The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: murderer

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 295: RED SKULL II

    (Captain America Comics 001 & 003, 1941)

    When I started this here blog I tried to put a little bit of thought into the tagging system, and specifically tried to work out how to deal with the fact that a lot of super-villain types have the same names. The solution I came up with is that everyone named, say, the Skull gets the same tag but legacy characters who are adopting a specific persona that another has used get appended with Roman numerals (skull II, Skull III, etc). And here I am breaking that rule the very first time I have the chance.

    Well, kind of. See, this is the original Red Skull so far as appearance in print is concerned. About 4 issues after he dies in his second appearance, the Red Skull returns, but a different Red Skull. This second Skull is the one that continues to appear to this day and the fellow I’m writing about here has been retroactively relegated to the status of Regional Franchise Red Skull. It’s all about not having to bother typing that extra ‘II’ in the tags for the next 80 years worth of appearances, honestly.

    So: the Red Skull (II)! Pretty much the perfect Nazi creep villain complete with a red skull calling card, taunting notes and a gimmick wherein he convinces his victims that he is killing them with his stare when in fact he is sneakily injecting them with poison. Why does he do this? For his own Nazi creep pleasure I guess.

    And just who is this retroactive knockoff? Why, it’s none other than George Maxon, aircraft manufacturer, who sold out the US to Hitler for the promise of high office. Boo this man!

    Maxon seemingly kills himself with his own syringe at the end of his first appearance and his body is shown being examined by the FBI afterward, they evidently just… left him to rot in his secret lair? Which works out pretty well for him, to be honest, since like any good poison-user he is immune to his own weapon.

    This time around, the Skull goes for a touch of death rather than a gaze, which involves a) an electrified costume and b) getting punched in the face a bunch. He seems to enjoy it, so I guess winning is worth a sock in the jaw to him.

    This second adventure sees this Red Skull’s greatest triumph as he steals the designs for a drilling vehicle and uses it to smash up part of NYC in one of those huge cataclysms that happened so often in the 40s. Marvel Universe New York must be simply awash in commemorative plaques detailing them all.

    Unfortunately for George Maxon and his super-villain legacy, this issue also sees his lowest moment, as he mistakes a couple of con artists for the real Captain America and Bucky despite one million signs that they aren’t. Frankly getting blown up with a round bomb a few pages later must have been a bit of a relief from the embarrassment of it all.

    (Maxon also shows up in Young Allies 001 the same year but it’s a weird appearance that has since been retconned pretty thoroughly for good reasons but in a way that has caused me a lot of annoyance when reading fan wikis. An ignominious end to be sure)

    SKULL SCORE: It’s just the eyes, which merits a healthy score of 4! Minus one point for being a mask makes the total come to 3.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 294: THE WAX MAN

    (Captain America Comics 002, 1941)

    The Wax Man is a bit of  an oddball. For one thing, he’s not explicitly a Nazi, just “in the pay of a hostile foreign power,” which is only strange in that this is Marvel Comics, the only big publisher not hedging their bets about calling bad guys Nazis – the story previous to this featured Captain America and Bucky punching out Hitler and Goering and leaving them in trash cans, for heavens sake. But not the Wax Man, he just has a bunch of nonspecific guys working for him who shout “ach du lieber!” when you surprise them.

    He’s also a combo of two kinds of foreign agent character types. As seen above he’s a ruthless and feared killer who gruesomely slays even his own men via suffocation in wax masks (and collects the heads of his enemies, natch), but also…

    He’s a guy with a squadron of super tanks and a plan to topple the US Government via their mechanized might backed up with barrages of guided missiles. These aren’t incompatible character traits per se (and in fact describe quite a few classic villains including Captain America’s very own Red Skull) but they are quite a lot to cram into a 15-page story without losing focus.

    The Wax Man manages to stick the landing by reverting to the “feared killer” aspect of his persona after his super tanks take a bath. Somewhat predictably/ extremely delightfully, he lairs in a wax museum, where we get some classic bits including The Real Guy Hiding Among the Statues and That’s Not Wax, That’s a Dead Person Covered in Wax.

    And finally, the Wax Man turns out to be a Chekov’s Mayor as his real identity is revealed to be Mayor Dobbs, who only showed up for half a page to demand that somebody do something about that terrible Wax Man.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 284: KAI-MAK, THE SHARK-GOD

    (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 023, 1941)

    Kai-Mak here (AKA God of Sharks, Lord of Sharks, Lord of the Deep, Master of the Deep, the Man-Shark) is one of my very favourite things in comics: a weird monster pretending to be a god in order to score power or riches or, as in this case, snacks.

