The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: murderer

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 1002: MASTERMIND

    (Lightning Comics v2 001, 1941)

    Lash Lightning, while aimlessly flying around the countryside at night, encounters a footsore scientist named Amy Lane. Turns out that her castle (!) has been stolen by a man named Mastermind and that she has been walking for several hours in an attempt to get help. In a move that always seems kind of rude to me, Lightning immediately flies her all the way back to the castle to investigate. The mysterious Mastermind is no longer present when they arrive, but the castle’s laboratory is now filled with strange electrical equipment.

    But just where is Mastermind (who is also frequently called the Mastermind)? As you may recall from our one thousandth entry, he is in the middle of breaking Lightning’s recurring foe the Mummy out of jail in an attempt to wrangle the formula for his invulnerability coating out of him. You don’t see this kind of thing very often and I have to assume that the inherent egomania required to become a super-villain prevents most of them from acknowledging that anyone else might have a good idea.

    Upon returning to the castle and discovering Lightning and Lane in his newly-stolen laboratory, Mastermind demonstrates what the electrical equipment is for by using it to charge himself with lightning in this state he is immune to electricity (and only electricity, hence the need for the Mummy’s radium solution), can throw destructive bolts of lightning, and is able to teleport both himself and others, though just why this makes him resemble a dracula with glowing eyes is not explained.

    Mastermind and the Mummy demonstrate the value of teamwork by subduing Lightning with relatively little effort, then immediately revert to super-villain type and engage in a struggle for dominance that sees the Mummy reduced to a smouldering pile of medical gauze and Mastermind is left forever vulnerable to being punched in the face.

    Undeterred, Mastermind sets out to enact his ultimate scheme: to extort money from the US government in exchange for not helping the Axis to take over America, and as the government (in the form of this room full of Army officers) refuses to pay up based solely on the threats of a goth, he sets out to do just that.

    Mastermind seeks out a nearby cell of pseudo-Nazi spies and offers his services as a saboteur, then proves that he can deliver the goods by blowing up the Washington Monument. I am not ashamed to admit that I yelled aloud when I read this part of the book – that’s the sort of high-tier, messing-with-national-symbols villainy that you don’t get a lot of in this era.

    Mastermind’s pitch to the spies is of course successful and he goes on a real sabotage tear, though none of it is as crazy or memorable as that initial salvo. By this point Lash Lightning has recovered and escaped, and the two have a final confrontation back at Amy Lane’s castle as Mastermind is nipping back for a quick recharge. Instead of that pick-me-up, however, he gets thrown to his doom on the rocks below.

    OR DOES HE??

    No he does not, because Mastermind is back in Lightning Comics v2 002 and he’s explicitly rather than implicitly collaborating with the Nazis. This time, he’s got a mind control serum that he uses to take over the minds of everyone at Fort Hancock.

    And just why does he mind control an entire fort worth of soldiers? Why, to both prevent them from operating the shore defenses as the Nazi fleet is sailing into the nearby city’s harbour and as auxiliary troops for the subsequent shelling and invasion of that city, of course.

    Lightning is of course not going to stand for this kind of thing: he blows up/drives off the fleet, cures the men of the Mastermind’s control with a careful application of electricity and takes care of Mastermind himself with the careful application of a sock on the jaw.

    In his third appearance in Lightning Comics v2 003, Mastermind escapes jail by arranging to have himself sent a tiny recharging device that appears to just plug into the electrical outlet that I never really pictured 1940s prison cells as having but which gives him enough juice for one teleport away.

    This time around, Mastermind steals an experimental dirigible equipped with heat and paralysis rays and uses it to prep the way for yet another Nazi invasion by attacking US defense facilities.

    Not only does Lash Lightning show up and take him down with an almost insulting level of ease, but he does so accompanied by a pretty devastating put-down. It’s the old law of diminishing returns, as a villain who started out as a formidable opponent becomes more and more of a pushover as time goes on. Mastermind jumps to his death rather than being captured this time, only of course he doesn’t because he is a teleporter.

    Sure enough, when Mastermind returns in Lightning Comics v2 004, he confirms that teleportation saved his bacon. This time around he is working for the Nazis yet again, but rather than paving the way for invasion he is attempting to destroy some war materiel making its way from America to the UK via Canada. And speaking of Canada, since Lash Lightning prevents the supplies from being destroyed as they cross the border, the bulk of this issue takes place in my home country. Specifically, Mastermind is the very first super-villain who we have encountered doing supercrime in the province of Quebec!

