The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: fake monster

  • MONSTER, CRITTER AND CREATURE ROUND-UP 001

    I’ve threatened to do it for long enough, it’s time for the creatures to have their day.

    Alligator Men:

    Our very first creatures are also our first tough call. Steel Sterling fights these Alligator Men in Brazonia, South America while on the trail of Dr Yar (aka the Black Knight), and with any group of intelligent humanoids there is the question: did our villain make them using the power of mad science, or did he find them in the jungle and convince them to follow him?

    The thing that sways my opinion on the Alligator Men is the fact that Dr Yar also has this swarm of giant mosquitoes at his command. If someone is going to the trouble of overcoming the square cube law to create a not-very-successful trap for his arch enemy then bioengineering a batch of alligator-headed goons has got to be a walk in the park, comparatively. (Zip Comics 003, 1940)

    Alligoscerous:

    This alligoscerous, a lake monster native to the hidden Diamond Empire in Asia and burdened with a most unlovely name, makes an attempt to dine on the Rocket and his allies and pays for it with its eyes. (Pep Comics 004, 1940)

    Allosaurus:

    Abdallah is a minor Centaur Publications character who has fantastical adventures in 10th Century Arabia, such as in this instance, when a caravan he is leading is attacked by a pack of allosaurus. It’s honestly giving me a warm flashback to AD&D adventure modules.

    Continuing in the tabletop RPG theme, later in that same story Abdallah must travel through an underground dungeon of sorts to save his father’s life, and does battle with this very heraldic griffin. (Funny Pages v3 008, 1939)

    Amphisaur:

    The amphisaur, an ancient dinosaur hibernating below the sea floor, is awakened by Naval manoeuvres and immediately begins laying waste to the works of mankind. It’s very Gozilla-before-Godzilla, though without the poignancy of the nuclear war metaphor.

    Though the beast’s hide is proof against all conventional weaponry and it is even immune to mummy-turned-super-hero Mystico’s arcane power for the slightly contrived reason that it dates from before magic was invented, it is ultimately undone when an entire skyscraper is repurposed into a jumbo-sized spear to impale it. (Startling Comics 004, 1940)

    the Sea Dragon:

    The Sea Dragon, which pops up to vex and befuddle the US Navy in Hawaii, is in reality a classic (and astonishingly huge) submarine disguised as a monster and operated by an unnamed, not-quite-Japanese, Navy. (Captain America Comics 005, 1941)

    Tangako:

    Adventurer Reef Kinkaid and his companions, stranded in a lost valley filled with prehistoric life in the Amazon jungle, must confront a variety of monsters, including the horned cave-ape tangako, which Reef grapples to death…

    … the cave-dwelling alagasaurus, which he grapples and beats to death…

    … and the annoyingly-spelled pterodactl, which he grapples to death. (Amazing-Man Comics 016, 1940)

    Bonus Dinosaurs!

     

    These random dinosaurs and prehistoric mammals are encountered by the Black Hood during a confusing trip through time. (Jackpot Comics 003, 1941)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 971: THE MONSTER

    (Fantastic Comics 023, 1941)

    The comic opens in media res, as a (the) Monster bursts into the hotel room of art critic Iona Hall and carries her off into the night. Cut to the Gorman Art Gallery the next day, where we see… Iona Hall!?

    As you might have guessed, this isn’t the real Iona Hall, and “famous art connoisseur” Dan Kenneth spots this when he is introduced to the false Hall by gallery owner Gorman. When Kenneth attempts to discover the reason for this imposture, however, he and the repentant fake are attacked by gun-toting goons and have to engage in a thrilling chase, and then, when he is able to ask the question a second time, the Monster shows up and carries away the double in the same manner as the original.

    It’s such a weird situation that Kenneth can’t even convince the police to look into it lest he be thrown in the drunk tank for challenging their view of reality. He simply has to adopt a new identity as the vigilante Gladiator in order to knock the beast out and discover just what the heck is going on.

    So what the heck is going on? It’s perfectly simple: art collector Craven has a painting by the great artist Velasquez and wants to have both it and some more money. To that end here is his plan:

    1. Bring in art critic Iona Hall
    2. Kidnap Hall as the Monster
    3. Replace Hall with lookalike June Starr
    4. Have his crony Gorman sell the painting at auction
    5. Buy his own painting for less than it’s worth
    6. Ask Dan Kenneth to give the painting the once-over for him
    7. As the Monster again, steal the painting from Kenneth
    8. Hold Kenneth responsible for the loss of the painting
    9. Collect the money from Kenneth and enjoy it while the painting hangs in his home.

