The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: minor super-villain

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 852: THE SUPER-SCIENTIST

    (Weird Comics 008, 1940)

    The Sorceress of Zoom is up to her usual tricks: attempting to steal some random guy from his lady friend, getting mad that he won’t fall in love with her, attacking the city he lives in and turning their tank patrol (!) into a series of ornamental trees, and finally abducting people willy-nilly in order to turn them into furniture. Regular stuff.

    In the city council’s hour of need it is approached by an eccentrically dressed character who calls himself the Super-Scientist and who claims that he can save the city from the Sorceress’ depredations. This of course turns out to have a pretty big caveat: the Super-Scientist will indeed save the city, but only so that he can rule it himself.

    After an initial exchange of fire (1. SoZ attempts to flood the city, 2. S-S transforms water to gas, 3. SoZ launches flaming humans in attempt to ignite gas, 4. flaming humans shot down by city militia (!)) the Sorceress of Zoom and the Super-Scientist agree to have an old-fashioned magic vs science duel for ownership of the city.

    As the duel comprises almost four pages of back-and-forth attack, defense and counter-attack, I won’t go into the whole thing, save to note that the Super-Scientist trucks in the kind of science that is indistinguishable from magic, that the highlight of the event is when the Super-Scientist’s radium ray briefly turns the Sorceress into a skeleton, and that the whole thing ends with the Super-Scientist transformed into a gross rat.

    All this has alleviated the boredom that seemingly inspires the Sorceress to start causing trouble in the mortal world, and she packs up Zoom and flies off. Ironically, in providing the Sorceress of Zoom with a diverting afternoon, the Super-Scientist has in fact saved the city, though any degree of ratty satisfaction he might feel about this is probably spoiled by the hungry cat that the Sorceress summons just before taking off.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 851: MORGANA LE FAY

    (Weird Comics 007, 1940)

    Here we are again with another Morgan(a) le Fay entry, our third in about a month and a half. Was there something in the water? This is also going to double as a micro Real Folk Round-Up, as all of the Arthurian characters who appear in the story are plot-relevant enough that I might as well detail them here as duplicate my effort.

    Our Real Folk start off with Sir Gareth, Knight of the Round Table, brother to Gawaine, not quite the sort of household name knight as his brother or a Lancelot or a Galahad but held in pretty high esteem by the fans of such things. Gareth is rescued from a group of murderous knights by the Sorceress of Zoom after she travels back in time to avoid the burgeoning World War II, and is pining after his lady Elaine*, held captive by Morgana le Fay and destined to be married to the odious Mordred.

    The Sorceress of Zoom, horny for Gareth, decides to aid him on his quest in hopes of finding a way to eliminate Elaine along the way. Approaching le Fay’s castle, the duo find themselves imprisoned and facing death by the sword. 

    The Sorceress’ shirtless men prove a match for Morgana le Fay’s knights; her flying dragons make short work of le Fay’s flightless ones, and her magic is easily able to save Sir Gareth from being changed into a pig. Morgana le Fay is seemingly beaten!

    The Sorceress of Zoom does not press her advantage, but instead encourages a joust for Elaine’s freedom between Sir Gareth and Sir Mordred (not much of a character beyond being a generic evil knight here. He is portrayed as the son of Morgana le Fay rather than of her sister Margawse, but whether that is because that is so common a literary elision that it has entered the public consciousness or because Gareth is also the son of Margawse and having them be half brothers would be a complication that the story did not need, is hard to say). Her plan is to influence the joust so that Sir Gareth loses and thus is single, but is foiled in this by Merlin the Magician (also barely a character and just there to deus ex machina the Sorceress back to her own time), who tells her she is not wanted in Arthurian England. Morgana, while technically defeated and foiled, is left to go about her business.

