The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: murderer

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 955: THE YELLOW SPOT

    (Dynamic Comics 001, 1941)

    Scientists across the US are going missing, kidnapped by  the magical madman known as the Yellow Spot!

    This brain-draining crime spree inspires the magical scholar Professor Moore to create the super-hero Dynamic Man, which in turn inspires the Yellow Spot to murder Professor Moore. He is just a wee bit too late, however, and instead of preventing the creation of Dynamic Man he merely provides him with a bit of extra motivation in the form of a dying father figure.

    But just why is the Yellow Spot after these men of science? Why, to push back against the death of superstition (very funny in retrospect, as in out world the avowed hyper-rationalism of the 40s and 50s gave way to the mystic syncretism of the 60s and ultimately to the proud anti-science of today). He’s got a machine that shrinks a man’s head and renders him like unto a child, and presumably he plans to keep on shrinking heads until it has an effect on the global scientific consensus.

    Dynamic Man shows up just in time to witness a head shrinking, and while it looks to be a pretty uneven contest at first, he is captured in a net made of woven black magic (very cool) that can only be cut using a knife “forged from the bones of a dying murderer” (even cooler, if hard to imagine).

    The thing about a net that can only be cut by a special knife is that it’s only as effective as your ability to keep that knife away from your prisoner, and I would argue that leaving it unattended on a table in the same room as the prisoner while a bunch of easily suggestible man-children wander around is tantamount to just handing it over. Which is a long-winded way of saying that Dynamic Man gets free with the help of a headshrunken scientist and starts beating up the Yellow Spot’s men.

    The Yellow Spot makes a break for it, but in an eleventh hour bit of plot contrivance it turns out that his bat form (i.e., the main way he gets around) is also the only form in which he can be harmed, and as it flies slower than Dynamic Man, he ends up as a flat bat. Personally, I would sacrifice a bit of convenience to avoid being squashed on the wing like this, but then again I am not an insane magic man.

    Finally, I would like to highlight the Yellow Spot’s minions, a bunch of low-grade monster men who he calls the Hideous Ones at least once. Particularly that last fellow, who I swear has half a mustache. A bold choice!

    Categorized in: Abstract Concepts (Shapes), Colours (Yellow), Origins (Henchmen)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 952: WOLF CARSON

    (Daredevil Comics 006, 1941)

    Wolf Carson, gang boss, is in the hospital after being gunned down by his own traitorous associates. Faced with a choice between 1) dying of his wounds or 2) recovering so that the authorities can scoop him up and take him to jail, Carson takes the ever-popular option 3) take the nearby unethical doctor up on his offer to help cheat death via experimental science, in this case a total brain transplant!

    True to his word, the never-named doctor digs up Carson’s corpse that night and extracts its brain, then in a feat of pure super science (particularly given the state the brain must been in after sitting in a corpse for 12+ hrs) transplants it into…

    … A WOLF BODY! Now, just why the doctor chose to do this is never actually stated but I have a couple of theories that boil down to either him doing so as a way to control Carson with the promise of a human body later etc or doing so because he was a terrible guy with a bad sense of humour. Either way, he pays for his choice of donor body with his life. In retrospect, I reckon that his mistake was in leaving Carson unrestrained and then pissing him off severely.

    With nothing else to live for, Carson turns to revenge as his motivation and systematically hunts down the members of the gang that betrayed him. Each murder is accompanied by a trademark “death howl,” which I am counting as a calling card.

    Major complication: Carson has been found, mistaken for a regular dog and taken in by Bart “Daredevil” Hill’s fiance Tonia Saunders, which means that a jealous wolf is now after both Bart and the Daredevil and also Tonia once she realizes just where her dog has been sneaking off to at night. 

    Wolf or not, Carson is no match for the Daredevil and is soon captured. In a rare addendum, we get to see the villain’s trial (and please note the use of the term “brain wolf” to describe him in that newspaper headline – I dearly wanted to use that as his villain name but it’s clearly being used as a description of what he is rather than a moniker). Bart Hill actually manages to put two and two together and determine that the wolf is Carson, upon which the judge sets what I personally would consider a troubling precedent for a super-hero universe by ordering that the brain wolf be summarily sent to the pound and put down. I mean, I’m not a lawyer but that seems bad – some super-intelligent ape c.1976 is going to have to go to the Supreme Court to argue that he shouldn’t be summarily destroyed over a parking ticket.

