The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: undersea

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 874: MAGI

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 874: MAGI

    (Zip Comics 004, 1940)

    The villain for today is called Magi, and is the chief magic-user to a race of Mermen and Mermaids. Magi and his pal Torno have come to the surface world on a mission to retrieve the last descendant of the Mer-folk on land. Some notes:

    -Magi gets no small amount of points for recognizing Zambini as his greatest threat among the surface world people and moving to neutralize him in advance of the mission.

    -These points are lessened by the fact that Zambini manages to wake up mid-Eternal Sleep spell and turn it into a Long Nap spell instead.

    -Mary Reed, the last Mer-descendant on Earth, is somehow the key to making the Merfolk able to walk the land again, but just how this is to be achieved is never articulated. Does it have something to do with her being the only part-Mer human or have the Merfolk simply been procrastinating for generations?

    -The reason that the Merfolk can’t just walk up onto land may shock you: it’s not due to amphibiousness-related problems as you might expect but rather because they can’t see in daylight. Wild! 

    Magi and Torno successfully nab Mary Reed, but her savvy friends recruit Zambini (extremely refreshed from his long magic nap) to help rescue her. In addition to Mary’s friend Jean Sampson (cruelly institutionalized for reporting Mary’s abduction but sprung by Zambini) and Jean’s fiance Stanley Hamilton, they are accompanied by Hamilton’s friend and minor antagonist Paul Lloyd, whose lust for Merman gold is such that he attempts to murder Zambini for it while walking around on the bottom of the ocean in a Zambini-made air bubble that he has no hint will survive the magician’s death. If ever a man deserved magical punishment (specifically: having his arm turned into a fish fin) it is he.

    The rest of the adventure is a foregone conclusion, considering that Magi was not quite powerful enough to overcome Zambini while the latter was in deep REM sleep. After some magical spankings and a round of apologies, the humans are off to the surface while the Merfolk city is spared further wizardly wrath. Even Paul Lloyd gets his regular arm back though he doesn’t deserve it, the jerk.

  • ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 016

    ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 016

    Love those aliens. And so forth. 

    the Sea Demons:

    The Sea Demons are a hostile underwater race of fish-men who look great but get very little character development as a society. Their main thing seems to be a deeps desire to attack and capture…

    the Sea Amazons:

    The Sea Amazons (described as “blonde Sea Amazons” at least twice in the text despite the fact that a pretty noticeable percentage of them – including their queen! – are brunettes) are about a (blonde) hair more well-developed than the Sea Demons. They are a race of amphibious women who live in the city of Mermea under the rule of Queen Bea (or possibly Mea) and who just hate being kidnapped by those dang Sea Demons. To that end, they have tamed a creature called the Guardian, and I must say that while I love the Guardian and its look I have an incredibly hard time figuring out its anatomy: its main component is an enormous humanoid head, yes, but is it stuck on the end of an eel body with a chin-mounted tentacle? Is it more like a giant slug? Are there two tentacles that I’m meant to picture churning through the water? 

    Though the Sea Demon and Sea Amazon societies are at odds, they do in fact have a lot in common, such as the Sea Demon’s own beast, the Seaclops, seen here battling the Guardian. They don’t really get around to exploring these similarities, however, as undersea hero Typhon ends up blowing up both the Seaclops and most of the Sea Demons. (Weird Comics 005, 1940)

    Crab Men: 

    These Crab Men from Mercury have been trapped on a derelict spaceship for twenty years – are they really vicious or just looking for help? Space adventurers Gale Allen and Jack North are taking no chances, and vaporize them with an artificial sun ray. (Planet Comics 008, 1940) 

    Cranians:

    Rex Dexter of Mars has the honour of encountering the Cranians, an alien race so goofy that even in-fiction they are believed to be just a myth. But what has brought the Cranians out of the mists of legend to aggress against the human race?

    It turns out that if you have a hand for a head and heads for hands, having that extra nose means that you will breathe twice as much and thus eventually use up all the oxygen on your planet, and rather than planting some extra forests, the Cranians have decided that the best solution to this problem is the conquest of Earth and its rich stores of O2.

    I personally do not think that a machine that controls Earth’s atmosphere such that oxygen levels can be cut in half near-instantly is a particularly good idea, but it turns out that I am a fool because not only does the far future Earth of 2000 AD have such a device but it proves integral to the defeat of the Cranian menace when Rex Dexter does just that. Live and learn, as they say. (Mystery Men Comics 017, 1940)

  • ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 014

    We’ve hit a rich seam of aliums this month.

