The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: Hawkman

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 248: THE GOLDEN MUMMY

    (Flash Comics v1 017, 1941)

    It’s the Golden Mummy! As I have previously stated, I love fake mummies and had read this issue before, so I was anticipating this fellow’s appearance with some joy, and it is with great sadness that I must announce that he’s a complete disappointment.

    My threshold for fake mummy appreciation is quite low – usually they just steal a few antiquities before getting tripped up by Archie and Jughead or the Scooby Gang, after all – but the Golden Mummy’s only admirable quality is his dedication to theme. He has the costume, a cave hideout, a bunch of gangsters that he paid well enough to paint themselves gold and pretend to be called the Sect of the Golden Mummy (and of course the only thing better than henchmen in themed costumes is when they also have a cool name). 

    . He even dies lamely, by stumbling into a trap set for Hawkman.

    So why do I dislike this guy so much? The reason is twofold: firstly, the whole Golden Mummy thing is just some incel shit: he’s a guy named Dr Selkirk getting revenge on his ex-fiance for dumping him by murdering her. This is one of those motivations that sucks some of the fun out of super-villain analysis.

    Secondly: the Golden Mummy is a completely unnecessary affectation. He kills her as she’s onstage singing opera, via a poisoned blowdart. The Mummy and his Sect spend the entire adventure coping with Hawkman, and it kind of seems like Selkirk made up the persona expressly because he was afraid of Hawkman – I don’t know if he’d have gotten away with it by not calling attention to himself with cryptic warnings and golden men but it couldn’t have hurt.

    Boo to the Golden Mummy. Booo!

  • THE FATE OF…

    (Flash Comics v1 016, 1941)

    Have you ever wondered what happened to the ancient Dravidians and their kingdom of Dravidia? No, because they’re an extant ethnic group and that would be a bit like wondering about the fate of the Caucasians and their fabled land of Caucasia? Excatly. But nevertheless, here’s Hawkman flying into Dravidia, somewhere in Mongolia.

    Furthermore, the Dravidian king claims that his people originally came from a now-sunken land called Eden. An intriguing concept – that Eden is truly lost because it sank into the sea. Nothing comes of it though.

    The really interesting thing to come out of this adventure is the idea that a prior incarnation of Hawkman might have ruled Dravidia as Keft, known as Icaro, the Redeemer. My experience with Golden Age Hawkman is limited to his JSA appearances, so I don’t know if the exploration of his prior incarnations is a running topic or if this is a weird outlier, decades before the idea of Hawkman and Hawkgirl being endlessly reincarnated gained steam.

  • THE FATE OF…

    (Flash Comics v1 016, 1941)

    Have you ever wondered what happened to the ancient Dravidians and their kingdom of Dravidia? No, because they’re an extant ethnic group and that would be a bit like wondering about the fate of the Caucasians and their fabled land of Caucasia? Excatly. But nevertheless, here’s Hawkman flying into Dravidia, somewhere in Mongolia.

    Furthermore, the Dravidian king claims that his people originally came from a now-sunken land called Eden. An intriguing concept – that Eden is truly lost because it sank into the sea. Nothing comes of it though.

    The really interesting thing to come out of this adventure is the idea that a prior incarnation of Hawkman might have ruled Dravidia as Keft, known as Icaro, the Redeemer. My experience with Golden Age Hawkman is limited to his JSA appearances, so I don’t know if the exploration of his prior incarnations is a running topic or if this is a weird outlier, decades before the idea of Hawkman and Hawkgirl being endlessly reincarnated gained steam.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 247: THE HAND

    (Flash Comics v1 015, 1941)

    It’s old hat by now: like former Hawkman foe Czar the Unkillable Man and his ilk, the Hand is a henchbeing who is far more interesting to read and talk about than their creator. This is the risk you run when you set out to create an autonomous crime-servant via… I’m guessing magical means? It’s unclear in the text but magic seems more likely than science.

    In this case, the creator is a guy named Edward Thayer, the black sheep of a wealthy family who has decided to turn his amazing talking and flying disembodied hand to the sordid task of killing off his brother Elwin and niece Teddy so that he can inherit enough money to convince some lady to sleep with him. Cue my usual complaints about crooks in super-hero universes not aiming high enough.

