The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: MLJ

  • DIVINE ROUND-UP 021

    DIVINE ROUND-UP 021

    Just scads of gods.

    Yum Chac: 

    These Mayan priests have tied a recent drought to some archaeological excavations in the Yucatan and have decided that the only thing for it is to revive the practice of human sacrifice to Yum Chac, aka just Chac, god of rain. They of course do this just in time for Zambini the Miracle Man to show up and wreck their whole operation.

    The really interesting thing about this whole episode is that it takes place at a site called “Hichen-Citza” and let me tell you that it’s this sort of thing that really shakes my confidence with regard to my knowledge of just when and why Golden Age comic book creators did these cute little place name substitutions. Surely there was no concern that an ancient or present-day Mayan might get upset by this depiction of their city but not, say their god? Or maybe I should just look back on the whole Egyptasia thing and conclude that “Zambini” scribe Joe Blair just really liked making up silly names for real places.

    (also the high priest is named “Macchu Pacchu,” which again seems to just be Blair having fun with names)

    El Castillo, the temple of Kukulcan also features, and evidently drawn from an old reference photo from back when the sides were still covered in vegetation. 

    God Style: Idol (Real Pantheon) (Zip Comics 008, 1940) 

    the Moon Orchid:

    I frequently like to point out when Golden Age explorers are just blithely waltzing into religious sites and stealing their sacred relics even in the face of stiff and reasonable resistance from the faithful, but this one is pretty beyond the pale. While most of the others at least attempt to adopt a pretense of respectability by claiming to be thieving for anthropological or other scientific reasons, Congo Bill and his pal Professor Kent are explicitly heading into the jungle to steal the Mesabi tribe’s sacred Moon Orchid so that they can sell it for big bucks.

    And steal it they do! And what’s worse: they blow up the entire Mesabi village in the process, so it’s not just sacrilege but mass murder. Worth it for that sweet orchid money, I guess.

    God Style: Animist (More Fun Comics 066, 1941) 

    Ozaz: 

    Adventurer Steve Conrad is on vacation in Egypt when he stumbles upon a weird cult looking to do a blood transfusion from a living woman into a mummy queen in order to bring her back to life and usher in a new age of the Pharaohs. Presumably this bunch worship all of your standard Ancient Egyptian gods, but they don’t name-drop any specific ones, until Steve fumbles his rescue attempt and is slated to be sacrificed to… 

    OZAZ THE FIRE GOD! Possessed of a pretty good name and nothing else, Ozaz is a made-up god who seems to have the head of a bird and whose statue is perfectly placed to topple over and kill the cultists when Steve’s assistant Chang opens the trap door underneath it. Too bad for Ozaz (no sacrifice today) and the Pharaoh cult (crushed to death).

    God Style: Idol (Real Pantheon) (Adventure Comics 063, 1941)

    Pyro:

    Worshipped by the Center People of Asteroid Djung, Pyro is a simple god: he hungers for sacrifice and he wants it via his sacred lava pit. 

    God Style: Invoked (Master Comics 019, 1941) 

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 876: THE CULT OF ANKKAMAN

    (Zip Comics 006, 1940)

    Zambini the Miracle man is visiting his old friend the archaeologist Professor Lorenz when he learns that Lorenz is potentially filled with curse-energy thanks to an ancient tomb he violated. The Professor is dismissive of these concerns, even though both his daughter Greta and Zambini himself reckon that there might be something to them.

    Sure enough, the very instant that Zambini has left the Lorenz house, two members of the Cult of Ankkaman show up and kidnap Professor Lorenz, making use of the magical Doorway of King Ankkaman (one of the items that he brought back from his travels/ that the cult are angry about him making off with) to spirit him away. 

    Sensing trouble, Zambini returns and finds Greta Lorenz in a state of hypnotic paralysis thanks to the cultists’ magics. He frees her and they use the Doorway to follow.