    Not great supercrime, mind you. He does manage to poison Lightning, but instead of taking proper advantage of this he just throws him off of a roof, something that he would ordinarily survive and something I think would be reasonable to assume he would survive even while half dead.

    And yes, he does survive, returning to to punch out Mastermind’s lights and foil all of his plans. It’s back to prison for our pale friend, and this time they must have made sure to check all of his incoming cake deliveries a bit more thoroughly because as far as I can tell he never appears again.

    Categorized in: Origins (Evil Equivalents), Powers (Teleportation), Professions in Crime (Masterminds)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 1000: THE MUMMY

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 1000: THE MUMMY

    Number 1000!!*

    (Lightning Comics v1 005, 1941)

    The Old Man of the Pyramids summons (F)lash Lightning to his thundercloud lair to warn him about trouble at Midton College, and he is right, as can only be expected of a wise old oracular father figure. This particular trouble is called Professor Vatz and is a professor of chemistry who is ready to give up academia for the heady world of supercrime.

    Vatz’s new career is founded on two inventions: his “Hotlight,” a ray gun that seems to spit out both bright light and great heat sufficient to kill a regular person or knock out a superhuman figure like Lightning, and a radium compound that makes ordinary cloth into a form of armour resistant to conventional attack. Vatz decides to apply this solution to mummy wrappings, and while I can kind of see that being a way to ensure that the his armour is applied as close to his body as possible, but just what his justification is for using wrappings from an actual mummy is completely inscrutable to me.

    As always, mummy wrappings are a fantastic look and they are only enhanced by the fact that Vatz either chooses to leave the little flyaway portions of his hair sticking out of the sides or simply does not care that they are. It’s some very very strong bald guy energy and perhaps the most significant addition to the mummy look in two thousand years.

    The newly-fledged Mummy recruits a few gangsters and goes on a mild crime spree but is soon tracked down by a recovered Lightning. This leaves the problem of the Mummy’s invincibility to solve, and Lightning does so with aplomb: if the wrappings are the vehicle for the invulnerability, simply remove the wrappings before applying violence.

    (please note that the Mummy had a calling card all ready to go, and it’s a cute one. He only ever gets to use it the once, however)

    The Mummy returns in Lightning Comics v1 006, in what is effectively a bottle episode. Professor Vatz, given far both too much credit for a rapid reformation and unfettered access to the prison laboratory, is able to recreate his radium solution and take over – but not actually escape – the prison he has been locked up in.

    The only thing that the Mummy seems to be unable to replicate in prison is his Hotlight. Instead, he sports a much cooler “Nitro Gun” that shoots explosive pellets. He is also able to whip up a “Lightning Arrester” to drain the electric energy from Lash Lightning’s body when he inevitably turns up to foil the Mummy’s plans.

    Despite the fact that he is able to disable Lightning and throw him into the prison gas chamber, the Mummy does not account for the possibility that his lightning powers might return to him and allow him to escape. He is soon recaptured in the exact same manner as he was in their first encounter and I must say that the fact that Professor Vatz failed to account for this – perhaps by means of a tricky little knot or fastener – really lowers him in my estimation.

    In the Mummy’s final appearance, in Lightning Comics v2 001, he is broken out of a prison hospital by Lash Lightning’s new archfoe Mastermind, who is hoping to learn the secret of Professor Vatz’s radium coating in order render himself immune to harm. 

    The Mummy makes three key mistakes in his dealings with Mastermind: 1) he tries to negotiate after the initial deal has been struck, proposing that the radium formula be revealed in exchange for the secret to Mastermind’s own ability to command lightning. This might work if the Mummy were dealing with a reasonable person, but Mastermind is a super-villain, a class of inherently unreasonable people. 2) The Mummy escalates the confrontation to a physical one without first applying the radium solution and thus rendering himself immune to harm, and 3) he gets himself obliterated by a lightning bolt. he does therefore mess up Mastermind’s plans by taking his formula to the grave, but it must be cold comfort when one is a smouldering corpse.

    Farewell, the Mummy. You weren’t a very good super-villain but you were an entertaining one.

