The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: minor super-villain

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 885: THE GHOST

    (Wow Comics 002, 1941) 

    After a particularly fraught meeting of the Orphan Society, at which the charity’s president Henry Suffridge accuses everyone present of potentially being responsible for some recent embezzlement, board member Jones is accosted by some spooky scary ghosts and skeletons while muttering to himself on his way home. They warn him in no uncertain terms to leave town – is he the embezzler, being punished for his misdeeds by the spirits of the dead?

    No he is not, as it turns out, because Mr Scarlet is on hand to demonstrate that these are in fact fully tangible, fully punchable goons in sheets and skeleton costumes with a layer of phosphorescent paint over top (specifically radium paint, in fact. Woof, as if being a costumed henchman wasn’t enough, now there’s an increased cancer risk?)

    The point of the whole charade is to scare Jones into leaving town because he knows who is responsible for the embezzlement. Are ghosts and skeletons better at doing that than a dozen large men with guns? The Ghost is betting that they are!

    And just who is this Ghost? Why, it’s Henry Suffridge, literally the only other named character in the story! Well, I guess there were fellow Orphan Society board members Crane and Petrie but considering that they each showed up for about one and a half panels I think that we can safely say that they were outside of the suspect pool. Ultimately, it’s a lot of grandiose window-dressing for a grubby little crime, done poorly. For shame, Ghost.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 884: DOCTOR DEATH

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 884: DOCTOR DEATH

    (Wow Comics 002, 1941)

    We open as concert pianist Campani plays the “Symphony of Death,” a piece of music anonymously dedicated to him, only to die at its conclusion. What will eventually become clear is that the sheet music he was reading from was coated in poison and slightly stuck together so that Campani would need to lick his finger in order to turn the pages, thus poisoning himself in the process.

    This is a pretty good plan! If pulled off carefully, it might even be done so anonymously that the perpetrator would be effectively untraceable. There’s no chance of that, however, because said perpetrator is in fact a comic book super-villain who calls himself Doctor Death and who has all of the subtlety of his kind. Not only does he have a goon conspicuously parked outside Campani’s apartment to report back on the whether the scheme has worked, but the day before he sent a threatening note to Campani, complete with signature and little skull and coffin illustrations.

    (as can be seen in the note above, even though Doctor Death does music-based crimes and is kind of dressed like a concert musician his actual theme is that of a medical doctor. It’s a bit of a muddle)

    Doctor Death’s next stated target is another musician, Ravelle, and though Mr Scarlet prevents Ravelle’s copy of the “Symphony of Death” from being mailed to him this doesn’t stop Doctor Death; he just goes to Ravelle’s house, and when Mr Scarlet shows up there he gets captured and slated to die as well.

    Doctor Death of course does not contend with the fact that while Mr Scarlet is technically not a super-human he is nonetheless a super-hero and thus able to, for instance, lift a grand piano over his head and throw it at Doctor Death’s body. Among other things, this splits the Doctor Death mask asunder, revealing that the villain is in fact… Ravelle! 

    It turns out that Ravelle was recently fired and presumably replaced by Campani and his response to this insult was to turn to elaborate murder plots for solace. The attempt on Ravelle’s own life was a bluff designed to draw suspicion away from himself that was repurposed into a trap for Mr Scarlet. But what of Sigowitz, the third name on the revenge list? Alas, we shall never know.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 884: DOCTOR DEATH

    (Wow Comics 002, 1941)

    We open as concert pianist Campani plays the “Symphony of Death,” a piece of music anonymously dedicated to him, only to die at its conclusion. What will eventually become clear is that the sheet music he was reading from was coated in poison and slightly stuck together so that Campani would need to lick his finger in order to turn the pages, thus poisoning himself in the process.

    This is a pretty good plan! If pulled off carefully, it might even be done so anonymously that the perpetrator would be effectively untraceable. There’s no chance of that, however, because said perpetrator is in fact a comic book super-villain who calls himself Doctor Death and who has all of the subtlety of his kind. Not only does he have a goon conspicuously parked outside Campani’s apartment to report back on the whether the scheme has worked, but the day before he sent a threatening note to Campani, complete with signature and little skull and coffin illustrations.

    (as can be seen in the note above, even though Doctor Death does music-based crimes and is kind of dressed like a concert musician his actual theme is that of a medical doctor. It’s a bit of a muddle)

    Doctor Death’s next stated target is another musician, Ravelle, and though Mr Scarlet prevents Ravelle’s copy of the “Symphony of Death” from being mailed to him this doesn’t stop Doctor Death; he just goes to Ravelle’s house, and when Mr Scarlet shows up there he gets captured and slated to die as well.

