The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: Dickie Dean Boy Inventor

  • REAL PERSON ROUND-UP 023

    It’s an Axis-heavy Round-Up this time, for reasons which will soon become clear.

    Adolf Hitler:

    Daredevil Comics 001 might not have been the first comic book to feature its title character physically attacking Adolf Hitler on the front cover, but it makes up for this in sheer volume of different characters who are getting in on the act. And the comic itself is also 100% concerned with super-heroes beating up and otherwise inconveniencing Hitler.

    Hitler’s first appearance in the comic proper also includes a rogue’s gallery of Third Reich figures, including Josef Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Goering, Admiral von Roeder* and General Walther von Brauchitsch. Also present: the fortune teller who supposedly advised Hitler on a day-to-day basis.

    *more on him later 

    Though Daredevil is present to merely spy on the well-attended meeting above, he is found out and has to punch out not just Hitler but Goering and Goebbels as well in order to make his escape.

    Hitler’s second major humiliation in the issue comes at the hands claws of the Claw. He makes a deal with the giant villain on behalf of his Japanese allies, but the Daredevil gets involved in and ruins the whole operation.

    Hitler has to pay a hefty bribe just to get out with his skin intact. This is a fine illustration of why most villains don’t negotiate this sort of thing in person.

     

    Finally, the suprisingly hands-on Hitler is coordinating a Nazi invasion of Africa when the Daredevil and jungle hero Lance Hale get involved, giving the Daredevil the opportunity to land two more punches and a boomerang-assisted trip on the dictator.

    Lance Hale, meanwhile, pranks Hitler by giving him a shave with an incredibly accurate arrow, then almost body slams him to death before he is interrupted by Nazis. (Daredevil Comics 001, 1941) 

    Benito Mussolini: 

    A sad cameo from Il Duce after a portion of his fleet is sunk by the British. (Daredevil Comics 001, 1941) 

    Heinrich Himmler:

    Is Blackout’s Nazi foe Heinrich Himmel meant to be a version of Himmler or is it just a very Nazi collection of syllables? Hard to say. (Captain Battle Comics 001, 1941) 

    Hermann Goering: 

    Like Hitler, Goering is surprisingly willing to lead from the front in this issue. He loses a dogfight with Cloud Curtis and almost kills himself over it. (Daredevil Comics 001, 1941)

    Josef Goebbels:

    Goebbels, meanwhile, steals a codebreaking machine devised by by boy inventor Dickie Dean.

    He doesn’t manage to hang onto it for long before he gets beaten up and mummified by Dean and the Daredevil (and Zip Todd, of course). (Daredevil Comics 001, 1941)

    the Koh-i-noor Diamond: 

    Once more a big ol’ gem is given a name that sounds like “Koh-i-noor,” in this case the (baseball-sized!) Kohnoor Diamond. (Captain Battle Comics 002, 1941)

    Lord Haw-Haw: 

    Lord Garnett here is a bit of a rarity as he starts out as a masked spy who will be appearing in the next Generic Costumed Villain Round-Up and then, after shooting Whiz, King of Falcons (see the next Catalogue of Wounds) flees to Germany and takes up a career in propaganda broadcasting, where his distinctive and annoying laugh earns him the epithet “Lord Hee-Haw.”

    His new career doesn’t last very long, as he is shot down by the Silver Streak while doing some aerial broadcasting. (Daredevil Comics 001, 1941)

    Admiral von Roeder:

    Who is von Roeder is a very good question, because I can find no evidence that he actually existed. There are four plausible explanations for this:

    1. He’s a fictional Nazi who somehow got conflated with real ones. 

    2. There was an Admiral von Roeder but he was only noteworthy for exactly the length of time it took for this comic to be written and he thereafter sank into such obscurity that he is no longer remembered.