    Now. There are exactly two things that got me excited about this particular entry, which is otherwise a pretty standard tale of a group objecting to the theft of their cultural objects from back when that was seen as unreasonable and villainous thing to do. The first of these is the fact that the Cult of Ankkaman comes from the country of Egyptasia, which I am 90% certain based on context clues is a country exactly like Egypt, only in Asia. Why set a story that could so very easily take place in regular old Egypt in this unnecessary new country you ask? Beats me, but it’s exactly the sort of weird comics thing that I love.

    The second thing is simply that Saki, the Cult’s magic user, does his spells Zatara-style, by speaking backward, and that the close proximity of this to Zambini’s “abbi dabbi” style of spellcasting really highlight just how silly both of these affectations are.

    Prof Lorenz is weirdly calm about being sacrificed to Ankkaman, which he rationalizes as some sort of extremely visceral research. Fortunately for the field of anthropology, Zambini shows up in time to ensure that he is able to publish this experience rather than perish due to it.

    Zambini, the Professor and Greta make their way back through the Doorway of Ankkaman, which Zambini then seals by the simple expedient of adding a door to the frame. The Professor is saved! Unless the cultists make their way back to his house via conventional travel, of course. 

  • ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 023

    A fine batch of aliens for ye this day, sor! 

    Inferians: 

    The wandering planet Inferno threatens to destroy the Earth with its heat, and the magician Zambini (plus some lady and the mad astronomer Professor Stargaze) travel to its surface in an attempt to cool it down. There they find the Inferians, charmingly can-shaped aliens made out of heat-resistant glass.

    We learn more information than usual about this alien culture from a handy text box: the nearby Inferian city is called Cinderburg, and the tap-based language is called Clink. From an Inferian tranformed into a human we learn that the king of Inferno is known as the Great Glassblower, plus the fact that Inferians can be horny.

    The Great Glassblower is implied to have made the Inferians somehow, so I had expected him to be some other manner of being but instead he is just a slightly better-dressed Inferian with a hostile attitude and a bowl full of molten glass that he’s not afraid to throw at intruders. Zambini nonetheless manages to seal up the huge volcano that is the source of Inferno’s great heat (and hopefully not important for maintaining the lives of the Inferians somehow) and thus Earth is saved! (Zip Comics 002, 1940)

    Etherians and Rodongees: 

    After helping the Barrangees move back to the surface of their world and defeat the giant insect species that had driven them underground in the first place, Captain Tornado and his fellow Earthicans were probably ready for a bit of a break from inter-species combat. Well, tough luck, because upon closer inspection, some of the giant insects flying around the surface of Barrang were not insects at all but insect-shaped vehicles piloted by four-armed, blue-haired guys with fragile constitutions and a bad attitude, and Tornado, his friends and a whole bunch of Barrangees are rounded up and taken prisoner by them.

    Their jailers turn out to be called Etherians, and the Etherians turn out to be jerks who have already enslaved a race called the Rodongees and now propose to do the same to the Barrangees. Tornado and his party fall in with a group of freedom-fighting Rodongees and pledge to help them overthrow the Etherians once and for all… and that is the end of the “Captain Tornado” feature. I sure hope they managed to complete their mission without having any more alien trouble on Barrang! (Popular Comics 056, 1940)

    the Evil Gods: 

    Ted Hunt and Jane Martin, the Star Rovers, are making an exploratory stop on Venus when they are captured by a tribe of post-apocalyptic Venusians, but just what exactly was the apocalypse that made them so? They soon find out when they witness a Venusian hunter being chased down and seemingly eaten by a robot referred to as one of the “Evil Gods.”

    And just what are the Evil Gods? Once Ted beats up the Venusian king he gets the story of how his people found six of them deep underground in some sort of suspended animation and how once they were accidentally revived they enslaved the former Venusian civilization and reduced the few free members of the species to starving in isolated swamps. Ted, now king of the Venusians, vows to free the people from the tyranny of the Evil Gods.