    Mermaid/ Reptile-Men:

    This city of Reptile-Men is ruled over by a Mermaid queen, and I am forced to contemplate, and not for the first time, whether this is an instance of a member or group of one species ruling over another or if it’s one of extreme sexual dimorphism. Whichever one it is, I do appreciate that the Reptile-Men have that really goofy wide stance going on with their lizard legs. (Weird Comics 003, 1940)

    Monkey Men: 

    Also known as the Cannibalistic Monkey Men, these beefy lads vex one of those hidden Ancient Roman colonies that are all over Africa and the Middle East by demanding tribute of human flesh. They eventually meet their match and are seemingly wiped out entirely when they try to eat Kaänga and his new pal “Red” Longjohn. (Jungle Comics 007, 1940)

    Capris-Men:

    Earth is in need of radium, the only cure to a deadly plague that is ravaging the population, and so an expedition headed by Rex Dexter of Mars sets out to get some from the nearly 100% pitchblende planet Capris (okay, so it’s called a planet throughout the story but it’s got to be a dwarf planet or an asteroid or something based on travel timelines alone). The fantastic-looking native Capris-Men, aka the Capris Monsters, don’t take to kindly to this and mount an attack on the expedition, which leads the expedition to leave early, meaning that they don’t get enough radium to treat everyone.

    The obvious solution to this problem is, of course, to tow the entire planet(oid) into orbit around Earth, so that the healing power of ionizing radiation can eternally shine down on its inhabitants and make them the healthiest people in the universe. No word on what the Capris-Men thought about this development. (Mystery-Men Comics 002, 1939)

    the Cave Men and the Lizard Men:

    The Cave Men are basically just some extra hairy guys who live in a cave system called the Underground Empire beneath Rhodesia/modern day Zimbabwe. They are possibly immortal and are ruled by a white lady named Aldia, who is – the question is whether she bothered to share the secret of the Immortal Flame with her subjects.

    The thing that really sets the Cave Men apart is the quality of their enemies, the Lizard Men. Sure, they’re just a mindless horde of inhuman monsters who exist only to be righteously slaughtered by the heroic Lance Hale, but just look at their majestic fins! (Silver Streak Comics 004, 1940)

  • ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 012

    You won’t believe these guys. 

    the Mermen: 

    Some undersea jerks who capture explorer Typhon and his crew. Their leader is a real creep named Neptune who has a nigh-fetishistic plan to freeze the crew – and particularly sole female crewmember Cecelia – into blocks of ice and then breathe fire on them. Luckily for all who might venture beneath the waves, he drowns (?) during Typhon’s escape. (Weird Comics 002, 1940)

    the Beaked Men:

    The Beaked Men of Mercury’s mountains operate as an extortion racket on the solar trade routes, raiding and capturing ships from their mobile “space island” ships. Such a threat to the interplanetary commerce of the year 25 000 will not stand, and Spurt Hammond, Planet Flyer successfully manages to explode the whole operation thanks to a handy prisoner revolt. (Planet Comics 004, 1940)

    the Big-Eared Tribe of Saturn: 

    I’m not sure if the implication is that all of the people of Saturn are big-eared or if it’s just a subgroup, but the fact that they seem to be generally feared and that the leader (and father) of this particular bunch of Big-Eared men, Varg Emmos, is a respected scientist who is presumably using his futuristic heardpiece to disguise his own big-eared status points toward the former. 

    Varg and his boys have a plot to take over Earth using an ultrasonic ray that affects only humans but are foiled when Rex Dexter in turn discovers a musical note that kills them and that is seemingly featured heavily in symphonic music. Sucks to be a Big-Eared music lover I guess. (Mystery Men Comics 020, 1941)

    the Coal People:

    The Coal People (also referred to as the Blackmen) reside in an underground kingdom below Colorado and are descended from ancient people who got themselves trapped there and were forced to subsist of coal to survive. Rather than dying of starvation and/or stomach cancer, they instead became humanoid creatures composed of living coal. The problem comes when mining activities bring the Coal People into contact with contemporary surface humans – fairly harmless when they decide to worship the above old man as a kind of captive god, but increasingly menacing after the discovery of a miner’s corpse reveals to them that there are more interesting things to eat than coal.