    3. The state of internet search is so wretched that a moderately obscure Nazi is currently unsearchable.

    4. They couldn’t come up with a real Nazi Admiral and so just made one up. 

    Regardless of his actual historicity, this von Roeder is beaten up by both Daredevil and a time-travelling Pirate Prince. (Daredevil Comics 001, 1941) 

    Winston Churchill: 

    Churchill invites both Daredevil and Silver Streak (and the most obnoxious version of Whiz, King of Falcons) to No. 10 Downing St to solicit their help with the war effort. (Daredevil Comics 001, 1941)

    More of this kind of thing

  • REAL PERSON ROUND-UP 023

    REAL PERSON ROUND-UP 023

    It’s an Axis-heavy Round-Up this time, for reasons which will soon become clear.

    Adolf Hitler:

    Daredevil Comics 001 might not have been the first comic book to feature its title character physically attacking Adolf Hitler on the front cover, but it makes up for this in sheer volume of different characters who are getting in on the act. And the comic itself is also 100% concerned with super-heroes beating up and otherwise inconveniencing Hitler.

    Hitler’s first appearance in the comic proper also includes a rogue’s gallery of Third Reich figures, including Josef Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Goering, Admiral von Roeder* and General Walther von Brauchitsch. Also present: the fortune teller who supposedly advised Hitler on a day-to-day basis.

    *more on him later 

    Though Daredevil is present to merely spy on the well-attended meeting above, he is found out and has to punch out not just Hitler but Goering and Goebbels as well in order to make his escape.

    Hitler’s second major humiliation in the issue comes at the hands claws of the Claw. He makes a deal with the giant villain on behalf of his Japanese allies, but the Daredevil gets involved in and ruins the whole operation.

    Hitler has to pay a hefty bribe just to get out with his skin intact. This is a fine illustration of why most villains don’t negotiate this sort of thing in person.

     

    Finally, the suprisingly hands-on Hitler is coordinating a Nazi invasion of Africa when the Daredevil and jungle hero Lance Hale get involved, giving the Daredevil the opportunity to land two more punches and a boomerang-assisted trip on the dictator.

    Lance Hale, meanwhile, pranks Hitler by giving him a shave with an incredibly accurate arrow, then almost body slams him to death before he is interrupted by Nazis. (Daredevil Comics 001, 1941) 

    Benito Mussolini: 

    A sad cameo from Il Duce after a portion of his fleet is sunk by the British. (Daredevil Comics 001, 1941) 

    Heinrich Himmler:

    Is Blackout’s Nazi foe Heinrich Himmel meant to be a version of Himmler or is it just a very Nazi collection of syllables? Hard to say. (Captain Battle Comics 001, 1941) 

    Hermann Goering: 

    Like Hitler, Goering is surprisingly willing to lead from the front in this issue. He loses a dogfight with Cloud Curtis and almost kills himself over it. (Daredevil Comics 001, 1941)

    Josef Goebbels:

    Goebbels, meanwhile, steals a codebreaking machine devised by by boy inventor Dickie Dean.

    He doesn’t manage to hang onto it for long before he gets beaten up and mummified by Dean and the Daredevil (and Zip Todd, of course). (Daredevil Comics 001, 1941)

    the Koh-i-noor Diamond: 

    Once more a big ol’ gem is given a name that sounds like “Koh-i-noor,” in this case the (baseball-sized!) Kohnoor Diamond. (Captain Battle Comics 002, 1941)

    Lord Haw-Haw: 

    Lord Garnett here is a bit of a rarity as he starts out as a masked spy who will be appearing in the next Generic Costumed Villain Round-Up and then, after shooting Whiz, King of Falcons (see the next Catalogue of Wounds) flees to Germany and takes up a career in propaganda broadcasting, where his distinctive and annoying laugh earns him the epithet “Lord Hee-Haw.”

    His new career doesn’t last very long, as he is shot down by the Silver Streak while doing some aerial broadcasting. (Daredevil Comics 001, 1941)

    Admiral von Roeder:

    Who is von Roeder is a very good question, because I can find no evidence that he actually existed. There are four plausible explanations for this:

    1. He’s a fictional Nazi who somehow got conflated with real ones. 

    2. There was an Admiral von Roeder but he was only noteworthy for exactly the length of time it took for this comic to be written and he thereafter sank into such obscurity that he is no longer remembered.