    Ted and Jane set out to find food and are immediately captured and transported back to the Evil Gods’ seat of power, where they learn that the tyrant beings are not in fact robots but blobby green aliens that use the impervious robotic exoskeletons to protect their frail flesh. 

    Ted escapes to retrieve his spaceship and takes advantage of the Gods’ habit of sleeping outside of their shells to kill five of them. The sixth, on watch over the Venusian slaves, is lassoed and dragged into a cave where it is then sealed, hopefully for all time. The Venusians (and Jane) are free! (Exciting Comics 003, 1940)

    Fang Men: 

    The Fang Men of Jupiter (or Jupitor, as it appears here) might have a rich and beautiful society that values poetry and art and presumably good dentistry but alas that is not how we encounter them while reading the adventures of Cosmic Carson. 

    Instead, all of the Fang Men we meet are space pirates, and particularly jerky ones at that. We can only hope that this is not an accurate picture of Fang-Man society as a whole. (Science Comics 001, 1940)

  • ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 023

    A fine batch of aliens for ye this day, sor! 

    Inferians: 

    The wandering planet Inferno threatens to destroy the Earth with its heat, and the magician Zambini (plus some lady and the mad astronomer Professor Stargaze) travel to its surface in an attempt to cool it down. There they find the Inferians, charmingly can-shaped aliens made out of heat-resistant glass.

    We learn more information than usual about this alien culture from a handy text box: the nearby Inferian city is called Cinderburg, and the tap-based language is called Clink. From an Inferian tranformed into a human we learn that the king of Inferno is known as the Great Glassblower, plus the fact that Inferians can be horny.

    The Great Glassblower is implied to have made the Inferians somehow, so I had expected him to be some other manner of being but instead he is just a slightly better-dressed Inferian with a hostile attitude and a bowl full of molten glass that he’s not afraid to throw at intruders. Zambini nonetheless manages to seal up the huge volcano that is the source of Inferno’s great heat (and hopefully not important for maintaining the lives of the Inferians somehow) and thus Earth is saved! (Zip Comics 002, 1940)

    Etherians and Rodongees: 

    After helping the Barrangees move back to the surface of their world and defeat the giant insect species that had driven them underground in the first place, Captain Tornado and his fellow Earthicans were probably ready for a bit of a break from inter-species combat. Well, tough luck, because upon closer inspection, some of the giant insects flying around the surface of Barrang were not insects at all but insect-shaped vehicles piloted by four-armed, blue-haired guys with fragile constitutions and a bad attitude, and Tornado, his friends and a whole bunch of Barrangees are rounded up and taken prisoner by them.

    Their jailers turn out to be called Etherians, and the Etherians turn out to be jerks who have already enslaved a race called the Rodongees and now propose to do the same to the Barrangees. Tornado and his party fall in with a group of freedom-fighting Rodongees and pledge to help them overthrow the Etherians once and for all… and that is the end of the “Captain Tornado” feature. I sure hope they managed to complete their mission without having any more alien trouble on Barrang! (Popular Comics 056, 1940)

    the Evil Gods: 

    Ted Hunt and Jane Martin, the Star Rovers, are making an exploratory stop on Venus when they are captured by a tribe of post-apocalyptic Venusians, but just what exactly was the apocalypse that made them so? They soon find out when they witness a Venusian hunter being chased down and seemingly eaten by a robot referred to as one of the “Evil Gods.”

    And just what are the Evil Gods? Once Ted beats up the Venusian king he gets the story of how his people found six of them deep underground in some sort of suspended animation and how once they were accidentally revived they enslaved the former Venusian civilization and reduced the few free members of the species to starving in isolated swamps. Ted, now king of the Venusians, vows to free the people from the tyranny of the Evil Gods.

