The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: minor super-villain

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 945: DR DRACULA

    (Silver Streak Comics 017, 1941) 

    With Dr Dracula, Captain Battle has now faced four Nazi or Nazi-adjacent villains in a row whose plans involve gathering up a bunch of guys and pretending to be monsters, in this case vampires. Was there a meeting about this at the regional Nazi spy headquarters or is this one of those things like when Hollywood makes two volcano movies at the same time? Maybe one guy had a good idea and the other three stole it. 

    I’d have to say that Dr Dracula has the best name and possibly the best look out of the four, but the Mummy Master’s Mummy Gang might take the gold in terms of best henchmen. 

    As a supplement to the power of fake vampirism, Dr Dracula steals a new death ray from the hapless Professor Fosdick, who then serves as the first (human) target of its instant skeletonization effect. Horrifying! And visually striking!

    (please note the fourth panel above, when Fosdick exclaims “Vampires! Vampires as large as men!” I believe him to be referring to vampire bats, which doesn’t make a huge amount of sense given what he is looking at at the time but which is the only interpretation to make much sense. It is the kind of thing that comic book people shout when vampire bats are about, after all)

    This is about the time that Captain Battle shows up to put a stop to Dr Dracula’s plans, which gives he and his men the opportunity to demonstrate that they can all fly as they engage in thrilling aerial combat vs Captain Battle and his luceflyer (Hale Battle is lagging behind and can’t be there for this fight). 

    These wing suits are very cool and more importantly… way more strategically valuable than the death ray that they just stole? Like, yes: the death ray can instantly kill any target, but so can a good sniper, and you certainly could deploy more good snipers easily if you had flying infantry, right?

    Having made his getaway, Dr Dracula gets down to the serious business of sabotaging American war production by turning people into goofy skeletons. Prof Fosdick must have had a sense of humour, because while the ray dissolves clothing it selectively leaves props such as cigarettes or blankets behind so that every tragic ray-gun death looks just a little bit funny.

    Dr Dracula meets his end when Captain Battle throws a steel net over him and the death ray explodes. This is what happens when you steal an experimental piece of technology and kill the inventor, folks. 

    Hale Battle must of course have his souvenir, and what better or more striking object is there than one of the false vampires’ wing suits?

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 945: DR DRACULA

    (Silver Streak Comics 017, 1941) 

    With Dr Dracula, Captain Battle has now faced four Nazi or Nazi-adjacent villains in a row whose plans involve gathering up a bunch of guys and pretending to be monsters, in this case vampires. Was there a meeting about this at the regional Nazi spy headquarters or is this one of those things like when Hollywood makes two volcano movies at the same time? Maybe one guy had a good idea and the other three stole it. 

    I’d have to say that Dr Dracula has the best name and possibly the best look out of the four, but the Mummy Master’s Mummy Gang might take the gold in terms of best henchmen. 

    As a supplement to the power of fake vampirism, Dr Dracula steals a new death ray from the hapless Professor Fosdick, who then serves as the first (human) target of its instant skeletonization effect. Horrifying! And visually striking!

    (please note the fourth panel above, when Fosdick exclaims “Vampires! Vampires as large as men!” I believe him to be referring to vampire bats, which doesn’t make a huge amount of sense given what he is looking at at the time but which is the only interpretation to make much sense. It is the kind of thing that comic book people shout when vampire bats are about, after all)

    This is about the time that Captain Battle shows up to put a stop to Dr Dracula’s plans, which gives he and his men the opportunity to demonstrate that they can all fly as they engage in thrilling aerial combat vs Captain Battle and his luceflyer (Hale Battle is lagging behind and can’t be there for this fight). 

    These wing suits are very cool and more importantly… way more strategically valuable than the death ray that they just stole? Like, yes: the death ray can instantly kill any target, but so can a good sniper, and you certainly could deploy more good snipers easily if you had flying infantry, right?

    Having made his getaway, Dr Dracula gets down to the serious business of sabotaging American war production by turning people into goofy skeletons. Prof Fosdick must have had a sense of humour, because while the ray dissolves clothing it selectively leaves props such as cigarettes or blankets behind so that every tragic ray-gun death looks just a little bit funny.

    Dr Dracula meets his end when Captain Battle throws a steel net over him and the death ray explodes. This is what happens when you steal an experimental piece of technology and kill the inventor, folks. 