    Revenge Killer Score: 4/7 (counting Bart and Daredevil as two separate targets)

    Categorized in: Animals (Wolves), Murder (Revenge Killers), Origin (Human Brain in Animal Body) 

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 950: HANS MEYER

    (Daredevil Comics 004, 1941)

    Bart “Daredevil” Hill and his fiance Tonia Saunders are accompanying their friends Jeff and Sue Hart on their honeymoon (!) yacht trip when they encounter the killer combo of rough stormy seas and a mysterious lighthouse that sends them right onto a reef.

    Happily for all involved (except two sailors who are swept overboard and never mentioned again) the yacht is merely wedged rather than sinking and there is a convenient nearby island. An inhabited one, even, as is revealed when the owner, a Hans Meyer, boats over to check on his new neighbours. 

    As you might have noted from when he described himself as the local dictator , Meyer is a prime creep who uses a floating lighthouse to draw ships to his island so that he can hunt their crews for sport, a la Count Zaroff of “The Most Dangerous Game” fame. He barely waits until breakfast is over before he hunts and nearly kills Jeff Hart, and only the Daredevil’s timely intervention prevents the coup de grace.

    I must give Meyer credit here: unlike most people in comics who see a costumed super-hero popping up well outside of their normal territory but coincidentally proximal to some people from back home, he actually puts two and two together and identifies the Daredevil as Bart Hill, and he loves it. I imagine that when you hunt humans for sport you are just itching for the day a vigilante-type super-hero crosses your path.

    I also have to give it to the creative minds behind the Daredevil for continuing to think up reasons for him to be wearing that spiked belt. “It protects him against bear hugs” is a valid, if very specific, reason!

    Having trapped the Daredevil in a pit, Meyer gets to brag a bit, and we learn the other part of his misanthropy, as foreshadowed by his leering at the ladies in his initial appearance. Not only does he hunt and murder the men who land on his island but he “marries” any women who do, and as he very conspicuously does not have any women on his island, we must assume the worst for them.

    Despite seemingly bringing along every weapon he owns (including some very uncomfortable looking knives just kind of shoved through a strap around his ankle), Meyer’s hero hunt goes poorly. Through sheer chance, however, he manages to bury and seemingly kill Daredevil by starting an avalanche.

    Meyer immediately scurries back home to marry Tonia Saunders against her will (and just why is the officiant in a cool mask, you ask? Because it was on the cover that way, as far as I can tell) and then gets himself shot by Jeff Hart, who Meyer never actually went back to kill after he was interrupted in the first place and who has seemingly been crawling slowly toward his vengeance the entire time since. All in all, it’s a memorable honeymoon for the newly-minted Mr & Mrs Hart!

    Categorized in: Location (Pacific Island), Murder (Hunting Humans for Sport), Real Folk – Fictional (Count Zaroff) 

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 950: HANS MEYER

    (Daredevil Comics 004, 1941)

    Bart “Daredevil” Hill and his fiance Tonia Saunders are accompanying their friends Jeff and Sue Hart on their honeymoon (!) yacht trip when they encounter the killer combo of rough stormy seas and a mysterious lighthouse that sends them right onto a reef.

    Happily for all involved (except two sailors who are swept overboard and never mentioned again) the yacht is merely wedged rather than sinking and there is a convenient nearby island. An inhabited one, even, as is revealed when the owner, a Hans Meyer, boats over to check on his new neighbours. 

    As you might have noted from when he described himself as the local dictator , Meyer is a prime creep who uses a floating lighthouse to draw ships to his island so that he can hunt their crews for sport, a la Count Zaroff of “The Most Dangerous Game” fame. He barely waits until breakfast is over before he hunts and nearly kills Jeff Hart, and only the Daredevil’s timely intervention prevents the coup de grace.