    Edward never gets to see his ill-gotten money, though, because Sandra (the lady in question) decides to bump him off for a quick buck. Which leads to the above panel: not only a rare hero/ villain teamup but an as-far-as-I-know unique hero/ disembodied hand teamup! Sadly, the revenge rampage ends with not only Sandra but the Hand itself seemingly plummeting to their deaths in a crashing car. Boo, says I! The Hand should be BRUNG BACK post-haste! Give it a bartending job somewhere.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 246: KARVAC

    (Flash Comics v1 014, 1941)

    Karvac himself is strictly ho hum territory: a would-be world conqueror who leads his army of heat ray-toting goons on a path of destruction before being beaten up by Hawkman. Snoresville, man.

    BUT: the method by which Karvac managed to acquire his army of heat ray-toting goons, now that’s the kind of comic book nonsense that we love around here.

    Karvac, you see, unearthed rites and rituals connected to Scorio, Alligator God of the Phoenicians, and established both a temple and cult of worshippers to Scorio in the Eastern US, in order to cast ancient ritual magics and bring Scorio to him.

    AND IT WORKS! Korvac summons a god! And that god promptly tells him how to make heat rays for his army of goons to tote! (it’s not exactly clear in the text whether the army of goons are also the Scorio cultists that Hawkman sees performing rituals at the temple earlier in the story, but it’s narratively satisfying to think so)

    Scorio eventually gets banished back to the otherworldly swamp that he usually hangs out in, and as far as I know has never made a return appearance. But he should! Korvac might’ve been a dud, but an ancient and vengeful alligator god who can hand out secret knowledge to evil men is a really neat foe for a guy like Hawkman, particularly once his reincarnation bullshit really gets going – Katar Hol might not know Scorio from a hole in the ground but Scorio knows a soul no matter how many times it’s been reborn. BRING BACK Scorio!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 246: KARVAC

    (Flash Comics v1 014, 1941)

    Karvac himself is strictly ho hum territory: a would-be world conqueror who leads his army of heat ray-toting goons on a path of destruction before being beaten up by Hawkman. Snoresville, man.

    BUT: the method by which Karvac managed to acquire his army of heat ray-toting goons, now that’s the kind of comic book nonsense that we love around here.

    Karvac, you see, unearthed rites and rituals connected to Scorio, Alligator God of the Phoenicians, and established both a temple and cult of worshippers to Scorio in the Eastern US, in order to cast ancient ritual magics and bring Scorio to him.

    AND IT WORKS! Korvac summons a god! And that god promptly tells him how to make heat rays for his army of goons to tote! (it’s not exactly clear in the text whether the army of goons are also the Scorio cultists that Hawkman sees performing rituals at the temple earlier in the story, but it’s narratively satisfying to think so)

    Scorio eventually gets banished back to the otherworldly swamp that he usually hangs out in, and as far as I know has never made a return appearance. But he should! Korvac might’ve been a dud, but an ancient and vengeful alligator god who can hand out secret knowledge to evil men is a really neat foe for a guy like Hawkman, particularly once his reincarnation bullshit really gets going – Katar Hol might not know Scorio from a hole in the ground but Scorio knows a soul no matter how many times it’s been reborn. BRING BACK Scorio!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 245: SATANA

    (Flash Comics v1 013, 1941)

     I am torn on Satana! Torn verily in twain!

    My standard critique of a comic book scientist-villain is that they would have been better off using their tech in a non-crime endeavor, but Satana is a brilliant and pioneering young surgeon living in 1941 and given what I know about the history of women in science I think it’s fair to say that if she had decided to make a go of it in academia then there’s a decent chance that all her research would have been stolen by some dude and she might have gotten credit years after her death, if ever. Also, her signature breakthrough involves transplanting human brains (and eyes!) into tigers, which while groundbreaking might be a hard sell to the ethics committee.

    On the other hand, her crime scheme is very bad. In short: she extorts rich men with threats of harm, then gets work as an entertainer called Satana the Tiger Girl at rich guy parties and has her tigers kill the ones that don’t pay up. She only does it once before getting caught by Hawkman, that we know of, but even if she varied the method by which the tiger was introduced to the rich guy, it’s not a sustainable business model. Stylish, yes, but not sustainable.

    Perhaps the best part of the story is when Hawkman comes across a couple of tigers engaging in humanlike behaviors and it nearly drives him insane, like he’s an HP Lovecraft character. Human habits like… sitting near a newspaper and holding a pipe in their mouth. 