    Categorized in: Accessories (Anti-Hero; Heat Rays), Day Jobs (College Professors), Supranormal Beings (Mummies)

    *technically Fang Ryan is number 1000 and the Mummy is number 999, but I like mummies more than snake-themed gangsters so I fudged it for the sake of the round number.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 999: FANG RYAN

    (Lightning Comics v1 005, 1941)

    We meet Fang Ryan after he grabs a payroll from the recently-deceased messenger who was in the process of delivering it. He then escapes despite the fact that Police Detective Danny “the Raven” Dartin is on the scene to engage him in thrilling gunplay, but drops his signature weapon, a stick with a couple of snake fangs on one end. It’s a neat gimmick: the stick has a reservoir full of poison inside of it, so when Fang whacks someone with it they die of what looks like a snakebite. It is therefore a shame that he does not actually use this item in the story (aside from in killing the courier, implicitly).

    Since Ryan has lost his weapon, the Raven knows that he will need a new supply of snake venom to make another, and waits in ambush for him at the zoo from which he had previously sourced the stuff. Sure enough, Ryan shows up in time for a fist fight, which ends in… perhaps not the only time that a super-hero is knocked out by a zebra but surely one of a very limited number of times that it happens.

    When a supercrook has rendered a super-hero unconscious and captured them, there are a few ways that they can proceed. The standard approach is of course to place the hero in a deathtrap in full costume and then leave the room, followed closely by “go to unmask them but take so long that they wake up and start fighting you again.” Fang Ryan instead opts for one of the rarer options and just immediately unmasks the Raven, and thanks to the gunfight from earlier he even recognizes him!

    Ryan’s next thoughts are both good: frame the Raven for his next job and expose the Raven’s identity, thus taking all the focus off of him and his piddly little crime spree. Where it all falls apart that he tries to do both at the same time instead of sequentially, as he calls up Dartin’s boss and rats him out before heading out to do the next robbery.

    The one-two punch of this means that when an insomniac sees the Raven and reports him to the cops, the entire police force shows up to get him rather than a car or two worth of guys.

    Meanwhile Dartin has escaped from where Ryan left him hogtied in the woods and shows up to avenge his honour. He ends up killing Ryan in a shootout, which somehow completely overwrites the part of Police Chief Lash’s brain that heard the information about Dartin being the Raven. It’s just the luck of the costumed vigilante, I guess.

    Categorized in: Animals (Snakes), Body (Nonhuman Parts), Fraud (Identity Theft (Hero Impostors))

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 995: ORG

    (Jungle Comics 015, 1941)

    Org is a fellow with a gift – the power to play the drums hypnotically – and also the knowledge of the location of a hidden valley full of giant spiders. He combines these two factors as a part of his scheme to conquer “all of Jungleland,” which probably means Africa and possibly means India but in my heart will always mean a humid pocket dimension summoned into being by Fletcher Hanks and his fellow Jungle writers’ lack of geographic savvy.

    Org quickly organizes a spider army with his sick beats, earning him one strike on Fantomah’s personal “should I kill this guy” tracker.

    This is often the point at which Fantomah gives her target a little hint that he might want to cut back on the wanton slaughter, etc. for his own sake, but Org is given no such grace – perhaps Fantomah just hates spiders. Or drummers. In any case, Org appears to be a pretty thoroughly rotten guy who delights in having his minions attack human and animal alike. It is at this point that I must point out the horrific fact that Org’s spiders have what appear to be human hands on the end of each of their legs, which is gross.

    Attacking people and animals like this were evidently strikes two and three, because it is at this point that Fantomah steps in, just a little too late as per usual. Org is paralyzed and unceremoniously fed to his own erstwhile troops, who in turn are shrunken down to the size of regular everyday spiders. We can only hope that there wasn’t some sort of catastrophic megafauna that they were keeping in check with their predations, I guess.

    Appropriately for what I am almost certain is our last Fletcher Hanks comic (but not out final Fantomah), our hero gives a little farewell at the end of the comic!

    Categorized in: Accessories (Giant Spiders), Powers (Animal Control), Supercrime (Attempted Conquest)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 989: THE ARTIST

    (Jackpot Comics 004, 1941)

    An otherwise-unnamed portraitist, the Artist finds himself down on his luck because he refuses to flatter his clients by painting them in anything but complete realism. After his latest client, a banker, literally kicks him out onto the street, he continues to work on the man’s portrait in a hate-fueled haze until he unlocks a power within himself: once he has painted someone’s portrait realistically enough, their soul becomes trapped inside and the husk of their body is forced to do the Artist’s bidding. It’s the ultimate service worker power fantasy!

    As befits a power born out of hatred and frustration at being rejected, the Artist sets out to enrich himself at the cost of others. He begins with the banker, who he forces to rob his own bank and then allows to be carted off to jail. And he still has his soul stuck in the painting, so in a way he’s in double jail.