    *Lady Elaine is not a reference to a specific Arthurian character to my knowledge. There are a half dozen or so Elaines running around Camelot and its environs, and the only one connected to Sir Gareth is his aunt/ Morgana le Fay’s sister, who she hopefully wouldn’t be trying to marry to her son.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 850: DR MORTAL

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 850: DR MORTAL

    (Weird Comics 001, 1940)

    Dr Mortal, in contrast to his fellow Weird Comics character the Sorceress of Zoom, is your typical comic-headlining super-villain, in that he is a mad scientist with an obsession with making monsters. Like most of his ilk, Mortal is opposed by a heterosexual couple of upstanding moral character, and in his specific case they are his niece Marlene Mortal and her lover Gary Brent (as Marlene’s surname is never actually given in print, I’m just making an assumption that it is also a Mortal, because I want it to be). Dr Mortal’s main distinguishing characteristic is that thanks to his eyebrow/mustache/skin droopiness he kind of looks like he’s melting.

    Some 1940 Dr Mortal highlights:

    In his first appearance, Dr Mortal is up to some basic mad scientist stuff: he is kidnapping and mutating people into big gobliny guys called the Monster Men. He is of course mind controlling these Monster Men to serve him, but it’s not very good mind control, as can be seen above as it is broken by Gary Brent. Dr Mortal seemingly dies in a fire but actually just scuttles out the back door.

    Weird Comics 002 sees Dr Mortal rebuilding, with the aid of his faithful assistant Salvo, and includes the immortal line “Now, Salvo – get me the lion entrails!!”

    Just what are the lion entrails for? Why, to create Lion-Men, of course! And what are the Lion-Men for? Why, to terrorize the countryside to no stated end, of course! They just kind of rampage around, smashing up local farms.

    Whatever the reasoning behind this, it ends up backfiring on Dr Mortal, as when Gary Brent shows up to rescue Marlene (and here I must say that any time that Marlene Mortal is not explicitly mentioned one can safely assume that she has been captured by Dr Mortal and is about to have something terrible happen to her) he is able to round up an armed group of farmers with relative ease, and it turns out that the Lion-Men are less effective against pitchforks and shotguns than they are against isolated farmsteads. Dr Mortal supposedly dies in a fire for a second time, and for a second time he’s just fine.

     

    Weird Comics 003 is one of those off-model appearances that you get in longer Golden Age series and especially in Fox Features comics, that could either be a different artist taking over for one issue or a comic intended for another character with a few minor edits. My money’s on the latter, but only because Marlene keeps calling Dr Mortal “father” instead of “uncle” throughout.

    Whatever its provenance, this story features Dr Mortal in a pretty straightforward “I’ll show ’em all!” revenge scheme in which he is creating a robot with a human brain and the terrific name “Jaque the Super Automaton.” After an interruption by Gary and Marlene, Jaque goes rogue and beats up Dr Mortal before setting his sights on the world at large.

    Poor Jaque meets his end at the barrel of a ray gun, while for the first time Dr Mortal is carted off to jail instead of seeming to perish.

    Dr Mortal shows some flexibility in Weird Comics 004, as he plays on the tremendous 1940s obsession with class to lure Gary and Marlene into a trap. He convinces the two of them that he has turned over a new leaf by surrounding himself with beautiful, high-class people who he has made in his lab. Called “Pseudo-Socialites” at least once, these are in my opinion Dr Mortal’s greatest creations.

    Mortal invites Gary, Marlene and a few other people who he presumably has beef with to a dinner party liberally stocked with Pseudo-Socialites, then excuses himself and uses a beam to revert his creations to their true, monstrous forms. It’s a great little plan, spoiled only by the fact that Gary Brent manages to electrocute all the monsters and capture Dr Mortal.

    Weird Comics 005 sees Dr Mortal experimenting with mind transferral and is mostly concerned with a poor ape who has been injected with the memories of a dead man. Oh, that poor ape.