    They kinda hint at a return appearance for Satana at the end of the story but she doesn’t actually come back until 2004, in the same Hawkman story that brought back the Thought Terror. She’s a substantially different character by that point, with ties to the Ultra-Humanite and a focus on making humanoid animals via genetic modification. I’ll revisit her when and if I manage to keep doing this long enough to get to that era. It’s good that they brought her back! She’s a fun character!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 241: KING JUPO

    (Flash Comics v1 009, 1940)

    King Jupo is the leader of the Kogats, a race of water-breathing caveman types who live beneath New York Harbor and have a fun mix of technologies, being armed with either stone axes or laser pistols. They’ve decided to invade the surface world, for no substantial reason other than that it seems like a good idea, and immediately run afoul of Hawkman. Needless to say, this does not end well, and the entire Kogats race, Jupo included, are destroyed when Hawkman collapses their city into an undersea trench, because genociding nonhuman races is okay in comics.

    I really like the Kogats – the contrast between the regular caveman guys and enormous Jupo is fun, plus Jupo himself – 10 feet tall, flaming red hair, ram’s horns – is visually striking. So what if their actual plan is ho hum regular comic stuff? I’m surprised that Roy Thomas never brought this guy back to fight the All-Star Squadron, but since he didn’t, they’re ripe to be BRUNG BACK, if only as part of the weirdly extensive network of subsea communities that Atlantis is part of. I wanna see Aquaman try to do diplomacy with this dude!

    This issue also features Hawkman meeting Poseidon who gives him the power to breathe underwater. I can’t actually figure out if he ever used this power again – it certainly doesn’t come up again in any Golden Age stories I’ve read, but it seems like the sort of thing your Roy Thomas or Geoff Johns would just love to incorporate into a story. Problem is, the fact that Hawkman has this power seems to be a mid-tier popular bit of trivia and finding out whether everyone is just talking about this story or not is a bit more effort than I care to expend.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 241: KING JUPO

    (Flash Comics v1 009, 1940)

    King Jupo is the leader of the Kogats, a race of water-breathing caveman types who live beneath New York Harbor and have a fun mix of technologies, being armed with either stone axes or laser pistols. They’ve decided to invade the surface world, for no substantial reason other than that it seems like a good idea, and immediately run afoul of Hawkman. Needless to say, this does not end well, and the entire Kogats race, Jupo included, are destroyed when Hawkman collapses their city into an undersea trench, because genociding nonhuman races is okay in comics.

    I really like the Kogats – the contrast between the regular caveman guys and enormous Jupo is fun, plus Jupo himself – 10 feet tall, flaming red hair, ram’s horns – is visually striking. So what if their actual plan is ho hum regular comic stuff? I’m surprised that Roy Thomas never brought this guy back to fight the All-Star Squadron, but since he didn’t, they’re ripe to be BRUNG BACK, if only as part of the weirdly extensive network of subsea communities that Atlantis is part of. I wanna see Aquaman try to do diplomacy with this dude!

    This issue also features Hawkman meeting Poseidon who gives him the power to breathe underwater. I can’t actually figure out if he ever used this power again – it certainly doesn’t come up again in any Golden Age stories I’ve read, but it seems like the sort of thing your Roy Thomas or Geoff Johns would just love to incorporate into a story. Problem is, the fact that Hawkman has this power seems to be a mid-tier popular bit of trivia and finding out whether everyone is just talking about this story or not is a bit more effort than I care to expend.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 240: PROFESSOR KITZOFF

    (Flash Comics v1 008)

    Professor Kitzoff makes me sad because he is categorically not the Sunspot Wizard. Oh sure, someone at DC or in the fan community went back and assigned titles to all the untitled Golden Age stories and they called this one “the Sunspot Wizard”, but that’s nothing. I love an unofficial name as much as (probably more than) the next guy, but they have to a) come from the text of the story itself and b) can’t just be replacing the actual name by which the character is actually referred!

    So, yes, sad. Professor “Boring Name” Kitzoff has followed the popular criminal scientist path of making an astonishing breakthrough based on junk science – in this case the idea that sunspots affect world events. He has a cool ray that supposedly allows him to affect these sunspots and thus the fate of humanity, but luckily for humanity, Hawkman and his pal Doctor French are on the case and Kitzoff is hounded from New York to the Andes until being accidentally shot by one of his own henchmen. Ho hum.

    My depression is only lifted by the fact that this is the adventure in which Hawkman is seemingly killed and his seeming corpse is nailed up in a coffin with lots of gaps between the boards for some reason, leading to one of the best images of the Golden Age: