The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: minor super-villain

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 962: THE MASTER

    (Exciting Comics 015, 1941)

    The
    Master is a mysterious new crooks who has been going around town kidnapping wealthy men,
    and the Black Terror and Tim have been running around after him and
    trying to figure out just what the heck is going on. The Master is also a classic Bad Boss in the “ruthlessly kill your minions” mould.

    As it turns out, the Master has broadly the same origin story as early Batman villain the Ugliest Man in the World,
    only instead of a medical student who was injected with a random
    cocktail of drugs and turned ugly in a frat hazing gone wrong, he is
    instead a chemistry student who was exploded by a random mixture of chemicals in some frat bullying gone
    wrong. Like his counterpart, the Master (aka Alfred Foster, aka Phillip
    van Allen) dropped out of sight, acquired a rubberoid mask and
    established a new identity so that he could enact his revenge on those
    he blamed for his disfigurement.

    Unlike the Ugliest Man in
    the World, the Master’s theming is not strong. He himself is vaguely
    Egyptian themed, while his henchmen are just a bunch of Malaysian guys who he does not treat very well.

    The
    Master’s plan also revolves around gathering up his tormentors so that
    he can kill them all at once, meaning that his revenge goes almost entirely unfulfilled when he is accidentally
    killed by one of his own men. All in all a very poor foray into super-villainy.

    Revenge Killer Score: 0/12

    Categorized in: Accessories (Rubberoid Mask), Generica (Masters), Origin (Extensively Scarred Face)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 961: DR ZINN

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 961: DR ZINN

    (Exciting Comics 009, 1941)

    Dr Zinn feels like a character who is somehow aware of my classification system and who is desperate not to be relegated to the ranks of the Generic Costumed Villain (yes, the “costumed” part has lost all meaning, I know) and so has shoehorned as many extra details into his appearance as possible to force me to give him Minor Super-Villain status. “what if I wasn’t just a super tall hypnotist, but also obsessed with snakes? And what if I ran a cult, the Cult of the Serpent, full of mind controlled thralls and they were also obsessed with snakes?” And I guess it worked.

    Dr Zinn’s main goal in his one appearance is to get ahold of the contents of a safe deposit box owned by a Mr Britt and his daughter, and while they never lay out what exactly is in there I certainly hope it’s securities or deeds to property or something, because if that little bundle of paper is meant to be cash then it’s like ten thousand dollars tops (I guess the Britts could have gotten their hands on some vanishingly-rare ten thousand dollar bills but we’re still not talking about multiple millions) and even in 1941 that’s not enough money to go to so much effort for.

    Zinn is captured after Edith Britt hires PI par excellence Dan Williams, who really undercuts the threat of hypnotic mind control by giving him a couple of eyes full of black pepper. 

    Addendum: I almost forgot to mention that Dr Zinn (whose first name is Mephiste, by the way) comes to the attention of the law when he orders some poisonous snakes through the mail and some get out and kill two postal workers, and he just grabs the rest and skedaddles out of there.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 960: THE MAN IN THE HOOD

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 960: THE MAN IN THE HOOD

    (Exciting Comics 008, 1941)

    This fellow expends an awful lot of effort setting up and facilitating a city payroll robbery by gang boss Owney Biggers. He is eventually revealed to be City Treasurer Robert V. Shaw, who has set the whole thing up, double-crossed Biggers, faked his own death and murdered several people in order to cover up the fact that he had been embezzling city funds.

    The most annoying thing about this annoying man (seriously, just an irritating character. True loser energy) is that he isn’t actually called the Man in the Hood, or anything else for that matter. Instead, he is variously referred to as:

    -a Menacing Form

    -that Bozo on the Roof

    -the Masked Attacker

    -the Hooded Killer

    -the Mysterious Assailant

    -that Mug

    -that Sneak in the Hood

    -a Grim Figure

    -that Rat in the Hood

    -the Guy in the Hood

    -the Killer

    -the Mysterious Form

    and “the Man in the Hood” is as good of a throughline as I could achieve from that mess.

    Categorized in: Objects (Hoods), Origins (Faked Own Death), Theft (Embezzlers) 

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 959: THE INVISIBLE MENACE

    (Dynamic Comics 002, 1941)

    It’s a story as old as comics and then some: an inventor has come up with a cool superscientific gizmo – in this case an invisibility serum – and no sooner are they done than some gangsters come stiffing around looking to exploit it. This particular gang is headed by an unnamed and trigger-happy fellow who guns down the scientist and then his own men in order to get his mitts on the single available dose of the stuff.

    The gangster dubs himself “the Invisible Menace” and this is the only reason I am calling him that instead of “the Invisible Killer” as everyone else in the story including the caption boxes does. 