    3. The state of internet search is so wretched that a moderately obscure Nazi is currently unsearchable.

    4. They couldn’t come up with a real Nazi Admiral and so just made one up. 

    Regardless of his actual historicity, this von Roeder is beaten up by both Daredevil and a time-travelling Pirate Prince. (Daredevil Comics 001, 1941) 

    Winston Churchill: 

    Churchill invites both Daredevil and Silver Streak (and the most obnoxious version of Whiz, King of Falcons) to No. 10 Downing St to solicit their help with the war effort. (Daredevil Comics 001, 1941)

    More of this kind of thing

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 947: CAPTAIN SKULL-FACE

    (Silver Streak Comics 017, 1941)

    Nazi U-Boat commander Captain Skull-Face has two major claims to fame: firstly there is his eponymous skull face. Even without that, however, he is absolutely loaded down with Nazi superweapons, any one of which would have been enough to carry a comic book story. 

    Starting off, Skull-Face has a submarine “the size of a big battleship.” Big enough to be mistaken for a small island

    Secondly, the u-boat is equipped with a vibration machine capable of disabling ships’ engines and rendering humans unconscious, which enables Captain Skull-Face and his crew to capture and loot Allied ships with impunity

    Way up in the first set of panels, Captain Skull-Face mentions sending captured ships back to shore to be reused so that he can loot them again. What he actually does is essentially fire them at the East coast of the US like so many enormous torpedoes – the reason that he meets Dickie Dean in the first place is that he and Zip Todd are on the hunt for whoever was blasting ships at them. 

    Finally, Skull-Face’s u-boat is home to a squadron of manned torpedoes piloted by insane men. A pretty rare resource to be expending all at once, might I add.

    Despite all of this advanced armament, Captain Skull-Face is outmatched by boy inventor Dickie Dean. Their encounter culminates in the Captain setting off the volcano at the centre of his own island base and almost getting roasted before being rescued by Dean and his pal Zip Todd and subdued using a Home Alone trap.

    SKULL SCORE: 2/5 It’s a good look but there’s still a lot of flesh on that head. 

    Categorized in: Body (Face, Skull), Generica (Captains), Murder (U-Boat Commanders) 

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 947: CAPTAIN SKULL-FACE

    (Silver Streak Comics 017, 1941)

    Nazi U-Boat commander Captain Skull-Face has two major claims to fame: firstly there is his eponymous skull face. Even without that, however, he is absolutely loaded down with Nazi superweapons, any one of which would have been enough to carry a comic book story. 

    Starting off, Skull-Face has a submarine “the size of a big battleship.” Big enough to be mistaken for a small island

    Secondly, the u-boat is equipped with a vibration machine capable of disabling ships’ engines and rendering humans unconscious, which enables Captain Skull-Face and his crew to capture and loot Allied ships with impunity

    Way up in the first set of panels, Captain Skull-Face mentions sending captured ships back to shore to be reused so that he can loot them again. What he actually does is essentially fire them at the East coast of the US like so many enormous torpedoes – the reason that he meets Dickie Dean in the first place is that he and Zip Todd are on the hunt for whoever was blasting ships at them. 

    Finally, Skull-Face’s u-boat is home to a squadron of manned torpedoes piloted by insane men. A pretty rare resource to be expending all at once, might I add.

    Despite all of this advanced armament, Captain Skull-Face is outmatched by boy inventor Dickie Dean. Their encounter culminates in the Captain setting off the volcano at the centre of his own island base and almost getting roasted before being rescued by Dean and his pal Zip Todd and subdued using a Home Alone trap.

    SKULL SCORE: 2/5 It’s a good look but there’s still a lot of flesh on that head. 

    Categorized in: Body (Face, Skull), Generica (Captains), Murder (U-Boat Commanders) 

  • REAL PERSON ROUND-UP 022

    REAL PERSON ROUND-UP 022

    What percentage of these people knew that they had ever been portrayed in a comic book, you reckon?

