The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: Bat

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 915: THE BAT

    (Cat-Man Comics 002, 1941)

    While rescuing the inhabitants of the mining town of Red Creek from the forest fire that threatens their town, Flying Legion leader Chute Harmon learns that the fire might in fact have been deliberately set and that the arsonist might be nearby. Donning his Asbestium suit, he sets off to investigate and soon finds himself in a confrontation with a masked man who calls himself the Bat.

    The Bat has a very succinct five-panel appearance, which is just long enough to explain his plan (burn down the town and then steal all of the miners’ gold after things cool down), get bopped on the head and flee into a raging inferno.

    There is some implication that the Bat might have lived to vex Chute Harmon and the Flying Legion another day, but as this was their only published adventure we must instead conclude that he was burned to a crisp.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 745: THE BAT

    (Smash Comics 010, 1940)

    I had a little intro to this entry all mapped out in my head, something along the lines of how in a super-hero universe, super crimes are just as obvious a choice as mundane ones, like hiring a scientist to mind control your political opponents instead of merely blackmailing them,  and so we shouldn’t judge super-villains for over-complicating things, but as a part of actually writing it out I had to go over the details of the Bat aka Graystone’s plan in my head and… he over-complicates it.

    I don’t think that I can lay this out properly in paragraph form, so we must once again turn to our old friend the bulleted list for aid. Here is the Bat’s basic plan:

    – systematically rob his neighbours

    – create a fake monster bat to terrify the countryside and draw suspicion away from himself by linking its appearances to the robberies

    – once everyone around him is poor and frightened enough, buy up all the local property for cheap.

    Up to this point, everything is fine. It’s a bit complicated but appropriately so for a comic book world in which there are people running around putting human brains into gorillas and so forth.

    Graystone’s downfall presumably begins when he realizes that being the only person in the area not targeted by the Bat is a bit suspicious. The obvious solution to this problem is simply to rob himself and join his neighbours in bemoaning their monster-haunted fate, but instead he:

    – fakes the kidnapping of his son (in on the scheme, flies the plane that the bat monster hangs off of, is arguably also the Bat)

    – calls in Scotland Yard and makes a bunch of noise

    – attempts to kill Captain Cook of Scotland Yard several times as he investigates the mystery

    – has the Bat demand that Cook deliver the ransom money so that Graystone can try to kill him again

    It’s like a list of things you shouldn’t do if you want to stay under the radar – heck, killing Cook would only raise the profile of the case! Even the operation of the bat monster involves both a secret airfield and a hidden image projector (that doubles as an engine-killing ray for some reason) so that the bat image can be projected onto a sheet that is being pulled by a plane. Have these fools never considered the humble kite?  

    Graystone, his son and various of their servants are of course bundled off to jail to think about wot they done.

  • MINOR SUPER -VILLAIN 103: THE BAT

    (More Fun Comics 055, 1940)

    An economics professor who dresses in a bat-winged robe and injects college students with experimental “artificial blood” while they sleep, the Bat is probably more the story of a man’s mental breakdown than a super-villain.