The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: minor super-hero

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO 024: JUST ‘N RIGHT

    (Doll Man 001, 1941)

    Just n’ Right is perhaps my favourite forgotten Golden Age super-hero, or at least the one I’ve thought about the most. I’m not sure I can adequately explain why but since he only ever appeared in a single six-page story I can at least present the entire thing to you and note the things that prey on my mind in the wee hours.

    So: the setup. Justin Wright is a lumberjack and an orphan who has just come of age and inherited his parents’ monies. Please note that he is such an orphan that he can’t even conceive of having parents. 

    It’s the old Batman-style “crime orphan vows revenge on crime” origin, only this time it’s an adult man rather than a child making the vow.

    And in keeping with the Batman-style origin, Justin takes inspiration from a totemic object: sheer fabric, which he had evidently neither encountered nor conceptualized in his former life as a simple lumberjack.

    Two things to point out on this page: 1. here’s where it’s revealed that Justin Wright has chosen Just n’ Right as his vigilante name, which is about as extreme as nominative determinism ever gets in comics, I reckon. Take a seat, Edward Nygma.

    2. the ‘Wayne Reid’ credit on the first page is a nom de plume for George E. Brenner, who did a fair amount of work for Quality Comics. I’m generally a fan but this is the perfect page to complain about how many people in his comics have these gaping toothless maws that I can’t look away from.

    Also the “frame Just n’ Right for murder” plot never pays off.

    Appreciate a calling card.

    And finally: my theory on why Just n’ Right never appeared again is that he was immediately arrested for vigilantism after antagonizing this poor police captain who just wanted a nice door. 

    So there you have it: Just n’ Right. The only explanation for the frequency with which I think of him is that he was a one-and-done. If he’d had a dozen or so mediocre adventures and appeared long enough to get killed in an issue of All-Star squadron he’d be trivia but as it stands he’s a weird mystery.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 221: PROFESSOR KYLL/ MINOR SUPER-HERO 023: TRIX

    (Doc Savage Comics v1 004, 1941)

    Professor Kyll is your regular-style scientist who develops a working humanoid robot and immediately starts thinking in terms of world conquest. My eyes might have glazed over and completely missed him if not for the fact that in the very same town was another scientist, a benevolent one, working on a humanoid robot made of rubber!

    Now, Flexo the Rubber Man has not come up on this here blog yet because I’ve fallen behind on my Golden Age Marvel reading but know ye this: I love me a weird rubber robot and am absolutely thrilled that there are two of them, even if poor Trix here never made a second appearance as far as I can tell. It’s enough that they existed and beat the tar out of Kyll’s metal guy.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 221: PROFESSOR KYLL/ MINOR SUPER-HERO 023: TRIX

    (Doc Savage Comics v1 004, 1941)

    Professor Kyll is your regular-style scientist who develops a working humanoid robot and immediately starts thinking in terms of world conquest. My eyes might have glazed over and completely missed him if not for the fact that in the very same town was another scientist, a benevolent one, working on a humanoid robot made of rubber!

    Now, Flexo the Rubber Man has not come up on this here blog yet because I’ve fallen behind on my Golden Age Marvel reading but know ye this: I love me a weird rubber robot and am absolutely thrilled that there are two of them, even if poor Trix here never made a second appearance as far as I can tell. It’s enough that they existed and beat the tar out of Kyll’s metal guy.

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO 022: MADAM FATAL

    (Crack Comics 001-022, 1940-1942)

    Madam Fatal is the alter ego of one Richard Stanton, famous actor and female impersonator. Shortly after retiring to settle down, Stanton’s young daughter was kidnapped by a vengeful enemy and his wife died of grief. Going undercover as the elderly Madam Fatal in order to avoid recognition Stanton spent the next nine years looking for his child. In the first Madam Fatal adventure, he finds the kidnapper but not the kid and since the kidnapper ends up dead, the case of Richard Stanton’s missing child just… never gets addressed again.

    Madam Fatal comics are pretty fun as a rule. They’re short and snappy, and since a big part of the character’s appeal is the incongruity of a little old lady (as mentioned in the past, they got no respect in the Golden Age) being in adventure situations, she is extremely kinetic and rough and tumble.

    There’s absolutely no exploration of gender roles or sexuality because, duh, it’s the 1940s, but Stanton and Fatal are generally treated as being two different genders. A modern revival of the character could do interesting things if done right, by the right people. Mostly though, Madam Fatal is a punchline in modern comics.