    I’m so fond of this trope, in fact, that I have to make sure to frontload the acknowledgement that it is predicated on the idea that a lot of the varied people in the world are credulous primitive savages with no critical thinking skills or I’ll focus too much on the monster and gloss over the racism. Someday we’ll get to M’nagalah the Cancer God, who at least has the decency to manifest in small mining towns and suburbs.

    That having been said, we must acknowledge how great both Kai-Mak and his high priest look. Jack Kirby’s finest shark-based work, I reckon. Just look at his nose and his greasy hair!

    The Vision shouts a bunch of guesses at what Kai-Mak is that are neither confirmed or denied – he could be right and Kai-Mak could be the last remnant of a race of sharkfolk, sure. He could also be a mutant, an Inhuman, a Deviant, some sort of alien or science experiment or heck, a demi-god spawned by Poseidon in a moment of weakness. Rather than spell out his origin, Kai-Mak opts for a no-holds-barred underwater deathmatch.

    After a cool battle under the waves, Kai-Mak is killed and both his worshippers and a selection of human sacrifices are free to go.

    Now, if there’s one thing that any super-hero universe is simply crawling with, it’s humanoid sharks. On a strict market saturation metric there’s no logical reason to campaign for the return of Kai-Mak. Too bad for Adam Smith that I think the free market sucks eggs: BRING BACK the Shark-God! There’s always room for another giant shark-man! Particularly one who’s been nursing his wounds at the bottom of the ocean for 80 years and is after a new community to subjugate. Have him pop up in New England, Deep One style! The old fish-for-sacrifice trade! It literally can’t go wrong!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 284: KAI-MAK, THE SHARK-GOD

    (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 023, 1941)

    Kai-Mak here (AKA God of Sharks, Lord of Sharks, Lord of the Deep, Master of the Deep, the Man-Shark) is one of my very favourite things in comics: a weird monster pretending to be a god in order to score power or riches or, as in this case, snacks.

    I’m so fond of this trope, in fact, that I have to make sure to frontload the acknowledgement that it is predicated on the idea that a lot of the varied people in the world are credulous primitive savages with no critical thinking skills or I’ll focus too much on the monster and gloss over the racism. Someday we’ll get to M’nagalah the Cancer God, who at least has the decency to manifest in small mining towns and suburbs.

    That having been said, we must acknowledge how great both Kai-Mak and his high priest look. Jack Kirby’s finest shark-based work, I reckon. Just look at his nose and his greasy hair!

    The Vision shouts a bunch of guesses at what Kai-Mak is that are neither confirmed or denied – he could be right and Kai-Mak could be the last remnant of a race of sharkfolk, sure. He could also be a mutant, an Inhuman, a Deviant, some sort of alien or science experiment or heck, a demi-god spawned by Poseidon in a moment of weakness. Rather than spell out his origin, Kai-Mak opts for a no-holds-barred underwater deathmatch.

    After a cool battle under the waves, Kai-Mak is killed and both his worshippers and a selection of human sacrifices are free to go.

    Now, if there’s one thing that any super-hero universe is simply crawling with, it’s humanoid sharks. On a strict market saturation metric there’s no logical reason to campaign for the return of Kai-Mak. Too bad for Adam Smith that I think the free market sucks eggs: BRING BACK the Shark-God! There’s always room for another giant shark-man! Particularly one who’s been nursing his wounds at the bottom of the ocean for 80 years and is after a new community to subjugate. Have him pop up in New England, Deep One style! The old fish-for-sacrifice trade! It literally can’t go wrong!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 281: THE WEIRD GHOST OF AMBER SWAMPS

    (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 021, 1941)

    I got lazy here and clipped the setup, sorry. In brief, the story takes place at Chellcroft, the swampland mansion of wealthy Georgian C.J. Miller (just one letter off from being quite funny), formerly a centre of art and society but now fallen into disrepair.

    To make things worse, the Weird Ghost of Amber Swamps has started haunting the property and killing people, including Norton, the poor butler pictured fleeing the house in the above image.

    You can’t have a murderous ghost, even a weird one, in a super-hero universe without someone showing up to check it out, and in this case it’s the Angel who turns up to pretty quickly discover that the Weird Ghost of Amber Swamps is in fact a Weird Living Man of Amber Swamps, albeit a huge one.

    More specifically, it’s the owner of the house, C.J. Miller, armed with a rubberoid mask and a wild razor blade/ fishing rod weapon that allowed him to kill at a distance. The fact that C.J. Miller was a celebrated angler (and built like a brick shithouse, let’s not forget) makes for a quicker unmasking than usual – a bit of a flaw in the old ghost routine.

