The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: minor super-villain

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 997: THE ZOMBIE WITCH

    (Jungle Comics 024, 1941)

    The Zombie Witch (aka the Queen of the Zombies, aka Celie) is, as the name suggests, a witch with a penchant for raising the dead – often while they are still actively being mourned. She demonstrates a few other magic powers (e.g., scrying in a bowl of water, crocodile charming) but the zombie thing is her bread and butter.

    So what, specifically, does she want a bunch of reanimated corpses for? Well! I won’t say that it’s for a good reason but it certainly an innovative one: Celie has pulled a con on some unscrupulous fellows and convinced them that a worthless mountain is full of gold, and is now going to sell them zombie labour to work the mines. It’s not a bad way to use up surplus zombies, if you ignore the horror.

    Tabu of course objects to the fraud just as hard as he does to the necromancy, and wastes no time in ratting the Zombie Witch out to her clients. They in turn waste no time in murdering her, but not before she orders her zombies to “kill the white men,” thus in turn sealing their dooms. Only Tabu makes it out alive.

    Categorized in: Accessories (Henchmen (Zombies)), Careers in Magic (Witches), Fraud (Con Artistry)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 996: THE BIRD KING

    (Jungle Comics 022, 1941)

    Zuko, aka the Bird King, is in a lot of ways a very classic minor super-villain. He has an obsession with birds and has both a flock of trained vultures and a set of working bird wings for personal flight that he uses in the pursuit of crime. He also has an obsession with diamonds that makes him jealously guard the ones that he has collected, and stop at nothing, including kidnapping and murder, to acquire more.

    The really unusual thing about Zuko is the fact that all of this villainous potential exists in a guy who lives in a treehouse in the middle of a crocodile-infested swamp in the middle of a jungle in an unspecified part of Central Africa. He only learns that there are people nearby with diamonds that he might be able to steal when one of them accidentally wanders into his front yard. In the next issue of Jungle Comics some crooks come looking for Zuko’s treasure so it’s possible that he was a super thief somewhere else before moving to the jungle to hide but as presented in his own story it’s kind of like if Dr Doom had just forged his mask and then stayed on the mountain with those monks.

    The Bird Man makes a spirited attempt to steal the diamonds from Kaänga’s adopted people but is unable to contend with jungle-man resistance. This all ends with him learning the ultimate lesson for people who choose the life of the wingsuit, all the way back to Icarus himself: they don’t work very well if they are on fire.

    Categorized in: Accessories (Wingsuits), Animals (Birds), Theft (Jewel Thieves) 

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 995: ORG

    (Jungle Comics 015, 1941)

    Org is a fellow with a gift – the power to play the drums hypnotically – and also the knowledge of the location of a hidden valley full of giant spiders. He combines these two factors as a part of his scheme to conquer “all of Jungleland,” which probably means Africa and possibly means India but in my heart will always mean a humid pocket dimension summoned into being by Fletcher Hanks and his fellow Jungle writers’ lack of geographic savvy.

    Org quickly organizes a spider army with his sick beats, earning him one strike on Fantomah’s personal “should I kill this guy” tracker.

    This is often the point at which Fantomah gives her target a little hint that he might want to cut back on the wanton slaughter, etc. for his own sake, but Org is given no such grace – perhaps Fantomah just hates spiders. Or drummers. In any case, Org appears to be a pretty thoroughly rotten guy who delights in having his minions attack human and animal alike. It is at this point that I must point out the horrific fact that Org’s spiders have what appear to be human hands on the end of each of their legs, which is gross.

    Attacking people and animals like this were evidently strikes two and three, because it is at this point that Fantomah steps in, just a little too late as per usual. Org is paralyzed and unceremoniously fed to his own erstwhile troops, who in turn are shrunken down to the size of regular everyday spiders. We can only hope that there wasn’t some sort of catastrophic megafauna that they were keeping in check with their predations, I guess.

    Appropriately for what I am almost certain is our last Fletcher Hanks comic (but not out final Fantomah), our hero gives a little farewell at the end of the comic!

    Categorized in: Accessories (Giant Spiders), Powers (Animal Control), Supercrime (Attempted Conquest)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 994: AKINA

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 994: AKINA

    (Jungle Comics 015, 1941)

    Akina is the hereditary ruler of the African kingdom of Lomar, and as such she has just inherited the mystical Stone of Hanniban. As a newly invested magical being, she falls into the very common trap of deciding that she must be the very best and most powerful of all magic users right away, and immediately sets out to prove herself by challenging Tabu, Wizard of the Jungle to a death duel.