    Luckily for the surface world (or for Coloradans, at least) the next person to enter the mines and get captured is the super-strong giant Mighty Man, who discovers the in-retrospect-fairly-obvious secret of the Coal People: that they fear fire. He and the erstwhile god escape and seal the mine behind them. Colorado is saved! (Amazing-Man Comics 011, 1940)

  • ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 012

    You won’t believe these guys. 

    the Mermen: 

    Some undersea jerks who capture explorer Typhon and his crew. Their leader is a real creep named Neptune who has a nigh-fetishistic plan to freeze the crew – and particularly sole female crewmember Cecelia – into blocks of ice and then breathe fire on them. Luckily for all who might venture beneath the waves, he drowns (?) during Typhon’s escape. (Weird Comics 002, 1940)

    the Beaked Men:

    The Beaked Men of Mercury’s mountains operate as an extortion racket on the solar trade routes, raiding and capturing ships from their mobile “space island” ships. Such a threat to the interplanetary commerce of the year 25 000 will not stand, and Spurt Hammond, Planet Flyer successfully manages to explode the whole operation thanks to a handy prisoner revolt. (Planet Comics 004, 1940)

    the Big-Eared Tribe of Saturn: 

    I’m not sure if the implication is that all of the people of Saturn are big-eared or if it’s just a subgroup, but the fact that they seem to be generally feared and that the leader (and father) of this particular bunch of Big-Eared men, Varg Emmos, is a respected scientist who is presumably using his futuristic heardpiece to disguise his own big-eared status points toward the former. 

    Varg and his boys have a plot to take over Earth using an ultrasonic ray that affects only humans but are foiled when Rex Dexter in turn discovers a musical note that kills them and that is seemingly featured heavily in symphonic music. Sucks to be a Big-Eared music lover I guess. (Mystery Men Comics 020, 1941)

    the Coal People:

    The Coal People (also referred to as the Blackmen) reside in an underground kingdom below Colorado and are descended from ancient people who got themselves trapped there and were forced to subsist of coal to survive. Rather than dying of starvation and/or stomach cancer, they instead became humanoid creatures composed of living coal. The problem comes when mining activities bring the Coal People into contact with contemporary surface humans – fairly harmless when they decide to worship the above old man as a kind of captive god, but increasingly menacing after the discovery of a miner’s corpse reveals to them that there are more interesting things to eat than coal.

    Luckily for the surface world (or for Coloradans, at least) the next person to enter the mines and get captured is the super-strong giant Mighty Man, who discovers the in-retrospect-fairly-obvious secret of the Coal People: that they fear fire. He and the erstwhile god escape and seal the mine behind them. Colorado is saved! (Amazing-Man Comics 011, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 843: THE RULER OF THE UNDERSEAS

    (Weird Comics 001, 1940) 

    During the inaugural voyage of his super submarine the A-14, oceanic explorer Typhon encounters a remarkable monster: a mass of eels with a central woman’s head and the attractive power of a siren.

    Though the creature kills several of his crew, Typhon is able to use his magic ring to kill its heads, which reveals that the girl-head in the centre is actually a human woman who has been mind controlled and used as a monster-part for “many years.” This is horrifying to contemplate!

    The Ruler of the Underseas, stung by the loss of his composite beast, sends the equally-as-horrifying Serpent-Men to capture them, which of course raises the question of why he was using a human woman in a bubble helmet as his monster core when he could have just used one of his loyal undersea dudes. Is it because none of them are attractive enough?

    Typhon foils the Ruler’s plans by paralyzing him with his magic ring so that they can all escape back to the A-14, and I am left with one observation and one question:

    Observation: Given how important Typhon’s magic ring is to the plot of this issue – note that it also protects him from the spell of the eel-siren earlier – one might expect it appear again in a future story. This is not the case.

    Question: Is the Ruler of the Underseas just permanently paralyzed? He certainly does not ever return to vex Typhon and his former eel-maiden companion (later named Cecelia). Because if he is, well, condemning even an evil man to an inescapable prison in his own body isn’t a great look, Typhon.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 843: THE RULER OF THE UNDERSEAS

    (Weird Comics 001, 1940) 

    During the inaugural voyage of his super submarine the A-14, oceanic explorer Typhon encounters a remarkable monster: a mass of eels with a central woman’s head and the attractive power of a siren.

    Though the creature kills several of his crew, Typhon is able to use his magic ring to kill its heads, which reveals that the girl-head in the centre is actually a human woman who has been mind controlled and used as a monster-part for “many years.” This is horrifying to contemplate!

    The Ruler of the Underseas, stung by the loss of his composite beast, sends the equally-as-horrifying Serpent-Men to capture them, which of course raises the question of why he was using a human woman in a bubble helmet as his monster core when he could have just used one of his loyal undersea dudes. Is it because none of them are attractive enough?