    Some flaws in this plan include:

    1. Iona Hall seems to be completely superfluous to the plan, unless she is there to authenticate the painting
    2. Even if this is the case, kidnapping and replacing Hall is only necessary if the painting is fake, which it isn’t
    3. June Starr is an unwilling accomplice who acts against the plan at least three times – an unkidnapped Iona Hall is far preferable
    4. The auction is completely unnecessary if Craven openly owns the painting – just ask Kenneth to clean it for you
    5. Plus you’ve driven down the price by buying it cheap. Perhaps they sold it for the amount that they thought that they could get out of Kenneth, in which case they chose the wrong scam and they should have been doing:
    6. Insurance fraud. The scam they should have been pulling was insurance fraud

    All in all I must assume that Craven was just too excited about his cool monster suit and came up with a plan that allowed him to use it a couple of times, because that is the only lens through which this scheme makes a lick of sense.

    Categorized in: Accessories (Personal Transport – Robotic Exoskeletons), Animals (Monsters), Narrative Footballs (Misc Origin Story Guys) 

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 971: THE MONSTER

    (Fantastic Comics 023, 1941)

    The comic opens in media res, as a (the) Monster bursts into the hotel room of art critic Iona Hall and carries her off into the night. Cut to the Gorman Art Gallery the next day, where we see… Iona Hall!?

    As you might have guessed, this isn’t the real Iona Hall, and “famous art connoisseur” Dan Kenneth spots this when he is introduced to the false Hall by gallery owner Gorman. When Kenneth attempts to discover the reason for this imposture, however, he and the repentant fake are attacked by gun-toting goons and have to engage in a thrilling chase, and then, when he is able to ask the question a second time, the Monster shows up and carries away the double in the same manner as the original.

    It’s such a weird situation that Kenneth can’t even convince the police to look into it lest he be thrown in the drunk tank for challenging their view of reality. He simply has to adopt a new identity as the vigilante Gladiator in order to knock the beast out and discover just what the heck is going on.

    So what the heck is going on? It’s perfectly simple: art collector Craven has a painting by the great artist Velasquez and wants to have both it and some more money. To that end here is his plan:

    1. Bring in art critic Iona Hall
    2. Kidnap Hall as the Monster
    3. Replace Hall with lookalike June Starr
    4. Have his crony Gorman sell the painting at auction
    5. Buy his own painting for less than it’s worth
    6. Ask Dan Kenneth to give the painting the once-over for him
    7. As the Monster again, steal the painting from Kenneth
    8. Hold Kenneth responsible for the loss of the painting
    9. Collect the money from Kenneth and enjoy it while the painting hangs in his home.

    Some flaws in this plan include:

    1. Iona Hall seems to be completely superfluous to the plan, unless she is there to authenticate the painting
    2. Even if this is the case, kidnapping and replacing Hall is only necessary if the painting is fake, which it isn’t
    3. June Starr is an unwilling accomplice who acts against the plan at least three times – an unkidnapped Iona Hall is far preferable
    4. The auction is completely unnecessary if Craven openly owns the painting – just ask Kenneth to clean it for you
    5. Plus you’ve driven down the price by buying it cheap. Perhaps they sold it for the amount that they thought that they could get out of Kenneth, in which case they chose the wrong scam and they should have been doing:
    6. Insurance fraud. The scam they should have been pulling was insurance fraud

    All in all I must assume that Craven was just too excited about his cool monster suit and came up with a plan that allowed him to use it a couple of times, because that is the only lens through which this scheme makes a lick of sense.

    Categorized in: Accessories (Personal Transport – Robotic Exoskeletons), Animals (Monsters), Narrative Footballs (Misc Origin Story Guys) 

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 871: THE MONSTER

    (Zip Comics 002, 1940) 

    Mr Satan is summoned to the charmingly-named Shadow Pond to solve a series of disappearances among a group of scientists who have secluded themselves there. Upon arriving he immediately finds himself in the middle of an attack by a humanoid monster (the Monster, of course. Annoyingly, it is never once referred to as the Monster of Shadow Pond, which would be a pretty great name). He manages to pull a young woman away from the attack and is shortly thereafter introduced to the cast of characters at Shadow Pond:

    Professor Heaslip: Mr Satan’s client and the de facto leader of the scientific group.

    Mrs Heaslip: the Professor’s younger wife, recently rescued from the clutches of the Monster by Mr Satan.

    John Heaslip: the Professor’s brother, a scientist in his own right. Narrowly avoided being killed by the Monster in its first attack.