    Turns out that Miller is broke and that committing a series of gruesome murders and then killing himself and pinning it all on the ghost is preferable to anybody finding out that he’s broke. Real rich guy shit that us poors wouldn’t understand. Sadly, he does not get his wish, as not only does he trip and kill himself with his own gimmicked fishing rod like a clown but he does so in front of a reporter. Haw haw haw, says I.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 281: THE WEIRD GHOST OF AMBER SWAMPS

    (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 021, 1941)

    I got lazy here and clipped the setup, sorry. In brief, the story takes place at Chellcroft, the swampland mansion of wealthy Georgian C.J. Miller (just one letter off from being quite funny), formerly a centre of art and society but now fallen into disrepair.

    To make things worse, the Weird Ghost of Amber Swamps has started haunting the property and killing people, including Norton, the poor butler pictured fleeing the house in the above image.

    You can’t have a murderous ghost, even a weird one, in a super-hero universe without someone showing up to check it out, and in this case it’s the Angel who turns up to pretty quickly discover that the Weird Ghost of Amber Swamps is in fact a Weird Living Man of Amber Swamps, albeit a huge one.

    More specifically, it’s the owner of the house, C.J. Miller, armed with a rubberoid mask and a wild razor blade/ fishing rod weapon that allowed him to kill at a distance. The fact that C.J. Miller was a celebrated angler (and built like a brick shithouse, let’s not forget) makes for a quicker unmasking than usual – a bit of a flaw in the old ghost routine.

    Turns out that Miller is broke and that committing a series of gruesome murders and then killing himself and pinning it all on the ghost is preferable to anybody finding out that he’s broke. Real rich guy shit that us poors wouldn’t understand. Sadly, he does not get his wish, as not only does he trip and kill himself with his own gimmicked fishing rod like a clown but he does so in front of a reporter. Haw haw haw, says I.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 279: THE CAT’S PAW

    (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 018-020, 1941)

    The Cat’s Paw gets a pretty classic intro: Dr Lin, the Angel’s old mentor and friend who was introduced in the previous issue, is ruthlessly murdered via high-speed application of poisoned dart. The Angel give chase, but fails to make the bust.

    The next day we see some of the Cat’s Paw’s scheme begin to emerge. She’s killing industrialists for some reason. But why?

    Here’s our first look at the villain in question, because I chose some odd images to clip. A couple of things about her stand out:

    -she’s our first example (if not necessarily Marvel’s first example – they’ve got a half-dozen other titles at this point) of a few things in a Marvel comic: a female super-villain, a proper costumed crook, themed weaponry in the form of a cat-claw launcher, and, kind of, a recurring villain.

    -on that last point: not really. Though the Cat’s Paw does appear in three issues worth of  Angel comics, it’s all one story, just decompressed a bit.

    -it is of course notable that she looks a bit like 90s Catwoman

    -most importantly: in the above image both the Cat’s Paw and the Angel are attending a costume party as themselves! A twofer! 

    Eventually, the Angel tracks the Cat’s Paw down to her HQ in one of the dozens of deserted castles that litter the mountains a short drive from NYC in any given comic book universe.

    Now for the disappointing news: the reason that the Cat’s Paw was killing all of those industrialists is that she was acting as a… catspaw for the Nazis in their bid to weaken US support for Britain (and here once more I must note that Marvel was really leading the pack on making Nazi villains for-real Nazis well before Pearl Harbor). She does rediscover her patriotism once her Nazi handler tries to bump her off, which is better than nothing, I suppose. 

    Here’s where I’d normally be decrying the comic for killing her off at the end, pointing out how ambiguous the “guess we’ll never find the corpse, oh well” nature of her death is, and call for her to be brung back as a legacy villain, but the Nazi collaboration is really sticking in my craw. Honestly if she hadn’t walked it back at the end I’d be all for the Cat’s Paw showing up as an Axis agent in period pieces going forward but as-is I reckon she can lie fallow.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 279: THE CAT’S PAW

    (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 018-020, 1941)

    The Cat’s Paw gets a pretty classic intro: Dr Lin, the Angel’s old mentor and friend who was introduced in the previous issue, is ruthlessly murdered via high-speed application of poisoned dart. The Angel give chase, but fails to make the bust.

    The next day we see some of the Cat’s Paw’s scheme begin to emerge. She’s killing industrialists for some reason. But why?

