The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: minor super-villain

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 795: GROVAK

    (Target Comics v1 005, 1940) 

    We meet Grovak the Martian space pirate as he and his crew are about to sacrifice a beautiful human babe in order to capture a portion of the protoplasmic Neptunian Creeping Death. Not only does this highlight Grovak’s ruthlessness but it shows what a bad boss he is – bullying, abusive, refusing to own up to his mistakes – Martian space pirates take note and seek employment elsewhere.

    Luckily for that never-named young woman, Spacehawk chooses this moment to show up and make his presence known with a blast from his flame ray pistol. Both the Creeping Death and Grovak get spooked and flee the scene.

    But a little mortal fear isn’t going to be enough to dissuade Grovak, not by a long shot. He moves forward with his plan, having already collected a portion of the Creeping Death by means of a less fortunate captive, and is ready to unleash it on unsuspecting space freighter crews in order to take their lives, their ships and their cargo, in order.

    Once again Spacehawk is compelled to step in, and while Grovak’s crew sensibly flees into the Neptunian hills, the villain himself attempts to destroy Spacehawk using the Creeping Death, only to end up on the receiving end of a protoplasmic devouring himself. It’s just like the old adage: you live by the horrible alien blob; you die by the horrible alien blob.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 795: GROVAK

    (Target Comics v1 005, 1940) 

    We meet Grovak the Martian space pirate as he and his crew are about to sacrifice a beautiful human babe in order to capture a portion of the protoplasmic Neptunian Creeping Death. Not only does this highlight Grovak’s ruthlessness but it shows what a bad boss he is – bullying, abusive, refusing to own up to his mistakes – Martian space pirates take note and seek employment elsewhere.

    Luckily for that never-named young woman, Spacehawk chooses this moment to show up and make his presence known with a blast from his flame ray pistol. Both the Creeping Death and Grovak get spooked and flee the scene.

    But a little mortal fear isn’t going to be enough to dissuade Grovak, not by a long shot. He moves forward with his plan, having already collected a portion of the Creeping Death by means of a less fortunate captive, and is ready to unleash it on unsuspecting space freighter crews in order to take their lives, their ships and their cargo, in order.

    Once again Spacehawk is compelled to step in, and while Grovak’s crew sensibly flees into the Neptunian hills, the villain himself attempts to destroy Spacehawk using the Creeping Death, only to end up on the receiving end of a protoplasmic devouring himself. It’s just like the old adage: you live by the horrible alien blob; you die by the horrible alien blob.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 794: THE GHOST OF ROCKY STONE

    (Target Comics v1 005, 1940)

    If there’s one type of character that the people at Novelty Press liked, it was a young man getting an American-style military education, and Lucky Byrd was one of those very men. A flying cadet at Randolph Field, Texas, Byrd managed to ferret out a variety of espionage and criminal plots as a sideline to his studies, the first of which involved fellow cadet Rocky Stone, a bully turned murderer turned reluctant saboteur who ended up dead at the hands of his unseen handler when he tried to confess all.

    Now, some months later, the ghost of Byrd’s old rival has seemingly returned for revenge as a glowing spectre piloting an eerie ghost plane that looks just sick as hell.

    As is so often the case with unexpected ghosts, it turns out that Rocky Stone had an identical twin brother, Bob, who has been seeking revenge on Lucky Byrd due to some unreliable information supplied to him by his nogoodnik sibling. And Lucky, good guy that he is, refuses to press charges once everything comes out in the open, so Bob Stone comes out of the whole thing with nothing more than an amazing icebreaker to bust out at parties. Assuming that he also was not prosecuted for stealing that plane from the US Army.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 794: THE GHOST OF ROCKY STONE

    (Target Comics v1 005, 1940)

    If there’s one type of character that the people at Novelty Press liked, it was a young man getting an American-style military education, and Lucky Byrd was one of those very men. A flying cadet at Randolph Field, Texas, Byrd managed to ferret out a variety of espionage and criminal plots as a sideline to his studies, the first of which involved fellow cadet Rocky Stone, a bully turned murderer turned reluctant saboteur who ended up dead at the hands of his unseen handler when he tried to confess all.

    Now, some months later, the ghost of Byrd’s old rival has seemingly returned for revenge as a glowing spectre piloting an eerie ghost plane that looks just sick as hell.

