The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: 1938

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 679: THE EXPLOSION OF KRYPTON

    (Action Comics 001, 1938)

    Does this first version of the explosion of Krypton really fit the category of minor super-villain? Absolutely not. “The planet got too old and blew up” is a natural disaster, albeit an extreme one.

    The second appearance of the Explosion of Krypton, in Superman v1 001, 1939, doesn’t even blame the explosion on old age. It just happens. So why categorize it such? Because basically every time it shows up going forward (and it’s going to be a while – we’re currently reading comics from 1940-41 and the next appearance of Krypton is in 1948) the blame rests squarely on someone’s shoulders, whether it be the Kryptonian Science Council’s bureaucratic stultification and/or short-sighted self interest dooming their own citizens or the latest villain-of-the-week getting an unearned boost to their C.V., someone takes the heat for this disaster. And when they do, I’ll be there to take note of it.

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 017

    Another fresh hot basket of also-rans, just for you.

    the Mask:

    Scoop Cody, society reporter, is secretly vigilante crimefighter the Mask. He’s not terrific at concealing this fact – both love interest Elaine and villain Carlos figure it out during the course of the one extant Mask story – but he gets the job done. Of mild interest is that Scoop Cody is also the name of the Marvel’s reporter pal. (Star Comics v1 013, 1938*)

    the Phantom Rider: 

    The Phantom Rider is your standard masked cowboy, identity unknown. Given their similar names and that they are both Centaur Comics characters it is equally likely that he is a renamed Phantom o’ the Hills as it is that he is a separate creation. His horse is named Thunder. (Star Comics 016, 1938*)

    Air Man:

    Air Man is Drake Stevens, an ornithologist who embarks on a vigilante career after his father is murdered in an insurance scam on the high seas. He only makes a handful of appearances before Centaur folds, and here are the salient things about him:

    -Air Man is a “realistic” version of Hawkman, i.e., not realistic but in a slightly more plausible way than an antigravity belt. His wings are filled with helium and he has a little jet engine for propulsion (at least, as of his second appearance. Maybe he’s just very slowly gliding around in his first). He also has egg-shaped bombs, which isn’t relevant to the flying but is fun.

    -Air Man is not a generic bird-themed hero but in fact an albatross-themed protector of the seas, which is a niche that I have not encountered before and the closest that I can think of is the Marvel hero Stingray, and that’s just because they both fly and are ocean-based.

     -Air Man believes in protecting the high seas so much that he breaks up with his fiance rather than just… living in a lighthouse with her or whatever. Super-heroes love breaking up with people and then feeling noble about it. (Keen Detective Funnies 023, 1940)

    TNT Todd:

    TNT Todd had been a regular FBI agent having FBI agent adventures in Keen Detective Funnies for about a year when he became if not the earliest then certainly our first example of a non-super character getting a super-heroic makeover to fit comic trends (I tell a lie Tex Thomson/ Mr America has come up before but he made the switch in 1941). While overshadowed by fellow explosion-based hero the Human Bomb a year or so later I must admit to enjoying TNT Todd more on a conceptual level. Just a guy careening through a city via a series of explosions, theoretically helping people. (Keen Detective Funnies 021, 1940)

    *there are several issues of Star Comics from this time that are not readily available, including issues 012, 014 and 015. This means that both the Mask and the Phantom Rider could have earlier first appearances.

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 016

    A pretty motley collection this time.

    the Ermine:

    A frontier vigilante who wears a reversible ermine skin outfit (white for winter wear, brown for regular), leaves an ermine tail as his calling card and can communicate/ is friends with with all the creatures of the forest (except for the ermine, presumably). The Ermine would be an interesting character if he wasn’t explicitly and murderously racist against Native peoples. He’s classed as a minor hero here because all of his recorded adventures involve him acting as the protector of two youths but I assume that he has a lot of hate crimes under his belt. (Star Ranger Funnies v1 015, 1938)

    the Lone Marshal:

    I have a strong suspicion that the Lone Marshal is a Lone Ranger knockoff. Obviously there’s no way to peer into the past and be sure, and admittedly the name was a really big influence on my opinion, but I’m sticking with it. He’s got a Sioux companion named Vajo and a horse named Lobo, so he’s just as not-technically-Lone as the Ranger is. (The Comics 001, 1937)

    Doctor Doom:

    Doctor Doom, “the Robin Hood of International Spies,” is some sort of freelance spy chief who we join as he works for the small Balkan nation of Returia as they fend off invasion plans by their rival, the similarly-small, not-as-Balkan Kingdom of Merovia. Doctor Doom and his double handful of associates are on the back foot for the entirety of their time battling the Falcon and never really manage to get the upper hand before the feature is cancelled but I assume that they would have come out on top eventually. (The Comics 001, 1937)

    Jungleman:

    Jungleman is your typical white-kid-raised-by-beasts jungle hero, in this case based out of Cambodia. He lives in a temple and collects treasure and repeatedly kidnaps a young woman named Louise until she falls in love with him – like I said, typical stuff. 