    Adolf Hitler:

    Hitler gets beaten up by the Silver Streak after he captures and attempts to kill Meteor. (Silver Streak Comics 016, 1941)

    A particularly parodic version of Hitler deploys a super weapon that is ultimately thwarted by Dickie Dean.  (Silver Streak Comics 017, 1941) 

    Charles Biro:

    Gangster Chick Biro almost gets killed by his boss the Domino but is saved when Presto Martin takes his place. (Silver Streak Comics 009, 1941)

    Genghis Khan:

    The Bingham Boys and their friends hunt down the Sword of Genghis Khan to a Tibetan lamasery, where the Grand Lama claims to be the descendant of the Khan and thus entitled to conquer the world. Our heroes beat up the would-be Khan and spirit the sword away to an American museum. (Silver Streak Comics 016, 1941)

    George Roussos: 

    It’s a classic case of slapping your fellow comic book creator’s name on a background sign as “Presto Martin” scribe Bob Wood uses Roussos’ name on an apartment building. (Silver Streak Comics 010, 1941)

    Next issue of the same strip features the headline “Roussos Does it Again! Famous Cartoonist Meets Second Deadline! I can hardly wait to read Roussos’ work in Daredevil Comics to see if he shoots back. 

    Same issue features Roussos’ Army & Navy Store, with a “Jerry Robinson, Prop.” thrown in for good measure. (Silver Streak Comics 011, 1941)

    George Washington: 

    Deploys his personal agent Dan Dearborn to escort a gunpowder shipment and help protect it from capture by the British. (Silver Streak Comics 008, 1941)

    George Rogers Clark: 

    That gunpowder is transported downriver by Clark, a Revolutionary War hero whom I was unfamiliar with and whose Wikipedia page is predictably fraught. (Silver Streak Comics 008, 1941)

    Captain John Neville: 

    Commander of the Fort Pitt garrison at Pittsburgh, where he briefly meets Dan Dearborn. (Silver Streak Comics 008, 1941)

    Mao Zedong: 

    He doesn’t play a direct role in the story, but Mao Tung here is definitely a stand-in for Mao Zedong, aka Mao Tse-tung. Captain Battle saves him from an assassination attempt by a Japanese spy. (Captain Battle Comics 001, 1941)

    Samuel Goldwyn:

    Goldbyn, head of Paragold Film Studios, is a classic stand-in for Sam Goldwyn of MGM. (Silver Streak Comics 017, 1941)

    Unknown News Broadcaster Jimmie Fidler: 

    As you can see, above, I was initially unable to find the reference point for Jimmy Fiddle here. The problem is that I have been conditioned to think a certain way about these stand-in names, so I spent a lot of effort looking for “James Diffle” and “John Oboe” and so forth, and didn’t even consider that it might be something as simple as “Jimmie Fidler” until I remembered that we had already encountered a Jimmy Fiddle and filed him under Unknown. 

    Sorry for disrespecting your 50+ year media career, Jimmie Fidler. In my defense, you retired when I was three years old. (Silver Streak Comics 009, 1941) 

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 935: PROFESSOR BLANKHORNE

    (Silver Streak Comics 013, 1941)

    Dickie Dean, Boy Inventor has a new invention: the Photo-Lightning Machine, with which he can cause a bolt of lightning to crash down on anyplace he pleases, like the deserted house across the road from him that nobody was planning on using, hopefully. The only catch is that he hasn’t yet figured out how to get the lightning to strike a target that is in water.

    Dickie and his pal Zip Todd take the plans for the machine to Dickie’s lawyer to have it registered at the patent office, only to find a new face ready to take his business. This is C.B. Wolf, a foreign agent who has infiltrated the firm specifically to steal Dickie’s inventions for his home country. Wolf wires the plans home to the laboratory of Professor Blankhorne, the second greatest inventor in the world, barring Dickie (and how that must rankle Professor Skinn), who decides that rather than using them to construct his own machine he will save time by travelling to Castleton to acquire the original.

    Dickie is of course unwilling to sign over his shiny new weapon of mass destruction to an Axis agent and capable of defeating the Professor’s crude attempt to mug him for it, which forces Blankhorne to establish a Stateside volcano lair to operate out of.

    Blankhorne’s second attempt at obtaining the Photo-Lightning Machine involves sending a storm of remote-controlled and explosive model planes down on Castleton, Pennsylvania and presumably just kind of hoping that they will kill Dickie but leave his invention intact. This attempt is foiled by a patented Dickie Dean lightning storm that brings all of the planes down safely outside of town.

    It is at this point that I must question Professor Blankhorne’s motives for confronting Dickie Dean. As mentioned above, he claims that stealing the machine will be quicker than building one, yet between the trans-Atlantic journey and the time spent in preparing his drone fleet, this effort has taken Blankhorne at least three and a half months so far. Is this the sunk cost fallacy at play, or is the Professor trying to prove that he is not merely the second-greatest inventor on Earth?

    Blankhorn (along with the surprisingly hands-on CB Wolf) are seemingly handed victory on a platter when Dickie’s pal Zip Todd sets out to confront them with a baseball bat and is promptly imprisoned and – both inexplicably and importantly – tied up and suspended in a big tub of water.

    Thanks to the aforementioned flaw in the Photo-Lightning Machine’s targeting, Dickie is able to blast Blankhorne’s entire base without hitting Zip Todd, and when the villains attempt to escape in the Sky Bug he blows them out of the air with a complete lack of remorse. 

    Astonishingly (considering the fact that he was blown up on-panel), Professor Blankhorne manages to return in Silver Streak Comics 015. He infiltrates Dickie Dean’s new high-tech laboratory in the guise of an old flower seller (and gruesomely murders Dickie’s head of security in a vat of lye) as part of a scheme to loot the place of all of its technological wizardry. A solid plan, though I will note that he does so on the first day that the lab is in operation and so his haul is mostly made up of the stuff that Dean had already created.

    Though the law is no match for Dickie Dean’s lightning cannon (a distinct invention from the Photo-Lightning Machine), Blankhorne is no match for a couple of teenaged boys in a smoke screen, and he is captured with much greater ease than in his first appearance.

    Categorized in: Accessories (Drones), Doctors & Professors, Ideologies (Crypto-Fascists)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 935: PROFESSOR BLANKHORNE

    (Silver Streak Comics 013, 1941)

    Dickie Dean, Boy Inventor has a new invention: the Photo-Lightning Machine, with which he can cause a bolt of lightning to crash down on anyplace he pleases, like the deserted house across the road from him that nobody was planning on using, hopefully. The only catch is that he hasn’t yet figured out how to get the lightning to strike a target that is in water.

    Dickie and his pal Zip Todd take the plans for the machine to Dickie’s lawyer to have it registered at the patent office, only to find a new face ready to take his business. This is C.B. Wolf, a foreign agent who has infiltrated the firm specifically to steal Dickie’s inventions for his home country. Wolf wires the plans home to the laboratory of Professor Blankhorne, the second greatest inventor in the world, barring Dickie (and how that must rankle Professor Skinn), who decides that rather than using them to construct his own machine he will save time by travelling to Castleton to acquire the original.

    Dickie is of course unwilling to sign over his shiny new weapon of mass destruction to an Axis agent and capable of defeating the Professor’s crude attempt to mug him for it, which forces Blankhorne to establish a Stateside volcano lair to operate out of.

    Blankhorne’s second attempt at obtaining the Photo-Lightning Machine involves sending a storm of remote-controlled and explosive model planes down on Castleton, Pennsylvania and presumably just kind of hoping that they will kill Dickie but leave his invention intact. This attempt is foiled by a patented Dickie Dean lightning storm that brings all of the planes down safely outside of town.

    It is at this point that I must question Professor Blankhorne’s motives for confronting Dickie Dean. As mentioned above, he claims that stealing the machine will be quicker than building one, yet between the trans-Atlantic journey and the time spent in preparing his drone fleet, this effort has taken Blankhorne at least three and a half months so far. Is this the sunk cost fallacy at play, or is the Professor trying to prove that he is not merely the second-greatest inventor on Earth?

    Blankhorn (along with the surprisingly hands-on CB Wolf) are seemingly handed victory on a platter when Dickie’s pal Zip Todd sets out to confront them with a baseball bat and is promptly imprisoned and – both inexplicably and importantly – tied up and suspended in a big tub of water.

    Thanks to the aforementioned flaw in the Photo-Lightning Machine’s targeting, Dickie is able to blast Blankhorne’s entire base without hitting Zip Todd, and when the villains attempt to escape in the Sky Bug he blows them out of the air with a complete lack of remorse. 

    Astonishingly (considering the fact that he was blown up on-panel), Professor Blankhorne manages to return in Silver Streak Comics 015. He infiltrates Dickie Dean’s new high-tech laboratory in the guise of an old flower seller (and gruesomely murders Dickie’s head of security in a vat of lye) as part of a scheme to loot the place of all of its technological wizardry. A solid plan, though I will note that he does so on the first day that the lab is in operation and so his haul is mostly made up of the stuff that Dean had already created.

    Though the law is no match for Dickie Dean’s lightning cannon (a distinct invention from the Photo-Lightning Machine), Blankhorne is no match for a couple of teenaged boys in a smoke screen, and he is captured with much greater ease than in his first appearance.

    Categorized in: Accessories (Drones), Doctors & Professors, Ideologies (Crypto-Fascists)

  • GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 038

    Criminals!

    Unnamed Gambler: 

    Not much is revealed about this fellow, but what we do know for sure is that he has access to a super strength drink and that he has been using it to clean up on gambling by slipping it to boxers and race horses with long odds. He also relies on the potion to help him escape from the cops, which backfires on him because Presto Martin, having taken the place of one of the boxers, is also hopped up on super juice and engages him in thrilling aerial combat.

    This super strength potion is the sort of thing I accuse crooks of employing shrtsightedly for quick crime profit rather than marketing legitimately for unimaginable wealth but I might give this fellow a pass due to his clear gambling problem. (Silver Streak Comics 007, 1941)

    the White Dragon Flower:

    She might just be a generic femme fatale spy chief who shows up for three panels before her whole operation gets busted up by aviator Cloud Curtis but I’ll be danged if a) that isn’t a great look and b) “White Dragon Flower” isn’t a terrific name, even if it was clearly thrown together to sound as mysterious and Asian as possible. (Silver Streak Comics 007, 1941)

    Categorized in: Animals & Plants (Plants)

    the Murder Syndicate, Inc: 

    As thier name suggests, the Murder Syndicate, Inc are hitmen for hire, distinguished mainly by the fact that the Daredevil has to round them up twice thanks to a mid-trial escape engineered by their boss, the mysterious Man in Black.

    And just who is the Man in Black? Why, it’s Judge Harkins, the man presiding over the trial in question! Is this surprising? Only if this is your first-ever experience reading a piece of fiction. (Silver Streak Comics 012, 1941)

    Categorized in: Murder (Assassins), Professions (Corporations) 

    Armando Siam:

    Armando Siam and his henchman Alfonze are a couple of generically foreign crooks who roll into Castleton in their absurdly long car one day and just kind of stumble into gaining control over Dickie Dean’s army of deep sea salvage robots, which they of course immediately set to looting the place.

    The duo eventually get word of the treasure that Dickie had been intending to use the robots for in the first place and hijack a salvage vessel in a very visually entertaining manner. Alas, it is at this point that the Boy Inventor himself catches up with them and the due end up as octopus fodder during their escape attempt. (Silver Streak Comics 014, 1941)

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 079

    Look anywhere and you won’t find finer minor super-heroes. That’s our guarantee!

    Dickie Dean, Boy Inventor **UPDATE**: 

    Dickie Dean, Boy Inventor, continues to live up to his moniker and churn out the boy inventions in 1941. Some highlights:

    – several different models of remote controlled robot

    – an autopilot for ships

    -a code-breaking machine

    – a device for viewing the past

    – force rays

    – a drilling machine

    – a rope that is attracted to hair

    – indestructible metal

    – an invisibility device

    – both a lightning cannon and a means of making natural lightning strike at specific targets 

    – an oil detector

    – a vertigo ray 

    To facilitate his boundless inventive genius, in Silver Streak Comics 015 Dickie salvages a bunch of treasure from the ocean floor and uses it to build and staff a laboratory complex with one security guard and such features as a huge uncovered pit of lye. The plot potential is enormous.

    This actually happened in Silver Streak Comics 006 in 1940 but I neglected to note it: Dickie Dean no longer lives in the real New Castle, Pennsylvania but the fictional Castleton, presumably also Pennsylvania. This also prompts him to change the “N” on his shirt to a “C”. For about five issues until someone forgot, that is. 

    Categorized in: Accessories (Various), Location (Castleton, Pennsylvania)

    the Daredevil II:

    After the second engagement between the Claw and the Daredevil in their ongoing battle for the future of the United States (watch this space), the Claw ends up in jail, unable to use his powers and one week away from execution. This, reasons Daredevil, is the perfect time to go fishing in the South Seas. And as soon as he leaves the Claw breaks jail and threatens the sovereignty of the nation once more. This is just basic narrative causality, friends.

    The Claw then has a series of triumphs, culminating in him capturing and killing what appears to be the Daredevil! It’s an ignominious end for the hero, so it’s a good thing that it wasn’t really him: the dead Daredevil turns out to be the original’s never-before-seen-or-mentioned, unnamed brother, who tried to stand in for his sibling in his absence despite not having been raised by boomerangs or whatever Daredevil’s current origin is, and paid the ultimate price for it. 

    “Daredevil II” Hill is not only never given a first name but is never mentioned and certainly never mourned after the above panel. It’s very sad, really. (Silver Streak Comics 009, 1941)

    Categorized in: Catalogue of Wounds, Origins (Legacy Characters)

    Secret Agent X-101: 

    Secret Agent X-101 is actually newspaper publisher Bart Benson of the Daily Record, and while he doesn’t bring anything too unique to the secret agent comics genre in his two appearances he is the first example I am aware of of the secret agent/ civilian life divide being treated like a super-hero and their secret identity, so that’s something. (Silver Streak Comics 008, 1941)

    Categorized in: Day Job (Newspaper Publisher), Profession (Espionage), Team Membership (US Secret Service)

    the Pirate Prince: 

    A
    pompadoured pirate captain who, along with a crew of lovable rogues
    named things like Merry, Flip and Gilly, battles against the slave trade
    and other sea-borne evils of the Age of Sail. Given that he robs Jean
    Lafitte of his ill-gotten booty in his first appearance, I’d wager that
    he operates somewhere around 1810 CE or so. 

    While this strip is pretty consistent in its anti-slavery, pro brotherhood-of-man stance, it is also a 1940s comic, so it features quite a lot of comic relief racial humour. It’s a real mixed message! (Silver Streak Comics 007, 1941)

    Categorized in: Origin (Heroes of the Past), Profession (Pirate), Royalty (Princes)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 923: PROFESSOR SKINN

    (Silver Streak Comics 007, 1941)

    The Skinn family is being killed off – at least seven of them have been murdered on their birthdays, leaving only the odius Mortimer Skinn, and he soon follows, despite police protection. 

    Boy Inventor Dickie Dean hasn’t been idle while this campaign of murder has been going on: thanks to a surveillance balloon he raised over the town for the purpose, he and his pal Zip Todd are able to track the culprit to his home. There. they learn that he is a blind beggar whom they had prevented Mortimer Skinn from beating some months prior, and that he is in fact Mortimer’s brother and the sole surviving member of the Skinn clan.

    Professor Skinn (unsettling name. unsettling family name) reveals that Mortimer and his other brothers attempted to kill him for his life insurance some years back but had only succeeded in blinding him and leaving him for dead. He spent at least some of the intervening time creating his frankly amazing looking cybernetic eye/helmet and planning a revenge that with the death of Mortimer is complete. And now he’s ready to put his skills to use in the world of crime!

