The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: humanity destroyer

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 965: DR THORNE

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 965: DR THORNE

    (Fantastic Comics 014, 1941)

    We open on a mysterious figure using backwards-talk magic to raise hundreds of spirits from their graves and shunt them into the Fourth Dimension. To what end? We shall learn that soon!

    Flip Falcon, expert in all things fourth dimensional. is contacted by Dr Thorne of the Institute of Science asking for help with this problem. You might have noticed that Dr Thorne is also the name of Minor Super Villain 965, and that is because they are the same guy. This is a trap, and Flip should be able to see that because while the border between the Third Dimension and the Fourth has proven to be quite permeable over the course of his comic adventures the idea that the missing bodies have travelled interdimensionally should not occur to any but the perpetrator. 

    Please also note that despite Dr Thorne’s minions being consistently described as ghost of spirits, their bodies are also dug up as part of his little necromantic ritual. Perhaps Thorne did so so that there would be evidence to point at in order to draw Flip in?

    Flip investigates and finds that the ghosts are indeed hanging around in the Fourth Dimension. He also finds (and is taken prisoner by) Dr Thorne, who knows that anyone hoping to engage in Fourth Dimensional villainy needs to take care of Flip Falcon first.

    Flip is transported to Thorne’s lab in his Castle of Misery (great name) where his dimensional energy-charged body is used as a battery to fill up the ghosts with extra ghost-energy that kills humans on contact. We can only speculate as to why Thorne is mass-murdering humans in this manner – perhaps its no more complicated than the classic necromancer’s desire to create more ghostly minions.

    For all that he has been a capable villain so far, Dr Thorne is in no way OSHA compliant, and he is electrocuted seemingly the instant a light tap from Flip causes him to sprawl over his instrument panel. Flip risks his life by touching the machinery long enough to turn it off, causing the ghosts on Earth to fall down “dead,” and all that’s left is the cleanup. That is, if these spirits were in fact housed in all of those missing bodies and those bodies are now littering the city streets. If they were indeed purely spiritual entities we might have a situation in which there are just incorporeal bodies everywhere and nothing can be done about it. Horrifying claim to fame for this poor city!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 965: DR THORNE

    (Fantastic Comics 014, 1941)

    We open on a mysterious figure using backwards-talk magic to raise hundreds of spirits from their graves and shunt them into the Fourth Dimension. To what end? We shall learn that soon!

    Flip Falcon, expert in all things fourth dimensional. is contacted by Dr Thorne of the Institute of Science asking for help with this problem. You might have noticed that Dr Thorne is also the name of Minor Super Villain 965, and that is because they are the same guy. This is a trap, and Flip should be able to see that because while the border between the Third Dimension and the Fourth has proven to be quite permeable over the course of his comic adventures the idea that the missing bodies have travelled interdimensionally should not occur to any but the perpetrator. 

    Please also note that despite Dr Thorne’s minions being consistently described as ghost of spirits, their bodies are also dug up as part of his little necromantic ritual. Perhaps Thorne did so so that there would be evidence to point at in order to draw Flip in?

    Flip investigates and finds that the ghosts are indeed hanging around in the Fourth Dimension. He also finds (and is taken prisoner by) Dr Thorne, who knows that anyone hoping to engage in Fourth Dimensional villainy needs to take care of Flip Falcon first.

    Flip is transported to Thorne’s lab in his Castle of Misery (great name) where his dimensional energy-charged body is used as a battery to fill up the ghosts with extra ghost-energy that kills humans on contact. We can only speculate as to why Thorne is mass-murdering humans in this manner – perhaps its no more complicated than the classic necromancer’s desire to create more ghostly minions.

    For all that he has been a capable villain so far, Dr Thorne is in no way OSHA compliant, and he is electrocuted seemingly the instant a light tap from Flip causes him to sprawl over his instrument panel. Flip risks his life by touching the machinery long enough to turn it off, causing the ghosts on Earth to fall down “dead,” and all that’s left is the cleanup. That is, if these spirits were in fact housed in all of those missing bodies and those bodies are now littering the city streets. If they were indeed purely spiritual entities we might have a situation in which there are just incorporeal bodies everywhere and nothing can be done about it. Horrifying claim to fame for this poor city!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 948: DR HORROR

    (Captain Battle Comics 002, 1941)

    The Sisters of Fear, a trio of witches who either are the Three Witches of “Macbeth” fame or who take a lot of inspiration from them, have a new scheme: to create a horrible creature to spread death and destruction across the face of the Earth.

