The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: super-villain definition

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 589: THE TANKONAUT

    (Exciting Comics 005, 1940)

    Stretching the definition of “super-villain” to the very limits here: the Tankonaut is a superweapon developed by US arms manufacturer M.V. Gage under contract to a man who is very clearly meant to be Hitler but is referred to only as the Dictator. Whether this would have qualified as treason in mid-to-late 1940 is beyond me but the next part, where the Tankonaut is tested on US targets (including Washington DC!) extremely is.

    Not only does the Tankonaut have an excellent name (100% the only reason it made the grade as an entry here, even under my already very loose policies about super-vehicles) but it has a neat gimmick: it isn’t a tank at all! Rather, it is a big beefy truck that carries around its own armour plating and weaponry for rapid deployment/ quick and sneaky escape! It’s a neat variation on the old “drive the crime vehicle into the back of a truck” scheme for the truck to actually be the crime vehicle.

    Unfortunately for M.V. Gage and the Tankonaut, John Thesson, the Son of the Gods, is on the case. He discovers the Tankonaut’s secret identity of A Truck by the simple expedient of flipping it over with a long pole. As usual, once the super vehicle has been disabled the non-super humans are quickly rounded up.

  • MEDIAN SUPER-VILLAINS: WHAT TO DO?

    What is a Median Super-Villain? It’s a made-up category of character that doesn’t fit into either of the other two made-up categories that I’ve been working from up til now, the Super-Villain and the Minor Super-Villain. 

    By my definition, Median Super-Villains are all actually Minor Super-Villains: they have a limited number of appearances and your parents have never heard of them. So what gives them the extra zazz that makes them Median? It’s that they keep on appearing, mostly. Some, like Wotan or Ian Karkull, manage to elevate themselves to the status of Super-Villain, but as time goes on we will be encountering more and more characters who recur for a few years or a decade or to this day but are objectively still minor – your Signalmans, say.

    Since this blog started out as a Twitter thread, my original mandate was to condense things down as much as possible – that’s why the early entries are so short and poorly written, because I was adapting a couple hundred tweets into blog posts (the later entries are longer and poorly written because I barely edit). This led to a habit of trying to condense every villain’s career into a single post, but no longer! Since I read comics one year at a time that’s how we’re dealing with villains’ careers as well, and we’ll offer updates as they appear in subsequent years. Huzzah!

  • SUPER-VILLAIN DEFINITION: THE ADDENDUM

    I’ve been thinking about super-villains and their degrees of notoriety and significance lately, because I’m almost always doing that. As a result: this addendum to my greatest work, the Super-Villain Definition entry on this very blog.

    Essentially, the only thing that separates a minor super-villain from a super-villain is continued relevance. Signal Man and Boss Zucco and Darkseid are all equivalent in their super-villain status on this front despite being entirely different otherwise (indeed, the only reason Boss Zucco is counted as a super-villain in my estimation is that he will continue to occasionally reappear as long as Dick Grayson is a comics character): they are antagonists to super-heroes.

    So: the gradations of super-villain are as follows

    ALSO-RANS

    These are the not-quite-super-but-more-than-regular guys. Sad sacks, the lot.

    -the generic costumed villain: fellas who throw on a hood or a mask to protect their identity but don’t have a special name or any real style. 

    -the generic mad scientist: they have super-science but fail to make an impression

    -style but no substance: a while back I ran across an utterly unremarkable crook who called himself the Crime Broker. Occasionally a name almost pulls someone through, and that is the most tragic of the also-rans.

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAINS

    -one and done: most minor super-villains are of this ilk: they show up, are killed or captured and never return.

    -the recurring foe: we haven’t actually run into a lot of these yet but they are what it says on the tin: a villain who makes occasional appearances as part of an ongoing rogues gallery but ultimately falls out of history – Zatara’s foe the Tigress is one such.

    -the reason for being: we’ve seen a few of these, such as the Mask or Fang Gow – villains who are the focus of a hero’s career, reappearing story after story.

    SUPER-VILLAINS

    -the rogues gallery: over time in something like the Marvel or DC Universes, a certain number of one and done characters – your Signal Mans or Calendar Mans – are brought back, recurring foes like Dr Sivana or Lex Luthor keep on recurring and such ‘reason for being’ villains who don’t end up decisively defeated lose some of their significance. This is your population of super-villains.

    To what end did I feel the need to write this up? See tomorrow’s post, in which we start talking about non-minor super-villains more!

  • SUPER-VILLAIN DEFINITION: THE ADDENDUM

    I’ve been thinking about super-villains and their degrees of notoriety and significance lately, because I’m almost always doing that. As a result: this addendum to my greatest work, the Super-Villain Definition entry on this very blog.