    I must give Meyer credit here: unlike most people in comics who see a costumed super-hero popping up well outside of their normal territory but coincidentally proximal to some people from back home, he actually puts two and two together and identifies the Daredevil as Bart Hill, and he loves it. I imagine that when you hunt humans for sport you are just itching for the day a vigilante-type super-hero crosses your path.

    I also have to give it to the creative minds behind the Daredevil for continuing to think up reasons for him to be wearing that spiked belt. “It protects him against bear hugs” is a valid, if very specific, reason!

    Having trapped the Daredevil in a pit, Meyer gets to brag a bit, and we learn the other part of his misanthropy, as foreshadowed by his leering at the ladies in his initial appearance. Not only does he hunt and murder the men who land on his island but he “marries” any women who do, and as he very conspicuously does not have any women on his island, we must assume the worst for them.

    Despite seemingly bringing along every weapon he owns (including some very uncomfortable looking knives just kind of shoved through a strap around his ankle), Meyer’s hero hunt goes poorly. Through sheer chance, however, he manages to bury and seemingly kill Daredevil by starting an avalanche.

    Meyer immediately scurries back home to marry Tonia Saunders against her will (and just why is the officiant in a cool mask, you ask? Because it was on the cover that way, as far as I can tell) and then gets himself shot by Jeff Hart, who Meyer never actually went back to kill after he was interrupted in the first place and who has seemingly been crawling slowly toward his vengeance the entire time since. All in all, it’s a memorable honeymoon for the newly-minted Mr & Mrs Hart!

    Categorized in: Location (Pacific Island), Murder (Hunting Humans for Sport), Real Folk – Fictional (Count Zaroff) 

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 944: PROFESSOR MARKUSYI

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 944: PROFESSOR MARKUSYI

    (Silver Streak Comics 016, 1941)

    Professor Markusyi, the music teacher in question, is a man who is never seen at night and who *refuses* to go out at night, much to the amusement and consternation of those around him.

    There are plenty of reasons why one might not want to go out at night (nyctophobia, love of an early bedtime, a jealous spouse, etc) but only a few of them are worthy of being the focus of a comic book plot, at least in the Golden Age. Markusyi’s secret reason for being diurnal is that he is a werewolf, and specifically the kind of werewolf who transforms every night? And maybe can do it at will during the day? The mythology is murky at best. As is the anatomy: just look at the legs on that thing.

    I gues we must give Markusyi some credit for containing the beast within for long enough to get a reputation as a night-hating crank, but there wouldn’t be a plot if he didn’t lose control, would there, so he murders one of his students for being “too beautiful to live” like a real creep.

    Also please note the free rein that a literal wolf had to roam the streets in the 1940s. Are modern social and legal conventions about not allowing your dog to roam free secretly part of an anti-werewolf agenda?

    We must now step back to the title page of this story for a look at a different messed-up drawing of a wolf (man), and while my initial instinct was to make fun of the anatomy on display (see above) I do kind of love the concept of a werewolf as a messed-up uncanny valley dog-thing, like the human part is trying to create the wolf part from memory and doing a bad job.

    I also want to showcase the fact that the only thing that Markusyi is called other than his own name is here in the title and it’s the Music Teacher, which is a good name for a villain but frustratingly not applicable here. I just love when villains have cool names, you guys. Calling them by their government name is a bummer.

    Bart “the Daredevil” Hill is alerted to the case thanks to a police inspector pal with what I would call an unprofessional approach to law enforcement. Thanks to some research in one of those extremely comprehensive books on folklore that you get in horror movies, Bart is soon aware of just how exactly Markusyi’s version of werewolfism works. Specifically, that he has to kill four… women? in order to be cured, and he’s already killed three!

    Markusyi’s fourth target is the Daredevil’s fiance Tonia Saunders, who he met and fixated upon thanks to an ill-conceived plan to gather information by signing her up for violin lessons with him. While this was a very dumb idea, it does allow Daredevil to find Markusyi before he commits his final murder (and becomes human just in time to have to get away from a crime scene) and seemingly beat him to death, which I guess that this kind of werewolf is unacceptable to. All’s well that ends well, I suppose? For a certain value of “well”?