    Blake: Scientist and acquaintance of Mr Satan. Blake gets mentioned a fair amount throughout the story but only makes one appearance. Probably killed by the Monster.

    Richards: Scientist. Killed in the first attack by the Monster.

    Slade: Scientist. Killed in the attack that Mr Satan witnessed.

    Unnamed Scientist: Killed at some point by the Monster.

    Is someone in this motley crew actually the Monster? Not the dead ones, obviously. 

    Mr Satan does some investigating and is himself almost killed by the Monster. In the process he discovers that the scientists’ missing bodies are caught in a whirlpool beneath the surface of the pond, explaining why they have not surfaced.

    A plan to kill the Monster with a bomb goes awry when the device, built by John Heaslip, goes off without warning and almost kills both his brother and Mr Satan

    This explosion provides Mr Satan with the final key to the puzzle: he tracks down the conveniently-not-at-the-site-of-the-explosion John and Mrs Heaslip and confronts them with the truth: this whole affair has been about the illicit love that they share. The Monster was born out of an attempt to murder Professor Heaslip so that his widow and brother could be together (and also so that they could steal his radium ray, a device that literally had not been mentioned before it was revealed to be a motivation for murder, and which I think was added late in the game to make the story a bit less sordid). A sad and grubby resolution indeed.

    We also get to see the full Monster getup, and while some of the other diving-suit-modified-to-look-like-sea-monster examples we have are a bit more monstery, this might just be the best looking weird diving suit. Lust look at that eye stalk/periscope!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 871: THE MONSTER

    (Zip Comics 002, 1940) 

    Mr Satan is summoned to the charmingly-named Shadow Pond to solve a series of disappearances among a group of scientists who have secluded themselves there. Upon arriving he immediately finds himself in the middle of an attack by a humanoid monster (the Monster, of course. Annoyingly, it is never once referred to as the Monster of Shadow Pond, which would be a pretty great name). He manages to pull a young woman away from the attack and is shortly thereafter introduced to the cast of characters at Shadow Pond:

    Professor Heaslip: Mr Satan’s client and the de facto leader of the scientific group.

    Mrs Heaslip: the Professor’s younger wife, recently rescued from the clutches of the Monster by Mr Satan.

    John Heaslip: the Professor’s brother, a scientist in his own right. Narrowly avoided being killed by the Monster in its first attack.

    Blake: Scientist and acquaintance of Mr Satan. Blake gets mentioned a fair amount throughout the story but only makes one appearance. Probably killed by the Monster.

    Richards: Scientist. Killed in the first attack by the Monster.

    Slade: Scientist. Killed in the attack that Mr Satan witnessed.

    Unnamed Scientist: Killed at some point by the Monster.

    Is someone in this motley crew actually the Monster? Not the dead ones, obviously. 

    Mr Satan does some investigating and is himself almost killed by the Monster. In the process he discovers that the scientists’ missing bodies are caught in a whirlpool beneath the surface of the pond, explaining why they have not surfaced.

    A plan to kill the Monster with a bomb goes awry when the device, built by John Heaslip, goes off without warning and almost kills both his brother and Mr Satan

    This explosion provides Mr Satan with the final key to the puzzle: he tracks down the conveniently-not-at-the-site-of-the-explosion John and Mrs Heaslip and confronts them with the truth: this whole affair has been about the illicit love that they share. The Monster was born out of an attempt to murder Professor Heaslip so that his widow and brother could be together (and also so that they could steal his radium ray, a device that literally had not been mentioned before it was revealed to be a motivation for murder, and which I think was added late in the game to make the story a bit less sordid). A sad and grubby resolution indeed.

    We also get to see the full Monster getup, and while some of the other diving-suit-modified-to-look-like-sea-monster examples we have are a bit more monstery, this might just be the best looking weird diving suit. Lust look at that eye stalk/periscope!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 745: THE BAT

    (Smash Comics 010, 1940)

    I had a little intro to this entry all mapped out in my head, something along the lines of how in a super-hero universe, super crimes are just as obvious a choice as mundane ones, like hiring a scientist to mind control your political opponents instead of merely blackmailing them,  and so we shouldn’t judge super-villains for over-complicating things, but as a part of actually writing it out I had to go over the details of the Bat aka Graystone’s plan in my head and… he over-complicates it.

    I don’t think that I can lay this out properly in paragraph form, so we must once again turn to our old friend the bulleted list for aid. Here is the Bat’s basic plan:

    – systematically rob his neighbours

    – create a fake monster bat to terrify the countryside and draw suspicion away from himself by linking its appearances to the robberies

    – once everyone around him is poor and frightened enough, buy up all the local property for cheap.

