The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: gang boss

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 521: RED DUGAN

    (Blue Ribbon Comics 003, 1940) 

    Red Dugan is a down-on-his-luck gang boss who turns to what will be a classic crime method in the Silver Age particularly: he kidnaps a scientist and forces him to science up a weapon for him to smite his enemies with. In this case, the scientist in question is one Dr Cardo, who seems oddly prepared for the task of making a Seafood Platter Man. Was he kidnapped just before embarking on his own reign of terror? We can only speculate.

    Dugan sends his new monster to plant a bomb on the ship they are based out of, allowing it to show off its might via a cool underwater octopus battle. FEATURING: two very charmingly rascally fish enjoying a free buffet.

    The story ends with a triumphant Red Dugan in full control of his monster, having disposed of his enemies and Dr Cardo (he thinks. In reality the monster was conditioned to be unable to harm its creator) and presumably ready to loot and pillage all water-accessible riches he can. We can speculate that he would have met his comeuppance in the next issue and that it would have been at the hands of nautical adventure trio the Devils of the Deep because their name was the title of the adventure but neither they, Red Dugan, Dr Cardo or the monster ever appeared again.

    Bonus: One more look at those great fish. And they have some crustacean friends!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 509: KING ROCKY THE FIRST

    (Blue Bolt v1 010, 1941)

    Some preamble: in Blue Bolt v1 007 the Green Sorceress managed to capture the Blue Bolt and thus in Blue Bolt v1 008 she was able to force Dr Bertoff to surrender to her forces. Her incompetent scientists subsequently triggered a series of devastating explosions while attempting to extract radium from Bertoff’s mineral fields, with the one positive effect of opening a passage to the surface world. The Green Sorceress then travelled to the surface to do espionage, followed by the Blue Bolt, who had escaped paralysis and freed Bertoff’s people since her departure.

    The Green Sorceress’ main surface henchman was gang boss Rocky Roberts, King of the Rackets, who got pretty thoroughly beaten up by the Blue Bolt but then manages to pop out of a little hatch in the Green Sorceress’ escape rocket and propose an alliance against Dr Bertoff and the Blue Bolt, to which the Sorceress agrees.

    This goes poorly! Rocky immediately takes over the Green Kingdom and declares himself King Rocky the Foist.

    Rather than rule in a traditional manner, King Rocky establishes himself as the head of a gang consisting of the Green Sorceress’ former army, with the citizens of the Green Kingdom being subjected to gang-style protection rackets, kidnappings, torture and garden-variety murder. This is a Jack Kirby idea, it has to be – even if he never made up another one to vex someone like Jimmy Olsen with the Sci-Fi Gangsterocracy is one of the most Kirby ideas I can think of.

    It’s tough to articulate but I respect King Rocky for his decision to murder the Green Sorceress. Believe it or not, it’s a refreshing change for a Golden Age villain, most of whom would see an attractive captive and start yelling about making her “my Queen!”

    But of course if you shoot at a super-villain you best not miss. King Rocky the Foist’s plans are interrupted by Blue Bolt and he meets the traditional end for a super-usurper: giant laser blast.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 509: KING ROCKY THE FIRST

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 509: KING ROCKY THE FIRST

    (Blue Bolt v1 010, 1941)

    Some preamble: in Blue Bolt v1 007 the Green Sorceress managed to capture the Blue Bolt and thus in Blue Bolt v1 008 she was able to force Dr Bertoff to surrender to her forces. Her incompetent scientists subsequently triggered a series of devastating explosions while attempting to extract radium from Bertoff’s mineral fields, with the one positive effect of opening a passage to the surface world. The Green Sorceress then travelled to the surface to do espionage, followed by the Blue Bolt, who had escaped paralysis and freed Bertoff’s people since her departure.

    The Green Sorceress’ main surface henchman was gang boss Rocky Roberts, King of the Rackets, who got pretty thoroughly beaten up by the Blue Bolt but then manages to pop out of a little hatch in the Green Sorceress’ escape rocket and propose an alliance against Dr Bertoff and the Blue Bolt, to which the Sorceress agrees.

    This goes poorly! Rocky immediately takes over the Green Kingdom and declares himself King Rocky the Foist.