    There’s a kind of critical and/or cultural debate over the madness of the main character in HG Wells’ the Invisible Man, over whether the titular character goes mad with the power inherent in being invisible or the process itself has some flaw that warps the human mind. Whichever way you slice it, the Invisible Menace has Invisibility Madness: no sooner does he fade from sight than he is slaughtering people left and right. Not that he wasn’t killing people while he was still visible but at least that was to some purpose. This is just wanton murder.

    The big question is: is this guy invisible forever? Neither he nor we ever find out, and frankly it matters quite a lot because it’s going to be pretty difficult to enjoy your riches as an invisible guy if the only other invisible guy anyone has ever heard of is famous for attacking a garden party with a tommy gun.

    The question never really gets resolved thanks to one of the great flaws in any invisibility-related plan: that you are still detectable via other senses. Accordingly, the Invisible Menace is stopped at the fangs of the dog hero K-9.

    Categorized in: Abstract Concepts (Menace), Body (Physical Qualities – Invisibility), Powers (Invisibility)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 958: THE YELLOW HOOD

    (Dynamic Comics 002, 1941)

    In probably the cheekiest campaign of terror ever, American defense officials are being murdered and then their shrunken skulls are being sent along to places where people are waiting for them with notes reading “Don’t wait for me any longer, here I am.”

    You may have noticed that all of the skull deliveries involved a man named Professor Curran, and being seasoned comics readers you rightly would have suspected that he was involved in the scheme somehow. It can’t be him, however, as Curran is one of the victims, murdered just out of sight of a captured Major Victory.

    Just kidding: the Yellow Hood and Professor Curran are one and the same, and the murder was staged to throw suspicion off of him. Curran’s role as a Chief Air Warden meant that he was in a prime position to facilitate a Nazi invasion of the United States, and the murders were designed to weaken US defenses further. It’s a high risk/ high reward endeavour, as evidenced by the fact that Curran chucks himself off a cliff rather than be captured by Major Victory.

    Categorized in: Accessories (Calling Cards), Colours (Yellow), Objects (Hoods)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 957: THE PROFESSOR

    (Dynamic Comics v1 001, 1941)

    Unlike most Professors in comics, this fellow is seemingly not named that because he is a scientist but rather because he is a clever criminal. He and his powerful companion Hugo are hired by the evocatively-named Hell Gang to intercept and destroy some key evidence while it is en route from the District Attorney’s office to the courthouse where Hell Gang leadership is on trial.

    It’s not fair to blame the Professor for this because there’s no way that he could know, but Jim Hornsby, aka the Black Cobra, works at the very district attorney’s office that the records are coming from and so is in a perfect position to stick his nose in and foil the whole plan. The records are delivered just in time to convict the Hell Gang, and though the Professor and Hugo get away I am pretty concerned about the Professor’s spine after the punch he takes in that final panel above.

    Categorized in: Generica (Professors), Misc (Mercenaries)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 956: THE EVIL EYE

    (Dynamic Comics 001, 1941)

    Lucky Coyne, private detective and man with the most complicated publishing history in comics* is hired by heiress Helen Jordan to solve a ghost problem in the mansion she has just inherited. The ghost in question, called the Evil Eye, obligingly makes an appearance just as she mentions him, with his signature “Weeeee… ha ha ha!” laugh.

    *Lucky Coyne appeared in comics by half a dozen publishers over the years, and operated as a police sergeant, a reporter and, as here, a private eye. And some of his adventures, including this one, were reprinted with differently-named lead characters such as Kensington Slade and Jinx Jordan.

    Lucky and his associate Terry make their way to the mansion and have a second encounter with the Evil Eye in which he locks them in an attic and then sets the place on fire in an attempt to kill them. While attempting to get out of the former trap, Terry knocks down a bit of wall and discovers a cask of precious jewels, which is what the ghost was after the entire time.

    There is a final confrontation between Lucky and the Evil Eye on the Jordan Mansion lawns, in which the ghost is hampered by being outside of his favoured terrains of “crumbling old manor” or “urban rooftop” and is pretty quickly laid out. The Evil Eye is unmasked, and it’s a classic Scooby-Doo situation: Harms, the mansion’s caretaker, was dressing up and haunting the place in an attempt to drive Helen Jordan away and claim the jewels for himself. Like so many of his fellow fake ghosts, his actions only served to make his targets aware of the valuables that he was trying to steal, alas.

    The Evil Eye also employs the services of the Black Demon, a creature described as a “giant black bat” but actually clearly some sort of vulture. Is this a case of nobody in the comic knowing what a bat is, or the comic’s artist (unidentified, per the Grand Comics Database) not knowing what a bat is? In either case, it’s a doozy.

    Categorized in: Body (Eyes), Fraud (Fake Undead – Ghosts), Language (Expressions)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 955: THE YELLOW SPOT

    (Dynamic Comics 001, 1941)

    Scientists across the US are going missing, kidnapped by  the magical madman known as the Yellow Spot!