    Any mad scientist worth their salt eventually gets into shrinking people and Weird Comics 006 is Dr Mortal’s shrinking phase. He of course uses this technology in an attempt to get revenge on Gary and Marlene and is immediately betrayed and shrunk by his own butler Kalak, forcing the three tiny enemies to team up against him.

    All of this revenge-based science must have drained Dr Mortal’s cash reserves, because Weird Comics 007 features him charging rich middle-aged people big bucks in order to transfer their minds into young, attractive bodies. As per usual, Mortal shoots himself in the foot by attempting to get revenge on Gary and Marlene and the whole scheme falls apart, leading to the deaths of all the old rich body snatchers. 

    Of particular note is the lady above, who just wants to have her mind placed in the body of Marlene Mortal and ends up in the body of a gorilla instead. And then Marlene shoots her dead. 

    (important note – Gary and Marlene only know about this scheme beacuse he calls them and tells them to stay away. They didn’t even know he was alive!)

    Weird Comics 008 features another mad scientist classic: giant insects, which Dr Mortal releases after the police take their first-ever on-panel interest in him and attempt to raid his laboratory. Hearkening back to the old days, this one ends with Mortal seemingly dying as his lab explodes.

    This is of course not the end, and Weird Comics 009 sees Dr Mortal in the South Pacific. He abducts men from nearby islands to test his devolution ray on, but is foiled when Gary and Marlene (who just happen to have been vacationing in Waikiki) rally the local police to raid his yacht.

    That’s it for Dr Mortal in 1940, but don’t worry, he wasn’t really eaten by sharks. We’ll see this rascal again in 1941.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 849: KEERO

    (Weird Comics 005, 1940) 

    Blast Bennett, space adventurer of the year 5940, is just noodling around the galaxy one day and decides to stop off to stretch his legs on a desolate ice planet, at which point he falls in a hole and becomes embroiled in a civil war, because he is a comic book protagonist and his every move draws him closer to the nearest source of adventure. 

    The Ice Planet is ruled by the presumably-benevolent Empress Ilera – she doesn’t really get a chance to rule on-panel before things go to hell but you gotta assume that the one the hero sides with is good, right? – who is under threat by Keero, who has a robot army and feels that that is enough of a qualification to be in charge.

    In Keero’s defense, they are very cool robots. I particularly enjoy the wind-powered ski-sailor variant, particularly as I just noticed that they only use one ski. Fun!

    Keero takes the palace with very little trouble, which plays into his narrative that he should be in charge because he has the power to take control. Don’t worry: strong argument against him being in charge immediately presents itself as he begins yelling about all the people he is going to execute before he even gets in the front door of the palace. Ever heard of being a good winner, Keero?

    Luckily for the Ice Planet in general and Empress Ilera in particular, Keero has chosen to go the Phantom Menace route with his robots, meaning of course that they are all controlled from a single point and that once that controller is destroyed they are just so many hunks of tin. Blast Bennett, as a seasoned space adventurer, achieves this with ease and then punches Keero right on the kisser. 

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 849: KEERO

    (Weird Comics 005, 1940) 

    Blast Bennett, space adventurer of the year 5940, is just noodling around the galaxy one day and decides to stop off to stretch his legs on a desolate ice planet, at which point he falls in a hole and becomes embroiled in a civil war, because he is a comic book protagonist and his every move draws him closer to the nearest source of adventure. 

    The Ice Planet is ruled by the presumably-benevolent Empress Ilera – she doesn’t really get a chance to rule on-panel before things go to hell but you gotta assume that the one the hero sides with is good, right? – who is under threat by Keero, who has a robot army and feels that that is enough of a qualification to be in charge.

    In Keero’s defense, they are very cool robots. I particularly enjoy the wind-powered ski-sailor variant, particularly as I just noticed that they only use one ski. Fun!

    Keero takes the palace with very little trouble, which plays into his narrative that he should be in charge because he has the power to take control. Don’t worry: strong argument against him being in charge immediately presents itself as he begins yelling about all the people he is going to execute before he even gets in the front door of the palace. Ever heard of being a good winner, Keero?

