The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: saboteur

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 487: THE EEL

    (Big 3 006, 1941) 

    Our story opens with Samson investigating a series of mysterious deaths and ship disappearances in naval yards across the country. Cut to beloved Samson supporting character J. Rembrandt Speedball hilariously painting camouflage on a Navy cruiser. He is briefly distracted by horniness, and when he manages to get ahold of himself *pow*, the ship has vanished.

    Speedball is arrested as a spy and spends the rest of the issue failing to commit suicide in his cell (a hilarious joke in the 40s, I guess), while Samson very convincingly disguises himself as a sailor. This smokes out the real criminal, the Eel, a saboteur of no stated or even implied affiliation who has been substituting the Navy’s ship paint with a variety that becomes acidic when opposed to an electric charge. It turns out that the Navy just wasn’t thinking to check if their ships had sunk! And also that J. Rembrandt Speedball was so horny for that lady that he completely missed any sight or sound of an entire cruiser sinking about three feet away from him. That’s some paint!

    Anyway, Samson goes ahead and drowns everyone at the end. Message to all aquatic-themed villains: be more amphibious.

  • MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 005

    Just a little crypto-fascist saboteur named Dr Vee who battled Dynamic Man but I like his name and I like his style. His sartorial style. Not the fascism. (Mystic v1 002, 1940)

    Lemo here has a mechanical mole-style tank and reckons he can take over the world with it after almost destroying one (1) circus tent. It’s a good thing he was blown up by one of Marvel’s many Herculeses before he could get too far and get disappointed. (Mystic Comics v1 004, 1940)

    This fellow, known only as the Mystery Man, has been working on the problem of how to counter snipers in warfare, and the scheme that he has come up with involves breeding up vicious wolf-dogs, training them to hate a particular smell and then applying that smell to the shoes of enemy combatants so that the dogs hunt and kill them. There’s a slight problem with this plan that the two crypto-fascist gentlemen that he’s trying to sell this system to don’t seem to come on to, even when he offers to sell them the scent and the dogs and doesn’t mention offering a dedicated group of scent-applying agents (or maybe he had some smaller dogs trained to do the job and he was going to upsell them later).

    The Mystery Man only gets caught because he has been picking up hitchhiking college students and using them to train the dogs and the person responsible for their safety is friends with giant super-hero Mighty Man and long story short the Mystery Man gets eaten by dogs. (Amazing-Man Comics 009, 1940)

    This here unnamed fella has a four-step plan: 

    1. Capture the Iron Skull 

    2. Inject the Iron Skull with a serum that turns him completely to iron

    3. Inject his iron blood into robots to make them alive somehow

    4. Profit

    Steps 1 and 2 go fine but as seen above a major flaw in the plan is that the Iron Skull is now more powerful and mops the floor with his erstwhile captor. The robots don’t even show up! (Amazing-Man Comics 015, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 409: THE SPHINX

    (Mystery Men Comics 018, 1941)

    The Sphinx is (somewhat appropriately) a bit convoluted? Or maybe disjointed? It’s hard to put into words but there is a weird dreamlike quality to some Golden Age comic books and the Blue Beetle stories from Fox Features often have it.

    To begin: the Sphinx is a mysterious figure who causes subway accidents and then utters threats and pronouncements in a booming voice, seemingly from nowhere. The Blue Beetle swiftly discovers that one of the Sphinx’s minions is in fact crouched nearby with a phonograph, and after some shenanigans and booby traps manages to track down the man who purchased the phonograph’s needle: Mr Ivan. 

    But Mr Ivan is dead, according to his burly identical sister who drives like a maniac. He can’t be the Sphinx!

    Or can he? Yes he can, because Mr Ivan and Miss Ivan are in fact the same person! A person who is getting revenge on the subway company for firing them. And look, I know that reading into past media can be a rocky road but… this cemetery fight sequence rules. If the Sphinx’s whole deal was being a crossdressing man or a trans woman seeking revenge on a former employer for wrongful dismissal I would love it and in my little heart I will believe that that is the case rather than that this is a standard comic book trope of a large man dressed up as a woman for larfs.