    As is so often the case with unexpected ghosts, it turns out that Rocky Stone had an identical twin brother, Bob, who has been seeking revenge on Lucky Byrd due to some unreliable information supplied to him by his nogoodnik sibling. And Lucky, good guy that he is, refuses to press charges once everything comes out in the open, so Bob Stone comes out of the whole thing with nothing more than an amazing icebreaker to bust out at parties. Assuming that he also was not prosecuted for stealing that plane from the US Army.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 793: BIG SHOT

    (Target Comics v1 002, 1940)

    Big Shot, a New York gang boss with a European spy named Drusella as his companion (a slight speculation as some imprecise speech balloon tails make it hard to be entirely sure just who is talking about what, but the details seem to fit), is after the technological advances that the Skipper has made in Boystate, with an eye toward using them to take over the world. His initial plan – drive up to the front gates and wing it from there – doesn’t bear fruit, so he is forced to improvise a real plan on the spot. Also please note that the Skipper is on to Big Shot from the very start thanks to mind-reading technology that one of the Boystate Rangers tells Big Shot about. This whole three-part story functions mostly as a demonstration of Boystate’s power for the reader.

    Since the Skipper’s stated mission is to take lost and abandoned boys and turn them into upstanding American men, Big Shot’s new plan involves recruiting a suitably wayward youth to infiltrate Boystate and do a little espionage. His chosen agent is the unnervingly-named Pretty Boy, a would-be gangster with a world-weary attitude.

    Pretty Boy is delivered from the harsh streets of NYC, where a boy might get beaten up by a grown man and forced into a life of crime, to the nice streets of Boyville, where boys are beaten up by their fellow boys in order to impart solid moral lessons. The nuance is unfortunately lost on him, and Pretty Boy sets out to fulfill his mission in the most direct manner possible.

    There’s some shenanigans involving a brief accidental foray into space as Pretty Boy steals an aircraft that he has no idea how to fly, but the end result is his delivering to Big Shot a bug-o-plane, a cosmic ray gun and the Skipper’s chief aide the Captain, at which point Big Shot tosses both the Captain and Pretty Boy into the skeleton-filled dungeon pit that he has had installed in his NYC penthouse apartment.

    At this point, Pretty Boy begins to see the error of his ways, and after some weeks of imprisonment and privation manages to make his escape and head back to Boystate for help.

    Once the Skipper and his personal child army are on the case, it’s all over for Big Shot. He doesn’t even get the satisfaction of executing his prisoner thanks to the repentant Pretty Boy.

    And speaking of Pretty Boy, he reforms and sheds his former, weird-to-type-this-many-times-in-short-succession name for the impersonal M-4 as he joins the Boystate Rangers and trades in his former rough and tumble lifestyle for one of blissful militarized conformity.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 792: THE OCTOPUS

    (Target Comics v1 003, 1940)

    I’m going to start out by saying that I have no idea why this story is called “Return of the Octopus!” as this is as far as I can tell both the first and last appearance of the character. Both the title and the Octopus’ costume seem to be dramatic flourishes that don’t really play out in the text of the story.

    I do really like the Octopus’ costume, though. It’s got a lot of low-effort charm, though now that I think of it I have no idea how easy it would be to source a green sweater with a large octopus decal on it c. 1940.

    Sadly, the Octopus shucks his disguise after one panel when he has to answer an inquiry from Treasury Agent Chick Farrell at his funeral home front, and this is where the other part of his character design comes into play, as physically he embodies a whole set of characteristics that were associated with undertakers in the early 20th Century and beyond: cadaverous face, unnerving stare, unnatural posture, old-fashioned clothing – general creep vibes. This is of course a slander against the hard-working undertakers of the world, but what can you do?

    The extant copy of this comic is unfortunately missing the one or two pages that close this story. At the end of the part that is available, the Octopus has just murdered his accomplice (his kidnap victim’s crooked uncle) and is about to get away on a boat, so based on my long experience in reading comic books I’d say that there’s a 70/30 split on the odds of whether he eventually drowns or is arrested.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 792: THE OCTOPUS

    (Target Comics v1 003, 1940)

    I’m going to start out by saying that I have no idea why this story is called “Return of the Octopus!” as this is as far as I can tell both the first and last appearance of the character. Both the title and the Octopus’ costume seem to be dramatic flourishes that don’t really play out in the text of the story.