    Doctor Death of course does not contend with the fact that while Mr Scarlet is technically not a super-human he is nonetheless a super-hero and thus able to, for instance, lift a grand piano over his head and throw it at Doctor Death’s body. Among other things, this splits the Doctor Death mask asunder, revealing that the villain is in fact… Ravelle! 

    It turns out that Ravelle was recently fired and presumably replaced by Campani and his response to this insult was to turn to elaborate murder plots for solace. The attempt on Ravelle’s own life was a bluff designed to draw suspicion away from himself that was repurposed into a trap for Mr Scarlet. But what of Sigowitz, the third name on the revenge list? Alas, we shall never know.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 883: AMERICA SMASHER

    (Spy Smasher 002, 1941) 

    There are a few different kinds of evil opposites. There are your classic elemental opposites, like when a fire guy fights a water guy or an ice guy, and your thematic opposites, like when the Flash goes up against Turtle Man. Then there are your literal Bizarro-style mirror image opposites, which is the closest to what America Smasher is, but not quite. Instead, he is a declared opposing force to Spy Smasher: “if you are going to smash spies, which includes me*, then I am going to smash America, which includes you.” Plus, since he is a super-villain, America Smasher has literalized the smashing concept by adopting a spiked mail glove as his thing.

    Spy Smasher is on a bit of a hot streak with regard to being able to locate his villains’ bases while they are still in the planning stages, but rather than simply use this as an information-gathering opportunity as he did when he found Dark Angel’s HQ, this time he gets cocky due to America Smasher’s diminutive size and attempts to take on the whole room, and he pays for that with a bop on the head from the mailed fist. 

    *Whether America Smasher would count as a spy in any way other than the fact that he is a Spy Smasher enemy is a conversation for another day.

    Spy Smasher gets out of this predicament thanks to the fact that America Smasher hit him so hard that everyone thinks that he’s dead. There’s the usual back and forth between the two before Spy Smasher and Eve Corby are caught and imprisoned in a mysterious humming building full of men and tanks. Just where could they be?

    Turns out: inside an incredibly huge plane (containing, for example, a full tank corps and hundreds if not thousands of soldiers) that is about to bomb the US in advance of a full invasion by the Nazis.

    The plane is so big, in fact, that Spy Smasher finds plenty of handholds on it to a) prevent himself from falling to his death and b) make is way to the cockpit so that he can start pitching pilots out the window willy-nilly. And as a plane is nothing without its pilots, it crashes, taking America Smasher and all his hundreds of minions to their demise with it.

    America Smasher does not in fact die in the crash, but instead establishes a sewer lair in what is probably NYC (Spy Smasher comics are often hard to pin down, geography-wise, even though the characters all live and work in named cities. The problem is in distinguishing whether the action of a particular issue is supposed to be taking place in Washington DC, where Admiral Corby works, or NYC, where he and his daughter Eve reside. Or sometimes Virginia, where Alan Armstrong lives. Or another place entirely). 

    America Smasher does get up to more recognizable spy activity in this issue, primarily centred around inducing a German American man to betray his Secret Service agent son, but he also spends a lot of effort attempting to get revenge for his prior foiled plan, by killing Eve Corby in particular. Why her in particular? That’s a good question.

    America’s Greatest Comics 001 was published in November or December of 1941 and this story shows it in one very particular way: by having America Smasher explicitly be a Nazi. Even very slightly in advance of Pearl Harbor and the US entering the war, publishers were starting to get a little bit brave about perhaps suggesting that all these bad guys with German accents and monocles that they had been populating their rogues galleries for for that last couple of years were in fact Nazis.

    As mentioned previously, this issue sees America Smasher in reduced circumstances as he’s living in a sewer rather than a flying war base. He hasn’t entirely given up on the finer things in villainy, however, as evidenced by the enormous Art Deco iron maiden that acts as both the centrepiece of his lair and the primary means by which he inspires cooperation in his victims. Also, it is the instrument of his downfall when Spy Smasher pushes it over onto him!

    Not his ultimate downfall, however. That comes when he floods sewer base in attempt to kill Spy Smasher and in a classic case of Bad Boss leaves his henchmen behind to die with him, only for one of them to go mad with fear and blow up the whole damn sewer and America Smasher with it. (America’s Greatest Comics 001, 1941)

    The rumours of America Smasher’s death are once again exaggerated it seems, as he recovers his gauntlet from his shattered lair almost immediately (though just whose arm it was on in that pile of rubble remains a mystery. For that matter, just who made the decision to leave a human corpse under a light coating of rubble in the New York City sewers?).

