The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: bring ’em back

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 297: THE BUTTERFLY

    (Captain America Comics 003, 1941)

    The Butterfly is great. You just can’t beat a guy in a semi-accurate butterfly outfit (I mean that head is a bit of a mashup) who robs museums. He’s got a glider rig and a weaponized proboscis! The only really problem with his operation is that he is in reality museum curator Doctor Victroli, both because he is a fairly obvious suspect and because he is an old man who ends up biting the dust after falling maybe 10 feet off a rope.

    Still, the Butterfly is a perfect candidate to be BRUNG BACK. After all, it’s a guy in a suit – someone else can wear it, and this is precisely the kind of low-level supercrook that the Marvel Universe should be awash in.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 291: QUEEN JARNA

    (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 025-026)

    Jarna here is Queen of the Lavarites, a group of aliens from Venus who coordinate with the Nazis (shown here as a chunky guy in his pyjamas about to be punched out by the Sub-Mariner). This is all regular comics stuff but there’s some fun highlights:

    a) the main Lavarite force is composed of these little roughnecks who talk in their own untranslated language and are clearly having a ball at all times. If your aliens have to look like humans they should absolutely look like fun humans.

    b) Lavarites have some extremely fun sexual dimorphism going on! Some wags over at the Marvel Wiki are of the opinion that Jarna here is a member of a second Venusian species who has become ruler of these little guys but that removes the much more fun option of them being some sort of eusocial species like bees  and that these are all her worker drone children. Or that Lavarite women are just fifty times larger than Lavarite men!

    (this is the first of two times that we cross over into Sexual Kink That I Don’t Fully Get territory)

    As with any good story involving a bunch of little guys, Namor gets Lilliputianed. (and there’s the other one!)

    Jarna is also surprisingly merciless in her attempt to do away with Namor – it’s just her bad luck that he’s also amphibious.

    Despite the fact that Namor lets her off with a warning in her first outing, Jarna is immediately back to her old tricks in the subsequent issue She’s working with the Nazis to build an underwater staging area for the invasion of the US, but good news: she’s planning on turning on them just as soon as they do the dirty work for her. Attempted world domination I can forgive but Nazi collaboration is a harder pill to swallow.

    Unfortunately it’s just Jarna in this issue – the Lavarites all seem to have gone back to Venus and I guess she hasn’t had time to hatch out another generation of them. I miss them.

    For some reason probably related to her status as a pretty girl Namor lets Jarna go at he the end of this story as well, and she’s stayed away ever since, possibly because he came very close to killing her on a couple of occasions there. I of course would love to see her BRUNG BACK, particularly if she is actually portrayed as the queen of a eusocial species of little guys that she gives birth to, and particularly if they aren’t defaulted to the insect version of such but reflect something more like naked mole-rat society or some other, weirder, model. Have ’em come back for revenge on the Sub-Mariner some time when he’s vulnerable!

    BONUS: this is perhaps the most perfectly drawn “amused disbelief” face I have ever seen 

    (said in a room with two people who had been surgically altered to be amphibious by the Antarctic-dwelling people of lost Atlantis, by the way)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 290: THE PARROT

    (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 024, 1941)

    There are two different comic book tropes that come together in the Parrot. The first is simple: the weird-looking guy adopts a criminal persona based on their appearance -. So: the Penguin, the Vulture, the Chicken, the Platypus, the Skull etc. This is basic stuff, but generally fun.

    The second thing has to do with the nature of super-powers, that by their very nature they require countering Just as every penny-ante gangster who faced Superman in the 50s seemed to have gotten their hands on a chunk of kryptonite, the well-informed criminal in a Human Torch story will at the very least have asbestos clothing and some form of fire-suppressing chemical liquid or spray. In extreme cases like the Kryptonite Man or the Torch’s own Asbestos Lady the counter-weapon becomes the entire theme, but the Parrot here represents an intermediate step that I find quite compelling.

    See, a while back the Human Torch encountered a Tibetan cult called the Fire-Men who had fire-powers that they used to fight fire-monsters. One of those Fire-Men, named Culflam, was a crook who got sent to jail at the end of the story, where he shared a cell with the Parrot and taught him all the secrets of the Fire-Men Cult (unfortunately for Culflam, as the last part of the Learn Mystical Secrets in Jail trick is to murder your teacher on the way out). 