    I do really like the Octopus’ costume, though. It’s got a lot of low-effort charm, though now that I think of it I have no idea how easy it would be to source a green sweater with a large octopus decal on it c. 1940.

    Sadly, the Octopus shucks his disguise after one panel when he has to answer an inquiry from Treasury Agent Chick Farrell at his funeral home front, and this is where the other part of his character design comes into play, as physically he embodies a whole set of characteristics that were associated with undertakers in the early 20th Century and beyond: cadaverous face, unnerving stare, unnatural posture, old-fashioned clothing – general creep vibes. This is of course a slander against the hard-working undertakers of the world, but what can you do?

    The extant copy of this comic is unfortunately missing the one or two pages that close this story. At the end of the part that is available, the Octopus has just murdered his accomplice (his kidnap victim’s crooked uncle) and is about to get away on a boat, so based on my long experience in reading comic books I’d say that there’s a 70/30 split on the odds of whether he eventually drowns or is arrested.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 791: CATS ROMELT

    (Lightning Comics 004, 1940)

    Though Cats Romelt is the head of a gang of river pirates who organizes a fake warehouse guard union in order to call a general strike and leave the dock warehouses easy pickings, none of this is the reason for his being here. No, it is his sheer bloody-minded commitment to using starved alley cats with poisoned claws as weapons of terror and mass destruction that tipped him over into the category of super-villain. It’s an idea that certainly works better on paper than in practice, but the real question is: is he constantly doing it because his nickname is “Cats” or is that his nickname because he breaks out a poison-clawed alley cat as the solution to any problem?

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 790: DR HORTON

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 790: DR HORTON

    (Sure-Fire Comics 003a, 1940)

    The town of Branton, no state specified, has been struck by a mysterious plague, and X, the Phantom Fed, is suspicious. He infiltrates the quarantine zone around the town in the guise of a doctor and starts investigating the various odd facts of the plague, beginning with 1) the fact that is is being spread by a troop of escaped gorillas that were being used in medical testing and are now apparently just wandering the town and attacking people at random.

    Or are these attacks actually random? They are not, and weird thing number 2) is the fact that the gorillas seem to only be attacking the wealthiest inhabitants of Branton, such as young Donald Warden here.

    3) Speaking of amazing coincidences, a mysterious doctor just happens to have an antidote to the disease spread by the gorillas, and is willing to provide it for a hundred grand a pop, which is again an amazing coincidence since all of the victims just happen to have that kind of money.

    X disguises himself as the deceased Donald Warden and arranges to get the antidote so that he can trail the agents of the mysterious doctor back to their headquarters. There, he makes an amazing discovery: the gorillas are actually men in gorilla outfits, administering fake diseased bites using a weird fork. Let me tell you: it has been too long since we have had some gorillas, real or not, in this online space.

    The thing about a gang made up of a bunch of guys in gorilla suits is that it is pretty easy to infiltrate, and X does just that, tagging along as Dr Horton, the supposed researcher who supposedly accidentally lost the gorillas, orchestrates an all-out attack on City Hall to loot the town treasury before presumably wrapping up the entire operation and skipping town. Horton’s luck has run out, however, and he is corralled with relative ease by the Man of a Million Faces.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 789: THE GRAND DICTATOR

    (Sure-Fire Comics 003a, 1940)

    The Grand Dictator, aka Miko, is on a mission to conquer the US, and he’s doing it from a cool flying fortress. Miko and his men are probably intended to be at least Nazi-adjacent, but they don’t really come off that way, at least as compared with their contemporaries. I mean, sure, they’ve got the uniforms and the attitude, but where are the dimwitted goons named Hans and Franz shouting “Jah, jah!” as they scuttle off to commit civilian atrocities?

    The Grand Dictator’s forces really stand out in the coolness of their military tech, including these very imposing flame guns…

    The aforementioned flying fortress (including the terrific detail that the GD’s forces have solved the problem of how to make something huge in the sky look like a cloud by stapling cotton batting to the bottom like it’s a prop in an elementary school play)…

    And in a bit of a combination of the first two, some fairly impractical-looking flame throwing planes.

    We’re still quite early in the career of Flash Lightning, and so he’s still kind of finding his level with regards to the relative power of he and his opponents. Case in point: the main challenge that Lightning faces in this issue is in getting his companion on the lower right to safety, after which he destroys the Grand Dictator’s entire operation with one big lightning bolt.