The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: Marvel Mystery Comics

  • THE FATE OF RUDOLF HESS

    (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 024-025, 1941)

    Rudolf Hess, a major figure in the Nazi party, flew to Scotland in May 1941, probably without authorization and probably in an attempt to broker some sort of peace treaty. As you can see from the previous sentence, even today the whole thing is pretty murky, and in 1941 it was a tantalizing enough mystery for Hess to crop up in a fair few comics either as himself or as a thinly-veiled stand-in.

    This here is “Herr Huss,” who flew from occupied France to New Jersey as part of a scheme to draw the US into WWII and who was foiled by future Captain America #3, the Patriot. He ends up killing himself rather than be captured.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 285: DAKA

    (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 024, 1941) 

    Daka is Namor the Sub-Mariner’s uncle who is the first of many to usurp his throne while he’s off adventuring. He allies with the Nazis and the Seal People in a scheme to invade Argentina and it’s a testament to how little I can bring myself to care about Atlantean political drama that not even the Seal People can inspire me to write more about this guy.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 284: KAI-MAK, THE SHARK-GOD

    (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 023, 1941)

    Kai-Mak here (AKA God of Sharks, Lord of Sharks, Lord of the Deep, Master of the Deep, the Man-Shark) is one of my very favourite things in comics: a weird monster pretending to be a god in order to score power or riches or, as in this case, snacks.

    I’m so fond of this trope, in fact, that I have to make sure to frontload the acknowledgement that it is predicated on the idea that a lot of the varied people in the world are credulous primitive savages with no critical thinking skills or I’ll focus too much on the monster and gloss over the racism. Someday we’ll get to M’nagalah the Cancer God, who at least has the decency to manifest in small mining towns and suburbs.

    That having been said, we must acknowledge how great both Kai-Mak and his high priest look. Jack Kirby’s finest shark-based work, I reckon. Just look at his nose and his greasy hair!

    The Vision shouts a bunch of guesses at what Kai-Mak is that are neither confirmed or denied – he could be right and Kai-Mak could be the last remnant of a race of sharkfolk, sure. He could also be a mutant, an Inhuman, a Deviant, some sort of alien or science experiment or heck, a demi-god spawned by Poseidon in a moment of weakness. Rather than spell out his origin, Kai-Mak opts for a no-holds-barred underwater deathmatch.

    After a cool battle under the waves, Kai-Mak is killed and both his worshippers and a selection of human sacrifices are free to go.

    Now, if there’s one thing that any super-hero universe is simply crawling with, it’s humanoid sharks. On a strict market saturation metric there’s no logical reason to campaign for the return of Kai-Mak. Too bad for Adam Smith that I think the free market sucks eggs: BRING BACK the Shark-God! There’s always room for another giant shark-man! Particularly one who’s been nursing his wounds at the bottom of the ocean for 80 years and is after a new community to subjugate. Have him pop up in New England, Deep One style! The old fish-for-sacrifice trade! It literally can’t go wrong!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 284: KAI-MAK, THE SHARK-GOD

    (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 023, 1941)

    Kai-Mak here (AKA God of Sharks, Lord of Sharks, Lord of the Deep, Master of the Deep, the Man-Shark) is one of my very favourite things in comics: a weird monster pretending to be a god in order to score power or riches or, as in this case, snacks.

    I’m so fond of this trope, in fact, that I have to make sure to frontload the acknowledgement that it is predicated on the idea that a lot of the varied people in the world are credulous primitive savages with no critical thinking skills or I’ll focus too much on the monster and gloss over the racism. Someday we’ll get to M’nagalah the Cancer God, who at least has the decency to manifest in small mining towns and suburbs.

    That having been said, we must acknowledge how great both Kai-Mak and his high priest look. Jack Kirby’s finest shark-based work, I reckon. Just look at his nose and his greasy hair!

    The Vision shouts a bunch of guesses at what Kai-Mak is that are neither confirmed or denied – he could be right and Kai-Mak could be the last remnant of a race of sharkfolk, sure. He could also be a mutant, an Inhuman, a Deviant, some sort of alien or science experiment or heck, a demi-god spawned by Poseidon in a moment of weakness. Rather than spell out his origin, Kai-Mak opts for a no-holds-barred underwater deathmatch.

    After a cool battle under the waves, Kai-Mak is killed and both his worshippers and a selection of human sacrifices are free to go.

    Now, if there’s one thing that any super-hero universe is simply crawling with, it’s humanoid sharks. On a strict market saturation metric there’s no logical reason to campaign for the return of Kai-Mak. Too bad for Adam Smith that I think the free market sucks eggs: BRING BACK the Shark-God! There’s always room for another giant shark-man! Particularly one who’s been nursing his wounds at the bottom of the ocean for 80 years and is after a new community to subjugate. Have him pop up in New England, Deep One style! The old fish-for-sacrifice trade! It literally can’t go wrong!

  • 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 282: KHOR, THE BLACK SORCERER

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 282: KHOR, THE BLACK SORCERER

    (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 022, 1941)

    Khor, the Black Sorcerer is one of those magical generalists I was talking about back when I wrote about the Mor the Mighty, with a diverse range of magic abilities including stun bolts, paralysis spells, teleportation spells and shrinking spells. He’s a Jack Kirby troll-man special who comes to the attention of the Vision when he kidnaps a whole-ass Antarctic science expedition because he’s a lonely immortal who doesn’t know how to make friends normally.