    Ted and Jane set out to find food and are immediately captured and transported back to the Evil Gods’ seat of power, where they learn that the tyrant beings are not in fact robots but blobby green aliens that use the impervious robotic exoskeletons to protect their frail flesh. 

    Ted escapes to retrieve his spaceship and takes advantage of the Gods’ habit of sleeping outside of their shells to kill five of them. The sixth, on watch over the Venusian slaves, is lassoed and dragged into a cave where it is then sealed, hopefully for all time. The Venusians (and Jane) are free! (Exciting Comics 003, 1940)

    Fang Men: 

    The Fang Men of Jupiter (or Jupitor, as it appears here) might have a rich and beautiful society that values poetry and art and presumably good dentistry but alas that is not how we encounter them while reading the adventures of Cosmic Carson. 

    Instead, all of the Fang Men we meet are space pirates, and particularly jerky ones at that. We can only hope that this is not an accurate picture of Fang-Man society as a whole. (Science Comics 001, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 875: THE RED CIRCLE

    (Zip Comics 006, 1940)

    As Nevada Jones and his pal Little Joe are passing through the town of Copper Bluffs one day, they find themselves smack in the middle of a criminal conspiracy: someone is murdering people as part of a scheme to buy up key portions of the town’s land before the railroad comes through town, and the sign that someone is about to be killed is that a red circle is painted on the shaving mug when they are visiting the town’s barber shop.

    Nevada does some snooping around and discovers an actual note from the mastermind behind the crime spree, signed with a red circle in a way that makes it clear that this is what he calls himself and I am not making things up in an effort to complete a “basic shapes” triumvirate with former minor super-hero the Red Triangle and a hypothetical third character called the Red Square who I must assume is some sort of Soviet super-agent.

    Given the barber shop-centric nature of the Red Circle’s activities it may come as little surprise when I reveal that the Red Circle turns out to be the kindly and helpful old sweeping man, who not only organized the whole thing but was using Nevada’s investigation to eliminate his partners and thus keep all of the money to himself. And he almost gets away with it, too! Ultimately, however, it turns out that he has brought a straight razor to a gun fight.

  • DIVINE ROUND-UP 020

    Human sacrifice is the order of the day with this bunch of deific bad-boys. 

    Shem: 

    Shem, the Sun God, is worshipped in the Land of Shem by the Shemmites, aka the Men of Shem. It’s a very well-branded religion. 

    The Shemmites capture and attempt to sacrifice Kalthar, king of the jungle, but fail to reckon with his tendency to grow to fifteen feet tall and be invulnerable to harm, and are ultimately driven from their lands. 

    God Style: Invoked (Zip Comics 004, 1940) 

    Marro: 

    When the Three Aces set out into the Amazon jungle to investigate rumours of an ancient flying machine they end up discovering a lost colony of Atlantis for the second time in their careers – an astonishing hit rate (though their memories were wiped after leaving the first one and a language barrier probably prevented them from knowing about the Atlantis connection this time, if we’re going to be scrupulously accurate). Upon arriving, they are immediately captured and prepared for sacrifice to the Atlanteans’ god Marro. 

    Luckily for the three aviators, Marro turns out to be the very ancient aircraft they seek, sealed against the ravages of time in a glass dome. They manage to convince the Atlanteans to not sacrifice them if they can make the god fly again as it did in their legends, and being the expert fliers that they are, the Aces pull it off without a hitch. 

    God Style: Animist (Action Comics v1 043, 1941)

    Moloch: 

    The set up for this is a bit convoluted, but here goes: an anthropologist named Dr Chadwick is showing Zero, the Ghost Detective a weird skull that he dug up in Egypt one day when the ghost of the skull’s former owner shows up to take it back, and makes off with Chadwick’s daughter, to boot. Zero pursues the ghost back to Egypt and through a portal to Ancient Egypt, where he finds himself in a temple to Moloch and learns that the skull had been stuffed full of jewels sacred to the god. Zero manages to escape back to the 20th Century with the girl but wisely leaves the jewels behind.

