The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: monocle

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 504: PROFESSOR X

    (Blue Bolt v1 005, 1940)

    Professor X has two of my favourite qualities in a minor super-villain: a famous name and a prior history. The first is the same kind of fun as when my friend named his cat after me. “What do you mean Professor X keeps getting up on the counter to steal ham?”

    I really love his Prohibition-Era villainy as well, particularly as I had it in my head that he specifically was a bootlegger and thus that all of his great inventions were in service of that – dirigibles full of Canadian whiskey? The axe-proof barrel? The mighty Beer-Bot? Fun stuff. The suicide vest, by contrast is a bit much and not particularly fun, but does establish his bona fides as a legitimate threat.

    Prof. X is on a classic Judge and Jury Revenge Killer tear, targeting Hogan, the cop who brought him in and Johnson, the lawyer who put him away, who since then has become the District Attorney of Centro and close personal friend of local super-hero Sub-Zero.

    Due to this last fact Professor X is forced to turn his genius to the creation of anti-Sub-Zero weaponry, including cold-proof cars, an unfreezable gun that fires superheated bullets and his iconic costume which – you guessed it – is insulated  and renders him immune to Sub-Zero’s freezing powers. And he almost manages to beat Sub-Zero! His only mistake is in having uninsulated water pipes in his secret lair and leads to him being sent to jail inside a large block of ice.

    Professor X returns in the next issue in an attempt to finish getting revenge on DA Johnson as well as new target Sub-Zero (he also tries to kill Sub-Zero’s girlfriend Mary but I don’t think he has a specific grudge against her), and this time he’s accompanied by a costumed henchman named Rat. Once again he very nearly pulls it off but this time his fatal flaw is a lot more fatal, as he misjudges a jump during his escape and does a header out a fourth story window. An ignominious end to be sure.

    JUDGE AND JURY REVENGE KILLER SCORE: 1/3

    But death is not the end for Professor X! Blue Bolt v1 007 features a gambler named Rocky Garret who has acquired the Professor’s anti-Sub-Zero tech as insurance against interference in his baseball-fixing scheme (and it’s a good idea for him to do so, as his scheme is Not Very Good – a lot of it is literally just putting the wrong numbers on the scoreboard which… isn’t good.  It’s a bad plan.)

    Sadly this is it as far as Professor X’s legacy goes. I was kind of hoping that Sub-Zero would be confronted with a guy in a mesh bodysuit every now and again going forward, but alas, it was not meant to be.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 504: PROFESSOR X

    (Blue Bolt v1 005, 1940)

    Professor X has two of my favourite qualities in a minor super-villain: a famous name and a prior history. The first is the same kind of fun as when my friend named his cat after me. “What do you mean Professor X keeps getting up on the counter to steal ham?”

    I really love his Prohibition-Era villainy as well, particularly as I had it in my head that he specifically was a bootlegger and thus that all of his great inventions were in service of that – dirigibles full of Canadian whiskey? The axe-proof barrel? The mighty Beer-Bot? Fun stuff. The suicide vest, by contrast is a bit much and not particularly fun, but does establish his bona fides as a legitimate threat.

    Prof. X is on a classic Judge and Jury Revenge Killer tear, targeting Hogan, the cop who brought him in and Johnson, the lawyer who put him away, who since then has become the District Attorney of Centro and close personal friend of local super-hero Sub-Zero.

    Due to this last fact Professor X is forced to turn his genius to the creation of anti-Sub-Zero weaponry, including cold-proof cars, an unfreezable gun that fires superheated bullets and his iconic costume which – you guessed it – is insulated  and renders him immune to Sub-Zero’s freezing powers. And he almost manages to beat Sub-Zero! His only mistake is in having uninsulated water pipes in his secret lair and leads to him being sent to jail inside a large block of ice.

    Professor X returns in the next issue in an attempt to finish getting revenge on DA Johnson as well as new target Sub-Zero (he also tries to kill Sub-Zero’s girlfriend Mary but I don’t think he has a specific grudge against her), and this time he’s accompanied by a costumed henchman named Rat. Once again he very nearly pulls it off but this time his fatal flaw is a lot more fatal, as he misjudges a jump during his escape and does a header out a fourth story window. An ignominious end to be sure.

    JUDGE AND JURY REVENGE KILLER SCORE: 1/3

    But death is not the end for Professor X! Blue Bolt v1 007 features a gambler named Rocky Garret who has acquired the Professor’s anti-Sub-Zero tech as insurance against interference in his baseball-fixing scheme (and it’s a good idea for him to do so, as his scheme is Not Very Good – a lot of it is literally just putting the wrong numbers on the scoreboard which… isn’t good.  It’s a bad plan.)