    Rather than rule in a traditional manner, King Rocky establishes himself as the head of a gang consisting of the Green Sorceress’ former army, with the citizens of the Green Kingdom being subjected to gang-style protection rackets, kidnappings, torture and garden-variety murder. This is a Jack Kirby idea, it has to be – even if he never made up another one to vex someone like Jimmy Olsen with the Sci-Fi Gangsterocracy is one of the most Kirby ideas I can think of.

    It’s tough to articulate but I respect King Rocky for his decision to murder the Green Sorceress. Believe it or not, it’s a refreshing change for a Golden Age villain, most of whom would see an attractive captive and start yelling about making her “my Queen!”

    But of course if you shoot at a super-villain you best not miss. King Rocky the Foist’s plans are interrupted by Blue Bolt and he meets the traditional end for a super-usurper: giant laser blast.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 496: THE CHIEF AND THE COBRA

    (Big Shot Comics 016, 1941)

    The Cobra technically works for the Chief if you want to exclusively go by the criminal org chart, but the Cobra is also the only reason for the Chief being mentioned at all and not just thrown into my big bin of nondescript gang bosses. Thus: a dual entry.

    Like I said, the Chief is your regular degular gang boss, albeit one who swans around in a green smoking jacket the whole time. Feeling the pinch as the Face cracks down on crime, he hires the Cobra, a rare super-powered Columbia Comics Corporation character. It’s not much – she can do comic book hypnotism that causes her target to see what she wants and also scry her hypnotized target using a crystal ball – but it’s more than most of her criminal peers have.

    The Chief and the Cobra essentially prank the Face’s secret identity Tony Trent by making him think that a man and then an entire house have disappeared, with the idea being that Trent, who at this point “knows” the Face in the same way Clark Kent knows Superman, will bring him in to investigate. And it works, only instead of being easily killed the Face does his regular schtick and beats everyone up. It’s your classic villain’s 2/3 of a plan – no consideration for how to deal with their foe, only how to draw them out.

    The Chief and the Cobra are pretty swiftly rounded up. Is hypnotizing a guy not to see a house and then looking at him in a crystal ball a crime? If not I assume that the Cobra was released pretty swiftly. I mean, she did try to shoot the Face at the end of the story but good luck ever convicting someone of attempted murder of a masked vigilante, amiright?

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 491: THE WEASEL

    (Big Shot Comics 001, 1940)

    Just a simple head of a gang that specializes in stealing furs (and I would call that over-specialized but we’re just a couple of years off from wartime rationing and with it gangs that specialize in meat, tires and scrap metal theft) but he has a number of super-villainous aspects:

    -the biggest one has to go first and it’s that he has the chutzpah to track a police informant through the streets of New York with a pack of bloodhounds. It’s a real power move!

    -the name and the cape don’t hurt

    Okay, that’s actually about it. Those bloodhounds are doing a lot of heavy lifting. The Weasel eventually decides to push his luck re: the cops and their willingness to use deadly force in defense of property and meets his end in a burning fur warehouse.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 483: THE WEB

    (Big 3 004, 1941)

    As a Blue Beetle villain, the Web of course wants nothing more than to take over NYC York City and is particularly ruthless in his pursuit of that goal. He attacks essential services like power and water in order to sow confusion, while also attacking targets such as orphanages to spread terror.

    The Web also has an… intense relationship with his underlings. They seem to be some sort of BDSM cult? For lack of better terminology?

    The Web is definitely getting off on this. I dunno about the rest of these guys – they might be brainwashed? They reflexively chant “I obey, Web!” and “the Web is great!” at every opportunity and have no substantive reaction to being beaten and abused – at the very least it constitutes henchman abuse.

    But having a crack team of submissives will only take you so far and in a final pitched battle with the Blue Beetle the Web does a header onto a bomb and subsequently explodes to death. Presumably his henchmen needed a lot of therapy afterward. Unless it was consensual, of course.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 483: THE WEB

    (Big 3 004, 1941)

    As a Blue Beetle villain, the Web of course wants nothing more than to take over NYC York City and is particularly ruthless in his pursuit of that goal. He attacks essential services like power and water in order to sow confusion, while also attacking targets such as orphanages to spread terror.

    The Web also has an… intense relationship with his underlings. They seem to be some sort of BDSM cult? For lack of better terminology?