    The real thing that sets Jungleman apart from his peers is both the sheer number and variety of his animal companions and their tremendous attrition rate – he goes through two tigers in his first three appearances when most jungle heroes have to make one big cat last their entire career! 

    Eventually, Louise and her dad convince Jungleman to relocate to the US under the more civilized alias of “Mister Jay” and I was all set for a lot of the same kind of fish-out-of-water stuff that Ty-Gor spent a lot of his time on but no! Their ship gets wrecked and they just end up in a different jungle! It’s the old jungle switcherooo and I never saw it coming! (Champion Comics 002, 1939)

    **UPDATE** Bob Phantom **UPDATE**

    Star Comics 001, 1938 features a different guy named Bob Phantom, which only reinforces my paranoia vis-a-vis there being a joke or a reference that I’m missing about the last name Phantom. Also, given the slapdash nature of early comics and their record keeping, nobody actually knows who created this guy and so it’s entirely possible that he’s the same Bob Phantom and Harry Shorten and/or Irv Novick just took him from Centaur to MLJ and upgraded him from stage magician to super-hero.

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 013

    More. MORE!

    Spiritman: 

    It’s impossible to say if Spiritman’s real name is Spirit Malcolm or if Spirit is just a nickname. The Golden Age is definitely a time in which nicknames are clearly signposted with quotation marks (including names like “Hank” half the time) but they’re also an age of inconsistent editorial standards. Let’s assume it is his given name, because then it’s another fun case of comic book nominative determinism.

    Spiritman is a scientific hero: armed with a Rayodine Pistol, he uses his Futurscope remote viewing device to hunt out evildoers and then – and this is where the “Spirit” part comes in – employs his Mistodine device to teleport to their location, or possibly to astrally project to their location. Either way, the effects are the same: the projected Spiritman can fly and is selectively invisible and intangible, allowing him to really just do whatever he wants. In his sole recorded adventure, this means killing about a dozen men for stealing US gold reserves. (Silver Streak Comics 001, 1939)

    the Wasp:

    Daily Free Press reporter Burton Slade is also masked vigilante the Wasp, so named because his weird cape looks a bit like insect wings if you squint. He also makes a buzzing sound sometimes. (Silver Streak Comics 001, 1939)

    Black X:

    Black X is Richard Spencer, a US espionage agent who travels around with his Indian manservant Batu (who of course is gifted with assorted mental powers). His stories are interesting enough to read but Black X himself is, appropriately enough, a bit of a cipher. Probably the most interesting thing about him is that the monocle he always wears is in fact more of an eye patch to cover his gouged-out eye. He also briefly went by the moniker Black Ace but that failed to stick. (Feature Funnies 013, 1938)

    the Invisible Hood:

    The fun thing about the Invisible Hood is that he doesn’t get his signature invisibility cloak until his second appearance, which means that for an unknown number of adventures he was just a Sandman-style two-fisted gas gun jockey in a very impractical full length form-fitting robe. Perhaps he was simply looking for a challenge. (Smash Comics 001, 1939)

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 012

    They just keep on coming.

    the Champ:

    The Champ is Captain America if Dr Erskine was a nutritionist rather than a… biologist? Biochemist? Whatever Dr Erskine was a doctor of. A sickly, bullied boy, the Champ (no other name given) was so-called by his bullies because he won at nothing. Scientist Dr Marlin, pitying the Champ, provides him with an experimental food supplement that over a period of seven years transforms him into a physical and mental paragon, the Champ of everything. (I really appreciate the writing on the description of the supplement – one could almost suspect that someone behind the scenes was considering a merchandising spin-off)

    Though the Champ tangles with spies and the like he is at his essence a college athlete character and so a lot of his stories are concerned with the surprisingly high-stakes world of betting on and rigging varsity level athletics, which is… not the most exciting subject matter for a comic. (Champion Comics 002, 1939)

    the Golden Knight:

    The Golden Knight is a heroic Crusader, a fairly popular genre of historical hero in the Golden Age and one that is very much out of favour now. He’ll probably come up again because he operates in an even more heightened comic book reality version of the Crusades than most of his peers, as evidenced by his first adventure, in which he stumbles upon what amounts to a group of Saracen Fifth Columnists lurking in an underground fortress in the English countryside.