    Here’s our first look at the villain in question, because I chose some odd images to clip. A couple of things about her stand out:

    -she’s our first example (if not necessarily Marvel’s first example – they’ve got a half-dozen other titles at this point) of a few things in a Marvel comic: a female super-villain, a proper costumed crook, themed weaponry in the form of a cat-claw launcher, and, kind of, a recurring villain.

    -on that last point: not really. Though the Cat’s Paw does appear in three issues worth of  Angel comics, it’s all one story, just decompressed a bit.

    -it is of course notable that she looks a bit like 90s Catwoman

    -most importantly: in the above image both the Cat’s Paw and the Angel are attending a costume party as themselves! A twofer! 

    Eventually, the Angel tracks the Cat’s Paw down to her HQ in one of the dozens of deserted castles that litter the mountains a short drive from NYC in any given comic book universe.

    Now for the disappointing news: the reason that the Cat’s Paw was killing all of those industrialists is that she was acting as a… catspaw for the Nazis in their bid to weaken US support for Britain (and here once more I must note that Marvel was really leading the pack on making Nazi villains for-real Nazis well before Pearl Harbor). She does rediscover her patriotism once her Nazi handler tries to bump her off, which is better than nothing, I suppose. 

    Here’s where I’d normally be decrying the comic for killing her off at the end, pointing out how ambiguous the “guess we’ll never find the corpse, oh well” nature of her death is, and call for her to be brung back as a legacy villain, but the Nazi collaboration is really sticking in my craw. Honestly if she hadn’t walked it back at the end I’d be all for the Cat’s Paw showing up as an Axis agent in period pieces going forward but as-is I reckon she can lie fallow.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 275: THE HAG

    (Marvel  Mystery Comics v1 019, 1941)

    I don’t have to go into how wild it is that this woman is called a Hag, right? The wild misogyny of it all? Great, thanks.

    Aside from her name, the Hag is a gang boss, and one who dreams big. Her plan involves causing a citywide power outage in NYC so that her men could  tamper with the Stock Exchange and then clean up the next day while everyone panics about a nonexistent stock crash that she engineered. And also for some reason she takes over a radio station to get access to incoming news? The motivation behind that one is weird to me.

    The real flaw in the Hag’s plan is that while she accounts for the presence of the Human Torch and Toro, she doesn’t really deal with them. Her men are equipped with flame-resistant clothing and fire-suppressing chemicals, but they just serve to help in avoiding the Torch. Ultimately, he catches up, there is an explosion (inevitable), and the Hag is no more.

    This adventure also features the concept of Toro needing a “flame transfusion” after being severely hurt, which is very terrific, and which seems to be a convoluted way for Carl Burgos to canonically establish that Toro’s powers are a little weaker than the Torch’s? For some reason? It’ll be interesting to see if this is ever referenced again, frankly.

    ADDENDUM: forgot to mention the Hag’s sweet calling card:

    ADDENDUM II: Toro’s reduced fire-power actually came up in the subsequent issue, so I’m going to go ahead and try to note every issue it came up in right here:

    Marvel Mystery Comics v1 019
    Marvel Mystery Comics v1 020
    Human Torch v1 004

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 275: THE HAG

    (Marvel  Mystery Comics v1 019, 1941)

    I don’t have to go into how wild it is that this woman is called a Hag, right? The wild misogyny of it all? Great, thanks.

    Aside from her name, the Hag is a gang boss, and one who dreams big. Her plan involves causing a citywide power outage in NYC so that her men could  tamper with the Stock Exchange and then clean up the next day while everyone panics about a nonexistent stock crash that she engineered. And also for some reason she takes over a radio station to get access to incoming news? The motivation behind that one is weird to me.

    The real flaw in the Hag’s plan is that while she accounts for the presence of the Human Torch and Toro, she doesn’t really deal with them. Her men are equipped with flame-resistant clothing and fire-suppressing chemicals, but they just serve to help in avoiding the Torch. Ultimately, he catches up, there is an explosion (inevitable), and the Hag is no more.

    This adventure also features the concept of Toro needing a “flame transfusion” after being severely hurt, which is very terrific, and which seems to be a convoluted way for Carl Burgos to canonically establish that Toro’s powers are a little weaker than the Torch’s? For some reason? It’ll be interesting to see if this is ever referenced again, frankly.

    ADDENDUM: forgot to mention the Hag’s sweet calling card:

    ADDENDUM II: Toro’s reduced fire-power actually came up in the subsequent issue, so I’m going to go ahead and try to note every issue it came up in right here:

    Marvel Mystery Comics v1 019
    Marvel Mystery Comics v1 020
    Human Torch v1 004