    Sadly this is it as far as Professor X’s legacy goes. I was kind of hoping that Sub-Zero would be confronted with a guy in a mesh bodysuit every now and again going forward, but alas, it was not meant to be.

  • MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 005

    Just a little crypto-fascist saboteur named Dr Vee who battled Dynamic Man but I like his name and I like his style. His sartorial style. Not the fascism. (Mystic v1 002, 1940)

    Lemo here has a mechanical mole-style tank and reckons he can take over the world with it after almost destroying one (1) circus tent. It’s a good thing he was blown up by one of Marvel’s many Herculeses before he could get too far and get disappointed. (Mystic Comics v1 004, 1940)

    This fellow, known only as the Mystery Man, has been working on the problem of how to counter snipers in warfare, and the scheme that he has come up with involves breeding up vicious wolf-dogs, training them to hate a particular smell and then applying that smell to the shoes of enemy combatants so that the dogs hunt and kill them. There’s a slight problem with this plan that the two crypto-fascist gentlemen that he’s trying to sell this system to don’t seem to come on to, even when he offers to sell them the scent and the dogs and doesn’t mention offering a dedicated group of scent-applying agents (or maybe he had some smaller dogs trained to do the job and he was going to upsell them later).

    The Mystery Man only gets caught because he has been picking up hitchhiking college students and using them to train the dogs and the person responsible for their safety is friends with giant super-hero Mighty Man and long story short the Mystery Man gets eaten by dogs. (Amazing-Man Comics 009, 1940)

    This here unnamed fella has a four-step plan: 

    1. Capture the Iron Skull 

    2. Inject the Iron Skull with a serum that turns him completely to iron

    3. Inject his iron blood into robots to make them alive somehow

    4. Profit

    Steps 1 and 2 go fine but as seen above a major flaw in the plan is that the Iron Skull is now more powerful and mops the floor with his erstwhile captor. The robots don’t even show up! (Amazing-Man Comics 015, 1940)

  • MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 004

    More mad science than criminal science or vice versa? You be the judge! 

    This guy, who seems to be neither bald nor ironically hairy enough for his name of Baldy Fluger to make sense, has a hypnotic ray and a plan: to use that hypnotic ray for crime. The Green Mask and Domino the Miracle Boy have something to say about that. (Mystery Men Comics 021, 1941)

    If there was any more to these three (respectively named Boris, Oscar and Unnamed Man) than what happens in the four panels above then I would be writing hundreds of words about them, but this is about it: three mad scientists, one of whom has one of the top lines in comics history (“They said I was a mad scientist but when I blast their children with my electron gun they won’t call me mad anymore!”) attack a steel mill for unclear reasons, possibly madness. The rest of the story involves them battling Lieutenant Drake of Naval Intelligence and Miss X. There’s a lot of electron gunning but no children are involved. (Mystery Men Comics 021, 1941)

    Renowned transplant surgeon Dr Moru just so happens to also be the mysterious person murdering people and stealing their hands, and all so that he can make beaucoup bucks giving gangsters brand new hands with brand new fingerprints. Until the Green Mask gets involved, of course. (Mystery Men Comics 029, 1941)

    Dr Murdo here had a death ray, an underground lair and a small army of goons but had the misfortune of crossing paths with Flexo the Rubber Man and being subdued with robot gas. (Mystic Comics v1 001, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 426: THE RED RAIDER

    (Keen Detective Funnies v2 021, 1940)

    A simple but effective origin story: The captain of a German Mergan submarine becomes obsessed with death and destruction and goes rogue, preying on Axis and Allied shipping alike and replacing the flag of Nazi Germany Zani Mergany* with the skull and crossbones. Suddenly, the threat of war is a threat to all seagoing vessels!

    The Red Raider (technically the name of the submarine but I stand firm in my conviction that the name of a super-vehicle can logically be applied to its owner if they have no codename of their own) has a relatively short reign of terror before he is socked in the jaw by the Masked Marvel and hot damn is “So, you think you can machine gun the Masked Marvel?” a cool toughguy line to say just before taking down the villain and his whole operation.

    *okay I made up Zani but the rest is real

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 426: THE RED RAIDER

    (Keen Detective Funnies v2 021, 1940)

    A simple but effective origin story: The captain of a German Mergan submarine becomes obsessed with death and destruction and goes rogue, preying on Axis and Allied shipping alike and replacing the flag of Nazi Germany Zani Mergany* with the skull and crossbones. Suddenly, the threat of war is a threat to all seagoing vessels!

    The Red Raider (technically the name of the submarine but I stand firm in my conviction that the name of a super-vehicle can logically be applied to its owner if they have no codename of their own) has a relatively short reign of terror before he is socked in the jaw by the Masked Marvel and hot damn is “So, you think you can machine gun the Masked Marvel?” a cool toughguy line to say just before taking down the villain and his whole operation.

