The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: murderer

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 891: THE LAUGHING SKULL

    (Wow Comics 003, 1941)

    The Laughing Skull specializes in extortion. They call it blackmail and it is kind of framed as being blackmail but over the course of the story it becomes clear that he has no concrete dirt on any of his victims and is just counting on carrying the day with vague threats and eventually by being able to point to all the people who he killed for not paying him. Straight-up threats-of-violence extortion, in other words. 

    To make sure that word gets out about the consequences of ignoring his demands, the Laughing Skull kills his victims by burying them alive and leaving cheeky tombstones on their graves. Horrible! 

    While very public murders might make for good business in the extortion industry they do come with a pretty specific workplace hazard in the form of super-heroes – in this case Mr Scarlet – knowing where and when to find you on most nights. We must assume that it’s a huge cemetery, however, because somehow Mr Scarlet is too late to save the Laughing Skull’s second victim even though he was already inside when they started digging. Or perhaps those henchmen are the world’s greatest gravediggers.

    Not that the Laughing Skull is a total pushover: his announced third victim is in fact a cover for a trap set for Mr Scarlet, and one that works well enough that Scarlet has to be rescued from his immanent burial by Miss Wade.

    Not to buck the greater super-villain trend by adjusting his methods after clashing with a super-hero, the Skull is finally captured while in the process of burying the actual third victim. Unmasked via a tombstone to the head, he turns out to be banker John Dodd, aka the false third victim, who used his insider knowledge to select the wealthiest targets for his extortion attempts. But there’s more! The Laughing Skull/ John Dodd is also revealed to be…

    … this guy, who has been popping up throughout the issue and confessing to being the Laughing Skull to both DA Brian Butler and Mr Scarlet! This is kind of a smart move? It definitely allows the Laughing Skull to misdirect Mr Scarlet on at least one occasion as that guy was always just lurking around waiting for his chance to confess. The risk is very high, however, particularly as John Dodd is at least theoretically a witness to the attempted murder of Mr Scarlet – did the Laughing Skull have a plan for when DA Brian Butler came to ask him for a statement or was he just going to keep burying lawmen until they stopped trying to arrest him?

    Anyway, the whole gang ends up dumped in a grave with a custom tombstone of their own (that opens up a whole world of questions about whether Mr Scarlet has stonecarving chops or is packing some sort of 1940s Sharpie in his belt). A dose of your own medicine, Laughing Skull!

    SKULL SCORE: 3/5 

    (this ish also feature Mr Scarlet having a smoke while in costume – a real rarity!)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 889: THE BLACK THORN

    (Wow Comics 003, 1941)

    Inventor Phineas Cox has created a mummy ray, which is a device that fires a beam that instantly mummifies living tissue, a horrible thing that could only be used ethically by the mortuary and possibly the jerky industries. Cox intends for the weapon to be used in the defense of the United States, and to that end takes it not to the military but to something called the Defend America League, where he is somewhat predictably thrown out on his ear. 

    Phineas Cox vows to show America what he’s made of, and that very evening the Black Thorn makes his debut by desiccating an innocent woman. Why call yourself the Black Thorn when your main gimmick is a mummy ray? My guess is that the ray is a late addition to what was an already thought-out alter ego – I mean, just look at that costume! It’s not my favourite outfit of the Golden Age, but it definitely lacks some of the sense of just having been thrown together out of things that were already in the attic that some of them do.

    The Black Thorn’s schemes are, true to Cox’ pronouncement, decidedly anti-American: he steals defense funds from a bank and blows up an arsenal, leaving a trail of mummies in his wake. He’d have kept on going, too, only it is at this point that Mr Scarlet gets involved.

    Mr Scarlet himself almost gets mummified on two occasions but the Black Thorn shoots at the wrong prone figure in the dark the first time and falls for a decoy the second time, and since the both the misidentified target and decoy were the body of the slain bank guard, this means that the poor guy ends up being triple-mummified, which is a small consolation but has to be some kind of record.

    Please also note the Black Thorn using his horned headpiece as a weapon against Mr Scarlet. It’s nice to see something  seemingly purely ornamental like that see practical use. 

    In the end, the Black Thorn turns out not to be Phineas Cox but Henry Hawley, the leader of the Defend America League, which savvy readers might have already spotted as a fascist organization based on the ostentatiously patriotic name alone. Hawley had not, in fact thought Cox to be a nutjob but instead imprisoned him and stolen his invention for used in his campaign against America, and he would’ve gotten away with it if it hadn’t been for that pesky Mr Scarlet.

    Though Mr Scarlet busts up the mummy ray and tells Cox not to even think about building another one, the Black Thorn will return, and he will be mummifying his foes. Somehow.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 888: THE SCORPION

    (Wow Comics 002, 1940)

    The Scorpion is mostly a regular gang boss, but with just enough extra oomph to take him over the edge into super-villainy. First thing: he is a very Bad Boss in that particular “execute under-performing employees as an example to the others” kind of way that all corporate overlords wish that HR would let them be.