    Gender nonconforming icon or no, the Sphinx proceeds with the attempted ruination of the subway company while dressed in a moderately cool set of Sphinx-themed armour. I’m honestly not sure how the story resolves – the gruesome caption about the Sphinx melting inside his armour is followed by some discussion of his being captured by the Blue Beetle. Is “captured” a euphemism for “horribly killed”? Maybe!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 369: ILLYRIA, QUEEN OF SPIES

    (Master Comics 012-014, 016-017, 019-020; Minute-Man Comics 001-002, 1941)

    Illyria, Queen of Spies! (AKA Queen Spy, Spy Queen, Queen of All Spies, Queen of Foreign Spies, etc) Definitely in the running for my favourite of the “recurring femme fatale spymaster” subgenre of super-villain, particularly as she is a foe to Minute-Man, one of the most bland piles of wallpaper paste ever to wear a patriotic costume.

    Beyond merely distracting me from how bored I am by Minute-Man, Illyria provides interest via a fairly wide range of plots and schemes and thus is kind of hard to boil down into a pithy summary. So: a numbered list:

    1. In her first appearance Illyria wears a snazzy orange robe, the better to whip off when captured so as to take advantage of Minute-Man’s “won’t hit girls” policy and get away. She and her three distinctive henchmen spend the issue shooting down US Army aircraft on behalf of their unspecified nation using a special blindingly-bright plane (Master Comics 012, 1941)

    2.In her second outing, Illyria engages in the already-old gag of using war games as a cover to massacre soldiers with real bullets. The interesting aspect of the story is that she is established as an explicit Axis agent (though of a never-specified power) and recruits spies from the other Axis powers to aid her in her schemes (Master Comics 014, 1941)

    3. This one’s just an attempt to kidnap a scientist who has developed a new explosive. It is the origin of the “Queen of Spies” part of her moniker, though. This adventure also marks the first time that Illyria is actually captured, as she is just as slippery as any recurring femme fatale  (Master Comics 014, 1941)

    4. After precisely one issue in the hoosegow, Illyria breaks out (that poor nurse) and attempts to blow up a Fourth of July celebration. (Master Comics 016, 1941)

    5. In service to a pretty rote kidnapping, Illyria deploys both a remote-controlled bomber and X-33, an extremely cool robot soldier who is sadly (for him) not at all waterproof. (Master Comics 017, 1941)

    6. Master Comics 019 & 020 are concerned with boring old espionage focused on stealing bombers and bomber plans: ho hum. Illyria does step up the villainy to include slavery in the latter appearance, though.

    7. Minute-Man 001 features Illyria and her drum-playing chum in a scheme to cause a native uprising on the US-held island of Barracoon in the Gulf of Mexico. The main draw of the story is Illyria’s keen voodoo dance hat but if you want to read a comic that inadvertently highlights the evils of colonialism then this is the one for you, along with about 90% of all Golden Age comics set outside of Europe or North America. And some of the ones set in North America, too.

    8. Illyria’s final appearance in Minute-Man 002 retroactively establishes that the Queen of Spies has been working for the heretofore unmentioned Green Hood, who is tired of her getting foiled all of the time. It’s a bit of an anticlimax for her, as the story is much more concerned with the Green Hood than her. Still, she manages to get away at the end, joining the ranks of the surprisingly populous “recurring femme fatale spies who don’t end up getting caught by dint of not recurring that extra time.”

    (at least I reckon that was her last appearance. She was captured at the end of Master Comics 020, dated November 1941, while Minute-Man 002 was the Winter Issue, dated September to December 1941)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 329: THE MAD VIOLINIST

    (Human Torch v1 005a, 1941)

    The Mad Violinist! Not especially mad, aside from being a fascist fanatic. More of a fiddler than a violinist, too – perhaps Nazi Super-Agent HR got mixed up when assigning codenames and swapped his with the Fiddler and vice versa.

    Name mixup or no, the Mad Violinist makes quite a splash when he attacks a military parade in NYC and kills potentially hundreds of soldiers and onlookers – it’s always a real pain to estimate such things from context, but at least 40 people bought it based on the images provided.

    Such crimes could not stand, of course, and the Violinist is swiftly tracked down by Jeff Mace, aka the Patriot, who learns that much like the Armless Tiger Man, the Nazis weaponized him after an accident that left him unstable and dangerous. 

    In conclusion, the best part of this story is the fact that the Mad Violinist has to drink BONE SOFTENING CHEMICALS to keep from killing himself and I might just get that on a coffee cup.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 329: THE MAD VIOLINIST

    (Human Torch v1 005a, 1941)

    The Mad Violinist! Not especially mad, aside from being a fascist fanatic. More of a fiddler than a violinist, too – perhaps Nazi Super-Agent HR got mixed up when assigning codenames and swapped his with the Fiddler and vice versa.

