The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: Dean Denton

  • GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 017

    GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 017

    Buncha mooks this time.

    The ship that picked up scientist-adventurer Dean Denton and his pals from the island of Baron Blood just so happened to have a pseudo-Nazi spy (fake name Lieutenant James, code name K-192, real name unknown) committing murders on it for unclear reasons. Despite composing a crime scene to contain nothing but clues pointing to other members of the crew Denton rounds him up pretty quickly. (Masked Marvel 003, 1940)

    Pilot Prop Powers has to defend his ship and his cargo of gold bullion from this air pirate and his scurvy crew, and the story ends up glossing over his huge flying aerodrome a bit. Well, I think it’s cool, unnamed air pirate captain. I’m sorry they blew it up. (National Comics 001, 1940)

    Klotz, aka the Master Spy, has the distinction of being the first foe to battle the Shield. His greatest moment is pictured above, as the Shield is so absorbed in reading spy files that he doesn’t notice approximately fifty boxes of TNT being piled up behind him. Klotz also returns in the 1984 series The Original Shield because there’s nothing like battling an extremely old man to make for an exciting comic experience. (Pep Comics 001, 1940)

    This bunch of clowns work for a mysterious figure who has been murdering Hollywood stars in connection with a jewel-smuggling ring. They’re not in the story for very long before their employer murders them all with mustard gas – the henchman’s greatest occupational hazard is, as always, the boss. Why do all these murders over some simple smuggled jewelry? Because the mastermind is Biff Crossley, himself a famous actor, and he wants nobody who can possibly tie him to the crime left alive, that’s why. (Pep Comics 008, 1940)

    THE SUPER-VILLAINS OF HOLLYWOOD PODCAST: The super-villainy might be a bit generic but this story is fodder for a whole season of tSVoHpod: Crossley murders two other stars (one of them inside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, using a bullet-firing compact) and tries to frame a third by pretending to be a target himself, he bumps off his own men, the Shield is there, and the whole thing ends with Crossley’s defiant suicide. Sensational! This is podcasting, baby!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 582: BARON BLOOD

    (Detective Eye 001, 1940)

    Not the first knockoff of Count “the Most Dangerous Game” Zaroff we’ve met, and certainly not the last. Baron Blood incorporates quite a lot of elements that you’ll find in various adaptations of the story: the island castle with built-in lighthouse to draw victims in via shipwreck, the monocle and prominent facial scar and the pack of hunting dogs and huge hunting guide/servant.

    What sets the Baron apart from the rest of the bored island-dwelling human-hunting aristocratic crowd is that for one he is not actually a baron but an escaped maniac. For two, he both dresses like a super-villain (orange chain mail!) and employs a staff composed of guys dressed as Vikings and armed with machine guns. Really great stuff, top score on the henchman front. Like the original and a lot of knockoff Zaroffs he also gives himself a bit of a hunting handicap, in his case using poisoned darts fired from a sling – some real eccentric villain behaviour.

    He of course (of course) meets his end at the point of his own darts after Dean Denton tackles him from out of a tree. Just carrying around a fistful of them like that is a Health and Safety nightmare in a regular workplace, let alone a jungle island where man hunts man.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 432: THE CONQUEROR

    (Keen Detective Funnies 011, 1939)

    The Conqueror is the major recurring foe of Dean Denton, Scientific Adventurer, about whom we will briefly aside: Dean Denton was created by Harry Campbell, who was also responsible for such characters as Ace of Space, Bruce Blackburn and the wretched Scarlet Seal, but also Wizard Wells and John Law, Scientiective, who form a kind of thematic triad of scientific detectives with Dean Denton.

    Dean Denton is definitely the most entertaining of the three to read (with the unfortunate caveat that his are the adventures that are most riddled with racial stereotypes. The Golden Age, folks!) due partially to his former occupation as a well-known ventriloquist but mostly to his archfoe the Conqueror, who beats John Law’s Avenger and Wizard Wells’ collection of no-name goons hands down.

    The Conqueror is actually rich guy Bolton Gates and over the course of a couple of dozen appearances he has my favourite villainous character arc: the villain of means with vast resources is foiled several times by Our Hero and ends up scrabbling around doing comparatively petty crimes for chump change. 

    In his first few appearances the Conqueror has a lavish estate under which is a technologically advanced lair filled with brainwashed minions. After Dean Denton blows all that up it seems like the Conqueror is forever seeking to recreate it with schemes that place him in positions of high status: not only does he pose as divine figures to dupe tribal groups in both Central America and Africa but he founds somewhere between two to three cults:

    Somewhat surprisingly, the White Crusaders, over which the Conqueror presided as the Master Crusader/ the White Master, was not a racially problematic group.

    Meanwhile the Cult of Astra was mostly a way to flimflam flaky Hollywood types and blackmail their studios with the threat of religion-related work stoppages (a scheme that nets him a two-episode arc on the Villains of Old Hollywood podcast).

    The third example is somewhere between a cult and his old habit of minion recruitment through mind control: he takes advantage of the conflict between the countries of Namreg and Feltia (and in case “Namreg” was too subtle for you they clash near the “Tonigam Line”) to capture and brainwash both Namreg and Feltian forces. 

    Even though the Conqueror gets away as per usual at the end of this scheme, it’s his last appearance in comics (that I know of, natch). One can imagine his conflict with Dean Denton continuing indefinitely and why not. It’s more fun than most things that might logically happen to a lone civilian trapped in the midst of two armies that he recently made enemies of. after all.