    Hale Battle must of course have his souvenir, and what better or more striking object is there than one of the false vampires’ wing suits?

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 944: PROFESSOR MARKUSYI

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 944: PROFESSOR MARKUSYI

    (Silver Streak Comics 016, 1941)

    Professor Markusyi, the music teacher in question, is a man who is never seen at night and who *refuses* to go out at night, much to the amusement and consternation of those around him.

    There are plenty of reasons why one might not want to go out at night (nyctophobia, love of an early bedtime, a jealous spouse, etc) but only a few of them are worthy of being the focus of a comic book plot, at least in the Golden Age. Markusyi’s secret reason for being diurnal is that he is a werewolf, and specifically the kind of werewolf who transforms every night? And maybe can do it at will during the day? The mythology is murky at best. As is the anatomy: just look at the legs on that thing.

    I gues we must give Markusyi some credit for containing the beast within for long enough to get a reputation as a night-hating crank, but there wouldn’t be a plot if he didn’t lose control, would there, so he murders one of his students for being “too beautiful to live” like a real creep.

    Also please note the free rein that a literal wolf had to roam the streets in the 1940s. Are modern social and legal conventions about not allowing your dog to roam free secretly part of an anti-werewolf agenda?

    We must now step back to the title page of this story for a look at a different messed-up drawing of a wolf (man), and while my initial instinct was to make fun of the anatomy on display (see above) I do kind of love the concept of a werewolf as a messed-up uncanny valley dog-thing, like the human part is trying to create the wolf part from memory and doing a bad job.

    I also want to showcase the fact that the only thing that Markusyi is called other than his own name is here in the title and it’s the Music Teacher, which is a good name for a villain but frustratingly not applicable here. I just love when villains have cool names, you guys. Calling them by their government name is a bummer.

    Bart “the Daredevil” Hill is alerted to the case thanks to a police inspector pal with what I would call an unprofessional approach to law enforcement. Thanks to some research in one of those extremely comprehensive books on folklore that you get in horror movies, Bart is soon aware of just how exactly Markusyi’s version of werewolfism works. Specifically, that he has to kill four… women? in order to be cured, and he’s already killed three!

    Markusyi’s fourth target is the Daredevil’s fiance Tonia Saunders, who he met and fixated upon thanks to an ill-conceived plan to gather information by signing her up for violin lessons with him. While this was a very dumb idea, it does allow Daredevil to find Markusyi before he commits his final murder (and becomes human just in time to have to get away from a crime scene) and seemingly beat him to death, which I guess that this kind of werewolf is unacceptable to. All’s well that ends well, I suppose? For a certain value of “well”?

    Categorized in: Doctors & Professors, Murder (Magical Reason), Origin (Lycanthrope)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 944: PROFESSOR MARKUSYI

    (Silver Streak Comics 016, 1941)

    Professor Markusyi, the music teacher in question, is a man who is never seen at night and who *refuses* to go out at night, much to the amusement and consternation of those around him.

    There are plenty of reasons why one might not want to go out at night (nyctophobia, love of an early bedtime, a jealous spouse, etc) but only a few of them are worthy of being the focus of a comic book plot, at least in the Golden Age. Markusyi’s secret reason for being diurnal is that he is a werewolf, and specifically the kind of werewolf who transforms every night? And maybe can do it at will during the day? The mythology is murky at best. As is the anatomy: just look at the legs on that thing.

    I gues we must give Markusyi some credit for containing the beast within for long enough to get a reputation as a night-hating crank, but there wouldn’t be a plot if he didn’t lose control, would there, so he murders one of his students for being “too beautiful to live” like a real creep.

    Also please note the free rein that a literal wolf had to roam the streets in the 1940s. Are modern social and legal conventions about not allowing your dog to roam free secretly part of an anti-werewolf agenda?

    We must now step back to the title page of this story for a look at a different messed-up drawing of a wolf (man), and while my initial instinct was to make fun of the anatomy on display (see above) I do kind of love the concept of a werewolf as a messed-up uncanny valley dog-thing, like the human part is trying to create the wolf part from memory and doing a bad job.

    I also want to showcase the fact that the only thing that Markusyi is called other than his own name is here in the title and it’s the Music Teacher, which is a good name for a villain but frustratingly not applicable here. I just love when villains have cool names, you guys. Calling them by their government name is a bummer.