    Luckily for the Ice Planet in general and Empress Ilera in particular, Keero has chosen to go the Phantom Menace route with his robots, meaning of course that they are all controlled from a single point and that once that controller is destroyed they are just so many hunks of tin. Blast Bennett, as a seasoned space adventurer, achieves this with ease and then punches Keero right on the kisser. 

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 848: DR HSIN

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 848: DR HSIN

    (Weird Comics 005, 1940) 

    There are exactly two reasons why I gave Dr Hsin his own entry rather than sticking him in the next Mad and Criminal Scientist Round-Up, and the first one is his creation/henchman Mako, aka the Perfect Man. I just can’t resist a man with a tube coming out of his head, especially when that man is some sort of cyborg frankenstein.

    The second reason is that Hsin’s plan – to steal the blood from hundreds of great men and women (up to and including Thor, God of Thunder!) and use it to create superhumans – is delightfully wackadoo. Is this how he created Mako? Is that what the tube is for? The mind boggles.

    As so often happens when one creates a perfect being, Mako eventually decides that Dr Hsin is surplus to requirements and tries to take over the entire operation. The rest of the issue is a series of punches: Mako punches out Dr Hsin, then Thor uses the Gauntlet of Thor to punch out Mako and then he does the same to Dr Hsin, making him the most punched man of the issue. 

    Dr Hsin gets turned over to the authorities, but poor Mako ends up getting blown up with the rest of Hsin’s experiments when Thor determines that they are too foul to exist. RIP to the Perfect Man. And also RIP Dr Hsin, because nobody thought to see if he had any poison on him.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 848: DR HSIN

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 848: DR HSIN

    (Weird Comics 005, 1940) 

    There are exactly two reasons why I gave Dr Hsin his own entry rather than sticking him in the next Mad and Criminal Scientist Round-Up, and the first one is his creation/henchman Mako, aka the Perfect Man. I just can’t resist a man with a tube coming out of his head, especially when that man is some sort of cyborg frankenstein.

    The second reason is that Hsin’s plan – to steal the blood from hundreds of great men and women (up to and including Thor, God of Thunder!) and use it to create superhumans – is delightfully wackadoo. Is this how he created Mako? Is that what the tube is for? The mind boggles.

    As so often happens when one creates a perfect being, Mako eventually decides that Dr Hsin is surplus to requirements and tries to take over the entire operation. The rest of the issue is a series of punches: Mako punches out Dr Hsin, then Thor uses the Gauntlet of Thor to punch out Mako and then he does the same to Dr Hsin, making him the most punched man of the issue. 

    Dr Hsin gets turned over to the authorities, but poor Mako ends up getting blown up with the rest of Hsin’s experiments when Thor determines that they are too foul to exist. RIP to the Perfect Man. And also RIP Dr Hsin, because nobody thought to see if he had any poison on him.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 847: THE WIZARD OF ZORO

    (Weird Comics 004, 1940) 

    The Wizard of Zoro really takes the prize for the Most Charming Atrocity of 1940 when he swoops down on a small town and turns everyone into the kind of semi-anthropomorphic giant frogs that you get in Victorian greeting cards. Do I love that he then enslaves the frogs? No. Do I endorse the fact that he singles out an attractive young woman for special torment by turning her boyfriend into a snake? Of course not. Nevertheless, the frogs are charming and dear.

    Perhaps the Wizard of Zoro is riding a little too high on his great ranomancy (a word I just made up to describe frog-based magic) because when the Sorceress of Zoom proposes an alliance between the two of them he gets all high and mighty about how he doesn’t need anyone else to be a cool and powerful wizard. (sidebar: I think it shows a lot of maturity for the Sorceress to attempt this partnership with someone who looks nearly identical to her recent tormentor the Wizard. It’s a real shame that the Wizard of Zoro was too much of a jerk to join her)

    The Sorceress of Zoom is of course more than a match for some lousy frog wizard, which she proves by incinerating his lousy palace. 