    Secondly, he is perhaps the closest thing to a super-villain was faced by Allan Lanier, aka the Hunchback, seen here in his civilian guise rushing to investigate the defenestration of the Scorpion’s poor minion and inadvertently getting his fiance Betty kidnapped in the process.

    The Scorpion also has a true super-villain’s lack of subtlety, seen here as he successfully fools Lanier into believing that Betty has gone to visit her uncle by means of a simple telegram but then is unable to resist sending a more explicit threat (signed with a cute lil’ scorpion!) and undoing his previous work. 

    Finally, the Scorpion has a cool hideout: just like the Ninja Turtles he lives in an abandoned subway station, to which he is tracked by the vengeful Hunchback.

    After that, it’s all over. The Hunchback doesn’t play around, he just breaks the Scorpion’s neck. I would say that this is a case of someone choosing their enemies poorly, but the Scorpion didn’t actually know he was dealing with the Hunchback until it was too late. I guess the lesson is “don’t kidnap women.”

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 881: THE TIGRESS

    (Spy Smasher 002, 1941)

    After the heady times of having an actual Nazi agent in the person of the Red Death last time, we are back in the realms of plausible deniability and no-name fascism in the person of the Tigress.

    Though the Tigress does indulge in some activities relating to her chosen theme, including somewhat gruesomely using her two trained tigers for corpse-disposal duties, her main line is in murdering US officials such as Senator Whitney here and then substituting her own disguised men for them.

    The Tigress’ latest plot involves replacing influential politicians such as  the aforementioned Senator Whitney and his co-Senator Burke here in order to influence the vote on something called the “South American Fortification Bill” and presumably then arrange an invasion of the US from the South. Luckily for Senator Burke, Spy Smasher was on hand for the assassination of Senator Whitney and where he failed to prevent that he is able to keep Burke from dying to an exploding cigar and having “Died due to Prank” engraved on his tombstone.

    Despite being prevented from murdering Senator Burke, the Tigress is still one step ahead of Spy Smasher, having had the foresight to station a couple of fake cops at the hotel where the assassination was to take place. They “take him into custody” right into the Tigress’ clutches, where she reveals that the next stage of her plan is to make up one of her guys into a fake Spy Smasher and use him to kidnap Admiral Corby, who will in turn be impersonated as part of the larger plot.

    Long-time readers may recognize where the Tigress’ plan goes awry: locking the hero in a supposedly inescapable deathtrap – in this case a room containing two tigers – and then failing to confirm that it worked is a sure-fire recipe for an alive hero.

    Having successfully escaped, Spy Smasher shows up in his Gyro-Sub just in time to save Admiral and Eve Corby from being flung to their dooms from a high cliff in what looks like a more public area than I personally would choose to murder someone who I hoped to replace with a double, but then again who am I to argue with the future… Dictatoress of America?

    Everything wraps up fairly quickly after this: the fake Spy Smasher meets the hero imposter’s frequent end as he is shot by mistake in the melee and the Tigress and her remaining men are rounded up (the Tigress’ vest also comes open in the scuffle and I have to assume that someone at Fawcett HQ declared the sight of her bare sternum to be too sexy, because that is clearly a retroactively-applied yellow shirt).

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 881: THE TIGRESS

    (Spy Smasher 002, 1941)

    After the heady times of having an actual Nazi agent in the person of the Red Death last time, we are back in the realms of plausible deniability and no-name fascism in the person of the Tigress.

    Though the Tigress does indulge in some activities relating to her chosen theme, including somewhat gruesomely using her two trained tigers for corpse-disposal duties, her main line is in murdering US officials such as Senator Whitney here and then substituting her own disguised men for them.

    The Tigress’ latest plot involves replacing influential politicians such as  the aforementioned Senator Whitney and his co-Senator Burke here in order to influence the vote on something called the “South American Fortification Bill” and presumably then arrange an invasion of the US from the South. Luckily for Senator Burke, Spy Smasher was on hand for the assassination of Senator Whitney and where he failed to prevent that he is able to keep Burke from dying to an exploding cigar and having “Died due to Prank” engraved on his tombstone.

    Despite being prevented from murdering Senator Burke, the Tigress is still one step ahead of Spy Smasher, having had the foresight to station a couple of fake cops at the hotel where the assassination was to take place. They “take him into custody” right into the Tigress’ clutches, where she reveals that the next stage of her plan is to make up one of her guys into a fake Spy Smasher and use him to kidnap Admiral Corby, who will in turn be impersonated as part of the larger plot.

    Long-time readers may recognize where the Tigress’ plan goes awry: locking the hero in a supposedly inescapable deathtrap – in this case a room containing two tigers – and then failing to confirm that it worked is a sure-fire recipe for an alive hero.