    Bart “the Daredevil” Hill is alerted to the case thanks to a police inspector pal with what I would call an unprofessional approach to law enforcement. Thanks to some research in one of those extremely comprehensive books on folklore that you get in horror movies, Bart is soon aware of just how exactly Markusyi’s version of werewolfism works. Specifically, that he has to kill four… women? in order to be cured, and he’s already killed three!

    Markusyi’s fourth target is the Daredevil’s fiance Tonia Saunders, who he met and fixated upon thanks to an ill-conceived plan to gather information by signing her up for violin lessons with him. While this was a very dumb idea, it does allow Daredevil to find Markusyi before he commits his final murder (and becomes human just in time to have to get away from a crime scene) and seemingly beat him to death, which I guess that this kind of werewolf is unacceptable to. All’s well that ends well, I suppose? For a certain value of “well”?

    Categorized in: Doctors & Professors, Murder (Magical Reason), Origin (Lycanthrope)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 943: HERR DEATH

    (Silver Streak Comics 016, 1941)

    This issue continues the trend of Captain Battle foes being fascist spies who are weaponizing fear by dressing up as the undead. In this case Herr Death is, as the name implies, a desiccated corpse version of Death, accompanied by a horde of the walking dead (not, I must stress, zombies. This is more “the dead have come out of their graves” kind of thing which, yes, would be classified as zombie behaviour now but which used to be its own spooky thing).

    Herr Death has improved on the formula employed by Herr Skull and the Mummy Master before him in a couple of ways. Firstly, his men are not just spooky looking but fitted with bulletproof vests in order to showcase their supernatural fortitude (lucky for them the “destroy the brain” aspect of fighting the undead doesn’t enter the public consciousness for a little while yet). Secondly, Herr Death is far more proactive than his contemporaries and he is very willing to mix it up with his scythe.

    Herr Death also has a very thematic cemetery lair featuring a sick-ass corpse whirlpool for disposing of interlopers such as Captain and Hale Battle. I can’t imagine that it’s too much fun to hang around in between missions but oooh, the atmosphere!

    On the negative side, Herr Death and his men are particularly bad at concealing the fact that they are Nazis, from the fact that his name includes the telltale Herr to his minions yelling “himmel!” and so forth the whole time. This really gives the game away to anyone who is paying attention, such as Captain Battle for instance.

    Once they’re no longer actively drowning in a skeleton whirlpool, Captain Battle and Hale are able to round up Herr Death with little difficulty. Bulletproof vests aren’t too effective against four good ol’ American fists.

    Hale Battle must of course grab his souvenir, and he of course chooses Herr Death’s scythe as the coolest possible option. I don’t think that it’s applicable here since Herr Death did so very many crimes, but this may just be the first time that we’ve seen someone take a murder weapon as a trophy, which makes me wonder just how many super-villain trials have been ruined because a key piece of evidence is sitting in a cave somewhere?

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 942: THE SERPENT

    (Silver Streak Comics 015, 1941)

    The Serpent, a well-established and powerful crimelord, has been laying low due to the threat posed by the Daredevil, but all that is at an end now because as far as she can tell the Daredevil isn’t around any longer. She puts in a call to her men, and I really like the sequence that follows. Nothing can stop these guys from getting to work, not prison, not pool, not partying with babes.

    The Serpent’s plan is both simple and audacious: kidnap the children of the wealthy simultaneously in at least thirteen cities across the US, relying on the mass confusion of the event to hinder law enforcement long enough for her to collect the 10 million dollars ransom and skedaddle.

    It turns out that the Serpent was right to fear the Daredevil as he had not retired or been killed but had instead been lying low specifically to draw her out. Now that she has revealed herself, he jumps into action and, barring a brief spell in the Serpent’s dungeons (from which she has the audacity to try to ransom him back to the police!), he breaks up her operation in no time flat.

    The Serpent herself is captured after an attempt to assassinate the Daredevil at his home because he a) didn’t check to see if anyone was following him and b) walked back in uniform. Terrible secret identity hygiene, Daredevil!

    Though she is jailed (and makes a great face while being captured!), the Serpent joins the ranks of one-off characters who are just kind of out there with full knowledge of their enemy’s secrets. Luckily for the Daredevil, he existed in a less continuity-obsessed time than later heroes and so the Serpent never comes back to bite him for his carelessness.