    The Wizard’s only response being to further transform his subjects, from frogs into mice, is inadequate at best. And the frogs were the only thing he had going for him, so he’s really shooting himself in the foot here. 

    The Sorceress ultimately puts this sad excuse for a duel out of its misery by weaponizing the boyfriend-turned snake. Once the Wizard of Zoro is consumed by his former victim he is forced to restore him to human form lest he be digested, and it seems that the Wizard’s magic works like an old string of Xmas lights because undoing one spell turns out to also restore all of the mice as well.

    All that’s left is to smack the Wizard one before everyone goes home.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 846: THE WIZARD

    (Weird Comics 003, 1940)

    The Wizard is the first of five villains to challenge the Sorceress of Zoom for the role of top villain in her own dang feature. He is unique among that group for being the only villain in the story he appears in, as while the rest of his peers come at the Sorceress while she is engaged in some nefarious activity, the Wizard shows up while she is peacefully hanging out with her friend Allan. 

    Once the Wizard’s weird humanoids have slaughtered all of the citizens of Zoom, he smashes the Sorceress’ never-before-seen magic mirror, which in this story only is the source of her magical power. He then absconds with the entire damn city.

    The Sorceress and Allan set out to restore the mirror by re-forging it in the heart of a volcano, only to find the Wizard and his goons waiting on the rim of the caldera to beat them up.

    This turns out to be a bad decision on the Wizard’s part, as the Sorceress is able to perform an extremely sick move that is let down somewhat by the art, wherein she leaps into the volcano holding the mirror and is thus able to use her magic to fly back out/become immune to flame/heal her horrific wounds once it re-forms. And the volcano does double duty, since she is able to dispose of the Wizard in there!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 846: THE SORCERESS OF ZOOM

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 846: THE SORCERESS OF ZOOM

    (Weird Comics 001, 1940)

    The Sorceress of Zoom is just what it says on the tin: a sorceress from Zoom, which is a magical flying city that she lives in and controls. She’s another of the Golden Age’s surprisingly large number of headlining super-villains, only instead of being a mad scientist or a more conventional crook she is a mercurial magic woman who just kind of flies around harassing people. Sometimes she’s almost okay and other times she’s one of history’s worst monsters – it’s over all fun!

    As has become the norm with these recurring villains, here is a litany of her crimes for 1940:

    In her first outing, the Sorceress takes over a small American city for unclear reasons (a page is missing from the only available scan of the issue and I reckon that the answer lies there), but the main conflict involves the Sorceress’ attempt to vamp a dude named Tom away from a lady named Janice. 

    Sorceress’ Motivation: caprice, lust

    Inhabitants of Zoom: This is the first appearance of the Sorceress of Zoom’s most frequent henchmen, a group of unnamed gobliny humanoids 

    In Weird Comics 002, the Sorceress really ups the stakes. This might be her most villainous appearance, as she first attempts to get the king of Bango, a… European city-state? to surrender 300 people so that she can kill them and turn their corpses into her goblin-men, and when he refuses to do so, she razes the entire city and turns the slaughtered population of Bango en masse.

    The only surviving Bangonian, Prince Paul, escapes to the nearby city-state of Zoda and when the Sorceress appears there, conceives of a plan to evaporate the cloud that Zoom sits upon – this marks the first of many times that Zoom is destroyed, but the Sorceress seems to be able to recreate it at will, so that’s not as consequential as it seems.

    I really enjoy the flying throne that the SoZ escapes on, so here it is.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: power

    Inhabitants of Zoom: The same gobliny humanoids, now revealed to be necromantically created out of human corpses.