    Up to this point, everything is fine. It’s a bit complicated but appropriately so for a comic book world in which there are people running around putting human brains into gorillas and so forth.

    Graystone’s downfall presumably begins when he realizes that being the only person in the area not targeted by the Bat is a bit suspicious. The obvious solution to this problem is simply to rob himself and join his neighbours in bemoaning their monster-haunted fate, but instead he:

    – fakes the kidnapping of his son (in on the scheme, flies the plane that the bat monster hangs off of, is arguably also the Bat)

    – calls in Scotland Yard and makes a bunch of noise

    – attempts to kill Captain Cook of Scotland Yard several times as he investigates the mystery

    – has the Bat demand that Cook deliver the ransom money so that Graystone can try to kill him again

    It’s like a list of things you shouldn’t do if you want to stay under the radar – heck, killing Cook would only raise the profile of the case! Even the operation of the bat monster involves both a secret airfield and a hidden image projector (that doubles as an engine-killing ray for some reason) so that the bat image can be projected onto a sheet that is being pulled by a plane. Have these fools never considered the humble kite?  

    Graystone, his son and various of their servants are of course bundled off to jail to think about wot they done.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 685: SATAN

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 685: SATAN

    (Pep Comics 002, 1940)

    Dateline: Florida! A huge and monstrous face has begun appearing in the clouds across the state to demand fealty! Coincidentally, armoured cars have been disappearing up and down the peninsula at about the same time as the facial appearances.

    The Comet is of course intrigued by this coincidence and decides to investigate. Plotting out the robberies on a map, he proceeds to the swamp located at the central point, and I’ve just realized that it’s a good thing that he’s right because the first thing he does is kick a man into the water and steal his boat and that would be a very embarrassing thing for a super-hero to have done to ,e.g., an innocent game warden. It’s no problem, though, because the guy was in fact an agent of Satan.

    Satan turns out to be a pretty cagey character: not only does he have a way of dealing with snoopers (dragging their boats through a whirlpool into his sub-swamp lair, as happens to the Comet) but he’s got an impressive level of knowledge of current super-hero news. He knows just who the Comet is and more importantly how to neutralize his major offensive ability, by welding his protective eye mask shut. And this is only the Comet’s second case!

    The mystery of both the monster in the clouds and the disappearing armoured cars, by the way, come down to the same thing: that old favourite, the mighty dirigible. One dirigible equipped with a high-powered projector and loudspeaker and a second with a powerful electromagnet, to be precise – as one is distracting everyone with a big face, the other is making off with the car and the cash (and the unfortunate driver and guards).

    Back to the Comet: Satan’s anti-super-hero savvy extends only so far. Despite his acumen in capturing the Comet and neutralizing his power, Satan has fallen prey to the super-villain’s hubris by leaving him to die in a deathtrap rather than merely shooting him in the head. You see, the really important thing about the Comet’s visor is that it’s just a sheet of glass and thus easily breakable, which the Comet does by the simple expedient of headbutting a rock. After that, it’s just a matter of utterly obliterating not only both dirigibles but the entire swamp base. Satan is toast.

    OR IS HE? In a shock twist, Satan returns in Pep Comics 003 and manages to capture the Comet again, this time taking the trouble to pop him into a glass tube and thus completely neutralizing his powers! (and also delighting me personally, because the name Satan is very ambiguously used in his first appearance and I really appreciated this confirmation that it really is his nom du crime. For my records).

    Satan’s got big plans for the Comet – no cheesy deathtrap this time, no sir. Instead, he brings in put-upon hypnotist Doc Zadar in order to put the Comet to work for him.

    And this isn’t your namby-pamby “can’t be forced to violate your deeply-held morals” hypnotism, this is the real hard-core shit. The Comet goes on a destructive and violent crime spree under Satan and Zagnar’s direction. Notably, this is when he kills a whole bunch of cops, which informs the rest of his Golden Age career by making him one of the few super-heroes who the police have some real justification for constantly trying to gun down (I mean, they still shouldn’t just be trying to execute him in the street, but it’s nice to see them doing it for a reason other than “he’s running away from me even though I’m threatening to kill him!”)

    Once again Satan is undone by his own hubris: this time his failure to see that cheating and abusing the man who controls the actions of a living death ray generator might be a bad idea, and he gets gruesomely dissolved for his mistake. Unfortunately for Zagnar, he forgets the first rule of owning a living death ray generator: always put the safety cap back on. He too is dissolved and the Comet is free to have cops try to gun him down in the street forevermore.