    *okay I made up Zani but the rest is real

  • MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 003

    They may not be the top of the class, but they did their time in the evil sciences!

    Dr Eric Karlin has a lot of moxie on paper: a Nazi psychologist with a sideline in Egyptology, he dissolves the enemies of the Reich in acid and keeps their jellied remains in a series of jars in his basement. He also employs mind controlled pseudo-zombies in a scheme to recover frozen Nazi assets from a bank vault. The problem is that while all of this makes for a dynamite summary, the Blue Diamond story that he appears in is… not very good. (Daring Mystery Comics 008, 1942)

    DeVaux here had a plan to grow regular guys into huge guys and use them to take over the world but made the elementary mistake of trying to kill a friend of super-magician El Carim as his literal first step toward that end – it didn’t go well. (Master Comics 011, 1941)

    I’m not sure if this guy is even a scientist, but if you’re “the worst foreign spy living” and your name is Dr Evil and your cover as you plan to blow up a NYC analog is to call yourself “Dr Live” well then I can’t help but love you, even if you do get electrocuted by extremely generic Golden Age hero Lightning. (Jumbo Comics 015, 1940)

    And speaking of Lightning, he also battled Dr Tol, who used remote stone-crumbling technology to open up banks for his gang to loot. He also had very cool goggles. (Jumbo Comics 020, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 396: THE CIPHER

    (More Fun Comics 071, 1941)

    The Cipher is a fairly unremarkable oceangoing spy with a really great name. He attempts to extract some information on winter warfare tactics from a friend of Clip Carson (on behalf of unspecified employers – somewhat interestingly, the Cipher is explicitly a freelance spy) and gets blown up for his efforts.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 384: DEEJA KATHOON

    (More Fun Comics 067, 1941)

    Deeja Kathoon is an occultist and necromancer who has the ability to summon and bind ghosts to his service and uses this power to unleash a ghostly crimewave on Cliffland, NJ. He has what turns out to be an Indian surname but there’s no indication in-story that he’s supposed to be Indian and so I must assume that it’s a coincidence and that my first guess was correct and his name was chosen by picking random syllables out of a hat.

    Ordinarily this would be the point at which I say “unfortunately, he chose to do his crimes in the Spectre’s home town,” but not this time, for you see the Spectre is a ghost. Kathoon binds him just like any other ghost and almost forces him to destroy the Cliffland City Hospital before the Ring of Life manages to deus ex machina him out of that particular jam.

    One thing that goes unexplored and unexplained in the story is the zippy little rocket ship that Kathoon tries to escape in once the Spectre is free. In the absence of any hint or eleventh hour reveal that he is an alien or magical time traveller I must assume that it is a magic rocket ship, which is great. More magic rocket ships are what we need, in my humble opinion.

    It’s just possible that being forced to do Kathoon’s bidding rattled the Spectre, or at least convinced him that the guy was a legitimate threat, because not only does he kill him via rocket ship explosion, he then hunts down and kills his ghost. This is, yes, a step more extreme than 1939 Batman gunning down the odd monster, but then again this is the Spectre. He has a reputation for brutality for a reason.

    In conclusion, this little cloud guy that Kathoon made to intimidate the Spectre is the sensational character find of 1941.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 384: DEEJA KATHOON

    (More Fun Comics 067, 1941)

    Deeja Kathoon is an occultist and necromancer who has the ability to summon and bind ghosts to his service and uses this power to unleash a ghostly crimewave on Cliffland, NJ. He has what turns out to be an Indian surname but there’s no indication in-story that he’s supposed to be Indian and so I must assume that it’s a coincidence and that my first guess was correct and his name was chosen by picking random syllables out of a hat.

    Ordinarily this would be the point at which I say “unfortunately, he chose to do his crimes in the Spectre’s home town,” but not this time, for you see the Spectre is a ghost. Kathoon binds him just like any other ghost and almost forces him to destroy the Cliffland City Hospital before the Ring of Life manages to deus ex machina him out of that particular jam.

    One thing that goes unexplored and unexplained in the story is the zippy little rocket ship that Kathoon tries to escape in once the Spectre is free. In the absence of any hint or eleventh hour reveal that he is an alien or magical time traveller I must assume that it is a magic rocket ship, which is great. More magic rocket ships are what we need, in my humble opinion.

    It’s just possible that being forced to do Kathoon’s bidding rattled the Spectre, or at least convinced him that the guy was a legitimate threat, because not only does he kill him via rocket ship explosion, he then hunts down and kills his ghost. This is, yes, a step more extreme than 1939 Batman gunning down the odd monster, but then again this is the Spectre. He has a reputation for brutality for a reason.

    In conclusion, this little cloud guy that Kathoon made to intimidate the Spectre is the sensational character find of 1941.