The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: saboteur

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 646: THE LIZARD

    (Fight Comics 006, 1940)

    The Lizard was (will be?) the leader of a group of Grotonian spies working to sabotage the military of Greater America in the far-off future year of 1998 AD. He had (will have?) the pretty clever idea of being arrested as a petty thief and running his operation from inside a jail cell but unfortunately for his reputation as a smart guy he then fell for the most obvious trick in the world when Saber the Spy Fighter, head of Greater American Super Intelligence, was put in his cell for an unstated crime and in full super-power granting uniform and casually “allowed himself to be recruited to the Grotonian cause.”.

  • MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 011

    Incorrigible scamps the lot of them.

    This unnamed scientist uses fake spirits, death traps and so forth to drive adventurer Ted Crane and his companions away from the jungle temple he is looting. BUT! He has made a classic mistake: they weren’t planning on entering the temple in the first place and based on their action in earlier issues they certainly don’t object to white people hauling off as much ancient African swag as possible. He gets punched out a window to his death for no reason! (Exciting Comics 004, 1940)

    This fellow, name of Terro, has a scheme to peddle his noiseless super explosive bombs to the hostile Kordian government, a sound, if evil, plan. His inventive genius is not however matched by his common sense, however, and he makes the key mistake of demonstrating his explosive by bombing the village just outside his front door. Like, if his castle wasn’t on top of a mountain I reckon it would be about a ten minute walk from the crater. Needless to say, Yank Wilson explodes him with extreme prejudice. (Fantastic Comics 004, 1940)

    Like Terro, Professor Snead here is a scientist of the near future who makes the critical error of testing his new explosive (in this case one of the military holy grails of the 40s, the flying torpedo, or to us savvy moderns, the guided missile) on a small town instead of, for example, a big rock. Wholesale loss of human life again leads Yank Wilson to show up and Snead too is exploded by his own creation. (Fantastic Comics 005, 1940)

    These unnamed Mexican scientists have an okay plan – sabotage the US agricultural industry so that they are forced to import food from South of the border – but I question the efficacy of giant crop-eating rat-lizards over, say, a plague of regular-sized mice. I also question the sanity of everyone who sees these things and calls them “giant insects”, i.e., everyone in the story.

    Samson of course steps in and defeats not only the – ugh – “giant insects” but also some chemically mutated bulls, and given the sensitive depictions of Mexicans above would it surprise you that the comic ends with him building a wall along the US-Mexico border? (Fantastic Comics 006, 1940)

  • GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 013

    GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 013

    Here come the also-rans.

    We’ve got another Leader, and this time he’s not a generically-fascist spy but the head of a gang looking to extort the New York World’s Fair via a series of bombings. Of course the Fantom of the Fair cannot let this stand and quickly tracks them down to a small island base.

    If the first reason I included the Leader aka Relmar here is because I enjoy a monocled man with a high opinion of himself then the second is the fact that the Fantom, without ever actually saying a word, lays such complete waste to Relmar, his men and his entire island. Don’t mess with the World’s Fair, is the message I’m getting. (Amazing Adventure Funnies 001, 1940)

    A masked saboteur of no clear allegiance, Biff Durgo aka the Masked Man is the poorly-disguised sole foe faced by Pack Morgan, Super Detective. (Detective Eye 002, 1940)

    Lead by the mysterious “One”, gangsters Face Greer and Shiv Scarpino are bleeding the city of Midtown dry. That’s why Mayor Kurt Piersole calls in trigger-happy detective Gunner Thompson, only it’s not, because when it all shakes out it turns out that Mayor Piersole was indulging in the old trick of establishing his innocence by being the one to call in the forces of order. It was a cliche in 1940 and continues to be to this day and then as now it ends one way: the One wasn’t quite as clever as he thought he was and ends up on the wrong side of his own hired gun. (Exciting Comics 001, 1940)

    John Blodgett kills his partner Samuel Forbes in order to make off with his claim on a lucrative gold mine but fails to reckon with the fact that Forbes’ daughter Caroline might just wonder what happened to her father and so has to don a mask and engage in some truly half-assed attempts to bump both her and private eye Dan Williams off before they uncover his dumb secret. (Exciting Comics 001, 1940)

  • GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 013

    Here come the also-rans.

    We’ve got another Leader, and this time he’s not a generically-fascist spy but the head of a gang looking to extort the New York World’s Fair via a series of bombings. Of course the Fantom of the Fair cannot let this stand and quickly tracks them down to a small island base.

    If the first reason I included the Leader aka Relmar here is because I enjoy a monocled man with a high opinion of himself then the second is the fact that the Fantom, without ever actually saying a word, lays such complete waste to Relmar, his men and his entire island. Don’t mess with the World’s Fair, is the message I’m getting. (Amazing Adventure Funnies 001, 1940)

    A masked saboteur of no clear allegiance, Biff Durgo aka the Masked Man is the poorly-disguised sole foe faced by Pack Morgan, Super Detective. (Detective Eye 002, 1940)

    Lead by the mysterious “One”, gangsters Face Greer and Shiv Scarpino are bleeding the city of Midtown dry. That’s why Mayor Kurt Piersole calls in trigger-happy detective Gunner Thompson, only it’s not, because when it all shakes out it turns out that Mayor Piersole was indulging in the old trick of establishing his innocence by being the one to call in the forces of order. It was a cliche in 1940 and continues to be to this day and then as now it ends one way: the One wasn’t quite as clever as he thought he was and ends up on the wrong side of his own hired gun. (Exciting Comics 001, 1940)

    John Blodgett kills his partner Samuel Forbes in order to make off with his claim on a lucrative gold mine but fails to reckon with the fact that Forbes’ daughter Caroline might just wonder what happened to her father and so has to don a mask and engage in some truly half-assed attempts to bump both her and private eye Dan Williams off before they uncover his dumb secret. (Exciting Comics 001, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 575: NAD NEUROD

    (Champion Comics 009, 1940) 

    Nad Neurod is a gang boss with an ambitious and not-uncommon-in-comics scheme: knock out the power and other utilities so that you can take advantage of the resultant confusion and loot an entire city (NYC in this case) at once! Even more importantly, he and his gang provide the perfect test/demonstration of the Human Meteor’s powers in his first foray into the outside world.

    (Nad Neurod is also exactly the kind of moniker that makes my Backward Name Senses tingle, but I’ll be danged if I can find any evidence of anyone named Dan Doruen existing ever, let alone in 1940. I’d put money on it being a reference to something, but sadly I must place it on the big Pile of Unsolvable Puzzles and move on with my life)

    Neurod and his cronies have a particular role to play, and that is to be a reasonably credible threat that a super-hero can thrash on their first outing, and they serve their purpose admirably – they completely flummox the authorities of New York City (probably) and are themselves flummoxed (and mostly killed) by the Human Meteor.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 547: THE HOODED TERROR

    (Smash Comics 003, 1939)

    It’s a good name but I’m afraid that the Hooded Terror is just a stock crypto-fascist European saboteur attempting to destroy the Panama Canal and trap the US fleet in the Pacific in order to set up an invasion of the East Coast. It’s no great loss to fiction when he gets cold-cocked by G-2 agent Wings Wendall and left behind in a sinking submarine to drown.

    Other than some degree of admiration for his ability to use a periscope while wearing a loose cloth mask over his eyes my one positive note about the Hooded Terror is that he had a real commitment to clear labelling. Never has exposition been handled so seamlessly.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 547: THE HOODED TERROR

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 547: THE HOODED TERROR

    (Smash Comics 003, 1939)

    It’s a good name but I’m afraid that the Hooded Terror is just a stock crypto-fascist European saboteur attempting to destroy the Panama Canal and trap the US fleet in the Pacific in order to set up an invasion of the East Coast. It’s no great loss to fiction when he gets cold-cocked by G-2 agent Wings Wendall and left behind in a sinking submarine to drown.

    Other than some degree of admiration for his ability to use a periscope while wearing a loose cloth mask over his eyes my one positive note about the Hooded Terror is that he had a real commitment to clear labelling. Never has exposition been handled so seamlessly.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 541: THE HOODED FIGURE

    (Silver Streak Comics 001, 1939)

    Simply a man who reacts to losing his pilot’s license in a very rational way: he sabotages planes at the local airfield and also booby traps all the parachutes so that they will strangle anyone that uses them.

    Upon being hunted down by two-fisted detective the Duke, the Hooded Figure makes the common mistake of trying to get away in a plane that he himself had already sabotaged. Ah, irony.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 541: THE HOODED FIGURE

    (Silver Streak Comics 001, 1939)

    Simply a man who reacts to losing his pilot’s license in a very rational way: he sabotages planes at the local airfield and also booby traps all the parachutes so that they will strangle anyone that uses them.

    Upon being hunted down by two-fisted detective the Duke, the Hooded Figure makes the common mistake of trying to get away in a plane that he himself had already sabotaged. Ah, irony.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 520: THE HIGH PRIEST OF THOR

    (Blue Bolt v2 006, 1941) 

    We open on an aircraft factory. Suddenly, a strange vibration fills the air. After an initial moment of surprise, the workers all file out the door and into a cave in a nearby hillside. Inside?

    THIS MAN!

    This man is the self-proclaimed High Priest of Thor and before we get into what he’s up to I’d like to commend his commitment to the costume. Your average religious-type villain is not going to these lengths to look ceremonial and in fact are more likely to be in the Robe and Cloth Mask club. I particularly like the helmet, which looks like it must be obstructing his vision and crushing his nose at the same time but which manages to combine wings and horns in a single Platonic Fake Viking Helmet. Also note the mustache, which flies off the first time he is punched and just reaffirms his commitment to the bit.

    Of course the High Priest of Thor ends up being some sort of pseudo-Nazi spy looking to sabotage the US defense program. It’s never explicitly laid out but his vibration machine seems to put its subjects into a mentally receptive hypnotic state and the Thor stuff is all a way of getting them to do what he wants: if Thor is real and they are fanatical Thor cultists like this guy says then why not blow up an airplane factory? Too bad for the High Priest of Thor that the Twister had to show up and ruin things but at least he got to look cool with a tommy gun before it was all over.

    Bonus: this Thor explainer written by someone who did not have the gumption to look up anything about Thor.