    If the Artist’s first crime was at least a little bit justified (I personally would not say that a rude client should be sent to jail for twenty years but I know a fair few artists who might disagree), his subsequent crime spree is exclusively aimed at making money and damn the consequences. In short succession he: forces a woman to kill her husband and then fork over the insurance money, enslaves the leader of Tomania to enable a Nazi invasion of that country, and sells his services as a trial fixer (by way of a desouled District Attorney) to gangster Knuckles Werner.

    You just can’t get away with this kind of thing forever, and especially not in Mr Justice’s unnamed town. Thanks to a little ghostly trickery, the Artist is forced to paint own portrait and confess to his crimes, and I guess that the jury was in a mood to accept the existence of the supernatural because he is found guilty and executed. Perhaps targeting the District Attorney like he did was not the best long-term strategy for the Artist.

    Categorized in: Accessories (Henchmen (Mind-Controlled Thralls), Power (Magic (Soul Theft)), Profession (Artists)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 988: FORD

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 988: FORD

    (Jackpot Comics 003, 1941)

    l

    We meet Ford for the first time as he is knifing his fellow archaeologist Baker to death in an ancient Egyptian tomb, in order to be the sole possessor of the fabled Black Book of Sorcery which they have just found.

    Two points about Ford right off the bat: 1. he is only ever called Ford. No first name, even! This is what I get for grumbling internally about how boring William Scott’s name was. 2. He looks like the Devil. This makes sense in the context of a Mr Justice comic, as artist Sam Cooper was never shy about tying one’s morality to their appearance, but in-universe, is it a reflection of the corruption of his soul or was he always that one archaeologist who looked like Satan?

    Having secured the Black Book of Sorcery, Ford is now subject to critiques of how he uses it. His first effort involves raising the mummies that are housed in the temple from the dead in order to murder the remaining six archaeologists in the expedition and thus cover up his crime. I would call this a rash act, but then again I would probably try stealing the book before committing murder in the first place. I suppose Ford and I are just different people.

    Next, he covers up the mummy murders by collapsing the entire temple on top of the bodies. This is a pretty wild stunt for an archaeologist of all people to pull, and on top of that it’s not even a great way to conceal some bodies, as rubble is famously clearable. It’s also a waste of a number of perfectly good mummies, mummies who might have been some help in cleaning up a crime scene.

    Having made his way back to the unnamed city that both he and Mr Justice call home, Ford attempts to profit off of his new mastery of the necromantic arts by raising deceased millionaire’s son John Grant from the dead to hit up his parents for a loan. Ethical considerations aside, this kind of thing isn’t the worst way to make some dough via dark magic: you could emotionally blackmail the parents with the thought of their child being condemned to a miserable half-dead existence, or maybe use privileged family information to commit some sort of financial fraud or very precise burglary, for example. 

    Ford just sends Grant to bust down the front door and demand cash, which is a total bust as Grant’s parents are left feeling more existentially horrified than inclined to pay out.  Honestly, if smash-and-grab stuff like this is all that you’re going to use necromancy for you might as well stick with the squad of beefcake mummies rather than raising up bespoke dead guys for every job.

    This is the point that Mr Justice gets involved in the story, by the way. You can’t do dark majick inside the borders of [CITY NAME NOT FOUND] and hope to escape his gaze.

    For his final trick, Ford summons the very off-model spirit of Nero, “the most horrible tyrant the world has ever known” as a counter to Mr Justice. Nero in turn proposes a sort of ghost road trip to the Edge of Infinity to access the Immunity Vacuum and become immortal in a way that is distinct from the immortality already enjoyed by the souls of the dead in the Mr Justice cosmology.

    Perhaps the Immunity Vacuum confers a version of immortality that prevents one’s soul from being beaten up by another ghost and thrown into the “depths of eternal nothingness,” never to emerge, and if it is it’s too bad for Ford and Nero that the latter’s chariot isn’t faster because that’s exactly what Mr Justice does to them.

    Unsurprisingly, this kills Ford’s body, which makes it simplicity itself for Mr Justice to collect the Black Book of Sorcery and use the convenient self-destruct spell that it holds to render it blank.

    Categorized in: Accessories (Book of Magic), Day Jobs (Archaeologists), Supercrime (Necromancy)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 988: FORD

    (Jackpot Comics 003, 1941)

    l

    We meet Ford for the first time as he is knifing his fellow archaeologist Baker to death in an ancient Egyptian tomb, in order to be the sole possessor of the fabled Black Book of Sorcery which they have just found.