    BONUS: All this Comet talk had me feeling nostalgic and I looked up 1983’s The Comet 001, which I had as a kid. It’s a pretty maudlin book primarily concerned with the Comet castigating himself over what a violent and murderous vigilante he was, and the splash page reflects this via the floating ghosts of the dead who haunt him – note all the cops from Pep Comics 003 at the top there. But just who is that at the lower left?

    I am 75+% certain that this is the monster face that Satan was projecting onto the clouds in Pep 002, which is a pretty hilarious thing to be haunting a depressed 80s super-hero. “I contributed to the death of the airship as a viable mode of transport when I murdered those dirigibles!”

    (the real if boring answer is that it probably is the face from the clouds but, as Satan himself is never actually pictured in the severely abridged version of the story in this comic, the face is being retconned into being his)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 455: THE DEVIL OF THE DEEP

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 455: THE DEVIL OF THE DEEP

    (Mystic Comics v1 001, 1940)

    The Devil of the Deep AKA the Deep Sea Demon AKA the Water Ghost, like the Sea-Devil before him, is a fellow who dresses up in a modified diving suit in order to scare pearl divers away from a particular oyster bed.

    Unlike the Sea-Devil, the Devil of the Deep costume is quite elaborate and convincing – you can’t, for example, clearly see the breathing apparatus strapped to his back. He’s also gone for a mermaid-style swimming setup, a frankly bold choice given that he’s theoretically killing everyone who sees him – why not have use of your legs?

    Also unlike the Sea-Devil, the Devil of the Deep has a pretty indefensible reason for his actions, in that he’s trying to scare people away from the oyster bed because that’s where all the evidence that he murdered his cousin in order to inherit the family fortune is. His lack of forward planning is everyone elses’ problem, apparently.

    (this is a good skeleton)

    UPDATE May 2024: this story originally appeared in Centaur comic Funny Pages v2 001, 1937, with a less-fun colouring job. The monster suit was a very disappointing grey throughout.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 340: THE SEA-DEVIL

    (Master Comics 007, 1940)

    Let’s start with the good things about the Sea-Devil: he’s part of one of my favourite super-villain traditions: the guy who dresses up like a creature in order to play off of local superstitions. Nothing specific in this case – he’s just banking on the local oyster divers not wanting to contend with a mysterious horned humanoid while they’re trying to earn an already dangerous living. To that end, his costume isn’t the most elaborate fake sea monster in comics, though it does have a certain minimalist charm.

    The rest of the story is depressingly familiar. The Sea-Devil is a guy named Sam Mindoro, his motivation is to drive off the white guy who owns his ancestral lands and of course this makes him the worst kind of villain despite him not actually killing anyone while disrupting the extraction of wealth from the area. I mean he does try to kill Shipwreck Roberts and Deep Sea Doodle, which is a crime, but “wants his land back” and “inconveniences a white guy” are treated as much worse ones. Depressing stuff.

    ADDENDUM: Forgot to mention that this fellow is our first Filipino super-villain, for what it’s worth.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 337: DR DROWN

    (Master Comics 001, 1940)

    Dr Drown is a paragon of his sub-category of super-villain. Unfortunately for him, that is not a particularly exalted position, as he belongs to the Association of Seagoing Criminal Scientists and the membership of that group is heavily diluted by decades of Aquaman and Sea Devils and even Challengers of the Unknown foes with wilfully bad schemes.

    Dr Drown’s schemes aren’t too bad! He as a submersible yacht that he uses to torpedo and loot ships, which is a lucrative if very evil business model, with the sole flaw being that he keeps doing it in exactly the same part of the ocean which makes him very easy for his foe Shipwreck Roberts to track him down.

    Drown’s other claim to fame is as a tamer of sea monsters and it’s here that things really get going for me. The “brontosauruses” above are pretty light fare but check this out:

    I follow a lot of horror artists on various social medias and it’s still been a while since I’ve seen anything quite as unsettling as the Giantocrab. Why does it have human arms, for heaven’s sake?

    By contrast the Colostopus is merely a fun dome-shaped friend with a good name.

    Drown also deployed this Mechanosaurus in a later adventure but as the name suggests it was actually a monster-shaped submarine (a classic move but always sad to miss out on a real monster).

    As stated above, Dr Drown is a great example of a generally mediocre lot – I’d be right chuffed if he or one of his descendants were ever brung back.