    Name mixup or no, the Mad Violinist makes quite a splash when he attacks a military parade in NYC and kills potentially hundreds of soldiers and onlookers – it’s always a real pain to estimate such things from context, but at least 40 people bought it based on the images provided.

    Such crimes could not stand, of course, and the Violinist is swiftly tracked down by Jeff Mace, aka the Patriot, who learns that much like the Armless Tiger Man, the Nazis weaponized him after an accident that left him unstable and dangerous. 

    In conclusion, the best part of this story is the fact that the Mad Violinist has to drink BONE SOFTENING CHEMICALS to keep from killing himself and I might just get that on a coffee cup.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 298: THE UNHOLY LEGION

    (Captain America Comics 004, 1941)

    This is one of those moments where the first examples of a thing that shows up here is not a great example of the thing. Blame the tyranny of alphabetical order, I suppose, because I know for a fact that Star-Spangled Comics will feature the Ring of Rags when I work my way down my list to it, and that is a good example.

    The thing in question is of course Poor People as a Horrifying and Existential Threat, and it’s going to crop up periodically. The poor end up as a creeping horde without real agency of their own who can be mobilized in service to some evil end, in this case the destabilization of the American military/ industrial complex.

    The reason that this is not the best example of the type is that the people in question are probably not actually poor beggars but Nazi spies. I mean, they are absolutely Nazi spies. The probably is in regard to the fact that there’s no indication that any of them are anything else. Actual poor people being portrayed as monsters will have to wait.

    (bonus: the thing that gets Captain America and Bucky on this case is that they give a guy money and then he turns out not to be disabled enough for them to have done so)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 292: ARMLESS TIGER MAN

    (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 026, 1941)

    Armless Tiger Man! A minor classic in the Characters With Goofy Names category and almost certainly a Wizard Magazine Mort of the Month some time in the late 90s. Also: he wears stirrup pants.

    Unfortunately there’s not a lot going on in the story: Armless Tiger Man is a Nazi saboteur who murders a man in order to save a few bucks on bribes, which leads the Angel to get involved. He ends up getting tracked down due to his taste for hard-to-find Chateau Quim wine (I checked and yes, it absolutely meant the same thing in the 40s as it does now, so this is very cheeky). As seen above he manages to escape only to be apprehended mid-sabotage.

    His origin is a bitt more interesting: after losing his arms in an industrial accident he obsessively trains to use his arms and legs as replacements and develops an unsettling appearance due to his massive jaw muscles. He also develops a hatred of industrial machinery which is the reason that the Gestapo mobilizes him to the US.

    You can’t keep a weird fella like this down forever – Armless Tiger Man is our first properly brung back Marvel Villain, appearing in a Captain America WWII-era comic in 2010, in which he died, then gets to show up in hell! I mean, it’s not illustrious but it’s better than the Vampire Killer got.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 283: N-4

    (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 023, 1941)

    N-4 is the kind of Nazi spy that really reminds one that the swastika was a costume design go-to for a while there. Gonna be swastikas cropping up basically forever, aren’t there. Like Captain Nazi still shows up from time to time, doesn’t he.

    More interesting than N-4 being one of our earlier costumed Nazis is that they’re a trend-based crime villain! The trend: highways! Their whole scheme revolves around the recently-completed Pennsylvania Turnpike and involves a trick switcheroo tunnel that they use to steal tanks in a complicated scheme that foolishly includes framing the Human Torch and Toro for some reason and of course leads to them being caught.

    And of course I was using neutral pronouns in that last paragraph because I wanted to obfuscate the fact that N-4 was your old classic female agent posing as a male agent for unclear reasons. Also she got caught because of a deus ex bear trap.

    Not a lot to say about N-4, it seems! I’d say sorry N-4 but you are a Nazi, so go rot somewhere.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 131: THE ADDER

    (Action Comics v1 035, 1941)

    Yet another spy encountered by Clip Carson, the Adder was interested in blowing up the Panama Canal for unclear reasons. Much more interestingly, he took his name from a snake-shaped ring which both fatally poisoned those he punched with it and left a cool snake mark on the spot he hit, and evidently he used it enough that his men spoke of him in hushed terms as “the Child of Death,” which is an amazing name.

    As with so many villains who use a cool signature weapon, the Adder ends up falling on his own ring. A sad end.