    By far the most interesting thing about Khor is that his home in the Antarctic tropical paradise the Land Where Time Stands Still has since been retconned as part of Marvel’s main Antarctic tropical paradise the Savage Land. This a fun bit of trivia, but more fun is the idea that throughout the whole convoluted history of the Savage Land (or at least from 1245 AD onward) an immortal French wizard is holed up in a little cave in the one location in the whole dang place not overrun with swamp men or ape men or dinosaurs, missing all the fun. Dante Alighieri is fighting literal demons in an alien amusement park while Khor spends the afternoon washing his robe. Delightful!

    It all ends with the Vision pitching Khor into a lava flow and freeing his collection of beefy old men. I won’t say that I won’t miss him, but I’ll always know that in any story set between 1245 and 1941 AD he’s there, in the Savage Land, bored out of his mind, and that’s enough.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 282: KHOR, THE BLACK SORCERER

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 282: KHOR, THE BLACK SORCERER

    (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 022, 1941)

    Khor, the Black Sorcerer is one of those magical generalists I was talking about back when I wrote about the Mor the Mighty, with a diverse range of magic abilities including stun bolts, paralysis spells, teleportation spells and shrinking spells. He’s a Jack Kirby troll-man special who comes to the attention of the Vision when he kidnaps a whole-ass Antarctic science expedition because he’s a lonely immortal who doesn’t know how to make friends normally.

    By far the most interesting thing about Khor is that his home in the Antarctic tropical paradise the Land Where Time Stands Still has since been retconned as part of Marvel’s main Antarctic tropical paradise the Savage Land. This a fun bit of trivia, but more fun is the idea that throughout the whole convoluted history of the Savage Land (or at least from 1245 AD onward) an immortal French wizard is holed up in a little cave in the one location in the whole dang place not overrun with swamp men or ape men or dinosaurs, missing all the fun. Dante Alighieri is fighting literal demons in an alien amusement park while Khor spends the afternoon washing his robe. Delightful!

    It all ends with the Vision pitching Khor into a lava flow and freeing his collection of beefy old men. I won’t say that I won’t miss him, but I’ll always know that in any story set between 1245 and 1941 AD he’s there, in the Savage Land, bored out of his mind, and that’s enough.

  • COUSINS OF THE WAR-WHEEL

    (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 022, 1941)

    During the Human Torch and Toro’s time foiling the Nazi invasion of clear-stand-in-for-Yugoslavia Aslavia they encounter and sink this submersible fortress:

    But FAR more importantly they encounter what may be the best ridiculous Nazi superweapon I have ever seen:

    The German Invasion Wall! The superweapon so ridiculous that even in a comic book it has to have bits of wood propping it up so that it doesn’t fall over when firing its cannons! I love it.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 281: THE WEIRD GHOST OF AMBER SWAMPS

    (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 021, 1941)

    I got lazy here and clipped the setup, sorry. In brief, the story takes place at Chellcroft, the swampland mansion of wealthy Georgian C.J. Miller (just one letter off from being quite funny), formerly a centre of art and society but now fallen into disrepair.

    To make things worse, the Weird Ghost of Amber Swamps has started haunting the property and killing people, including Norton, the poor butler pictured fleeing the house in the above image.

    You can’t have a murderous ghost, even a weird one, in a super-hero universe without someone showing up to check it out, and in this case it’s the Angel who turns up to pretty quickly discover that the Weird Ghost of Amber Swamps is in fact a Weird Living Man of Amber Swamps, albeit a huge one.

    More specifically, it’s the owner of the house, C.J. Miller, armed with a rubberoid mask and a wild razor blade/ fishing rod weapon that allowed him to kill at a distance. The fact that C.J. Miller was a celebrated angler (and built like a brick shithouse, let’s not forget) makes for a quicker unmasking than usual – a bit of a flaw in the old ghost routine.

    Turns out that Miller is broke and that committing a series of gruesome murders and then killing himself and pinning it all on the ghost is preferable to anybody finding out that he’s broke. Real rich guy shit that us poors wouldn’t understand. Sadly, he does not get his wish, as not only does he trip and kill himself with his own gimmicked fishing rod like a clown but he does so in front of a reporter. Haw haw haw, says I.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 281: THE WEIRD GHOST OF AMBER SWAMPS

    (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 021, 1941)

    I got lazy here and clipped the setup, sorry. In brief, the story takes place at Chellcroft, the swampland mansion of wealthy Georgian C.J. Miller (just one letter off from being quite funny), formerly a centre of art and society but now fallen into disrepair.

    To make things worse, the Weird Ghost of Amber Swamps has started haunting the property and killing people, including Norton, the poor butler pictured fleeing the house in the above image.

    You can’t have a murderous ghost, even a weird one, in a super-hero universe without someone showing up to check it out, and in this case it’s the Angel who turns up to pretty quickly discover that the Weird Ghost of Amber Swamps is in fact a Weird Living Man of Amber Swamps, albeit a huge one.

    More specifically, it’s the owner of the house, C.J. Miller, armed with a rubberoid mask and a wild razor blade/ fishing rod weapon that allowed him to kill at a distance. The fact that C.J. Miller was a celebrated angler (and built like a brick shithouse, let’s not forget) makes for a quicker unmasking than usual – a bit of a flaw in the old ghost routine.

    Turns out that Miller is broke and that committing a series of gruesome murders and then killing himself and pinning it all on the ghost is preferable to anybody finding out that he’s broke. Real rich guy shit that us poors wouldn’t understand. Sadly, he does not get his wish, as not only does he trip and kill himself with his own gimmicked fishing rod like a clown but he does so in front of a reporter. Haw haw haw, says I.