The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: Captain Kidd

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 639: LU CHENG THE FORBIDDEN

    (Fantastic Comics 013, 1940) 

    A vampire holed up in a cave in the Gobi Desert with a bunch of lady vampires, Lu Cheng the Forbidden talks a big game but I reckon that he’s super screwed. He’s somehow found himself in one of the largest deserts in the world, presumably farther from human habitation than is comfortable for a vampire – when Captain Kidd wanders into his cave all Lu Cheng is concerned with is using his plane to get the heck out of the Gobi.

    Lucky for Captain Kidd, Lu Cheng is not the kind of vampire that is immune to everything that isn’t a specific vampire weakness, or maybe is a kind of vampire that is vulnerable to grenades. Either way, he ends up dead for real. And as a bonus, the lady vampires are the kind of vampire thrall that returns to normal once the head vampire is killed! Hooray!

  • GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 014

    Once again the also-rans.

    A bunch of small-time crooks get paid to fake the death of Titano (the largest gorilla in captivity!) for an insurance scam and of course use him to rob a series small-town banks. If only they had thought a bit more ambitiously they might have made the big time. (Exciting Comics 005, 1940)

    This Yank Wilson adventure features a fairly by-the-book super-spy ring headed by Count Lustig von Blackgard. They plot, they scheme, they are ultimately foiled. This mysterious radio message is the only mention of a higher-up, but their moniker – the extremely evocative Neuromania – was too good to pass over without comment. (there is of course the possibility that Neuromania is the spies’ home country. Either way, it’s great). (Fantastic Comics 002, 1940)

    This happy fellow has no name but makes up for it with a laundry list of distinctive features: missing left eye, hunch, catlike upper lip, pointy ears, bizarrely long hair on his forearms, etc. He lives under a fake man-eating tree in… probably the African jungle and spends his days torturing and poisoning people for no stated reason until he is killed by Captain Kid using his own poisoned melon. (Fantastic Comics 005, 1940)

    This is Nipon, ruler of an unnamed Asian country (wink, wink) from that period in late 1940 through 1941 when the Axis powers were very clearly the villains on everyone’s minds but the US was remaining neutral so you couldn’t in good conscience make the leader of a foreign nation the villain of your story. These guys are usually either extremely obvious stand-ins named, like Arnolf Hilter or Menito Bussolini (in which case they get added to a Real Folk entry) or so generic that I forget them entirely. Nipon is kind of neither – like, he’s obviously a stand-in for the Emperor of Japan but extremely generically, but also he has a very fun look! (Fantastic Comics 013, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 623: THE CYCLOP

    (Fantastic Comics 009, 1940)

    Captain Kidd is once again back in Africa, this time in search of a lost explorer named Perez, and has once again bribed a local into taking him somewhere dangerous only to get that local killed (this happens about a third of the time with Kidd – not quite often enough to make a very depressing supercut).

    Kidd and his unfortunate hireling Wango track Perez to the Lost Valley, where they discover and are captured by a tribe of one-eyed Beastmen, respectively.

    Surprisingly little is made of the fact that the Beastmen worship a hypnotically paralyzed woman. Ordinarily a reveal like this would be lead to the woman’s rescue being the focus of the rest of the adventure but this panel is her only appearance – is it possible that Captain Kidd thinks that she is merely a statue? A grim fate indeed. 

    Also: RIP Wango.

    The Beastman leader (referred to as “the Cyclop” throughout) of course turns out to be Perez, who went mad upon his discovery of the valley and somehow became the leader of the whole place. If I’m honest, the theoretical comic about the sequence of events that lead to that happening (and presumably to that poor woman becoming a goddess-statue) is more interesting than what we got.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 618: THE GREAT WHITE CHIEF

    (Fantastic Comics 007, 1940) 

    The Great White Chief is a chubby scientist who wears stirrup pants with no shoes or socks and lives in a dormant volcano (that he makes look non-dormant using special effects) where he makes animal-headed monstrosities like Cinu the Unicorn Man here. This is all very good classic villain stuff.

    The name is pretty annoying. It implies a lot about his relationship with the native peoples of wherever his volcano is located (probably Africa as he has kidnapped the daughter of an ivory trader) and so I am constantly on edge while reading about him, waiting for him or Captain Kidd to say or do something really racist, but nothing concrete ever happens. But the name!

    I guess the only thing to do is to focus on how fun a design the unicorn man is. Look! Captain Kidd is stabbing him with his own horn!

