The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: Bull’s-Eye Bill

  • MONSTER, CRITTER AND CREATURE ROUND-UP 003

    I hope everyone likes monsters as much as I do because there are a whole lot of them to cover.

    Beaked Tyros:

    When polar explorer Anthony Conrad gets lost in an Arctic storm and falls through a hole in the pack ice, he reasonably expects to meet his demise. Instead, he falls into the subterranean kingdom of Artica and is chosen by the elderly Artican king – also a stranded former surface explorer – as his successor. 

    As part of the coronation process, Anthony must prove his mettle to his prospective subjects, and step two of that process is Thrilling Arena Combat with the horrible beaked tyros “Lord of Artica’s Jungles,” and I love this thing. Though it looks like just another low-rent carnosaur at first glance, upon closer examination it has many bizarre features, including weird bird legs, thin, unpleasant-looking teeth, radially-symmetrical hands that are possibly equipped with suckers on the palms, and skin that is described as “hairy” in the caption box. Truly this is a strange and wonderful beast that sadly must be chopped up in service to the story. (Cyclone Comics 001, 1940)

    the Beast:

    When asked to prove his worthiness to wed the Princess Ahloo, our hero Abdallah knows exactly what to do: ride directly to a nearby valley full of dinosauroids and slay one of them. Though one of the pteranodon-adjacent flying reptiles that confront him when he enters the valley would probably be sufficient to satisfy Ahloo’s father, Abdallah instead opts to battle a creature referred to only as the Beast, a possibly-fire-breathing, possibly-carnivorous sauropodoid that give him a truly heroic-level challenge. And it works! He gets the girl! (Funny Pages v2 003, 1937)

    the Birds:

    These vulture-monsters come very close to destroying the Blue Bolt on his very first adventure. They are only prevented from doing so, in fact, because they work for the Green Sorceress and she has become infatuated with Our Hero here on sight.

    I’m always a big fan of these kinds of monster birds that up the ante on deadliness by throwing most of the birdliness of the creature out the window and instead give them the body plan of a griffin. Really great stuff and my only note is that some of the tails are very unpleasant to look at. (Blue Bolt v1 001, 1940)

    Bolu:

    Meg and Mickey are two children who have access to a magical time-travel stone and use it to just kind of blunder around throughout history. In this particular instance they have ended up in the Stone Age and are only saved from being eaten by some uncharitable portrayals of our collective ancestors by the appearance of a dinosaur, called Bolu by the cavemen and of course far, far more out of place than two 20th Century kids could ever hope to be. There is some indication that the bolu was summoned by the Spirit of the Stone to save the two from becoming dinner, but if that’s the case then why do the cavemen already know about it? (The Comics 007, 1938)

    Carnicantileia:

    The swamp-dwelling carnicantileia briefly menaces Flip Falcon and his associates during one of his early adventures when he mostly uses his fantastic time-and-space machine to go to Mars. It’s a pretty impressive snake-style beast, and as such it’s a real shame that it is killed in such a goofy way, by having a big rock thrown down its gullet. (Fantastic Comics 003, 1940)

    Carnivoplant:

    The carnivoplant is a classic man-eating plant, subtype seaweed, that almost kills adventurer Kinks Mason before it in turn is preyed upon by a swarm of phosphomites. And just what are phosphomites, you may ask? Contextually, they are small glowing creatures that eat carnivoplants, and that is all the information we get. (Fight Comics 001, 1940)

    Cave Monster:

    Modern day cowboy hero Bull’s-Eye Bill and his companions meet this cave reptile while pursuing an outlaw, and as I previously observed, it was clearly meant to set up an adventure into a prehistoric underground world that subsequent creators chose not to take advantage of. 

    As for the one beast that we do get to see fight some cowboys, I really appreciate how lizardy it looks, as well as how it seems to be posing for maximum dramatic effect in every panel, even when killing a guy or writhing around in its death throes. (Target Comics v1 007, 1940)

    the Ozix:

    Someday
    when I post a picture of a creature that is just a big cat with some extra stuff stapled onto it in one of these round-ups I will be able to refer to it
    as a standard type of creature, but I simply haven’t done the work yet.
    The ozix, then, is a beast with the body of a leopard and the head of a
    crocodile – how novel a concept! Adventurer Congo Jack must slay this
    one during his adventures under the earth. (Lightning Comics v2 002,
    1941) 

    Dakk:

    Returning to the adventures of King Anthony in the sub-Arctic world of Artica, here we see him as he is about to tour his kingdom on the back of a domesticated dakk, and I must say that I like the very beast-of-burden look that they have given to this creature’s head. Sadly, this particular dakk has been poisoned as part of an attempt to assassinate the new king.