    Typhon foils the Ruler’s plans by paralyzing him with his magic ring so that they can all escape back to the A-14, and I am left with one observation and one question:

    Observation: Given how important Typhon’s magic ring is to the plot of this issue – note that it also protects him from the spell of the eel-siren earlier – one might expect it appear again in a future story. This is not the case.

    Question: Is the Ruler of the Underseas just permanently paralyzed? He certainly does not ever return to vex Typhon and his former eel-maiden companion (later named Cecelia). Because if he is, well, condemning even an evil man to an inescapable prison in his own body isn’t a great look, Typhon.

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 058

    A number of minor Fox Features characters for your perusal and delight.

    the Bird Man: 

    The Bird Man, descendant of “an ancient Indian god” (no further detail provided) uses his weird demigod wing-flaps to fly around the American Southwest and render aid to people. (Weird Comics 001, 1940)

    In Bird Man’s final appearance, in Weird Comics 004, he has conformed to the heroic norm a bit more by moving to a penthouse apartment in what might be NYC (please note that he keeps a little statue of his divine ancestor on top of his TV). He also has slightly more conventional wings in this appearance, but I have to say that I prefer the flaps.

    Typhon: 

    Typhon is a near-future undersea adventurer who not only has access to various super-submarines and ray guns and so forth but also sometimes has a magic ring that allows him to combat the various supernatural threats of the deep ocean. (Weird Comics 001, 1940)

    Thor, God of Thunder: 

    Thor, God of Thunder (the Norse god) gets restless one day in 1940 and decides to invest a mortal man with some of his power, making him Thor, God of Thunder (the super-hero). This is a not-uncommon origin story for a super-hero to have, but the really important thing to note is that the human, Grant Farrel, is not some paragon of virtue or descendant of Thor, and that he isn’t being sent out into the world to combat injustice on Thor’s behalf. No, he’s just kind of a sad sack who just got dumped and Thor hands him the power with a kind of “have fun with it” attitude. Grant seems like he might be the type to get into super-heroics of his own accord but he doesn’t really have any choice because Glenda, the girl who dumped him, is a real magnet for spy rings and secret invasions of France and so forth. They do eventually get back together, don’t worry.

    Like many of his contemporaries, Grant/Thor goes through a lot of different costume variants over the course of a short career, but the thing I really want to highlight is this very weird style of Viking helmet that both he and Original Thor wear in hist first three or four appearances. I mean, what’s with the discs? 

    Thor is of course wildly over-powered, as shown in this pretty awesome sequence in which he lassos an entire Luftwaffe attack on Paris and throws it at Berlin. He can also throw both his hammer and thunderbolts to devastating effect, and kind of alternates between flying under his own power and cartoonishly riding around on a big jagged bolt of lightning.

    In his final appearance, in Weird Comics 005, Thor is sans hammer for no particular reason. This doesn’t really slow him down but even so he gets a bit of divine aid via the gift of Thor’s strength-boosting gauntlet. (Weird Comics 001, 1940)

    Dynamite Thor:

    Dynamite Thor, the Explosion Man, is actually Peter Thor, wealthy mine owner and explosives expert. I was all ready to roast him for including his surname as part of his superhero identity, but on review of his five appearances it appears that the actual name he goes my is merely Dynamite. This also leaves me with no material with which to roast Thor’s fiance Glenda (same as our last Thor – what is it with Thors and Glendas?) for not realizing just who the mysterious man she so idolizes is.

    In his initial appearance, Dynamite Thor is merely a man with a belt-full of explosives and a pretty hammer-and nail approach to problem-solving. Crooks holed up in an old shack? Blow up the shack. Crooks getting away in a vehicle? A controlled explosion will bring a nearby object down and stop their flight. A big fire? Blow it up.

    By his second appearance in Weird Comics 007, someone had evidently decided that Dynamite Thor needed more of a hook or perhaps they just couldn’t figure out a good explosion-themed vehicle for him to fly around, because he gets his signature move which is absolutely the only reason that he is still talked about: he flies by the simple expedient of setting off a series of explosions under his ass. Finally, by his next appearance in Blue Beetle Comics 006, 1941, he is explicitly mentioned to be immune to these explosions, something that must have come as a great relief to him (edit to add: I was mistaken and they do make sure to mention that he is immune to explosions at the same time as he starts flying around on a column of them). (Weird Comics 006, 1940)

  • ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 008

    ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 008

    Magical adventurer Kardak the Mystic is drawn into a series of adventures among the various nonhuman intelligences of the world when his new love interest is kidnapped by some of them and he sets off in pursuit. Here are the ones he meets in 1940:

    the Fishtails: 

    The Fishtails, inhabitants of “the lost continent, Anderras!” are the ones who start Kardak’s undersea adventure off when they kidnap Lorna to fulfil a prophecy that they require a “white, Earth Queen” to protect them from destruction at the hands of their enemies. Setting aside the shades-of-Namor racial aspect of this interspecies deal, this all works out for the Fishtails, as though Lorna has very little in the way of offensive capability, her paramour is able to defeat the Fishtail’s enemies the Mocha Men with relative ease. 