    After finishing off poor Cinu, Captain Kidd gets the drop on the GWC and socks him into a boiling sulphur pit. I was going to make a joke about Kidd being just as weirded out by the name as I was but then I remembered that Captain Kidd is himself pretty racist. Welp…

    Hey look, more animal headed people! Check out that bird head!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 618: THE GREAT WHITE CHIEF

    (Fantastic Comics 007, 1940) 

    The Great White Chief is a chubby scientist who wears stirrup pants with no shoes or socks and lives in a dormant volcano (that he makes look non-dormant using special effects) where he makes animal-headed monstrosities like Cinu the Unicorn Man here. This is all very good classic villain stuff.

    The name is pretty annoying. It implies a lot about his relationship with the native peoples of wherever his volcano is located (probably Africa as he has kidnapped the daughter of an ivory trader) and so I am constantly on edge while reading about him, waiting for him or Captain Kidd to say or do something really racist, but nothing concrete ever happens. But the name!

    I guess the only thing to do is to focus on how fun a design the unicorn man is. Look! Captain Kidd is stabbing him with his own horn!

    After finishing off poor Cinu, Captain Kidd gets the drop on the GWC and socks him into a boiling sulphur pit. I was going to make a joke about Kidd being just as weirded out by the name as I was but then I remembered that Captain Kidd is himself pretty racist. Welp…

    Hey look, more animal headed people! Check out that bird head!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 612: QUEEN IZZUKI

    (Fantastic Comics 006, 1940)

    The eminent scientist Dr Chandler is being held in Amazoland, home of the Amazons! The extremely diplomatic Captain “Ugh!” Kidd sets out to rescue him! 

    This is another one I might have skipped over if not for a couple of remarkable things, the first being that the poorly-named Amazon homeland seems to be just a country, somewhere in Asia if all the references to the Amazon’s eyes being almond-shaped (that’s not how Captain Kidd puts it, of course) are anything to go by. Are they just another lost jungle civilization and I’m reading too much into things or does Amazoland have a seat at the UN in a decade or so?

    The second thing is that this may be the least a character has sexualized a society of scantily-clad women in all of fiction. I’d blame it on the 40s obsession with male vs female roles but Captain Kidd doesn’t really say anything about that so I assume he’s just too racist to be attracted to Asian women.

    Queen Izzuki turns out to be an older woman who is obsessed with regaining her lost beauty and so has captured Dr Chandler to perform plastic surgery on her. Captain Kidd turning up is a bonus: free husband!

    Captain Kidd was already against this whole situation but the prospect of having to marry an old woman (an old Asian woman!) really galvanizes him. He does let Dr Chandler get shot with an arrow (fired by Izzuki, who’s not some layabout queen who doesn’t know how to shoot an arrow at someone) but he’s mostly okay afterward. They escape and Amazoland has to consider more conventional ways of attracting a plastic surgeon, like paying for their education in return for a certain number of years of service.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 602: THE TALKING APE

    (Fantastic Comics 004, 1940)

    Pilot/ adventurer/ confusing-name-haver Captain Kidd has heard some disturbing rumours about a cult of beast-men planning an attempt to take over the Sahara region and so he sets out to investigate. After bribing a local man to show him the way (and then carelessly letting the local man get captured by the cult), Kidd finds a weird bunch of things all at once:

    -the cult is indeed made up of beast-men, hoofed humanoids with pig or wolf features who take their orders from:

    -the Talking Ape, a talking ape who derives its authority from:

    -the Ibkar Oracles, a quartet of young women who sit around huffing volcanic gasses and making prophecies all day, Oracle of Delphi-style.

    It’s an impressive setup for a local tyrant who wants to extort some nearby communities but hardly a threat to the larger North African populace – Captain Kidd runs off the entire beast-man force with a single strafing run in his plane!

    If the beast-men are a bit of a bust, that doesn’t change the fact that there is an ape and it is talking and about to murder the guide that Captain Kidd failed so thoroughly without even learning his name. Clearly it’s ape-fighting time.

    A short tussle reveals the shocking truth: the Talking Ape is in actuality a young woman! A young woman with extremely elastic limbs, seemingly, or possibly an extremely advanced ape suit with both robotic arm extensions and some sort of tesseract technology to fit those super-long lady legs into about half the space they require.