    So the Parrot is fireproof. He’s also something like seven and a half feet tall and completely ruthless. All of this makes for a very fun villain, even if all he really does is try to rob an opera crowd. I was pretty jazzed to read his second appearance, two issues later!

    Very sad times had by all: all he does is escape from jail again and then accept a contract from a man with  a German accent to blow up a strategic sulphur supply – his flame immunity doesn’t even come up! And then he dies in a car crash! Truly this is an example of squandered potential.

    Clearly the Parrot should be BRUNG BACK in some form – unfortunately the only hook I can think of are his stolen Fire-Man powers perhaps coming with some sort of curse for shirking the duties of the cult and he comes back to haunt the California desert as a fiery ghost? Or a modern incarnation of the cult needs access to lost teachings and mistakenly resurrects him instead of Culflam?  Or maybe the US government just keeps the bodies of deceased super-villains in cold storage somewhere and he just gets mad scienced back from the dead, I don’t know.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 286: GROSSO

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 286: GROSSO

    (Marvel Mystery Comics 024, 1941)

    It’s been a while since we’ve had a proper evil equivalent, so here’s Grosso to show us how it’s done! Golden Age Vision, see, is from an extradimensional realm usually called Smokeworld that’s full of smoke and that the Vision travels to and from via (you guessed it) clouds of smoke. Smoke is kind of his whole deal. Grosso, by contrast, is from the World of War-Dust, with war-dust being defined as clouds of metallic particulate like aluminum. Whether the dust strictly has to have been generated in the production of armaments isn’t really addressed – Grosso is a vocal enough fan of war as a concept that I reckon he wouldn’t appear in the dust produced by,  say, an electric fan factory even if he had the option.

    The fact that Grosso know the  Vision by sight raises further questions about Smokeworld and the World of War-Dust existing in some sort of particulate-based continuum – perhaps the aforementioned dust from electric fan production would open a portal to a world of morally neutral people obsessed with moderate breezes.

    The fact that Grosso’s hinder is so juicy merits further study.

    The back half of the story is taken up with a big fight between Grosso and the Vision where it becomes clear that Grosso is either made of metal dust or manifesting a body on Earth using metal dust: his primary attack (other than big punches) is firing busts of aluminum dust and his arm is disabled when Vision squirts some water on it. The full ramifications of this are left unexplored because the Vision subsequently ups the ante and employs the Ultimate Liquid: molten lead. Grosso hasn’t been seen since, probably due to being dead.

    Obviously I’m totally into this guy and  think he or some other representative of the World of War-Dust should be BRUNG BACK – it’s not like we up and stopped making weapons of war, after all. Having alien warmonger frat bros pop up in your factory from time to time should be a thing in the Marvel Universe. There should be insurance for it!

  • 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 278: THE VAMPIRE KILLER

    (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 020, 1941)

    We open on a fear-gripped Star City (not the one you’re thinking of), in which ten people have been killed and drained of their blood. VAMPIRE! KILLER!

    An eleventh soon joins their ranks, and we get a look at the Vampire Killer in his cool as hell Shadow cosplay. VAMPIRE! KILLER! INTO! FASHION!

    But it seems all is not as we thought! Extradimensional smoke-man the Vision, exercising the oft-overlooked super-hero skill of Research, discovers that the so-called Vampire Killer is in reality biochemical Experiment 36-B, AKA Florus Homo. I don’t know that I want to blame the victim here, but engineering an intelligent plant that feeds on blood is a comic book science version of Russian Roulette. PLANT! MAN! DAD! EATER!

    And of course, having learned that the Vampire Killer is no vampire, we get to see it’s face in all of its Kirby-designed glory. Makes you wish that it hadn’t been set on fire by the Vision one page later. But it’s a plant, right? And seeds! Seeds can stay viable for centuries! There’s still hope, even now! BRING! BACK! TURNIP! HEAD!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 270: DR LORROF

    (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 015, 1941)

    Dr Lorrof is your true mad scientist’s mad scientist. He’s all worked up about being “cast out of science,” and he’s not going to take that lying down. To the contrary, he’s going to go way overboard and try to destroy Titan City with a blob that he made out of crabs.

    Plus, not only does he refer to himself in the third person but he does so while attempting to steal a radium ray that is the only known weakness of his blob, a rare bit of non-hubristic caution from a mad scientist, especially from someone as unhinged as Lorrof is.