    Two points about Ford right off the bat: 1. he is only ever called Ford. No first name, even! This is what I get for grumbling internally about how boring William Scott’s name was. 2. He looks like the Devil. This makes sense in the context of a Mr Justice comic, as artist Sam Cooper was never shy about tying one’s morality to their appearance, but in-universe, is it a reflection of the corruption of his soul or was he always that one archaeologist who looked like Satan?

    Having secured the Black Book of Sorcery, Ford is now subject to critiques of how he uses it. His first effort involves raising the mummies that are housed in the temple from the dead in order to murder the remaining six archaeologists in the expedition and thus cover up his crime. I would call this a rash act, but then again I would probably try stealing the book before committing murder in the first place. I suppose Ford and I are just different people.

    Next, he covers up the mummy murders by collapsing the entire temple on top of the bodies. This is a pretty wild stunt for an archaeologist of all people to pull, and on top of that it’s not even a great way to conceal some bodies, as rubble is famously clearable. It’s also a waste of a number of perfectly good mummies, mummies who might have been some help in cleaning up a crime scene.

    Having made his way back to the unnamed city that both he and Mr Justice call home, Ford attempts to profit off of his new mastery of the necromantic arts by raising deceased millionaire’s son John Grant from the dead to hit up his parents for a loan. Ethical considerations aside, this kind of thing isn’t the worst way to make some dough via dark magic: you could emotionally blackmail the parents with the thought of their child being condemned to a miserable half-dead existence, or maybe use privileged family information to commit some sort of financial fraud or very precise burglary, for example. 

    Ford just sends Grant to bust down the front door and demand cash, which is a total bust as Grant’s parents are left feeling more existentially horrified than inclined to pay out.  Honestly, if smash-and-grab stuff like this is all that you’re going to use necromancy for you might as well stick with the squad of beefcake mummies rather than raising up bespoke dead guys for every job.

    This is the point that Mr Justice gets involved in the story, by the way. You can’t do dark majick inside the borders of [CITY NAME NOT FOUND] and hope to escape his gaze.

    For his final trick, Ford summons the very off-model spirit of Nero, “the most horrible tyrant the world has ever known” as a counter to Mr Justice. Nero in turn proposes a sort of ghost road trip to the Edge of Infinity to access the Immunity Vacuum and become immortal in a way that is distinct from the immortality already enjoyed by the souls of the dead in the Mr Justice cosmology.

    Perhaps the Immunity Vacuum confers a version of immortality that prevents one’s soul from being beaten up by another ghost and thrown into the “depths of eternal nothingness,” never to emerge, and if it is it’s too bad for Ford and Nero that the latter’s chariot isn’t faster because that’s exactly what Mr Justice does to them.

    Unsurprisingly, this kills Ford’s body, which makes it simplicity itself for Mr Justice to collect the Black Book of Sorcery and use the convenient self-destruct spell that it holds to render it blank.

    Categorized in: Accessories (Book of Magic), Day Jobs (Archaeologists), Supercrime (Necromancy)

  • GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 045

    GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 045

    It’s hard out there for the little guys.

    Unnamed Spy Chief:

    I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a comic book villain with such a distinctive look and clear devotion to a visual theme but absolutely nothing else. Her “decadent Egyptian Queen” bit doesn’t spill into her plans, it doesn’t inform how her minions dress… she doesn’t even have a name. Baffling! 

    On top of everything else, her plans are foiled and she is captured by the oafish Navy man Spark Stevens.(Green Mask v1 004, 1941)

    John Dale:

    When John Dale decides to murder his elderly cousin Ludwig in order to speed up the inheritance process, he disguises himself by grabbing this lizard-goblin mask that seems to be part of the decor, and then again when he decides that further murders will help him to cover up the first one. Thankfully for intrepid reporter Dell and her companion, the Night Bird is there to prevent this second (and third) murder.

    Dale’s plan is flimsy at best, and includes multiple key factors that would fall apart under the lightest of scrutiny (no autopsy because he, the main beneficiary with power of attorney, said that they didn’t need it, fake will, etc). The best of these is this secret room setup, where the open window in the library is covered in an enlarged photo of the view from the secret room in order to obfuscate its presence to those in the library. Would having the will reading in a room other than the library make it even easier to conceal the secret? Certainly, but it wouldn’t be as clever. (Green Mask v1 007, 1941)

    the Corpse:

    In Green Mask v1 007, the titular Green Masks solves the murder of a man named Brown over an engraved box that turns out to contain a map to lost pirate treasure. The murderer, a con artist and fake medium called Swami Zodia, is captured, and Michael “the Green Mask” Shelby and his pals take possession of the map in what I would call morally questionable circumstances. Hope Mr Brown didn’t have any heirs!