    Categorized in: Animals (Snakes), Kidnappers (Ransom), Villains Who Know Their Heroic Foe’s Secret Identity

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 942: THE SERPENT

    (Silver Streak Comics 015, 1941)

    The Serpent, a well-established and powerful crimelord, has been laying low due to the threat posed by the Daredevil, but all that is at an end now because as far as she can tell the Daredevil isn’t around any longer. She puts in a call to her men, and I really like the sequence that follows. Nothing can stop these guys from getting to work, not prison, not pool, not partying with babes.

    The Serpent’s plan is both simple and audacious: kidnap the children of the wealthy simultaneously in at least thirteen cities across the US, relying on the mass confusion of the event to hinder law enforcement long enough for her to collect the 10 million dollars ransom and skedaddle.

    It turns out that the Serpent was right to fear the Daredevil as he had not retired or been killed but had instead been lying low specifically to draw her out. Now that she has revealed herself, he jumps into action and, barring a brief spell in the Serpent’s dungeons (from which she has the audacity to try to ransom him back to the police!), he breaks up her operation in no time flat.

    The Serpent herself is captured after an attempt to assassinate the Daredevil at his home because he a) didn’t check to see if anyone was following him and b) walked back in uniform. Terrible secret identity hygiene, Daredevil!

    Though she is jailed (and makes a great face while being captured!), the Serpent joins the ranks of one-off characters who are just kind of out there with full knowledge of their enemy’s secrets. Luckily for the Daredevil, he existed in a less continuity-obsessed time than later heroes and so the Serpent never comes back to bite him for his carelessness.

    Categorized in: Animals (Snakes), Kidnappers (Ransom), Villains Who Know Their Heroic Foe’s Secret Identity

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 941: THE MUMMY MASTER

    (Silver Streak Comics 015, 1941)

    In a very comic book series of events, a rash of mummy thefts at the City Museum in NYC is followed by the emergence of a Nazi super-crook calling himself the Mummy Master.

    While my normal modus operandi is to lay out the story of the villains I cover in an abridged but linear fashion, here I must jump ahead to the reveal that the Mummy Master is in fact City Museum director Dr Kolb, because I need to talk about just what the heck is going on with this guy and what exactly he was thinking. 

    So: Kolb is a Nazi and he is either officially or unofficially working to hinder US defense production by targeting so-called “Dollar-a-Year Men” (a type of altruistic/patriotic rich guy explored recently in our discussion of the Death Battalion). On the surface his decision to become the Mummy Master is… not a good one, but one with a lot of thematic resonance and which uses a lot of close-at-hand resources: he has access to mummies and a ready-made HQ in the depths of the museum. He never really states it outright, but by stealing a bunch of mummies and then dressing his henchmen up like them he seems to be going for the same sort of shock factor as Herr Skull got with his Skull Men.

    The first Dollar-a-Year Man on the Mummy Master’s list is even kidnapped with the same mummy DIY philosophy: he receives a mummy case in the mail, is disturbingly cavalier about going to bed with it sitting about five feet away and is then captured by the very alive mummy inside and taken away in its former home.

    I would say that the first indication that Kolb/the Mummy Master is not a criminal genius comes at the culmination of the Henderson kidnapping. Surely the move is to dress up like movers and stick the mummy case in a truck, but the Mummy Master and his Mummy Gang just schlep the thing through the city streets. It’s like the idea of maintaining the theme is interfering with Kolb’s ability to do risk management.

    The abduction of the second man, Billings, is comparatively simple: just a bunch of fake mummies storming the guy’s office and grabbing him. It’s a dumb meathead plan, but it’s less dumb than the first, ostensibly clever plan so I must give it some credit.

    By this point, the Mummy Master’s haphazard approach to super-espionage has caught up to him and not only Captain Battle but Hale Battle and Battle associate Jane Lorrain are wandering around inside his lair – his capture is a foregone conclusion.

    Hale Battle of course takes a souvenir of the battle with the Mummy Master, in the form of a little mummy doll made out of some of his wrappings. Of note is the fact that Hale’s collection contains only the souvenirs that we have seen him collect, in contrast to other trophy displays like Green Arrow’s that are already stuffed full of trash upon their first appearance.