    As part of the prep for this task they gather together all of their fiendish allies, the Demons of Land, Sea and Air, and I must commend them on being a diverse and fun-filled collection of grotesques

    The Sisters do the “double double toil and trouble” routine – either in homage to the great witches of antiquity or as a callback to one of their own classic numbers, depending – and call Dr Horror into being. There are three things worth pointing out about this guy:

    1. his pupils are little human skulls 

    2. he’s a dedicated nudist

    3. somehow he is a doctor, despite a) having just been created and b) having an innate antipathy toward human society, the only place where being a doctor has any meaning. But perhaps that’s the point – that he cares so little for the mores of humanity that he’s going to adopt that title, our puny certification boards be damned

    Dr Horror is a pretty straightforward guy: he hates humanity, he has all the terrible power of the elements at his command and thus he spends most of his time post-creation blasting humanity and its trappings to smithereens.

    Dr Horror’s depredations are unopposed by any hero. Instead, the forces of nature themselves rise up and destroy him by holding him in place with a whirlwind and then exploding a volcano under his feet. There’s a strong implication that this is because Dr Horror is a being of darkness and evil and that the essence of nature is bright and good, which is all fine but I really resent the implication that the dinosaurs were also evil and that that is why nature destroyed them.

    Dr Horror swears that he will return to avenge himself and the Sisters of Fear (also blown up), but he has not yet managed to do so.

    Categorized in: Generica (Doctors), Murder (Attempted Destruction of Humanity), Origins (Magical Constructs) 

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 936: SIN KHAII

    (Silver Streak Comics 013, 1941)

    Sin Khaii, a lama at the same monastery that Thun-Dohr was raised at, has been cast out for unspecified reasons. His reaction to being an outcast – to steal Pandora’s Box and use it in a war on all humanity – would seem to retroactively justify the exile, however. Just why a Tibetan monastery would be the hiding place of Pandora’s Box is likewise left unexplored.

    Sin Kahii is able to use the Box to unleash fresh evils upon mankind, in the form of mosquito-like insects that are under his control. The first such is a plague called the Black Madness, which seems to act both as a traditional and deadly disease and as a vector for insanity, as seen above after Dr Benson Bell concocts a cure for it and his assistant is immediately driven to homicidal rage to keep it from being distributed.

    No madness or madman is a match for the mystic might of Thun-Dohr, however. Sin Khaii’s first plot is foiled with a sock to the jaw. Of Clavell, the madman. Sin Khaii remains unpunched.

    Since regular humans have proved to be no match for his foe, Sin Khaii’s next plan involves allying with someone more powerful, namely the ancient and evil Black Pharaoh (check in in a day or two for more on him). To that end, he levitates the Pharaoh’s whole damn pyramid and moves it from Giza to the former site of the New York World’s Fair (I was going to gripe about the comic missing an opportunity to feature the pyramid next to the Trylon and Perisphere but it seems like they were demolished with much more alacrity than I might have expected).

    As will be discussed further in the Black Pharaoh’s own entry, his imprisonment in the pyramid can only be ended when he and his servants’ places are taken by other people. Sin Khaii facilitates this via another Pandora’s Box bug, in this case “curiosity.” Could one argue that curiosity is not one of the evils contained in the box since Pandora already had it her curiosity was in fact foundational to the whole myth? I think that one could, but of course if we’re going to insist on mythic accuracy then Sin Khaii is going to have to be finding increasingly unlikely ways to weaponize hope, seeing as it’s the only thing that’s supposed to still be in the dang thing.

    Once the Black Pharaoh is free, he and Sin Khaii plot to destroy the United States but are once again foiled by the flying fists of Thun-Dohr. The pyramid (and all of the sand in Egypt) is restored to its proper resting place and Sin Khaii, still at large, swears further vengeance. Sadly for us plot resolution fans out there, the “Thun-Dohr” feature never returned after this second instalment and Sin Khaii is presumably at large to this day.

    Categorized in: Accessories (Pandora’s Box), Day Jobs (Lamas), Powers (Various Magical)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 734: THE ROBOT MASTER

    (Silver Streak Comics 004, 1940)

    We open on a flashback, as this unnamed scientist and Captain Ken Keen of the Planet Patrol reminisce about the Comet of Death which has returned to the Solar System 100 years after it initially laid waste to the cities of Earth, Mars and Venus. And since the adventures of the Planet Patrol unlike many if not most Golden Age sci-fi comics is set in a defined time period, we know that that initial attack took place in the futuristic world of 1965 CE!