    Here’s the monster, called the Green Terror. Two things:

    1. This crowd really knows their lines

    2. This crowd is present because Dr Lorrof announced the impending emergence of the monster from it’s shell. The few hundred people who get eaten have to apportion at least some of the blame to themselves

    And you thought I was joking about the crabs. 

    Lorrof sadly doesn’t survive this confrontation with Electro – after the replacement crabs fail to destroy the robot, Lorrof himself attempts to do so with a vial of explosive goo, only to blow himself sky high.

    Obviously I reckon that this is exactly the sort of science villain that the Marvel Universe needs, if only for the fact that he yells things like “fiery demons!” when startled. And what are the Avengers going to do when confronted by the Green Terror Mk II at a time when hospitals don’t routinely hold a stockpile of radium? BRING Lorrof BACK so we can find out!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 269: THE BRAIN OF PROFESSOR DONAIRE

    (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 015, 1941) 

    I must admit that I was predisposed to give Professor Donaire the benefit of the doubt, given that where I’m from a donair is a delicious late night drunken street food. But he didn’t need it! Even with a non-snack-based name, Prof. Donaire would be a terrific villain.

    Having said that: Prof. Donaire is a real dummy. He suffers from exactly the same failure of imagination as our old pal Python: that nobody would bother to investigate the nearby vicinity when large numbers of corpses are found in quick succession.

    But the similarities to Python don’t end there! Like Python, Donaire lives in an old stone structure (a temple rather than a castle, buts still) retrofitted with a modern lab, has a big bald goon with a K name (Karlo to Python’s Kreeper) and the corpses he’s dumping are sans brain.

    Unlike Python, Prof Donaire has no interest in the brains of his victims. No, he’s a body thief. He’s scooped out his own brain and put it in a jar and now can control five seperate bodies on the 40s equivalent of a Local Area Network. And as always with any kind of body part thief, Donaire is just salivating at the thought of adding a toned super-hero bod to his collection.

    Luckily for the Angel, merely having the bodies of a bunch of athletes does not grant Donaire the reflexes or fighting abilities of their original owners. Likewise, being able to mobilize four bodies for a melee doesn’t convey the ability to coordinate their attacks. The Angel is perfectly fine.

    All good things come to an end, however, and Professor Donaire learns a bit too late the primary rule of having an disembodied brain: don’t just, like, put it on a shelf or other easily accessed location in a glass jar. In this particular case, Donaire ends up setting his own lab (and therefore brain) on fire but the Angel would have been completely justified in nailing it with a jump-kick.

    In conclusion: the Brain of Professor Donaire should absolutely be BRUNG BACK.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 266: DR BRUNO VAROZ

    (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 010, 1940) 

    I like this guy. This guy is the fun kind of mad scientist with a lot of fun details. First of all he lives in a castle roughly the same size as the island it sits on, off the coast of Cuba. Secondly, he follows the rules of Mad Scientist Grooming, which state that they must either be impeccably groomed or, as with Dr Varoz here, look like they woke up in a compost heap.

    Varoz’ great discovery is a formula for artificial blood, which he uses to bring the dead back to life. Like aerial torpedoes (missiles) and airplane detectors (RADAR), artificial blood as something that both real-world and comic book people were trying to perfect in the 40s, but unlike the former we still haven’t quite gotten the handle on artificial blood, probably because it always seems to turn people into draculas or monsters or, as here, a bunch of skull-faced science revenants.

    And there’s a lot to like about these guys! They look great for one, they’re seemingly unstoppable for two, even though there’s nothing stopping them from being killed again – I guess they’re just too scary to stop.

    They’re also intelligent, which rules, and which is why they’re science revenants and not science zombies. They talk, fly planes, fire guns… Dr Varoz can stay forgotten as far as I’m concerned, but I would love to see his Corpse-Beings BRUNG BACK in some capacity.

    (I really like that the animated corpse is afraid of Electro)

    Dr Bruno Varoz’ other two claims to fame are this excellent two-headed monster and a pretty cold-blooded death via being thrown by Electro into the same acid pit pictured above; The monster, unaccounted for at the end of the story, would also be a welcome sight in a modern comic, if only in one of those crowd shots on Monster Island or in the Mole Man’s tunnels.