    This goes poorly. Tabu defeats the inexperienced Akina without even breaking a sweat and depowers the stone to boot – hopefully it wasn’t the linchpin of some sort of defence strategy that Lomar depended on. A few highlights form their magic battle:

    Tabu gets turned into a drum, then explodes and reforms as three Tabus.

    Akina summons these giant flaming lizards, which Tabu then levitates straight into her palace. Do the lizards eat a lot of people who are arguably blameless in Akina’s crimes? Indeed they do.

    Tabu ultimately concludes the duel by shrinking both Akina and the entire Black Ivory Palace of Lomar; The Stone of Hanniban is the only thing that he leaves at its original size, and though it’s never spelled out, one can reasonably assume that this is as part of a trick to get Akina to fork over the thing willingly rather than have her neck be broken by its relatively enormous weight.

    Categorized in: Accessories (Gems), Generica (Ends in A), Powers (Various Magics)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 993: ZOMAX

    (Jungle Comics 014, 1941)

    Zomax, the “demonized marine scientist,” has a very over-the-top, Fletcher Hanks villain goal: to kill every animal in the jungle. And he isn’t afraid to say it.

    I won’t say that Zomax has a good reason for wanting to destroy all jungle life, but he does have some justification, stemming from a big game hunt he went on that involved, in order:

    1. being mauled by a fatally wounded lion. Once the lion died, Zomax wandered away, only to…

    2. be grabbed by a man-hating elephant and tossed into a stagnant pond where…

    3. swarms of poisonous gnats shredded his skin. Zomax crawled out of the muck in torment, only to be…

    4. crushed by a boa constrictor, but not killed, because he was…

    5. pulled away by the Hannibal Lector of gorillas, who then proceeded to take Zomax home to his nest and inflict months of psychological torture on him.

    Though one might see all of this as a kind of ironic punishment for going on a big game hunt in the first place, Zomax does not in fact see it that way, and concludes that the jungle is an evil place fit only for destruction. And since he is a “marine scientist,” what better tool of that destruction than the ocean itself?

    Specifically, Zomax has built a machine that can create and control a bespoke tidal wave to to wash over the entire continent of Africa (or that portion of it that contains jungle animals) and destroy all of his tormentors. Other than the gnats, I reckon: I bet they do just fine in a landscape covered in brackish ponds. 

    As violence against any jungle is violence against the universal Jungle that Fantomah protects, she is out to get Zomax as soon as he actually initiates the tidal wave engine (though please note the silhouettes that indicate that Zomax gets revenge against one representative of each animal species that wronged him, gnats excepted).

    Having been given an unusual number of chances to repent and stop his machines by Fantomah, Zomax instead decides to flee in a plane, leaving her not choice but to destroy him with his own tidal wave, or, as Fantomah (and the second Paul Karasik collection of Hanks comics) puts it “YYou shall die by your own creation!”

    Categorized in: Generica (Ends in -x), Origin (Vengeance Quest), Supercrime (Disaster Causers)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 993: ZOMAX

    (Jungle Comics 014, 1941)

    Zomax, the “demonized marine scientist,” has a very over-the-top, Fletcher Hanks villain goal: to kill every animal in the jungle. And he isn’t afraid to say it.

    I won’t say that Zomax has a good reason for wanting to destroy all jungle life, but he does have some justification, stemming from a big game hunt he went on that involved, in order:

    1. being mauled by a fatally wounded lion. Once the lion died, Zomax wandered away, only to…

    2. be grabbed by a man-hating elephant and tossed into a stagnant pond where…

    3. swarms of poisonous gnats shredded his skin. Zomax crawled out of the muck in torment, only to be…

    4. crushed by a boa constrictor, but not killed, because he was…

    5. pulled away by the Hannibal Lector of gorillas, who then proceeded to take Zomax home to his nest and inflict months of psychological torture on him.

    Though one might see all of this as a kind of ironic punishment for going on a big game hunt in the first place, Zomax does not in fact see it that way, and concludes that the jungle is an evil place fit only for destruction. And since he is a “marine scientist,” what better tool of that destruction than the ocean itself?