    The voyage to the treasure-bearing island is fraught with death and danger courtesy of a treacherous ship’s captain and his ally the Corpse, supposedly the walking cadaver of the pirate who drew the map in the first place. This is of course hogwash, and despite putting in a surprisingly strong showing against the Green Mask and Domino the Corpse is eventually unmasked to reveal that he is… Swami Zodia again! Yes, having committed murder for it, Zodia isn’t yet ready to give up on the treasure and has pulled out the comic book con artist’s ultimate weapon: the fake ghost. Alas, it does not work. (Green Mask v1 008, 1941)

    Simia:

    Simia is, simply put, an evil ape (species up for debate. Chimpanzee? Gorilla?). He was found as an orphaned baby and raised by a man named Jim Keane – does his evil nature stem from being brought up in a household where using utensils was prioritized and acting like an ape meant that you get locked up in a cage, seemingly indefinitely? Possibly.

    Simia is set free by some evil men who are after Keane, and immediately organizes an ape gang to terrorize the local jungle, which includes kidnapping Kaänga’s mate Ann (he also inadvertently helps his foster father by killing his enemies).

    Kaänga is not a guy whose home life you want to mess with, as Simia learns just before getting his head bashed in on a boulder. (Jungle Comics 014, 1941)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 985: THE MAD GHOST

    (Green Mask v1 008, 1941)

    The tale of the Mad Ghost (“Death Deals in Diamonds!”) is presented as a classic whodunnit, which happen to be one of my very favourite genres of both comic stories and of fiction in general. Sadly, this story is a prime example of how poorly this genre can be executed, and an early sign of this is in the dramatic presentation of suspects on the splash page. While it is pretty common to include the story’s protagonist in such lineups for aesthetic reasons or maybe to bulk things out a bit, this batch includes both Lens “the Night Bird” Crockett and his partner Dell, rendering that fat juicy suspect pool down to a mere three guys.

    As we get into the story proper we can find this same commitment to quality, as our murder mystery is in fact nothing more than a loosely connected series of action vignettes featuring the Mad Ghost. In terms of clues to the mystery of the Ghost’s identity, we learn that Count Rogo is a shady customer and that the hotel manager and detective are present, and that’s about all. Other than the fact that the hotel detective and the Mad Ghost wear the same colour suit, but surely that must be a red herring, yes?

    No, that’s really it so far as audience-friendly clues go. The Night Bird claims that he “recognized his profile” but c’mon. He’s wearing a rubberoid mask when he’s the Ghost! Are we using “profile” in a bold new way here? And just why was he dressing up like a creepazoid and stalking the rooms of a failing hotel? Because he is actually an escaped diamond thief who murdered and impersonated the real hotel detective while attempting to discover the location of his swag, which the detective had confiscated and hidden somewhere in the building. Was committing a series of monster murders a reasonable way to go about solving this problem? Sadly it was not.

    Categorized in: Body (Sanity), Theft (Jewel Thieves), Supranormal Beings (Ghosts)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 984: THE GHOUL

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 984: THE GHOUL

    (Green Mask v1 007, 1941)

    The Ghoul has a simple, brutal, efficient racket: identify people who have large life insurance policies, murder them, and then extort the payout from their beneficiaries with threats of violence. What is unclear is exactly how long the racket has been going on, and whether the point we come in at represents some awkward teething troubles or a long-established operation beginning to crumble.

    Either way, the Ghoul’s last score is a mess: actor John Pierce is shot down mid-play and then the gang’s lieutenant, Steve Pelley -himself a very recognizable New York crime figure scoops up Mrs Pierce in front of the theatre and brings her in to be shaken down. Aside from the fact that this is a sure way to draw attention to Pelley as the probable murderer (which he is)… the insurance claim hasn’t even been filed yet! What the heck is the hurry?

    Indeed, all of this suspicious activity attracts the attention of the Green Mask and Domino, who clean up the gang in short order. Please note the Green Mask’s punch shattering the Ghoul’s skull mask: this is a classic visual and always fun to see.

    Categorized in: Extortionists, Murderers, Supranormal Beings (Undead (Ghouls))