    Categorized in: Doctors & Professors, Murder (Magical Reason), Origin (Lycanthrope)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 944: PROFESSOR MARKUSYI

    (Silver Streak Comics 016, 1941)

    Professor Markusyi, the music teacher in question, is a man who is never seen at night and who *refuses* to go out at night, much to the amusement and consternation of those around him.

    There are plenty of reasons why one might not want to go out at night (nyctophobia, love of an early bedtime, a jealous spouse, etc) but only a few of them are worthy of being the focus of a comic book plot, at least in the Golden Age. Markusyi’s secret reason for being diurnal is that he is a werewolf, and specifically the kind of werewolf who transforms every night? And maybe can do it at will during the day? The mythology is murky at best. As is the anatomy: just look at the legs on that thing.

    I gues we must give Markusyi some credit for containing the beast within for long enough to get a reputation as a night-hating crank, but there wouldn’t be a plot if he didn’t lose control, would there, so he murders one of his students for being “too beautiful to live” like a real creep.

    Also please note the free rein that a literal wolf had to roam the streets in the 1940s. Are modern social and legal conventions about not allowing your dog to roam free secretly part of an anti-werewolf agenda?

    We must now step back to the title page of this story for a look at a different messed-up drawing of a wolf (man), and while my initial instinct was to make fun of the anatomy on display (see above) I do kind of love the concept of a werewolf as a messed-up uncanny valley dog-thing, like the human part is trying to create the wolf part from memory and doing a bad job.

    I also want to showcase the fact that the only thing that Markusyi is called other than his own name is here in the title and it’s the Music Teacher, which is a good name for a villain but frustratingly not applicable here. I just love when villains have cool names, you guys. Calling them by their government name is a bummer.

    Bart “the Daredevil” Hill is alerted to the case thanks to a police inspector pal with what I would call an unprofessional approach to law enforcement. Thanks to some research in one of those extremely comprehensive books on folklore that you get in horror movies, Bart is soon aware of just how exactly Markusyi’s version of werewolfism works. Specifically, that he has to kill four… women? in order to be cured, and he’s already killed three!

    Markusyi’s fourth target is the Daredevil’s fiance Tonia Saunders, who he met and fixated upon thanks to an ill-conceived plan to gather information by signing her up for violin lessons with him. While this was a very dumb idea, it does allow Daredevil to find Markusyi before he commits his final murder (and becomes human just in time to have to get away from a crime scene) and seemingly beat him to death, which I guess that this kind of werewolf is unacceptable to. All’s well that ends well, I suppose? For a certain value of “well”?

    Categorized in: Doctors & Professors, Murder (Magical Reason), Origin (Lycanthrope)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 935: PROFESSOR BLANKHORNE

    (Silver Streak Comics 013, 1941)

    Dickie Dean, Boy Inventor has a new invention: the Photo-Lightning Machine, with which he can cause a bolt of lightning to crash down on anyplace he pleases, like the deserted house across the road from him that nobody was planning on using, hopefully. The only catch is that he hasn’t yet figured out how to get the lightning to strike a target that is in water.

    Dickie and his pal Zip Todd take the plans for the machine to Dickie’s lawyer to have it registered at the patent office, only to find a new face ready to take his business. This is C.B. Wolf, a foreign agent who has infiltrated the firm specifically to steal Dickie’s inventions for his home country. Wolf wires the plans home to the laboratory of Professor Blankhorne, the second greatest inventor in the world, barring Dickie (and how that must rankle Professor Skinn), who decides that rather than using them to construct his own machine he will save time by travelling to Castleton to acquire the original.

    Dickie is of course unwilling to sign over his shiny new weapon of mass destruction to an Axis agent and capable of defeating the Professor’s crude attempt to mug him for it, which forces Blankhorne to establish a Stateside volcano lair to operate out of.

    Blankhorne’s second attempt at obtaining the Photo-Lightning Machine involves sending a storm of remote-controlled and explosive model planes down on Castleton, Pennsylvania and presumably just kind of hoping that they will kill Dickie but leave his invention intact. This attempt is foiled by a patented Dickie Dean lightning storm that brings all of the planes down safely outside of town.