    The exception to this came in The Shade v2 006, 2012. James Robinson (and Darwyn Cooke) introduced Hot Older Lady Madam Fatal, made her just as much of a shitkicker as the original, and even (finally) resolved the case of Richard Stanton’s missing child. A worthy if brief revival!

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO 021: THE BLACK CONDOR

    (Crack Comics 001-031, 1940-1943)

    There are a lot of elements to the Black Condor’s origin so I shall be presenting them in a bulleted list:

    -His father, archaeologist Richard Grey, brought his wife and newborn baby along on an expedition to Mongolia. This did not pay off, as their caravan was massacred by bandits and the only survivor was the baby, Richard Jr, who was carried off by a mother condor.

    -Experiencing cross-species maternal instincts, the condor chose to raise the child instead of eating it. Grey eventually not only learned to communicate with condors but through imitation managed to teach himself to fly (later on this explanation of his power was considered far too ridiculous. Instead, he was exposed to a radioactive meteorite while living with the condors, which makes a lot more sense).

    -Teen Richard then has a run-in with some eagles that leaves him seriously injured. He is found by kindly hermit/ missionary Father Pierre, who nurses him back to health and teaches him English. And names him Black Condor – because of his black hair, oddly enough. All is well until bandits kill Father Pierre while Black Condor is out and about. This puts him at 3/4 parental figures lost to crime, giving him the motivation of 1.5 Batmans.

    -Black Condor becomes a foe of crime across Eurasia, with enough success that it’s reported on globally. The narrative culmination of this effort comics in Hindustan, where he confronts and kills Gali Kan, the bandit chief who had killed Father Pierre (later retellings of the origin make him explicitly the one who killed Condor’s parents too, because that’s very narratively satisfying)

    For the first year of Black Condor adventures he bummed around the world defeating various tyrants using his black-ray gun (never explained) but then! He encounters young US Senator Tom Wright! Who is his double! And who is then killed! And Black Condor, a man who was raised by birds and has known how to speak for maybe five years max, assumes the man’s identity, position in the US government and fiancé. With the fiancé’s father’s blessing. 

    Anyhow, real good comics. It’s a shame that a character with such a lot of wild stuff going on doesn’t really show up any more. He has successors but other than being able to fly they’re pretty separate character concepts, to be covered in about 50 subjective years, I guess.

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO 021: THE BLACK CONDOR

    (Crack Comics 001-031, 1940-1943)

    There are a lot of elements to the Black Condor’s origin so I shall be presenting them in a bulleted list:

    -His father, archaeologist Richard Grey, brought his wife and newborn baby along on an expedition to Mongolia. This did not pay off, as their caravan was massacred by bandits and the only survivor was the baby, Richard Jr, who was carried off by a mother condor.

    -Experiencing cross-species maternal instincts, the condor chose to raise the child instead of eating it. Grey eventually not only learned to communicate with condors but through imitation managed to teach himself to fly (later on this explanation of his power was considered far too ridiculous. Instead, he was exposed to a radioactive meteorite while living with the condors, which makes a lot more sense).

    -Teen Richard then has a run-in with some eagles that leaves him seriously injured. He is found by kindly hermit/ missionary Father Pierre, who nurses him back to health and teaches him English. And names him Black Condor – because of his black hair, oddly enough. All is well until bandits kill Father Pierre while Black Condor is out and about. This puts him at 3/4 parental figures lost to crime, giving him the motivation of 1.5 Batmans.

    -Black Condor becomes a foe of crime across Eurasia, with enough success that it’s reported on globally. The narrative culmination of this effort comics in Hindustan, where he confronts and kills Gali Kan, the bandit chief who had killed Father Pierre (later retellings of the origin make him explicitly the one who killed Condor’s parents too, because that’s very narratively satisfying)

    For the first year of Black Condor adventures he bummed around the world defeating various tyrants using his black-ray gun (never explained) but then! He encounters young US Senator Tom Wright! Who is his double! And who is then killed! And Black Condor, a man who was raised by birds and has known how to speak for maybe five years max, assumes the man’s identity, position in the US government and fiancé. With the fiancé’s father’s blessing. 

    Anyhow, real good comics. It’s a shame that a character with such a lot of wild stuff going on doesn’t really show up any more. He has successors but other than being able to fly they’re pretty separate character concepts, to be covered in about 50 subjective years, I guess.