    Specifically, Zomax has built a machine that can create and control a bespoke tidal wave to to wash over the entire continent of Africa (or that portion of it that contains jungle animals) and destroy all of his tormentors. Other than the gnats, I reckon: I bet they do just fine in a landscape covered in brackish ponds. 

    As violence against any jungle is violence against the universal Jungle that Fantomah protects, she is out to get Zomax as soon as he actually initiates the tidal wave engine (though please note the silhouettes that indicate that Zomax gets revenge against one representative of each animal species that wronged him, gnats excepted).

    Having been given an unusual number of chances to repent and stop his machines by Fantomah, Zomax instead decides to flee in a plane, leaving her not choice but to destroy him with his own tidal wave, or, as Fantomah (and the second Paul Karasik collection of Hanks comics) puts it “YYou shall die by your own creation!”

    Categorized in: Generica (Ends in -x), Origin (Vengeance Quest), Supercrime (Disaster Causers)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 992: THE VAHINES

    (Jungle Comics 013, 1941)

    The Vahines, aka the Tiger-Women of Wildmoon Mountain, have a plan: kill every other woman in the world, which will then give them ultimate power over all men. Some thoughts on this setup:

    1. The logistics of this plan are trash. There are maybe 15 to 20 Vahines total and estimates put world population at around 2.3 billion in 1940, so murdering half of those people will be a full-time job that will probably take the rest of their lives*. And if they succeed, what then? They rule over a population that is going to die out in a single generation? They certainly can’t repopulate the planet because they spent their fertile years slaughtering people.

    *It’s just possible that “the world” referred to by the Vahines is the weird liminal Jungle-Dimension that Fantomah comics seem to be set in, but seeing as how that’s mostly something I made up to explain how weird the worldbuilding in these stories is, I doubt it.

    2. I keep saying that we’re almost out of Fletcher Hanks stories but I really mean it this time, so it’s nice to get one last instance of women surfing around on the backs of big cats.

    3. “The Vahines have come down off of Wildmoon Mountain to murder all other women” sounds like the synopsis of a MADtv sketch about PMS. 

    Regardless of the canonicity of the liminal Jungle, that’s where their mountain is located and so that is where they start murdering women. This goes against Fantomah’s mission to protect Jungle life, and so they meet resistance in the form of All Animals. The Vahines, however, are no fools. They knew that Fantomah wouldn’t be cool with their insane mission and so they have prepared a salve that makes them glow in a way that is scary to animals. Problem solved!

    Or is it? in a classic blunder, the Vahines have failed to contend with the fact that Fantomah a) is not afraid of a mild glowing effect and b) is a minor deity. It takes the merest exertion of her powers to remove the glow, and soon the Vahines’ tigers are a mere smudge on the jungle floor.

    As for the Vahines themselves, it is now the time for the extreme retribution. Fantomah begins this by extracting the enormous moonstone called the Wild Moon from inside of Wildmoon Mountain – it seems that the name was more than just cool but that it also meant something – and sticking the Vahines to it. This is initially very concerning to the Vahines because of a prophecy about their lives ending if the Wild Moon leaves…

    … and then very, very concerning, as the Wild Moon, with its Vahine cargo, is blasted off to slam into the surface of Mars. The prophecy was correct! If unhelpful!

    Categorized in: Animals (Tigers), Ideologies (Misogyny), Murder (Mass Murderers)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 991: ZIRA

    (Jungle Comics 013, 1941)

    While searching for her champion Sir Champion (annoying thing to have to write and the main reason I’m happy that he eventually fades into obscurity), who has failed to return from a hunt, Camilla, Queen of the Lost Empire is confronted by the ghostly vision of a blonde lady who rules an ancient lost castle. This is just a kind of person you get in the undefined part of Africa that houses the Lost Empire.

    The lady’s name, by the way, is Zira, Princess of the Palace of the Black Heart. She also refers to herself as a “wizardess,” and while I am generally of the opinion that gendered job titles like that are retrograde and unhelpful I must admit to being charmed. Wizardess!

    This vision leads Camilla back to the aforementioned Palace of the Black Heart, where her mortal form is revealed to be a middle-aged lady, or “old hag” as our hero so tactfully puts it. Zira states that Sir Champion is locked up in her dungeon and she will return him in exchange for all of Camilla’s magic powers. The sum total of these powers, from my notes, being the ability to talk to gorillas and the power to call upon Thor and Baal to freeze someone. Frankly not a bad trade for someone’s life. Do we include her eternal life? She got that from a potion, after all.