    This brain-draining crime spree inspires the magical scholar Professor Moore to create the super-hero Dynamic Man, which in turn inspires the Yellow Spot to murder Professor Moore. He is just a wee bit too late, however, and instead of preventing the creation of Dynamic Man he merely provides him with a bit of extra motivation in the form of a dying father figure.

    But just why is the Yellow Spot after these men of science? Why, to push back against the death of superstition (very funny in retrospect, as in out world the avowed hyper-rationalism of the 40s and 50s gave way to the mystic syncretism of the 60s and ultimately to the proud anti-science of today). He’s got a machine that shrinks a man’s head and renders him like unto a child, and presumably he plans to keep on shrinking heads until it has an effect on the global scientific consensus.

    Dynamic Man shows up just in time to witness a head shrinking, and while it looks to be a pretty uneven contest at first, he is captured in a net made of woven black magic (very cool) that can only be cut using a knife “forged from the bones of a dying murderer” (even cooler, if hard to imagine).

    The thing about a net that can only be cut by a special knife is that it’s only as effective as your ability to keep that knife away from your prisoner, and I would argue that leaving it unattended on a table in the same room as the prisoner while a bunch of easily suggestible man-children wander around is tantamount to just handing it over. Which is a long-winded way of saying that Dynamic Man gets free with the help of a headshrunken scientist and starts beating up the Yellow Spot’s men.

    The Yellow Spot makes a break for it, but in an eleventh hour bit of plot contrivance it turns out that his bat form (i.e., the main way he gets around) is also the only form in which he can be harmed, and as it flies slower than Dynamic Man, he ends up as a flat bat. Personally, I would sacrifice a bit of convenience to avoid being squashed on the wing like this, but then again I am not an insane magic man.

    Finally, I would like to highlight the Yellow Spot’s minions, a bunch of low-grade monster men who he calls the Hideous Ones at least once. Particularly that last fellow, who I swear has half a mustache. A bold choice!

    Categorized in: Abstract Concepts (Shapes), Colours (Yellow), Origins (Henchmen)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 955: THE YELLOW SPOT

    (Dynamic Comics 001, 1941)

    Scientists across the US are going missing, kidnapped by  the magical madman known as the Yellow Spot!

    This brain-draining crime spree inspires the magical scholar Professor Moore to create the super-hero Dynamic Man, which in turn inspires the Yellow Spot to murder Professor Moore. He is just a wee bit too late, however, and instead of preventing the creation of Dynamic Man he merely provides him with a bit of extra motivation in the form of a dying father figure.

    But just why is the Yellow Spot after these men of science? Why, to push back against the death of superstition (very funny in retrospect, as in out world the avowed hyper-rationalism of the 40s and 50s gave way to the mystic syncretism of the 60s and ultimately to the proud anti-science of today). He’s got a machine that shrinks a man’s head and renders him like unto a child, and presumably he plans to keep on shrinking heads until it has an effect on the global scientific consensus.

    Dynamic Man shows up just in time to witness a head shrinking, and while it looks to be a pretty uneven contest at first, he is captured in a net made of woven black magic (very cool) that can only be cut using a knife “forged from the bones of a dying murderer” (even cooler, if hard to imagine).

    The thing about a net that can only be cut by a special knife is that it’s only as effective as your ability to keep that knife away from your prisoner, and I would argue that leaving it unattended on a table in the same room as the prisoner while a bunch of easily suggestible man-children wander around is tantamount to just handing it over. Which is a long-winded way of saying that Dynamic Man gets free with the help of a headshrunken scientist and starts beating up the Yellow Spot’s men.

    The Yellow Spot makes a break for it, but in an eleventh hour bit of plot contrivance it turns out that his bat form (i.e., the main way he gets around) is also the only form in which he can be harmed, and as it flies slower than Dynamic Man, he ends up as a flat bat. Personally, I would sacrifice a bit of convenience to avoid being squashed on the wing like this, but then again I am not an insane magic man.

    Finally, I would like to highlight the Yellow Spot’s minions, a bunch of low-grade monster men who he calls the Hideous Ones at least once. Particularly that last fellow, who I swear has half a mustache. A bold choice!

    Categorized in: Abstract Concepts (Shapes), Colours (Yellow), Origins (Henchmen)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 954: THE GROOM

    (Daring Mystery Comics 008, 1942)

    The Groom is but a simple gang boss who dresses up in a bridegroom’s outfit complete with top hat while doing crimes. While he absolutely gets his ass handed to him by comedy characters Rudy the Robot and his creator the Li’l Professor I simply must hand it to a crook with such commitment to a theme. 

    Categorized in: Accessories (Minions – Gangsters), Family (Grooms), Locations (New York)