(Crackajack Funnies 010-017, 1939)
The Piranha is a mysterious gang boss operating out of New York City and known for the gruesome way he dealt with his enemies, of which we will return to in a second.
The Piranha is actually the wealthy Senõr Romez, a society luminary known for his fabulous parties and the many unsolved murders that happen at his fabulous parties. He also dresses exactly like the Piranha but with hair and a mask – a lot of the story involves G-Man Ed Tracer trying to find some way to link Romez and the Piranha.
Back to that murder method. Somewhat predictably, the Piranha feeds his victims to piranhas, but it’s what he does next that really catches the old attention: he sends entire skeletons as warnings (side note – the character receiving the skeleton in the above panels is a radio celebrity named Jimmie Stewart. I don’t think that it’s supposed to be a version of Jimmy Stewart the actor [who was working in radio at the time] but it’s a weird coincidence).
As predictable as the Piranha using piranhas as a murder method is, it’s even more predictable that he himself would end up on the wrong end of a skeletonization by the end of the story. Live by the piranha, die by the piranha, as they say.
Now here’s the kicker: when I first read this story a few years back it was as a serial, spread out over eight issues. I didn’t notice then because it was a disjointed way to take in details but revisiting it just now all in a go… I don’t know if we ever learn the reason that the Piranha is killing wealthy partygoers and kidnapping the princess of the South American (?) country of Spanovia and so forth. He’s just generically evil and foreign? Presumably there’s money in it somewhere but as far as the facts on paper go he’s just into some sort of extreme roleplay.