    The Golden Knight (aka Sir Richard of Warwick) is also notable for the nonchalance with which he receives a vision of a sword-bearing lady in a one-piece swimsuit telling him to go to war. Unflappable, we call it. (Fantastic Comics 001, 1939)

    UPDATE 1940

    the Arrow:

    The Arrow, a very early costumed hero indeed, is simply an enormous guy in a hoodie (I mean, it’s basically a hoodie) who alternately kills criminals with a bow and arrow and threatens to do so to get what he wants. I have a slightly outsized level of affection for him because he approaches superheroics like I do an open world game like Skyrim.

    The Arrow does eventually get a more super-heroic look (roman sandal style lacing on his shins, a belt) and about the same time he gets shunk down to more average human proportions, possibly because the idea of a roughly seven foot guy with a carefully guarded secret identity was getting hard to write around. (Funny Pages v2 010, 1938)

    UPDATE 1940 

    UPDATE 1941 

    Mister Midnite:

    mister midnite

    Mister Midnite is Neal Carruthers III, a wealthy sportsman who dresses up in a tuxedo and domino mask to fight crime, with a watch face set to midnight as his calling card and the police on his tail. The only thing that really sets him apart from the horde of other besuited vigilantes is his weirdo power, which is that he can shout “stop, time!” and cause clocks to stop. Although in rereading the first Mister Midnite story again… he might just be able to stop that one clock in that one clock tower? It’s a dumb and bizarrely specific power and Mister Midnite is just lucky that I find that kind of thing charming. (Silver Streak Comics 001, 1939)

    UPDATE 1940 (Silver Streak Comics 002, 1940)

  • THE FATE OF ATLANTIS

    (Super Comics 002, 1938)

    This is just a regular account of some survivors of Atlantis (and their wives) setting up a colony somewhere – in this case the South Seas. The development of a priestly class obsessed with covering up their murder of one guy (to the extent that he is eventually made their god of Justice!) is pretty fun.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 420: THE HOODED ARCHER

    (Jumbo Comics 003-005, 1938-1939)

    The Hooded Archer is included here as a curiosity. He gets an enormous buildup! He’s going to teach the entire movie company that is shooting on hero Wiley Wilton’s ranch the meaning of terror!

    Here is the meaning of terror. Terror is when:

    – someone aims but does not fire an arrow at a man (jackass actor Geoffrey Parker)

    – they then shoot a distinctive arrow at another man (Wiley Wilton)

    – a bandit (Henry Fleetfoot) is broken out of jail

    – the first man (Geoffrey Parker again) is murdered with a distinctive arrow, framing Wiley Wilton

    And then the Hooded Archer leaves the narrative completely. Henry Fleetfoot is the antagonist for a couple more issues and then the story ends on a cliffhanger – the serial keeps going but clearly at least one episode in which the Archer is revealed to be either actor Shelby Adams or director Mr Schwartz is just missing. It’s one of the more egregious times that the somewhat slapdash way that early anthology comics were put together has lead to a completely forgotten and lost story element like this!

  • FASCIST GOON CLEARING HOUSE 001

    There are various groups of fascist goons in comics and doing an individual entry for each bunch would be a slog, so it’s time for another grouping of jerks!

    The Yellowshirts here put in a better showing than most and almost manage to take over NYC before they get beaten down by the Patriot. (Human Torch v1 004, 1941)

    Do the Brown Hoods sound kind of like how the Mafia was described in the 30s? Yes. Is that going to stop me from including them here? No. (More Fun Comics 036, 1938)

    The Yellow Battalion are most notable for their fancy hats, as they end up getting the tar beat out of them in roughly three panels by Red, White and Blue… (All American 005, 1939)

    … who also obliterate the slightly-more-organized Black Cross a couple of issues later (All American 008, 1939)

  • SEMI-MINOR SUPER-HEROS: FIGHTER PILOT EDITION

    Conundrum: Golden Age fighter pilot characters are essentially a very minor subset of super-heroes, and they are also very boring to me. I  feel a compulsion to write something about them and also to slump sideways in my seat when contemplating their existence.

    Solution: since the only really interesting thing about them is their cool names, I will list those.

    the Flying Flame (Daring Mystery Comics 006, 1940)

    the Flying Fox (More Fun Comics 037, 1938)

    the Hell Diver (Hit Comics 014, 1941)

    the Scarlet Ace (Amazing-Man Comics 013, 1940)

    the Sky Devils (Daring Mystery Comics 002, 1940)

    the Spitfire (Crack Comics 015, 1941)

    the War Bird (Slam-Bang Comics 003, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO 003: THE FLYING FOX

    (More Fun Comics 037-051, 1938-1940)

    Rex Darrell! The Flying Fox! One of the most dull Golden Age aviator heroes, but as with so many of them, he has a cool name so here he is.