    Back in the even more futuristic world of 2065 CE, Keen and his Martian companion Nirma set out to investigate the comet, only to discover that it is in fact an enormous hostile spacecraft. Making their way inside, they find it to be crewed by extremely cool-looking octopoid “robot animals” that attack on sight.

    Keen and Nirma get away from the robots in the objectively funny way of climbing inside a disabled one and sticking their feets out the bottom to scuttle way, tentacles dragging.

    This robot disguise is unfortunately not enough to fool the comet-ship’s owner, who turns out to be a huge, very cool-looking, robot with a human brain. This Robot Master (referred to as such in exactly one caption, but I have to call them something, don’t I?) is a Fletcher Hanks-style villain who hates humanity for unclear reasons and expresses that hate via attempted genocide. The 1965 attempt having failed, the Robot Master is back again for a second pass.

     
    Since the previous attempt to destroy humanity via drive-by death ray, the Robot Master seems to be gearing up for a more nuanced second approach, and is starting by converting Nirma and Keen to remote controlled cyborgs and sending them back as espionage assets. The rest of the plan is never elaborated upon, as Ken Keen’s cage is conveniently located within reach of a switch labelled “FOR MAGNETIC POWER” but which might as well say “PULL TO DEFEAT THE ROBOT MASTER” as it turns out to magnetize the entire ship in a way that completely immobilizes the ship’s robotic occupants. Keen and Nirma then escape and blow the entire place to high(er) heaven.

  • MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 015

    They can’t help themselves and/or they’re choosing to be horrible.

    Dr Zynnon has been asked along to help Dr Curan, his daughter Sandra and protagonist Buzz Crandall in their mission to prevent the Moon from exploding, presumably dooming us all. This turns out to be a Bad Choice, because unbeknownst to all, Dr Zynnon harbours a deep misanthropy and would love nothing more than for the world to be doomed.

    Despite the fact that I love not being scoured from the face of the planet by hurtling lunar debris I must give Zynnon credit for one of the most adorable doomsday devices ever conceived of: tiny moon lizard carrying vials of acid powerful enough to bring down the roof of the lunar cavern the bulk of the adventure takes place in. Powerful enough, that is, if they were delivered to the correct location. Which they weren’t, presumably because Zynnon didn’t bother to train or condition them in any way and just let loose as many lizards as he could smuggle onto the moon bathysphere under his coat. In the end, the only casualty of Zynnon’s plot was Zynnon himself. (Planet Comics 004, 1940)

    Tobor the Evil is a Plutonian scientist who has been using an army of child-sized robots to steal Martian gold, with the end goal of conquering Mars and making it a Plutonian territory. With the help of Captain Nelson Cole of the Solar Force, he learns two important lessons about fielding robot armies: 1) don’t leave robot shells that can be repurposed into armour by your foes just lying around, and 2) if your robots have an “indiscriminate murder” setting, make sure to build in a failsafe that excludes yourself from the list of viable targets. (Planet Comics 008, 1940)

    Von Dorf, a mad physiologist and asylum escapee, was so singularly obsessed with the hybridization of humans and panthers that he kidnapped a nurse and turned her into Marga the Panther Woman. It’s likely that he would have his own numbered entry on the Minor Super-Villain list if literally the only other things he ever did weren’t a) get his ass kicked and b) blow himself up. Truly being part of an origin story is the most hazardous job in comics. (Science Comics 001, 1940)

    Dr Passendorf here managed to perfect the quite respectable criminal science inventions of a mind control device and a paralysis ray and then had to lower himself to using both in the employ of a shifty Wall Street jerk named Augustus Elba who needed to cover up some light embezzlement. Just as well that he ends up riddled with shrapnel after the Eagle blows up his machine – the roasting at the next Criminal Science Convention would have been severe. (Science Comics 005, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 706: LEPUS-THE-FIEND

    (Planet Comics 007, 1940) 

    Lepus-the-Fiend has a lot of classic Fletcher Hanks villain qualities: the weirdly hyphenated name, the fact that he lives on a star (to be clear: not a poetic name for a planet. He lives on a five-pointed, flaming star) and of course his hatred of civilization, which is not given a particular motivation so I am left to assume is because he is a hairy and wild looking guy. He’s not the first Hanks character to yell about destroying all the civilized planets but it is his particular phrasing that makes the title of Paul Karasik’s first collection of Hank’s comics.

    Lepus has chosen to destroy civilization in a fairly dramatic fashion, by smashing inhabited planets together like so many pool balls. Effective but fiddly, it seems, as both Earth and Venus are saved by Lepus’ poor aim on his first attempt.

    Lepus-the-Fiend doesn’t get another shot at planet-smashing, as it is at this point that Buzz Crandall and and his aide Sandra really get on top of the adventure and blow him to smithereens. These civilization-haters never seem to be particularly prepared for civilization to defend itself, do they.

    (note the second panel above. This is the answer to a question that had been bouncing around in my head: why would Fletcher Hanks take over an existing character (Buzz Crandall) rather than make up a new one as seems to be his usual modus operandi? Because this was originally a Whirlwind Carter comic that Marvel evidently did not want. We’re solving mysteries here!)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 641: ONE-EYE

    (Fantastic Comics 013, 1940) 

    One-Eye is a stylish fellow with a real bone to pick with humankind, who have apparently rejected him for the heinous sin of Having Only One Eye, I guess? Unless having a widow’s peak and a long waxed mustache are considered disfigurements? I suppose that cultural mores do change over time and it is 8000 years in the future… in any case, the point is that he’s upset at the world and has decided to kill humanity off.

    To that end, One-Eye has gathered together a collection of generic mutants, all of whom are more interesting looking than him (and one of whom appears to be wearing some shockingly high-cut booty shorts).

    Among these recruits is this “giant devil-octopus” which a) has six arms, b) appears to be made of human skin and c) is the most unsettling thing I’ve seen in a comic in a long time.

    By contrast Kuga the man-eating giant cat is a walk in the park, a beauty to behold! Plus it is stuck in a too-small room so that One-Eye can drop people down a trap door in his office and have them slide directly into its mouth. Barely threatening at all!

    Ultimately Sub Saunders beats up the mutants, blows up One-Eye’s undersea base and hands him over to the authorities.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 633: CHONGO

    (Fantastic Comics 012, 1940)

    Flip Falcon’s Fourth Dimension Machine has served various roles as a sort of all-purpose portal to adventure over the course of his tenure in Fantastic Comics, starting out as an interplanetary teleporter allowing access to the various planets of the Solar System and later acting as a time machine. Now it is entering what I believe to be its final form as a gateway to the Fourth Dimension itself, a weird hellscape of the imagination briefly seen in Flip’s encounter with Lucifer.

    In addition to bordering on all times and places, the Fourth Dimension seems to also contain if not the entire afterlife then at least some version of Hell, occupied by the Demi-Things. Ar the Demi-Things demons? The souls of the damned? Some sort of third thing? Whatever they are, Chongo is the worst of the bunch and thanks to the bizarre dimensional pseudo-physics he is able to steal a radio beam and re-purpose it into a death ray/ surf board.

    He immediately attacks Earth with this ray and unfortunately I must report that it looks very cool. It’s a skeletonizing ray!

    Flip Falcon of course sets out to defeat the evil Chongo but the ultimate victory must go to the greater society of Demi-Things, who rally together and basically beat him to death once he is removed from the shelter of his death ray. I guess this might be considered some sort of redemptive act – does this lend credence to the Demi-Things = lost souls theory? I believe that we’ll be seeing more of them in the future, so we’ll just note that down without drawing any conclusions just yet..

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 633: CHONGO

    (Fantastic Comics 012, 1940)

    Flip Falcon’s Fourth Dimension Machine has served various roles as a sort of all-purpose portal to adventure over the course of his tenure in Fantastic Comics, starting out as an interplanetary teleporter allowing access to the various planets of the Solar System and later acting as a time machine. Now it is entering what I believe to be its final form as a gateway to the Fourth Dimension itself, a weird hellscape of the imagination briefly seen in Flip’s encounter with Lucifer.

    In addition to bordering on all times and places, the Fourth Dimension seems to also contain if not the entire afterlife then at least some version of Hell, occupied by the Demi-Things. Ar the Demi-Things demons? The souls of the damned? Some sort of third thing? Whatever they are, Chongo is the worst of the bunch and thanks to the bizarre dimensional pseudo-physics he is able to steal a radio beam and re-purpose it into a death ray/ surf board.

    He immediately attacks Earth with this ray and unfortunately I must report that it looks very cool. It’s a skeletonizing ray!

    Flip Falcon of course sets out to defeat the evil Chongo but the ultimate victory must go to the greater society of Demi-Things, who rally together and basically beat him to death once he is removed from the shelter of his death ray. I guess this might be considered some sort of redemptive act – does this lend credence to the Demi-Things = lost souls theory? I believe that we’ll be seeing more of them in the future, so we’ll just note that down without drawing any conclusions just yet..