    The Web is definitely getting off on this. I dunno about the rest of these guys – they might be brainwashed? They reflexively chant “I obey, Web!” and “the Web is great!” at every opportunity and have no substantive reaction to being beaten and abused – at the very least it constitutes henchman abuse.

    But having a crack team of submissives will only take you so far and in a final pitched battle with the Blue Beetle the Web does a header onto a bomb and subsequently explodes to death. Presumably his henchmen needed a lot of therapy afterward. Unless it was consensual, of course.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 480: PORKY HOGG

    (Big 3 002, 1940)

    Obviously the most remarkable thing about Porky Hogg is that he looks like a pig-man but more than that he is a pig-man who has a real gift for motivation and teambuilding.

    These gangsters are worked into a dang frenzy over the prospect of killing the Blue Beetle – I’m pretty sure they killed that guy in the third panel! – if Porky Hogg had the real Beetle on hand during this little rally they might have taken him out with sheer enthusiasm.

    So, having correctly identified the Blue Beetle as the only thing standing between him and complete domination of New York City and having mentally conditioned an entire gang into some sort of Blue Beetle-hating cult, just what is the plan?

    Here’s where we start to get into Porky Hogg’s failings, because the plan is a bad one: kill a guy and frame the Blue Beetle for it by leaving a sticker on the body. I mean, it works, because the cops in Blue Beetle comics are dumb as hell, but it doesn’t actually do anything to remove the Blue Beetle from the city, because the cops are dumb as hell and the Blue Beetle can easily avoid them. In fact, the cops are always after the Blue Beetle. That’s the kind of super-hero he is, the kind that the cops are after!

    The rest of the story involves a lot of running around and attempted murder. Blue Beetle gal pal Joan Mason gets kidnapped as per usual and taken to Porky Hogg’s incredibly inconvenient mountaintop lair and then Porky Hogg gets knocked off of that same lair to his death. You know what they say: don’t live on a mountain if you’re not prepared to fall off of a mountain.

    Weirdly, Blue Beetle faces off against another guy named Porky Hog (with one g and not as piggy) the next year in Blue Beetle v1 008, and he also framed the Blue Beetle for murder because, as mentioned, the cops in Blue Beetle comics are dumb as hell.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 479: DR BLOOD

    (Big 3 001, 1940)

    There are a couple of interesting things about Dr Blood but I’ll be honest: it’s mostly the name. Great, over the top villain moniker, Dr Blood. Furthermore, Dr Blood runs a costumed gang called the Inner Crime Ring, which is not nearly as good a name as Dr Blood but still better than an unnamed collection of gangsters.

    What Dr Blood is a doctor of is hard to say. The Inner Crime Ring has access to paralysis ray technology so I suppose we must assume that he invented that rather than stealing it from a lesser scientist with an unimpressive name. Or he could be a Doctor of Larceny.

    The other thing about Dr Blood and the Inner Crime Ring is that they make the mistake of tangling with the super-hero Samson and his pal David and Samson absolutely destroys them. Like, straight-up murders them. This is my first Samson story so I’m unsure if this is his usual MO or if it’s because Dr Blood almost killed David earlier in the episode but what I can say for certain is that those cops should not be as okay with this level of vigilante justice/ mass destruction as they are.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 479: DR BLOOD

    (Big 3 001, 1940)

    There are a couple of interesting things about Dr Blood but I’ll be honest: it’s mostly the name. Great, over the top villain moniker, Dr Blood. Furthermore, Dr Blood runs a costumed gang called the Inner Crime Ring, which is not nearly as good a name as Dr Blood but still better than an unnamed collection of gangsters.

    What Dr Blood is a doctor of is hard to say. The Inner Crime Ring has access to paralysis ray technology so I suppose we must assume that he invented that rather than stealing it from a lesser scientist with an unimpressive name. Or he could be a Doctor of Larceny.

    The other thing about Dr Blood and the Inner Crime Ring is that they make the mistake of tangling with the super-hero Samson and his pal David and Samson absolutely destroys them. Like, straight-up murders them. This is my first Samson story so I’m unsure if this is his usual MO or if it’s because Dr Blood almost killed David earlier in the episode but what I can say for certain is that those cops should not be as okay with this level of vigilante justice/ mass destruction as they are.