    It is at this point that I must question Professor Blankhorne’s motives for confronting Dickie Dean. As mentioned above, he claims that stealing the machine will be quicker than building one, yet between the trans-Atlantic journey and the time spent in preparing his drone fleet, this effort has taken Blankhorne at least three and a half months so far. Is this the sunk cost fallacy at play, or is the Professor trying to prove that he is not merely the second-greatest inventor on Earth?

    Blankhorn (along with the surprisingly hands-on CB Wolf) are seemingly handed victory on a platter when Dickie’s pal Zip Todd sets out to confront them with a baseball bat and is promptly imprisoned and – both inexplicably and importantly – tied up and suspended in a big tub of water.

    Thanks to the aforementioned flaw in the Photo-Lightning Machine’s targeting, Dickie is able to blast Blankhorne’s entire base without hitting Zip Todd, and when the villains attempt to escape in the Sky Bug he blows them out of the air with a complete lack of remorse. 

    Astonishingly (considering the fact that he was blown up on-panel), Professor Blankhorne manages to return in Silver Streak Comics 015. He infiltrates Dickie Dean’s new high-tech laboratory in the guise of an old flower seller (and gruesomely murders Dickie’s head of security in a vat of lye) as part of a scheme to loot the place of all of its technological wizardry. A solid plan, though I will note that he does so on the first day that the lab is in operation and so his haul is mostly made up of the stuff that Dean had already created.

    Though the law is no match for Dickie Dean’s lightning cannon (a distinct invention from the Photo-Lightning Machine), Blankhorne is no match for a couple of teenaged boys in a smoke screen, and he is captured with much greater ease than in his first appearance.

    Categorized in: Accessories (Drones), Doctors & Professors, Ideologies (Crypto-Fascists)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 935: PROFESSOR BLANKHORNE

    (Silver Streak Comics 013, 1941)

    Dickie Dean, Boy Inventor has a new invention: the Photo-Lightning Machine, with which he can cause a bolt of lightning to crash down on anyplace he pleases, like the deserted house across the road from him that nobody was planning on using, hopefully. The only catch is that he hasn’t yet figured out how to get the lightning to strike a target that is in water.

    Dickie and his pal Zip Todd take the plans for the machine to Dickie’s lawyer to have it registered at the patent office, only to find a new face ready to take his business. This is C.B. Wolf, a foreign agent who has infiltrated the firm specifically to steal Dickie’s inventions for his home country. Wolf wires the plans home to the laboratory of Professor Blankhorne, the second greatest inventor in the world, barring Dickie (and how that must rankle Professor Skinn), who decides that rather than using them to construct his own machine he will save time by travelling to Castleton to acquire the original.

    Dickie is of course unwilling to sign over his shiny new weapon of mass destruction to an Axis agent and capable of defeating the Professor’s crude attempt to mug him for it, which forces Blankhorne to establish a Stateside volcano lair to operate out of.

    Blankhorne’s second attempt at obtaining the Photo-Lightning Machine involves sending a storm of remote-controlled and explosive model planes down on Castleton, Pennsylvania and presumably just kind of hoping that they will kill Dickie but leave his invention intact. This attempt is foiled by a patented Dickie Dean lightning storm that brings all of the planes down safely outside of town.

    It is at this point that I must question Professor Blankhorne’s motives for confronting Dickie Dean. As mentioned above, he claims that stealing the machine will be quicker than building one, yet between the trans-Atlantic journey and the time spent in preparing his drone fleet, this effort has taken Blankhorne at least three and a half months so far. Is this the sunk cost fallacy at play, or is the Professor trying to prove that he is not merely the second-greatest inventor on Earth?

    Blankhorn (along with the surprisingly hands-on CB Wolf) are seemingly handed victory on a platter when Dickie’s pal Zip Todd sets out to confront them with a baseball bat and is promptly imprisoned and – both inexplicably and importantly – tied up and suspended in a big tub of water.

