The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: sea monsters

  • NOTES – OCTOBER 2023

    Ripped from the headlines:

    The acclimation of a new Dalai Lama must have been big headlines in 1941 because not only did Zoro the Mystery Man save him from being kidnapped for ransom… (Master Comics 014, 1941)

    … but over on Earth-Two, the Three Aces did the same! (Action Comics 032, 1941)

    Great Folk:

    Wizzar, Father of All Magic, teacher and mentor of El Carim, dead and returned as a spirit who appears “when some great crime against the dead remains unpunished” is that all-too-frequent thing in comics: a cosmic plot-hook-delivering entity used only once and never seen again (Master Comics 015, 1941) 

    Also, Wizzar sends El Carim to the planet Zaam to battle the tyrant Rashtala and basically everyone on Zaam has an amazing look:

    Just great.

    Grandfather Oyster, the big oyster that eats people when they try to get the little oysters, is a really terrific sea monster concept. Is this the only hostile oyster in comics history? Probably! (Master Comics 017, 1941)

    Memes of Yore: COWARD!

    Very unsympathetic crowd of Goat-People watching space hero Captain Venture fight a space dragon. (Master Comics 021, 1941)

    Nobody ever delivers a long monologue on why kicking people is an unmanly way to fight but there are a lot of expressions of distaste, like Spike of the Companions Three is uttering here. (Master Comics 021, 1941)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 337: DR DROWN

    (Master Comics 001, 1940)

    Dr Drown is a paragon of his sub-category of super-villain. Unfortunately for him, that is not a particularly exalted position, as he belongs to the Association of Seagoing Criminal Scientists and the membership of that group is heavily diluted by decades of Aquaman and Sea Devils and even Challengers of the Unknown foes with wilfully bad schemes.

    Dr Drown’s schemes aren’t too bad! He as a submersible yacht that he uses to torpedo and loot ships, which is a lucrative if very evil business model, with the sole flaw being that he keeps doing it in exactly the same part of the ocean which makes him very easy for his foe Shipwreck Roberts to track him down.

    Drown’s other claim to fame is as a tamer of sea monsters and it’s here that things really get going for me. The “brontosauruses” above are pretty light fare but check this out:

    I follow a lot of horror artists on various social medias and it’s still been a while since I’ve seen anything quite as unsettling as the Giantocrab. Why does it have human arms, for heaven’s sake?

    By contrast the Colostopus is merely a fun dome-shaped friend with a good name.

    Drown also deployed this Mechanosaurus in a later adventure but as the name suggests it was actually a monster-shaped submarine (a classic move but always sad to miss out on a real monster).

    As stated above, Dr Drown is a great example of a generally mediocre lot – I’d be right chuffed if he or one of his descendants were ever brung back.