    Not only is this one of the rare occasions in which a human woman is made the ruler of a nonhuman group without having to suffer the gross overtures of their king, but Lorna and Kardak are allowed to leave once everything is settled, no fuss! Truly the Fishtails are a wonder civilization. (Top-Notch Comics 004, 1940)

    the Mocha Men: 

    The Fishtails’ enemies, the Mocha Men, are fairly generic hostile undersea humanoids, though they do have several points in their favour:

    1. a fun alliterative name.

    2. four gangly arms, which makes for a fun silhouette.

    3. they ride giant sea spiders into battle, which is very fun.

    4. their leader is called the Magator, and it’s always fun when one of these supposedly alien civilizations uses a properly unique and weird title instead of something like King. It’s fun!

    The Mocha Men are ultimately defeated (though not wiped out, unusually for the time) by Kardak so that he and Lorna can return to the surface and continue their voyage to India (Top-Notch Comics 004, 1940)

    the Glass Men:

    The Glass Men, aka the Looking Glass Men, are solar-powered glass humanoids who live in a glass valley somewhere in the magical realms traversed by Kardak the Mystic and his companions on their way from the Louisiana bayous to the lands of the Master Brahmins. The Glass Men, in my opinion, are very confrontational for guys made of glass. They also appear to have zero power storage capability, as they collapse immediately once Kardak cuts off the sun’s rays with an illusory eclipse.

    The Glass Men capture Kardak et al with relative ease, at which point we learn that they are one of those types of nonhuman entity that convert enemies into beings like themselves via the application of concentrated solar radiation. Thankfully for Kardak and pals they have access to a magic turban.

    King Rexa of the Glass Men is also extremely cool-looking, as Joe Corallo and Butch Mapa recognized when they used him as the basis for the demonic figure haunting the hero in the recent Kardak the Mystic one-shot for Archie. Probably a good call to go with the cool claws rather than the original disc-shaped hands on that guy. (Top-Notch Comics 009, 1940)

    the Beast-Men: 

    The Beast-Men, like the Glass Men before them, are merely speed bumps along the route that Kardak, Lorna and Balthar are taking to their destination. I do like their style, though they do seem to complicate things a bit more than is strictly necessary – why insist that trespassers must be killed by Beast-Men in animal form only? Why drag things out with gladiatorial combat when the three have already been taken prisoner? I guess it must get boring living in a pocket dimension. (Top-Notch Comics 010, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 725: THE SEA-WITCH

    (Science Comics 005, 1940)

    En route to the court of King Neptune to deliver a new invention to him, Navy Jones and Princess Coral find themselves the prisoner of a heinous-looking clarinet-playing mermaid who looks a lot like something out of a 19th Century political cartoon.

    I’ll be honest here: while the Sea-Witch is a notable-enough villain to cover here, the real attraction of this comic is that it all looks like an outsider art fever dream. The Grand Comics database says that the artist was Bert Whitman and that he did enough comics work in the 40s that I should have run into him, but either luck has conspired against me in that regard or this was just a more interesting assignment than usual for him, because it’s just really enjoyably weird.

    Navy Jones escapes the clutches of the One-Eyed Octopus when it turns out that it is fatally allergic to pepper, and he and Princess Coral are able to simply swim away under the cover of its dying ink-cloud. The Sea-Witch’s little imp minions give chase but are unable to contend with the sheer power of the “Speed Sea Tri-Motor” underwater jetapacks that the duo are wearing courtesy of Coral’s as-yet-unnamed father.

    Other weird and wonderful occurrences in this comic:

    An idyll with Queen Nina and her subjects in Mermaid City,

    This two-panel plot by a pair of incompetent undersea pirates,

    Navy Jones visiting the grave/locker of his great great great grandfather, Davy Jones (bah gawd, his name isn’t just a pun, it’s hereditary!),

    and the pomp, circumstance and wide array of weird sea creatures in King Neptune’s court. The question of whether this is the Neptune of myth or just some guy is overshadowed (and possibly answered) by the presence of, for example, a cutlass-wielding fish-man centaur in the background. Delightful!