    Categorized in: Day Jobs (Museum Director), Fraud (Fake Mummy), Supranormal Beings (Mummies)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 941: THE MUMMY MASTER

    (Silver Streak Comics 015, 1941)

    In a very comic book series of events, a rash of mummy thefts at the City Museum in NYC is followed by the emergence of a Nazi super-crook calling himself the Mummy Master.

    While my normal modus operandi is to lay out the story of the villains I cover in an abridged but linear fashion, here I must jump ahead to the reveal that the Mummy Master is in fact City Museum director Dr Kolb, because I need to talk about just what the heck is going on with this guy and what exactly he was thinking. 

    So: Kolb is a Nazi and he is either officially or unofficially working to hinder US defense production by targeting so-called “Dollar-a-Year Men” (a type of altruistic/patriotic rich guy explored recently in our discussion of the Death Battalion). On the surface his decision to become the Mummy Master is… not a good one, but one with a lot of thematic resonance and which uses a lot of close-at-hand resources: he has access to mummies and a ready-made HQ in the depths of the museum. He never really states it outright, but by stealing a bunch of mummies and then dressing his henchmen up like them he seems to be going for the same sort of shock factor as Herr Skull got with his Skull Men.

    The first Dollar-a-Year Man on the Mummy Master’s list is even kidnapped with the same mummy DIY philosophy: he receives a mummy case in the mail, is disturbingly cavalier about going to bed with it sitting about five feet away and is then captured by the very alive mummy inside and taken away in its former home.

    I would say that the first indication that Kolb/the Mummy Master is not a criminal genius comes at the culmination of the Henderson kidnapping. Surely the move is to dress up like movers and stick the mummy case in a truck, but the Mummy Master and his Mummy Gang just schlep the thing through the city streets. It’s like the idea of maintaining the theme is interfering with Kolb’s ability to do risk management.

    The abduction of the second man, Billings, is comparatively simple: just a bunch of fake mummies storming the guy’s office and grabbing him. It’s a dumb meathead plan, but it’s less dumb than the first, ostensibly clever plan so I must give it some credit.

    By this point, the Mummy Master’s haphazard approach to super-espionage has caught up to him and not only Captain Battle but Hale Battle and Battle associate Jane Lorrain are wandering around inside his lair – his capture is a foregone conclusion.

    Hale Battle of course takes a souvenir of the battle with the Mummy Master, in the form of a little mummy doll made out of some of his wrappings. Of note is the fact that Hale’s collection contains only the souvenirs that we have seen him collect, in contrast to other trophy displays like Green Arrow’s that are already stuffed full of trash upon their first appearance.

    Categorized in: Day Jobs (Museum Director), Fraud (Fake Mummy), Supranormal Beings (Mummies)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 940: THE PARSON

    (Silver Streak Comics 014, 1941)

    The Parson is a weird little dude who takes over a gang of opportunistic London-based looters who have been taking advantage of the ongoing Blitz to make big bucks off of the misfortune of their fellows. Though the gang is initially against the notion of, again, a little weird dude muscling in on their racket, the Parson presses the issue with his powers of hypnotic domination, the source of which is as mysterious and unexplained as the reason for his nom de guerre. 

    (note the backward-speak in the above panel – this is the only instance of him using Zatara-style “magic words” in the story. After this it’s just big-eye hypnotism)

    We do, however know the Parson’s motivation for taking over the gang: he is in fact a Nazi agent working to destabilize London by encouraging the gang to greater and more violent crime, and he reports directly to – a very rude – Adolf Hitler.

    This is a Daredevil comic, which means that the Daredevil has to be in it, which means that he has to get to London somehow. This is achieved by having Bart “the Daredevil” Hill fly a bomber across the Atlantic to the British on a lark. Once he is on the ground, his super-hero intuition is strong enough that he immediately tracks the gang to their bunker lair.

    Though the Parson gets briefly gets the upper hand with a little quick hypnotism, the Daredevil’s willpower proves too great to be suppressed for long and he swiftly batters the whole gang into submission.

    A final note: though the Parson’s men are low-down dirty thieves and murderers, they are still unwilling to work with a Nazi, to their moderate credit.

    Categorized in: Ideology (Nazis), Power (Mind Control), Professions (Religious)