    This assassination attempt is only partially successful, as Anthony survives the fall into the jungles of Artica but is then placed in further peril at the claws of the various creatures that live there, such as this amazing giraffe-patterned water lizard.

    Though he escapes the lizard, Anthony is almost immediately attacked by a great horned tigrid, which is is of course a regular tiger with two little horns on its head, and another example of what I was talking about in the ozix entry.

    Finally, after stumbling upon the roots of the conspiracy against him and dealing with them violently, King Anthony makes his way home on a humble unicorn. (Cyclone Comics 003, 1940) 

    the Storm Monster:

    A giant reptilian beast that plagues an African village on a yearly basis (during a huge storm, natch), the Storm Monster meets its end after swallowing Kaänga whole, upon which he carves his way free of its guts with his trusty knife. (Jungle Comics 021, 1941)

  • MEDIA IN COMICS 004

    It’s an all-movies episode of Media in Comics!

    Movies:

    London Strikes Back – Hard! is the film follow-up to London Can Take It, with both featuring an actor playing costumed vigilante London and the narration of Marc Holmes, London’s secret identity. As a bonus, please note the wild nasal apparatus that Imperial Studios required to put a toothbrush mustache on the actor playing Hitler. (Daredevil Comics 005, 1941)

    We don’t too much of the action of Wild Mesa as it is filmed on the ranch of cowboy hero Bull’s-Eye Bill, as the issues in question are much more concerned with the interpersonal conflict between Bill and film star Tex O’Conner. Seems to be a regular-ass Western. (Target Comics v1 009, 1940)

    And now for some more Fantastic Feature Films content, as discussed in the last Media in Comics round-up: 

    Musical genius Gorevski, driven mad by a progressive paralysis in his right arm and the perceived infidelity of his wife, turns his strange musical abilities to crime in The Music Monster. (Target Comics v1 004, 1941)

    Big city gangsters steal a rain-making machine and get mixed up in backwoods hijinks in the execrable hillbilly comedy Ezekiel’s Ark. (Target Comics v1 005, 1941) 

    The Blue Zombie, a film about mad science being turned against warmongers, turned up in a minor super-hero round-up a while back. (Target Comics v1 006, 1941)

    The House of Horror is kind of a horror movie and kind of a crime movie, about a young couple who stumble into a gang hideout while visiting a relative and get fake haunted. (Target Comics v1 007, 1941)

    In Wedding Present, a gangster tries to go straight for love, only to be dragged back in and ultimately meet his end thanks to his own twisted mind. (Target Comics v1 008, 1941)

    Boomerang is the tale of a heroic reporter fighting to clear his lover’s father from a political frameup (the boomerang in question being the fact that the source of the smear campaign has his own career ruined). (Target Comics v1 009, 1941)

    Sword of Destiny is a very weird horror movie in which an American couple buy a house that once belonged to Mexican war hero General Santa Guerrero, only to find that instead of dying twenty years earlier as everyone had believed he had instead been trapped in the building’s basement, eating rats and house painters. The titular sword of destiny is Guerrero’s own that had been left hanging over the fireplace and is ultimately used to slay him. (Target Comics v1 010, 1941)

    Oddly featured just two issues after the last one, this Boomerang is a story about a man trying to commit the perfect murder and then himself dying when rigor mortis causes his victim to posthumously shoot him back. (Target Comics v1 011, 1941)

  • IT’S CALLED “NO, AND”

    (Target Comics v1 007-008)

    The of these two selections is from the end of the Bull’s-Eye Bill story in Target Comics v1 007 and the second is from the beginning of the story in 008, and while the artist is clearly different it’s a bit hard to tell if the writer has also changed. Anyhow, shout out to whichever member of the team looked at that absolute 100% lead-in to an adventure in an underground prehistoric enclave, said “I don’t want to write and/or draw a bunch of cowboy vs dinosaur shit” and had them just walk back out of the cave into a story about Hollywood location scouts instead.

    (I haven’t read far enough to see if lone African American cast member Happy ever reappears after unceremoniously being left out of the second issue but if he doesn’t I’m going to assume that he at least heeded the call to adventure and is off somewhere riding a quetzalcoatlus and having fun instead of punching cows all day)