    This final 1941 adventure is a bit anticlimactic after the previous heights and even mediums of villainy that America Smasher had aspired to: he trails Alan Armstrong and Eva and Admiral Corby to Alaska in order to steal the Army’s new Ski Tank prototype and then gets his block knocked off by Spy Smasher. He doesn’t even appear to die at the end of the issue but instead suffers the ignominy and shame of arrest. 

    America Smasher will return in 1942 – will his career continue to spiral ever farther downward? Tune in and see! (Whiz Comics 025, 1941)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 883: AMERICA SMASHER

    (Spy Smasher 002, 1941) 

    There are a few different kinds of evil opposites. There are your classic elemental opposites, like when a fire guy fights a water guy or an ice guy, and your thematic opposites, like when the Flash goes up against Turtle Man. Then there are your literal Bizarro-style mirror image opposites, which is the closest to what America Smasher is, but not quite. Instead, he is a declared opposing force to Spy Smasher: “if you are going to smash spies, which includes me*, then I am going to smash America, which includes you.” Plus, since he is a super-villain, America Smasher has literalized the smashing concept by adopting a spiked mail glove as his thing.

    Spy Smasher is on a bit of a hot streak with regard to being able to locate his villains’ bases while they are still in the planning stages, but rather than simply use this as an information-gathering opportunity as he did when he found Dark Angel’s HQ, this time he gets cocky due to America Smasher’s diminutive size and attempts to take on the whole room, and he pays for that with a bop on the head from the mailed fist. 

    *Whether America Smasher would count as a spy in any way other than the fact that he is a Spy Smasher enemy is a conversation for another day.

    Spy Smasher gets out of this predicament thanks to the fact that America Smasher hit him so hard that everyone thinks that he’s dead. There’s the usual back and forth between the two before Spy Smasher and Eve Corby are caught and imprisoned in a mysterious humming building full of men and tanks. Just where could they be?

    Turns out: inside an incredibly huge plane (containing, for example, a full tank corps and hundreds if not thousands of soldiers) that is about to bomb the US in advance of a full invasion by the Nazis.

    The plane is so big, in fact, that Spy Smasher finds plenty of handholds on it to a) prevent himself from falling to his death and b) make is way to the cockpit so that he can start pitching pilots out the window willy-nilly. And as a plane is nothing without its pilots, it crashes, taking America Smasher and all his hundreds of minions to their demise with it.

    America Smasher does not in fact die in the crash, but instead establishes a sewer lair in what is probably NYC (Spy Smasher comics are often hard to pin down, geography-wise, even though the characters all live and work in named cities. The problem is in distinguishing whether the action of a particular issue is supposed to be taking place in Washington DC, where Admiral Corby works, or NYC, where he and his daughter Eve reside. Or sometimes Virginia, where Alan Armstrong lives. Or another place entirely). 

    America Smasher does get up to more recognizable spy activity in this issue, primarily centred around inducing a German American man to betray his Secret Service agent son, but he also spends a lot of effort attempting to get revenge for his prior foiled plan, by killing Eve Corby in particular. Why her in particular? That’s a good question.

    America’s Greatest Comics 001 was published in November or December of 1941 and this story shows it in one very particular way: by having America Smasher explicitly be a Nazi. Even very slightly in advance of Pearl Harbor and the US entering the war, publishers were starting to get a little bit brave about perhaps suggesting that all these bad guys with German accents and monocles that they had been populating their rogues galleries for for that last couple of years were in fact Nazis.

    As mentioned previously, this issue sees America Smasher in reduced circumstances as he’s living in a sewer rather than a flying war base. He hasn’t entirely given up on the finer things in villainy, however, as evidenced by the enormous Art Deco iron maiden that acts as both the centrepiece of his lair and the primary means by which he inspires cooperation in his victims. Also, it is the instrument of his downfall when Spy Smasher pushes it over onto him!

    Not his ultimate downfall, however. That comes when he floods sewer base in attempt to kill Spy Smasher and in a classic case of Bad Boss leaves his henchmen behind to die with him, only for one of them to go mad with fear and blow up the whole damn sewer and America Smasher with it. (America’s Greatest Comics 001, 1941)

    The rumours of America Smasher’s death are once again exaggerated it seems, as he recovers his gauntlet from his shattered lair almost immediately (though just whose arm it was on in that pile of rubble remains a mystery. For that matter, just who made the decision to leave a human corpse under a light coating of rubble in the New York City sewers?).