    Having successfully escaped, Spy Smasher shows up in his Gyro-Sub just in time to save Admiral and Eve Corby from being flung to their dooms from a high cliff in what looks like a more public area than I personally would choose to murder someone who I hoped to replace with a double, but then again who am I to argue with the future… Dictatoress of America?

    Everything wraps up fairly quickly after this: the fake Spy Smasher meets the hero imposter’s frequent end as he is shot by mistake in the melee and the Tigress and her remaining men are rounded up (the Tigress’ vest also comes open in the scuffle and I have to assume that someone at Fawcett HQ declared the sight of her bare sternum to be too sexy, because that is clearly a retroactively-applied yellow shirt).

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 880: THE RED DEATH

    (Spy Smasher 002, 1941)

    Spy Smasher occupies a niche in the crimefighting community: he smashes spies, and since he also stars in a comic book, the spies he smashes adopt increasingly baroque themes as time goes on. Take the Red Death, a master spy who also dresses like a skeleton man out of an Edgar Allen Poe story, and who also happens to be the only one of Spy Smasher’s 1941 foes to creep far enough over the line of plausible deniability that I’d call him an outright Nazi. It’s the swastika on the forehead what does it, even if that’s just an affectation for splash page drama.

    The Red Death is in fact such a feared figure in military/ espionage circles that a General Noosan calls a meeting to brief various high-ups about the possibility that he may have made his way to the US, which he certainly has because he crashes the get-together about one minute after it begins. 

    Both General Noosan and the Red Death himself do a little oblique name dropping (“just look what he did to France, Norway, Poland… and others!”) to indicate that the Red Death is responsible for the Nazi successes of World War II, though the Red Death throws in a reference to Russia that Noosan leaves out –  perhaps Noosan has a better idea of how the Siege of Moscow will turn out than the Read Death does.

    Oddly, though Noosan is the one who called the meeting to discuss the Red Death’s presence in the US he is also the one to be so skeptical about the identity of the skeleton-faced man who just burst into the room that he ends up serving as an example of the villain’s signature weapon: a deadly gas that is also called the Red Death and which turns its victims a stylish red as they die.

    It is at this point that Spy Smasher shows up and rescues the remaining officials, though the Red Death and his cronies get away.

    (bonus Looming Spectre of Death image featuring the Red Death as Death and also a reappearance of the telltale swastika)

    Spy Smasher attempts to infiltrate the Red Death’s organization and learn his plans by posing as a low-level henchman named Mousey. He is successful insomuch as he does learn that the Red Death is going to subject the population of NYC to his gas by bombing them with it, but this is leavened by the fact that he has to get himself captured along the way.

    Spy Smasher is left behind to suffer in the knowledge that he was unable to save NYC, only to be set free by an abused Red Death henchman named Hermann, proving once again that it doesn’t pay to be a bad boss, even in the supercrime game.

    Spy Smasher makes his way onto the Red Death’s bomber thanks to his Gyro-Sub’s superior airspeed and engages the entire plane in a fistfight that doesn’t have time to resolve before the rack of Red Death bombs break loose and start stinking up the joint. Spy Smasher escapes but the Red Death and his cronies die to their own gas as the bomber crashes just off the shore of Liberty Island, which is probably symbolic somehow.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 878: MR NIMBUS

    (Zip Comics 009, 1940)

    Mr Nimbus is a simple kind of crook: he has developed or otherwise acquired a liquid that creates a corrosive green gas and he is going to use that to kill people and steal riches from them. No dreams of world domination, no grand designs, just good old fashioned murder and robbery. But also no especial care taken, as he leaves behind a very big clue to the location of his next crime for the Scarlet Avenger and his Operative 1, Inez Courtney to find.

    Mr Nimbus dutifully shows up to gas the Metropolitan Opera House and steal all of the jewellery on display in the audience, but thanks to his carelessness the Scarlet Avenger is there to prevent any rich people from getting killed. Too bad about the performers, though. The downside to being a simple kind of crook, I guess, is that you are also quite predictable.  

    Everything comes to head on the Opera House roof, from which Mr Nimbus takes what should be a fatal fall, only to be missing when the Scarlet Avenger checks for his body, like a proverbial Michael Myers. Look out for him in the 1941 run of Zip Comics! Will my whole “simple guy” thesis hold up? Who knows!

    (Mr Nimbus also has a cool hypnotic ring but it didn’t fit the narrative I was building about him being a simple, one-trick villain. The thesis was already flawed) 

  • GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 031

    They’re not good people and they’re not good at what they do and yet they still have a certain charm. 