    Dickie rebuffs Skinn’s attempt to recruit him as a partner, so out comes the scalpel, the bone drill and the brain injection fluid, because Professor Skinn is not one to take no for an answer. Dickie Dean is promptly evilized and turned on to the benefits of a life of crime.

    The new super-science criminal duo proceed to create a precious metal-attracting magnet and go ham on the town’s gold supply.

    Fortunately for Dickie’s long-term viability as the lead character in a comic strip, Zip Todd gets himself free after days (weeks?) of imprisonment and turns the tables on Skinn thanks to some lax lab safety procedures that mean there’s just vials of nitroglycerine lying around to grab. Skinn reverses the evilization procedure with a handy ray and is hauled away… FOR NOW.

    (also Skinn is vulnerable to attacks on his enormous weak point, like a video game boss)

    Professor Skinn returns in Silver Streak Comics 008, where he escapes prison with the help of his assistant Blubber’s berserker strength. Please not that the Castleton PD saw fit to take away Skinn’s helmet when they locked him up, thus rendering him blind – I’d call that cruel and unusual punishment.

    Dickie, rightfully concerned about Skinn being on the loose, works on an invention that he can use to counter anything that the Professor throws at him, while Skinn does the same and then forces a confrontation by kidnapping Dickie’s parents.

    It’s a tehnological showdown: disintegrator ray vs invisibility ray, and Dickie’s invisibility gives him just enough of an edge to free his parents and destroy the disintegrator, though he himself is captured in the process.

    Professor Skinn next sets out to loot Castleton again, this time with an army of remote controlled robots, but between Zip Todd (overlooked in the scuffle) leading the entirety of the Castleton PD back to his base and a still-invisible Dickie getting loose and causing a ruckus he and Blubber are ultimately forced to zipline down the mountain to freedom.

    This is enough for Professor Skinn: he challenges Dickie to settle things with a war of inventions via singing telegram.

    Silver Streak Comics 009: the war of inventions kicks off after both parties have had a couple of months to prepare, in a fairly horrific fashion as Professor Skinn shells the Castleton High School.

    After putting some distance between them and their surviving classmates, Dickie and Zip Todd wait out the initial shelling in an impenetrable fort before sallying forth in a similarly impenetrable tank equipped with a force ray cannon. They are accompanied by a squadron of small but mighty robots to counter Skinn’s own robot forces. Skinn, in addition to his mechanical infantry, has an air force comprised of trained, bomb-dropping birds, and is conducting his artillery barrage from a base concealed behind a waterfall. 

    I must say that I was disappointed by Skinn’s use of fairly conventional artillery, but he won me back with the robot army and sea gull air force.  

    Professor Skinn is extracted from behind the waterfall when Dickie uses his force ray to bounce a few artillery shells back to their source, and then makes a bid for victory by having his birds carry off Dickie and Zip while he and Blubber steal Dickie’s super tank. It all ends badly, however, as Professor Skinn and Blubber blow themselves up while trying to activate the force ray. Professor Skinn has finally joined the rest of his family in Hell.

    OR HAS HE? 

    No, it turns out, because Silver Streak Comics 011 features a final appearance in which he attempts to chase Dickie and his pals away from fixing up an abandoned theme park that he has been hiding out in. This is a definite step down for the Professor, from legitimate threat to Scooby-Doo villain.

    Skinn’s main Teen Removal tool in this issue is a very Silver Age vehicle called the Gadget Octopus that is equipped with various gag tentacles (boxing glove tentacle, kicking foot tentacle, net tentacle, kid spanking tentacle etc) as well as a fire cannon for when things get serious.

    Once Dickie gets in a room with him, Professor Skinn is easily captured, as befits his fallen status. He’s taken off to jail once more (hopefully with a better lawyer who can successfully argue against eye confiscation this time) and is never seen again. Did he wisely retire or did the fact that Pennsylvania – where “Dickie Dean, Boy Inventor” is plausibly set – is a death penalty state and Skinn is a multiple murderer come into play? 

    Categorized in: Accessories (Various), Murder (Familicides), Origin (Blind Characters)