    This final 1941 adventure is a bit anticlimactic after the previous heights and even mediums of villainy that America Smasher had aspired to: he trails Alan Armstrong and Eva and Admiral Corby to Alaska in order to steal the Army’s new Ski Tank prototype and then gets his block knocked off by Spy Smasher. He doesn’t even appear to die at the end of the issue but instead suffers the ignominy and shame of arrest. 

    America Smasher will return in 1942 – will his career continue to spiral ever farther downward? Tune in and see! (Whiz Comics 025, 1941)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 882: THE EYE

    (Spy Smasher 002, 1941)

    Yet another not-quite Nazi spy for Spy Smasher to smash. I really like the Eye’s little “hey” pose in the splash panel, like even he knows that he’s not quite dynamic enough to be there.

    Like so many of his peers, the Eye is after Spy Smasher ally Admiral Corby (at least once mentioned as being chief of the US Secret Service but usually just generically Important), and ends up kidnapping his daughter (and Spy Smasher love interest) Eve as part of his scheme.

    The stated reason for Eve’s capture is to prevent her from telling Alan “Spy Smasher” Armstrong that the Eye is the one behind the latest round of espionage, and I’ll be honest: the Eye is such a weird and distinctive looking guy that I really thought that the reason for this secrecy would turn out to be that he was some other character in disguise, but no, he just Looks Like That.

    (“the Eye commands” is a great catchphrase. I think that they Eye should use it more)

    Spy Smasher foils the Eye’s men in their mission to assassinate Admiral Corby and it is only after that that we learn just why the Eye is called the Eye. It’s because he’s a hypnotism guy, as demonstrated on the unfortunate Major Johnson in the above sequence. He’s not a very good hypnotism guy, though. Sure he manages to kill Johnson by turning his own mind against him, but the only reason he does that is out of frustration after being unable to extract any secrets out of  him. And he had to keep him in a dark room for three weeks in order to soften him up – the Eye doesn’t even have enough confidence in his abilities to try them out on Spy Smasher in a moment of distraction.

    It’s possible that he’s also called the Eye because he only has the one, but the problem with a character who uses the brim of a hat in place of a more conventional eye patch is that they could also just be making a fashion choice and without a real clear look at that right eye area we’re just going to have to mark this one as unresolved. 

    Despite all his bluster, the Eye goes down without a fight once he meets Spy Smasher – perhaps this is why he was so keen to keep word getting out about his being involved. Yet again, Admiral and Eve Corby are saved!

  • 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 879: THE DARK ANGEL

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 879: THE DARK ANGEL

    (Spy Smasher 001, 1941)

    We’ve entered 1941 and the crypto-fascist spies are getting closer and closer to being just plain old Nazis. Case in point: the Dark Angel, a classic femme fatale spy with just enough plausible deniability to satisfy comics’ compulsion to stay just barely technically politically neutral. 

    The Dark Angel’s name might be straight out of the mid-90s but her plans are 1941 all the way down. As the story opens she is sending two of her men to blow up a bridge and a factory and a bunch of soldiers, never imagining that Spy Smasher already has a comfortable vantage point to watch her give orders and thus is perfectly able to foil her schemes.

    Not one to wallow in defeat, the Dark Angel manages to turn the tables on Spy Smasher by discovering his secret identity* of Allan Armstrong and ambushing him in his own home. It’s honestly an impressive feat for a first-time-on-the-page villain!

    *well, technically one of her minions goes out and discovers it but if “employing competent henchmen” isn’t a key skill that many villains lack then what is it.

    A combination of sadism and unrequited love/lust inspires the Dark Angel to keep Spy Smasher alive with the knowledge that she and her men are off to assassinate the President rather than execute him immediately. Unfortunately for her/ luckily for Spy Smasher, she isn’t completely infallible in her choices of henchmen, as seen in the person of chosen Spy Smasher guard Fritzy, a drunken oaf who passes out almost immediately and whose body furnishes Spy Smasher with the knife he needs in order to escape.

    Though the Dark Angel and her guys get inside the White House with shocking ease, only to find not Franklin Delano Roosevelt but Spy Alan Smasher sitting in the President’s official comfy chair. Dark Angel and her guys are swiftly rounded up and chucked in jail and the fact that she and at least one of the guys knows his secret identity is just kind of ignored.