The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: Whiz King of Falcons

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 925: THE IRON-JAW

    (Silver Streak Comics 009, 1941)

    The US is being rocked by a series of explosions targeting munitions factories and other facilities contributing to national defense, and not even the speed of the Silver Streak is enough to combat the organizational skills and coordination of the mysterious mastermind behind them. It is only by sheer coincidence that he happens upon an imperilled security guard from a plant in Georgia and learns from him that the men who blew up his workplace were under command of a mysterious figure called “Iron-Jaw” and that they all work for the “Axes Government”.

    Even with this information under his belt, the Silver Streak still loses two more factories to the Iron-Jaw before finally running down some of his men in Boston and discovering the secret of their great organizational abilities: a super-miniaturized (for the 40s) radio set used to relay orders to the Axes forces in America. By following the instructions coming from a captured unit, the Streak and Whiz are finally able to get the jump on the Iron-Jaw’s men and prevent the destruction of a plant in Pittsburgh, though the mastermind remains on the loose.

    The Iron-Jaw returns in Silver Streak Comics 010 with a new set of goals – the focus is now on shutting down media criticism of the Axes. To that end, the Silver Streak is drawn away via a report of a potential bombing in Chicago while Iron-Jaw is grabbing the real target, broadcaster Kitty Doyle, in NYC.

    This is Silver Streak we’re talking about here, so he returns in time to interrupt the kidnapping in progress. the mysterious Iron-Jaw is revealed to be a moderately cool-looking/ moderately goofy-looking/ fairly spiky humanoid robot. With a gold finish, no less – so much for thematic consistency.

    Though Iron-Jaw briefly gets the upper hand, even a super strong, very pointy robot is no match for the world’s fastest man and it takes a fatal header onto the streets of Manhattan below.

    Here’s something about the Iron-Jaw: in its first appearance, all it does is talk, while in its second it is completely mute. This dovetails interestingly with something that Kitty reports after its defeat, that investigation of the robot indicates that it was controlled by trans-oceanic radio waves originating from the Axes government. Which seems to indicate that the Iron-Jaw was merely operating as the mouth and hands of one or more spymasters in some comic book pastiche of Germany, which in turn means that this is one of the few times in Golden Age comics in which the villain gets away at the end!* Neat!

    *excluding all of the recurring villains who get away all the time, of course. 

    Finally, Silver Streak and Whiz get to meet FDR to get his congratulationss, plus a Congressional Medal of Honor!

    Categorized in: Body (Jaws), Elements (Iron), Origins (Robots) 

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 041

    Another assortment of guys for your delectation.

    the Sky Wolf:

    Just another masked pilot in a souped-up named plane (originally the Silver Bullet, followed by the Golden Bullet), the Sky Wolf loses both his place in Silver Streak Comics and his plane’s name to fellow pilot Cloud Curtis once 1941 rolls around, and to add insult to injury, in 1942 the far more successful character of Skywolf debuts over at Hillman, ensuring that he doesn’t even have good SEO. (Silver Streak Comics 004, 1940)

    Whiz, King of Falcons:

    The Silver Streak is not immune to the sting of pride, so when aviator Sir Cedric Baldwin challenges him to a race around the world to prove who is the fastest man on Earth, he accepts, and is of course fast enough that he not only wins but is able to have a very culturally-sensitive adventure in Saudi Arabia along the way. Silver Streak is knocked out and captured at one point, and the falconry-obsessed villain takes advantage of this to inject his favourite bird with some super-fast blood. 

    Astonishingly, this works, despite our only account of the Silver Streak’s origin being as a result of hypnotic conditioning coupled with a near-death experience – perhaps the hypnosis was so deep that it mesmerized his very blood? That would explain the falcon’s immediate shift in loyalty from its owner to its super-heroic blood doner, at least.

    “Whiz, King of Falcons” is technically not this guy’s name until Silver Streak Comics 007, which was published in 1941, but I reckon that calling him “Unnamed Falcon Companion” here and then correcting it in six months’ time would be extremely wilfully obtuse of me. (Silver Streak Comics 006, 1940)

    UPDATE 1941 

    the Daredevil:

    The Daredevil is Bart Hill, a vigilante in the Batman mould, having lost his parents to a gang of crooks and subsequently vowed to revenge himself on crime. Further, those same crooks tortured Bart himself, rendering him mute in the process, and due to a boomerang-shaped brand they left on his chest he devoted himself to the study of the weapon, adopting it as one of his heroic signatures. The Daredevil is one of the longer-running non-Marvel or DC/Fawcett/Quality characters of the Golden Age so he will be making a few appearances here going forward, but there are a few notable things about him:

    – his origin will undergo some revision between his first and second appearances, most notably the fact that his muteness is discarded – presumably to enable for easier storytelling

    – his costume is also somewhat revised, which is fun particularly because, like his Silver Age namesake, he switches from a yellow to a red colour scheme

    – this Daredevil’s Golden Age popularity, combined with his public domain status, means that he’s a popular choice for modern revivals, but the fact that there is a currently-published character with the same name (and owned by Disney, to boot) means that nobody dares to actually call him Daredevil in their stories and so the more recent versions of him have a wide range of variably terrible alternate names including the Death Defying ‘Devil, the Daring Devil and Doubledare. (Silver Streak Comics 006, 1940)

    UPDATE 1941 

    Iron Vic:

    Iron Vic is a frustrating beast. He first appears as a mostly-dead body washing up near the island laboratory of Professor Carvel, who applies a “certain rare serum” to the task of saving his life before dropping dead from the strain. Vic, as the man comes to be known, is rendered both amnesiac and superhuman by the process. He has one proper super-heroic adventure against Carvel’s old colleague Dr Spagna before the strip transitions into one primarily about baseball (and in case you’re wondering there is no mention of the ethical quandary that a superhuman participating in regular human sports would cause). The really frustrating part is that Dr Spagna implies that he knows something about Iron Vic, but the Spagna story is never actually resolved anywhere. Vic is merely an amnesiac baseball player until I think he enters the Army at some point? WHERE OH WHERE IS MY RESOLUTION (Single Series 022, 1940)