuck in that track suit until Weird Comics 017, while the Eagle just keeps on trying new outfits the whole time. I can only imagine how galling that must have been for him. (Weird Comics 009, 1940)