    Camilla evidently wishes to continue to speak to apes and so she and her men battle with Zira’s forces until they are ironically defeated by some apes.

    It then turns out that Camilla has more tricks up her sleeve than I had in my notes. She offers to brew up a potion to make Zira good looking in exchange for freedom for her and her men, and since this is the same comic that made a point of calling Zira a wizardess, she is of course very vain by default and takes the deal immediately.

    The thing about taking advantage of a woman’s default vanity in such a comic is of course the fact that the vain woman will also be extremely fickle, as seen when the newly-hot Zira reneges on her deal in favour of keeping Sir Champion for her own horny purposes. Things quickly turn violent and Sir Champion is forced to slay Zira to save Camilla’s life. All in all it’s a real eleventh-hour fumble on Zira’s part.

    Categorized in: Accessories (Castles), Genrica (Ends in -a), Powers (Various Magics)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 990: THE EMPEROR

    (Bill Barnes, America’s Air Ace Comics 003, 1941)

    The first chunk of the story that the Emperor appears in is not available anywhere that I can find, but what remains is enough to evaluate him and determine that yes, he is a super-villain. Specifically, he is a scientist who discovered “the secret of atomic power” and decided that the best way to use it was as part of an attempt to conquer the world. Plus he has all of his henchmen running around in little uniforms, a clear sign of super-villainy.

    The part of the Emperor’s plans that we get to see involves using cool-looking rocket bombers to blow big holes in various US cities and then sending out agents provocateur to stir up public support for surrender as an alternative to continued explosions.

    Unfortunately for the Emperor, Bill Barnes (America’s Air Ace) is on the case, and he’s such a mechanical genius that he is able to divine the secrets of atomic energy merely by creeping around the engine room of one of those cool rocket bombers for about half an hour. Barnes builds his own fleet of nuclear-powered aircraft, tracks the Emperor to a secret base in the Rockies and then wipes him off the map with atomic bombs. I suppose that the actual Emperor himself might have suvived, since we never actually see him alive or dead, but it’s pretty unlikely.

    BONUS: Bill Barnes is awarded “the highest honor of the nation” by FDR for stopping the Emperor, which is either the Medal of Honor or… some precursor to the Medal of Freedom that I can’t find (logically there had to be a highest civilian honour before 1942 but Wikipedia is being coy). It all depends on whether America’s Air Ace is a military or civilian role.

    Categorized in: Accessories (Mountain Base), Royalty (Emperors), Supercrime (Attempted Conquest of the US)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 990: THE EMPEROR

    (Bill Barnes, America’s Air Ace Comics 003, 1941)

    The first chunk of the story that the Emperor appears in is not available anywhere that I can find, but what remains is enough to evaluate him and determine that yes, he is a super-villain. Specifically, he is a scientist who discovered “the secret of atomic power” and decided that the best way to use it was as part of an attempt to conquer the world. Plus he has all of his henchmen running around in little uniforms, a clear sign of super-villainy.

    The part of the Emperor’s plans that we get to see involves using cool-looking rocket bombers to blow big holes in various US cities and then sending out agents provocateur to stir up public support for surrender as an alternative to continued explosions.

    Unfortunately for the Emperor, Bill Barnes (America’s Air Ace) is on the case, and he’s such a mechanical genius that he is able to divine the secrets of atomic energy merely by creeping around the engine room of one of those cool rocket bombers for about half an hour. Barnes builds his own fleet of nuclear-powered aircraft, tracks the Emperor to a secret base in the Rockies and then wipes him off the map with atomic bombs. I suppose that the actual Emperor himself might have suvived, since we never actually see him alive or dead, but it’s pretty unlikely.

    BONUS: Bill Barnes is awarded “the highest honor of the nation” by FDR for stopping the Emperor, which is either the Medal of Honor or… some precursor to the Medal of Freedom that I can’t find (logically there had to be a highest civilian honour before 1942 but Wikipedia is being coy). It all depends on whether America’s Air Ace is a military or civilian role.

    Categorized in: Accessories (Mountain Base), Royalty (Emperors), Supercrime (Attempted Conquest of the US)