    Thanks to the aforementioned flaw in the Photo-Lightning Machine’s targeting, Dickie is able to blast Blankhorne’s entire base without hitting Zip Todd, and when the villains attempt to escape in the Sky Bug he blows them out of the air with a complete lack of remorse. 

    Astonishingly (considering the fact that he was blown up on-panel), Professor Blankhorne manages to return in Silver Streak Comics 015. He infiltrates Dickie Dean’s new high-tech laboratory in the guise of an old flower seller (and gruesomely murders Dickie’s head of security in a vat of lye) as part of a scheme to loot the place of all of its technological wizardry. A solid plan, though I will note that he does so on the first day that the lab is in operation and so his haul is mostly made up of the stuff that Dean had already created.

    Though the law is no match for Dickie Dean’s lightning cannon (a distinct invention from the Photo-Lightning Machine), Blankhorne is no match for a couple of teenaged boys in a smoke screen, and he is captured with much greater ease than in his first appearance.

    Categorized in: Accessories (Drones), Doctors & Professors, Ideologies (Crypto-Fascists)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 932: THE GHOST OF THE DOMINO

    (Silver Streak Comics 011, 1941)

    The Domino is dead! All those murders he did and more importantly admitted to when he was trying to extort the NYPD have caught up to him via the electric chair, and all of New York breathes easier.

    Not for long, however, as the various witnesses at the Domino’s trial, and particularly the members of his own gang who turned state’s evidence, begin turning up dead with a domino – that has the Domino’s fingerprints on it! –  in their hands. Rumours that the ghost of the Domino has returned for revenge start flying around the underworld.

    And to top it all off, the Domino’s grave turns out to be empty!

    Now, the seemingly dead gangster returned from the dead to get revenge is a common enough trope that we can lay out the possible ways it might have happened with ease:

    1. the Domino’s death was faked and the “body” smuggled out for “revival” elsewhere

    2. the Domino really dies and his body was collected by an unscrupulous scientist for revival or brain transplant, etc.

    3. the Domino’s body was stolen and he is being impersonated, possibly by a secret identical twin

    4. it’s actually the Domino’s ghost

    Feel free to place a small bet on which of these comics-accurate options is the case here.

    Answer: it’s option 3! The Ghost of the Domino is in fact Pete Poulos, one of the Domino’s former lieutenants, who has faked his old boss’ return and done all of the seeming revenge killings as a smokescreen for his true goal: to eliminate all the other former members of the Domino gang who know where their old boss’ money is hidden.

    As per usual, a combination of facial disguises and a bulletproof vest carries the day for Presto Martin, and the Ghost of the Domino is sent to replace the original in prison (and possibly the grave).

    Categorized in: Accessories (Calling Cards), Activities (Dominoes), Fraud (Fake Ghosts)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 931: THE HEATER

    (Silver Streak Comics 010, 1941)

    Having so recently weathered the cold-based threat of the Wingers, the US aviation community is now faced with another elemental enemy in the form of the Heater, a mysterious plane that is attacking aircraft with a heat ray. Cloud Curtis, self-appointed defender of the airways, is of course keenly interested in this development.

    Unlike the Wingers, the Heater’s motivations are never explored. They could be spies, territorial smugglers, extortionists like their predecessors, any number of things. And yes: despite being a group of at least four men they are called the Heater singular, probably because it is the plane that is being referred to rather than the gang inside of it.

    Cloud Curtis’ first attempt to stop the Heater is stymied when they melt the grappling arms right off of his Golden Bullet. This marks the second out of two times that his signature move (grab ahold of a plane and then personally board it and punch everyone out) has been stymied by these uncouth plane gangs.

    Thankfully for Curtis and the other denizens of the skies, while he was trading bullets for heat ray blasts his ally Pop Whistler was back at their home base inventing a new type of plastic that not is only heatproof but reflects heat back at its source. Once the Golden Bullet is coated in this material it is a simple matter of engaging the Heater in another dogfight and they are soon treated to a dose of their own incendiary medicine.

    Categorized in: Accessories (Aircraft & Rays), Elements (Fire), Murder