    Unfortunately for us, the unveiled Ape flings herself into a pool of lava rather than be captured, so we will never really have an inkling as to her motivations beyond Captain Kidd’s half-baked musings about her “conceiv[ing] the gorilla as a symbol of strength,” whatever that means. Stay in your lane, Captain Kidd: punching things.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 597: NEGUS

    (Fantastic Comics 003, 1940)

    An evil African witch doctor with a magical orb, a cool tree house and a real commitment to being Chaotic Evil, Negus meets a swift end once Captain Kidd comes looking for his imprisoned and mind controlled pal Arndt Barrows Colonel Bennet (as with a surprising number of Golden Age comics, the writer seems to have lost track of the name of this secondary character over the course of a 5 page story).

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 595: THE VOICE

    (Fantastic Comics 002, 1940)

    Captain Kidd and his pal Freddy land on the… Southeast Asian? island of Morgia, known to be rich in gold but critically not to ever export that gold. As the heroes of the piece, Kidd and Freddy are of course there to just look around and seeing the sights, not to scoop up a bunch of gold on the cheap. Certainly not.

    Instead of free gold tourist hotspots they find dozens of local people dead of that one torture where a bamboo plant grows through you. The one living guy they find takes them to an elaborate temple with a flooded tunnel entrance.

    Inside, the duo find a cloaked man referred to only as the Voice, who appears to be running a combination cult and scam where he gets gold in exchange for whiskey. He’s also responsible for the bamboo torture outside if his hilarious non-apology is anything to go on, though why he’s having people killed is never elaborated on. 

    The Voice’s entire scheme relies on the flooded entrance to keep firearms from entering the temple, a measure that Captain Kidd has defeated by putting his pistol in Freddy’s hat. Suddenly, all bets are off!

    The Voice makes his escape while Captain Kidd is dealing with his huge goon Twist but unfortunately for him this is a case of Chekhov’s Flooded Tunnel and he drowns during his escape attempt.

  • REAL PERSON ROUND-UP 003

    Once more they ride: the REAL PEOPLE OF COMICS

    Abraham Lincoln:

    Lincoln’s shadow is used to symbolize the power of the US exerting a calming effect on the European belligerents. (Smash Comics 005, 1939)

    Adolf Hitler:

    Chancellor Rudolf of Wurtberg here is a more dynamic than usual Hitler analog (Smash Comics 004, 1939)

    Misc minor appearances:

    Getting some bad news about Nazi operations in Yugoslavia (Blue Ribbon Comics 015, 1941)

    Captain Kidd:

    For no particular reason this aviator/ adventurer is named after him. (Fantastic Comics 001, 1939)

    Franklin Delano Roosevelt:

    Discusses the threat of the Black Hand With J. Edgar Hoover (Blue Ribbon Comics 016, 1941)

    Misc Minor Appearances: appraised of the danger of invasion by Vlamir Koran (Smash Comics 001, 1939) 

    Seen ordering Americans in Europe to return home; meets Black Ace/X after he saves the transports that are returning them. (Smash Comics 003, 1939)

    Determines to defensively arm the US (Smash Comics 005, 1939)

    H.V. Kaltenborn:

    Radio commentator, appears as “H.V. Baltenhorn” (Blue Ribbon Comics 017, 1941)

    John Dillinger:

    Gangster “Jack Dilger” is vexed by Ty-Gor. (Blue Ribbon Comics 015, 1941) 

    Joseph Stalin:

    The same 3/4 perspective shot always used for FDR, now in Stalin form! (Smash Comics 002, 1939)

    Mahatma Gandhi:

    Aside from the pun name “Mohlasos Candhi”, this version of Gandhi is hitting a lot of the overt and casually racist checkmarks of the 1940s, including a disregard for the difference between India and the Middle East and a complete indifference for the distinction between Hindus and Muslims. Oh and also it’s another classic adventure based on propping up colonial rule. (Blue Ribbon Comics 017, 1941)

    Shirley Temple:

    As “Curley Semple” (“Dixie Dugan” comic strip, 1935)

    Sherlock Holmes:

    Philpot Veep (along with his sidekick Waldo) was one of many humourous takes on Sherlock Holmes in Golden Age comics. Note also the wanted poster for G. Brenner, almost certainly referring to George Brenner, creator of the Clock. (Smash Comics 001, 1939)

    BONUS PHILPOT VEEP, DRUG FIEND

    COMIC BOOK DRAMA: in Smash Comics 005, George Brenner strikes back! Here’s Philpot Veep scribe Joe Devlin depicted AS A CLOWN! EPIC GOLDEN AGE BEEF SPOTTED

    Woodrow Wilson:

    Meets and gives sage advice to young Blane Whitney, who would grow up to become MLJ hero the Wizard. I am legitimately flabbergasted to see Wilson show up in this capacity. (Top-Notch Comics 001, 1939)