    Weird Comics 003 really highlights the mercurial nature of the Sorceress’ character, as she is fully the blameless protagonist here. She and her friend Allan are just hanging out in Zoom when a nefarious character called the Wizard attacks them and makes off with the entire dang city, forcing the Sorceress and the tuxedo-clad Allan to quest in search of it. The Wizard is number 1 of 5 upcoming Minor Super-Villain entries dealing with foes of the Sorceress, so more on him later.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: vengeance, good times

    Inhabitants of Zoom: Seemingly just regular people, who are all slaughtered by the Wizard. The hazards of living in a magical city owned by a super-villain, I suppose. 

    In Weird Comics 004, the Sorceress attempts to ally with a fellow called the Wizard of Zoro to take over the US (? Possibly – a sense of place is not the strong suit of the Sorceress of Zoom comics), but he is too full of himself to work with someone else, making him the second of our future entries and giving the Sorceress a real opportunity to show off her flying, lion-driven carriage as she makes a brief tactical retreat.

    The Sorceress once again threatens to return and steal someone’s fairly generic man at the end of this one, and as far as is shown she never really follows up on these impulses.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: vengeance, lust

    Inhabitants of Zoom: The coachmen above are the only ones shown, so presumably more regular people have decided to live on the edge by inhabiting a magical villain’s lair. 

     

    Weird Comics 005 sees the Sorceress kidnapping the magical men who live in Nagpur, India, both to beef up her forces and to prove that she is better than them.

    What the Sorceress doesn’t count on is the fact that one of the magical men might have a magical son, and that magical son might effect a magical rescue. The magical men, once released, are able to prevent the Sorceress from making any more attempts to deprive them of their freedom.

    This issue also attempts to inject some continuity and foreshadowing into the ongoing Sorceress of Zoom narrative with a bit of a cliffhanger about just what the general and the king in her cryo-chamber could be doing there. This is to my knowledge never revisited.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: pride, power

    Inhabitants of Zoom: The gobliny humanoids are back!

    In Weird Comics 006, a somewhat off-model Sorceress of Zoom attempts to take over the Middle East with the help of some dragons. This attempt is foiled by young Prince Ja’afar, who is gifted a protective amulet and a flying carpet by a friendly desert mage and invades Zoom to rescue his love, the Princess Shahzarad.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: power, lust

    Inhabitants of Zoom: Slaves and dragons.

    Weird Comics 007 sees the Sorceress transporting Zoom back in time to escape the chaos of the growing World War II. She ends up in Arthurian England, mixed up in a conflict between Sir Gareth of the Round Table (who she of course wants, carnally) and Morgana le Fay (upcoming minor super-villain 3/5), before being run out of town by Merlin.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: lust

    Inhabitants of Zoom: Big beefy shirtless men, mostly. 

    The Weird Comics 008 story is the first of what I think will be a pattern of adventures going forward: the Sorceress rolls into some area and starts causing trouble, then gets into a scrap, then undoes some or all of the mischief that she caused and leaves. My theory is that this is what she does when she gets bored.

    In this case, the Sorceress annoys a young couple and attempts to seduce the man away from the woman (who has been turned into flowers, natch), then attempts to conquer a nearby city before having a real tussle with upcoming villain 4/5, the Super-Scientist, and leaving (after turning the flowers back into a lady).

    This issue also features the second time that Zoom is destroyed and recreated.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: lust, boredom, power

    Inhabitants of Zoom: the very cool-looking Vapor Men. 

    Weird Comics 009 is another of these boredom issues, in which the Sorceress is ostensibly transporting some treasure out of the North African desert but really seems to just be having fun torturing the poor people who she has enslaved to do so. Eventually, she gets into a conflict with out final upcoming super-villain, Gobi, the Super-Wizard of the Desert, who wants to use the Sorceress’ slaves as food for his vultures. Zoom is destroyed yet again this issue.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: wealth, boredom

    Inhabitants of Zoom: None shown. 

    That’s it for the Sorceress of Zoom in 1940: stay tuned for her 1941 adventures!