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO 020: THE RED TORPEDO

    (Crack Comics 001-020, 1940-1942)

    The Red Torpedo is Jim Lockhart, a guy who came up with a design for the ultimate one-man submarine and turned that into his whole personality. This is a not-uncommon Golden-Age comics trope that kind of petered out once the world was no longer awash with mechanized combat – Silver Age super-vehicles tended more toward the exploration side of things.

    So: Jim Lockhart, young US Navy officer resigns his commission after being told that his submarine design was unworkable. He builds it anyway, with the help of his fiancé, Meg, then seemingly leaves her behind as well – a “Peggy” show up as his assistant a few issues later but after that he’s a strictly one-man operation. 

    Lockhart shows up here and there in the extended DCU – most notably in a Roy Thomas engineered cull of the old Quality Comics characters in All-Star Squadron back in the day. Like most of the others killed off in that ish, Red Torpedo got better and shows up whenever someone needs a really good submarine for something.

    Good luck finding it but the thing that really cemented my love for this guy is the Crack Comics installment of the Next Issue Project. A really lovely, simple, melancholy story about a submarine man.

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO 019: THE CLOCK

    (Funny Picture Stories/ Funny Pages/ Feature Comics/ Crack Comics, 1936-1944)

    The Clock has the distinction of probably being the earliest masked crimefighter and definitely that of being the earliest one to stick around, which would make him the earliest super-hero if Dr Occult hadn’t made his debut in 1935. A lot of the details about him are fairly cliché, both because they were cribbed from existing pulp clichés and because the Clock helped define the clichés of the genre.

    So: Brian O’Brien is a wealthy playboy who puts on a tuxedo and mask and fights crime at night. He leaves calling cards for his foes, is often thought to be a criminal himself and is friends with police Captain Kane in his civilian identity while enjoying a somewhat fraught relationship with him while masked.

    Over the years the Clock has a few different associates – above find Pug Brady, a down-on-his-luck guy who happens to look just like Brian O’Brien. They team up for a couple of years until Pug is unceremoniously chucked for a tough orphan girl named Butch about whom I know almost nothing, so it’s a bit of a qualified statement when I say that by far my favourite member of the Clock family is the Orchid:

    The Orchid appears a handful of times and her gimmick is that she is also a crimefighter, and one who is slightly more on-the ball than the Clock: she may know his secret identity, she can always get a message to him and most of the time she disappears at the end of a case, with the exception of the time she was distracted by her own kidnap-victim father. The Orchid only makes a handful of appearances but she’s a winner in my books: bring her back, I say – fold her into the backstory of the Black Orchid!

    So: the Clock is a solid Golden Age strip. Sadly, he will likely never see the light of day again. DC owns roughly seven dozen masked adventurers in suits and included in that number is Midnight, who would be a straight palette-swap of the Spirit if they had bothered to give him a different-coloured suit. Thusfar, he’s the one they pull out in the rare cases that a suited crimefighter who isn’t early Sandman is required, while the Clock and the Mouthpiece and Destiny and Just n’ Right and Devil’s Dagger and Diamond Jack and Cosmo, Phantom of Disguise all twiddle their thumbs in purgatory.

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO 018: DIAMOND JACK

    (Slam-Bang Comics 001-007, 1940)

    Diamond Jack is pretty simple conceptually: he’s a guy in a suit with a magic ring and he fights crime. He doesn’t have much in the way of backstory or supporting cast – just your average Golden Age adventurer type.

    He is canonically anti-Nazi, even though all of his appearances are from 1940, so that’s a point in his favour. Mostly his stories are entertaining due to the number of wacky supernatural villains he battles. And as always I’m an advocate of BRINGING BACK magic item users as legacy heroes. A magic ring with a heroic history (and half a dozen pre-baked villains but virtually no other baggage) is a good starting point for a new hero, and Diamond Jack is even a completely gender-neutral name so they could be literally anyone!

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO 018: DIAMOND JACK

    (Slam-Bang Comics 001-007, 1940)

    Diamond Jack is pretty simple conceptually: he’s a guy in a suit with a magic ring and he fights crime. He doesn’t have much in the way of backstory or supporting cast – just your average Golden Age adventurer type.

    He is canonically anti-Nazi, even though all of his appearances are from 1940, so that’s a point in his favour. Mostly his stories are entertaining due to the number of wacky supernatural villains he battles. And as always I’m an advocate of BRINGING BACK magic item users as legacy heroes. A magic ring with a heroic history (and half a dozen pre-baked villains but virtually no other baggage) is a good starting point for a new hero, and Diamond Jack is even a completely gender-neutral name so they could be literally anyone!