The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: bring ’em back

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO 025: ACE OF SPACE

    (Feature Comics 038-041, 1940-1941)

    Pretty fond of the Ace of Space. As you can see above he has the fairly common origin of finding an alien spaceship and [getting powers accidentally from alien technology/ getting powers as a reward for helping the alien/ looting the deceased alien/ taking on the dying alien’s mission and technology]. In this case, he has to defend the Earth from invading Slogoms. 

    Also, I demand that you appreciate that cool looking alien. What a cool guy!

     

    The alien’s power belt gives A.C. “Ace” Egan the standard power array of enhanced flight, strength and speed, plus telepathy and, best of all, makes him 9 feet tall. He also inherits the alien’s spaceship, which can usefully turn invisible. 

    As with most forgotten DC/ Marvel super-heroes I reckon that Ace of Space should be brung back as a legacy hero (or as himself after having relativistic adventures in his spaceship! I’m easy!) because if there’s one thing that I love about a sprawling shared super-hero universe it’s all the weirdos and obscurities. Any group shot at a super-meeting would only be enhanced by a 9 foot tall dude in jodhpurs and a flight helmet. Or his great grand-niece who is still 9 feet tall but dresses like a rockabilly lady – as I said, I’m easy.

    (the Slogoms are also very cool aliens)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 224: THE BLACK GONDOLIER

    (Doll Man 001, 1941)

    I truly love the Black Gondolier, as he is to my mind the Platonic ideal of the kind of crook that every super-hero universe should be crawling with: a guy who gets together some gadgets and works out a little scheme and very briefly becomes the scourge of shipping in New York Harbor.

    Why’s he got a motorized gondola? No idea! Where did he get his climbing gear? Doesn’t matter! What does matter is that in a world with a Doll Man, of course there’s a guy in a motorized gondola scurrying up the sides of ocean liners to rob them. And it absolutly does not matter that he’s gunned down by the cops at the end of this story – I am of the staunch opinion that there should always be a Black Gondolier in the (now) DC universe, showing up in the background at villain get togethers or super-prison scenes or getting whaled on by the Creeper in a big event. Bring back the Black Gondolier!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 218: THE LIGHTNING KILLER

    (Detective Comics v1 056, 1941)

    The Lightning Killer is a neat and potentially great concept that was ill-served by being featured in a 6-page middle-of-the-book strip like Cliff Crosby’s. As presented, he’s a mysterious killer who strikes only during thunderstorms and times his shots to lightning strikes so that they go unnoticed by witnesses. Unsurprisingly, he turns out to be the meteorologist Cliff consults midway through the story, as he is the only non-cop/ non-victim/ non-protagonist character featured.

    The Lightning Killer concept is cool enough that it deserves more! BRING him BACK, I say. Have the Lightning Murders play out over a year or two in the background of an ongoing, with thunderstorms being infrequent enough that he flies just under the radar but still leave an entire city on-edge! Or a recent murder could open up an investigation that reveals decades of seemingly unconnected slayings are the work of just one man! Neat stuff!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 201: THE WEREWOLF

    (Crack Comics 015, 1941) 

    I love the Werewolf, and here’s a list of the things I love about him:

    -His name: He has the unlikely handle of Prescott Taunton. A minor point but a good one.

    -His motivation: Prescott is a writer. Specifically, he wrote a book about lycanthropy and then shopped it around enough to get rejected at least seven times. And then he started murdering the people who rejected his work.

    -His ambiguous lycanthropy: Is he a werewolf or just nuts? In the real world the answer would be the latter, but in a comic book universe there’s room for the kind of low-grade feral human style of lycanthropy that appears to be on display here, which I love. He does seem to have undergone some minor physical changes so I’m inclined to believe that he’s the real deal.

    -His ease of capture: Though he puts up a bit of a fight and manages to flee his penthouse lair when the Clock and his pal Pug show up, it’s a very short reprieve as he doesn’t even make it to a proper second location, being knocked out in one punch on the street below.

    It’s been a while since I said that a villain should be BRUNG BACK but I’m saying it now – homicidal sensitive-to-rejection possible werewolf writer is a fun villain hook! Lift the story entirely and give it to the Creeper or someone!

  • 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-VILLAIN 176: Z

    (Captain Marvel Adventures 001, 1941)

    Z is (spoilers) an android built by Dr Sivana to destroy Captain Marvel. He’s a cool guy and a fun villain: slick, full of attitude, almost powerful enough to do the job. Plus he doesn’t seem to know he’s a robot, which I find to be a fun feature in an android character – it allows for shocking reveals! Z should definitely be BROUGHT BACK, if only as disposable muscle for Sivana. We wuz robbed of a smug android thug slouched over a chair cleaning his nails in the background of every Dr Sivana scene from 1941 on, I say!

    The really interesting thing about Z is the fact that he and Captain Marvel fight three times and each time, Captain Marvel is explicitly trying to kill him. I came into my ongoing “read all comics” project a lot less familiar with the Fawcett end of things so I was pretty bought in to the modern conception of Captain Marvel as some sort of Pure Being of Childlike Innocence and thus it was a lot more jarring to come into the realization that in his early days he was just as likely to resort to deadly force as Batman or Superman, probably a bit less often than the former and more than the latter. Honestly interested to see just when each adopts a code against killing relative to one another.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 176: Z

    (Captain Marvel Adventures 001, 1941)

    Z is (spoilers) an android built by Dr Sivana to destroy Captain Marvel. He’s a cool guy and a fun villain: slick, full of attitude, almost powerful enough to do the job. Plus he doesn’t seem to know he’s a robot, which I find to be a fun feature in an android character – it allows for shocking reveals! Z should definitely be BROUGHT BACK, if only as disposable muscle for Sivana. We wuz robbed of a smug android thug slouched over a chair cleaning his nails in the background of every Dr Sivana scene from 1941 on, I say!

    The really interesting thing about Z is the fact that he and Captain Marvel fight three times and each time, Captain Marvel is explicitly trying to kill him. I came into my ongoing “read all comics” project a lot less familiar with the Fawcett end of things so I was pretty bought in to the modern conception of Captain Marvel as some sort of Pure Being of Childlike Innocence and thus it was a lot more jarring to come into the realization that in his early days he was just as likely to resort to deadly force as Batman or Superman, probably a bit less often than the former and more than the latter. Honestly interested to see just when each adopts a code against killing relative to one another.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 143: THE CAMERA EYE

    (Adventure 066, 1941)

    Mr Cuthbert Cain, the Camera Eye (and I call him that because it’s what he himself signs on an ominous note – at various points in the story he is called the Camera Fiend and the Camera Criminal) is part of a long tradition of super-villains who take a recent technological or cultural trend and extrapolate it into a criminal gimmick – in this case, candid photography.

    Using black magic and photographic equipment, Cain captures souls and enslaves folks to his will, embarking on a minor crime wave. He falls afoul of Starman when he enthralls his friend FBI agent Woodley Allen and subsequently dissolves into the netherworld after a struggle that ends with him accidentally taking his own picture with his black magic camera.

    SHOULD THEY BE BROUGHT BACK? Absolutely! Not only is Cuthbert Cain exactly the kind of smug little shit that makes a perfect villain but the idea of a black magician who faces the price for their power and then comes back is a really great seed for a story. Particularly as the last time he was seen he had become a photo negative version of himself.

  • 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!