    This guy is exclusively called “the Fiend” in narration boxes even though he is introduced as “the Great Master” and “Mako”. He practices voodoo and just sort of generically terrorizes the Haitian countryside until Yarko the Great comes at the behest of the intriguingly named Doctor Medico to settle his hash. And speaking of names, this issue features multiple characters referring to voodoo practitioners rather than their subjects as “zombies,” which is a new one on me unless of course you count the Grand Zombie. (Wonderworld Comics 019, 1940)

    Called “the Wolf” by detective Dr Fung as he is hunting him down, this masked fellow is actually Horace Bailey, a Wall Street financier who killed his partner to gain full control of their firm and made the mistake of involving a super-sleuth in the execution of his perfect murder. (Wonderworld Comics 020, 1940)

    Don Cervantes is a fellow who discovered silver in the hills near the small probably-Mexican town of Toranto and decided that the best way to keep it all to himself was to revive the practice of human sacrifice in the area. This does not prevent Nevada Jones from moving in and deposing him, of course. (Zip Comics 007, 1940)

    Comic books having cover illustrations that do not reflect the action in the book itself are nothing new, but this is the first time I have felt the need to highlight any of the characters on them whose adventures have gone unchronicled. Here’s to you, Executioner, Green Guy with Sickle Claw and Tiny Green Guy, I’m sure that you were very dastardly. (Zip Comics 008, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 877: TWISTO THE RUBBER MAN

    (Zip Comics 009, 1940) 

    The Tingling Bros Circus is in trouble! Someone has been killing the performers, mid-act, with throwing knives, and it has caused enough financial disruption to the show that owner Jack Tingling is on the verge of bankruptcy!

    As you might have surmised from the fact that this entry is about him, the person responsible for the murders is sideshow attraction Twisto the Rubber Man, and we’ll get to his motivations in a second because they are one of two notable things about him. First, though, we must take note of the other notable thing: his powers. According to his own patter he was born with them, which I suppose makes him some sort of mutant. Whatever the reason, he is able to stretch and twist his body to a superhuman degree, as if he were completely boneless. He doesn’t seem to be able to extend his limbs at will, but his fist does continue travelling under its own momentum to sock new Steel Sterling sidekick Loony in the head in the above panel. He is also able to mould his face into a new shape as if it were made of putty – all in all, he’s a much more limited version of stretching characters like the soon-to-debut Plastic Man.

    But just why did Twisto do all of those murders? Why to drive down the value of the circus so that he can buy it, make his lion-taming wife Lilli a star and grow rich, of course! It’s a foolproof plan, spoiled only by the fact that Lilli considers it “bad” and “wrong” and “illegal” to murder her friends and coworkers for a shot at the big-time.

    Having been rejected by the woman that he loves over a few measly murders, Twisto has a bit of a mental break and turns to the only solution he knows: more murders. First on the agenda is Lilli, whose big cat act he sabotages by giving the beasts a taste of his own blood, thus transforming them into uncontrollable man-eaters (this is one of those tropes that crops up a fair amount, that an animal, once it tastes human blood, can’t stop craving it. Is it true? No idea). 

    At this point, Twisto is so deep in the murder hole (not to mention probably a bit light headed from all that missing blood) that he kind of talks himself into becoming a serial killer by extrapolating from “my beautiful, intelligent wife rejected me because of the crimes I did” to “all beautiful, intelligent women are my enemies and must die.” He almost starts his misogynistic murder spree with Steel Sterling love interest Dora Cummings, but is stopped by the timely intervention of Steel himself.

    Twisto’s progressive mental break continues: his murderous mania transitions into a childlike passivity and he is led away to jail without issue. This isn’t the last you’ll see of ol’ Twisto the Rubber Man, however, as he seemingly snaps out it and escapes immediately after being left alone. We’ll see him again in 1941, presumably with a whole new range of criminal motivations.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 875: THE RED CIRCLE

    (Zip Comics 006, 1940)

    As Nevada Jones and his pal Little Joe are passing through the town of Copper Bluffs one day, they find themselves smack in the middle of a criminal conspiracy: someone is murdering people as part of a scheme to buy up key portions of the town’s land before the railroad comes through town, and the sign that someone is about to be killed is that a red circle is painted on the shaving mug when they are visiting the town’s barber shop.

    Nevada does some snooping around and discovers an actual note from the mastermind behind the crime spree, signed with a red circle in a way that makes it clear that this is what he calls himself and I am not making things up in an effort to complete a “basic shapes” triumvirate with former minor super-hero the Red Triangle and a hypothetical third character called the Red Square who I must assume is some sort of Soviet super-agent.

    Given the barber shop-centric nature of the Red Circle’s activities it may come as little surprise when I reveal that the Red Circle turns out to be the kindly and helpful old sweeping man, who not only organized the whole thing but was using Nevada’s investigation to eliminate his partners and thus keep all of the money to himself. And he almost gets away with it, too! Ultimately, however, it turns out that he has brought a straight razor to a gun fight.