    Essentially, the only thing that separates a minor super-villain from a super-villain is continued relevance. Signal Man and Boss Zucco and Darkseid are all equivalent in their super-villain status on this front despite being entirely different otherwise (indeed, the only reason Boss Zucco is counted as a super-villain in my estimation is that he will continue to occasionally reappear as long as Dick Grayson is a comics character): they are antagonists to super-heroes.

    So: the gradations of super-villain are as follows

    ALSO-RANS

    These are the not-quite-super-but-more-than-regular guys. Sad sacks, the lot.

    -the generic costumed villain: fellas who throw on a hood or a mask to protect their identity but don’t have a special name or any real style. 

    -the generic mad scientist: they have super-science but fail to make an impression

    -style but no substance: a while back I ran across an utterly unremarkable crook who called himself the Crime Broker. Occasionally a name almost pulls someone through, and that is the most tragic of the also-rans.

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAINS

    -one and done: most minor super-villains are of this ilk: they show up, are killed or captured and never return.

    -the recurring foe: we haven’t actually run into a lot of these yet but they are what it says on the tin: a villain who makes occasional appearances as part of an ongoing rogues gallery but ultimately falls out of history – Zatara’s foe the Tigress is one such.

    -the reason for being: we’ve seen a few of these, such as the Mask or Fang Gow – villains who are the focus of a hero’s career, reappearing story after story.

    SUPER-VILLAINS

    -the rogues gallery: over time in something like the Marvel or DC Universes, a certain number of one and done characters – your Signal Mans or Calendar Mans – are brought back, recurring foes like Dr Sivana or Lex Luthor keep on recurring and such ‘reason for being’ villains who don’t end up decisively defeated lose some of their significance. This is your population of super-villains.

    To what end did I feel the need to write this up? See tomorrow’s post, in which we start talking about non-minor super-villains more!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 199: THE CRAB

    (Crack Comics 013, 1941)

    The Crab here is a prime example of the gang boss who goes just over the top enough – and has a good enough moniker – to make the jump to full super-villain.

    His plan – hold the city to ransom for 5 million bucks, then blow up the first ambush the cops set for him to show he means business – is sufficiently out there, and he adds some flourishes like taunting the police via skywriting, but the thing that really does it is his signature: 

    It’s a little crab, oh my god

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 133: THE BIG BOSS

    (Action Comics v1 037)

    Just a society playboy who puts on a mask to run his crooked casino empire. He might just be my new example of the bare minimum that I need to consider someone a super-villain – nobody is even surprised when his identity is revealed, but he has the barest film of anonymity along with a secret boat dock and a moderately cool name.

    Also he gets hit by a boat.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 133: THE BIG BOSS

    (Action Comics v1 037)

    Just a society playboy who puts on a mask to run his crooked casino empire. He might just be my new example of the bare minimum that I need to consider someone a super-villain – nobody is even surprised when his identity is revealed, but he has the barest film of anonymity along with a secret boat dock and a moderately cool name.

    Also he gets hit by a boat.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 085: BOSS X

    (Blue Beetle Comics 002, 1940)

    What makes them a super-villain? In thinking about this question I realized just how close comic book-style organized crime comes to supercrime to begin with and that Boss X represents the bare minimum of extra oomph required to make the leap to the super-villain designation: the name and the fact that he works out of a secret underground lair on an island.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 039: THE SLUGGER

    (More Fun 043, 1939)

    A common or garden-variety mugger, the Slugger’s technique (sneak up and bash ’em on the head) and the frequency of his attacks lead to a lot of press coverage, starting a city-wide panic (as in our previous entry). In response, the Slugger leans into it, up to and including sending taunting messages to the police, a favourite villainous move of mine. Crime can’t be seen to pay in a comic book, though, so he is eventually hauled in by the Radio Squad.

    The Slugger represents my absolute lowest level baseline version of the super-villain by dint of scale of crime. While I’m sure that there are other super-muggers out there to be discovered, I will be very surprised if I encounter another uncostumed, non-powered one.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 015: THE BROADWAY BANDIT

    (Detective v1 016, 1938)

    The Broadway Bandit is just a disgruntled actor who puts on a mask and robs box offices until Slam Bradley shows up to settle his hash but he might be out first illustration of the very basic level of super-villainy: a good name, a basic but distinctive costume and the commission of crimes while in the possession of both.

    SHOULD THEY BE BROUGHT BACK? No, but in a super-hero universe I reckon that there should be way more guys adopting this kind of persona to do basic crimes like armed robbery. In a world with cosmic threats named Molecule Man and such running around you might not even need a weapon to stick up a corner store if you strolled in in a plausible enough costume.