    There is of course a lot of business involving human sacrifice to Moloch via the white hot hands of his idol, and while Moloch himself only shows up in the form of the idol the question remains: just who is raising all these ghosts and powering this time portal?

    God Style: Idol (Real?) (Feature Comics 041, 1941)

    the “Monster-God”: 

    The Monster-God is not this fellow’s name. We never learn what, in fact, it is, because the adventure he appears in is another boilerplate heroic-white-explorers-versus-evil-native-heathens adventure, handled with all of Fawcett Comics’ trademark cultural sensitivity. I include him only for completions’ sake and to point out that I like how gangly he is.

    God Style: Idol (Whiz Comics 006, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 874: MAGI

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 874: MAGI

    (Zip Comics 004, 1940)

    The villain for today is called Magi, and is the chief magic-user to a race of Mermen and Mermaids. Magi and his pal Torno have come to the surface world on a mission to retrieve the last descendant of the Mer-folk on land. Some notes:

    -Magi gets no small amount of points for recognizing Zambini as his greatest threat among the surface world people and moving to neutralize him in advance of the mission.

    -These points are lessened by the fact that Zambini manages to wake up mid-Eternal Sleep spell and turn it into a Long Nap spell instead.

    -Mary Reed, the last Mer-descendant on Earth, is somehow the key to making the Merfolk able to walk the land again, but just how this is to be achieved is never articulated. Does it have something to do with her being the only part-Mer human or have the Merfolk simply been procrastinating for generations?

    -The reason that the Merfolk can’t just walk up onto land may shock you: it’s not due to amphibiousness-related problems as you might expect but rather because they can’t see in daylight. Wild! 

    Magi and Torno successfully nab Mary Reed, but her savvy friends recruit Zambini (extremely refreshed from his long magic nap) to help rescue her. In addition to Mary’s friend Jean Sampson (cruelly institutionalized for reporting Mary’s abduction but sprung by Zambini) and Jean’s fiance Stanley Hamilton, they are accompanied by Hamilton’s friend and minor antagonist Paul Lloyd, whose lust for Merman gold is such that he attempts to murder Zambini for it while walking around on the bottom of the ocean in a Zambini-made air bubble that he has no hint will survive the magician’s death. If ever a man deserved magical punishment (specifically: having his arm turned into a fish fin) it is he.

    The rest of the adventure is a foregone conclusion, considering that Magi was not quite powerful enough to overcome Zambini while the latter was in deep REM sleep. After some magical spankings and a round of apologies, the humans are off to the surface while the Merfolk city is spared further wizardly wrath. Even Paul Lloyd gets his regular arm back though he doesn’t deserve it, the jerk.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 873: SATAN

    (Zip Comics 003, 1940)

    Zambini (the Miracle Man) is on his first vacation in years and Satan, presuming that his guard will be down or that he left his magic amulet at home I guess, decides that this is the perfect time to attack and murder him for being such a thorn in the side of Evil. 

    (Please note the near-identical guy kind of capering behind Satan’s throne up there, as he represents my favourite thing about this adventure, that Satan rules over a nation of devils (the Devil Men) who all look pretty much exactly the same as him. Some of them have red hair or different beard styles, but over all they are the most homogeneous demon army I have ever seen,

    Also, I know that trying to formulate a coherent cosmology out of any comic book company’s output will be a fool’s errand for some time yet, but it’s interesting that Satan and the Devil appear to be two seperate entities in the MLJ/Archie afterlife) 

    In case it wasn’t clear up above: I don’t think that this is a very good plan on Satan’s part. Like, why not attack Zambini while he is tackling another problem instead of while he is having a nice rest? Why attempt to kill him with a tidal wave, the well-known slow and ominous disaster, rather than something quick and sudden that he doesn’t have time to react to by, as in this case, freezing the ocean?  

    Satan’s next move is to send some Devil Men to attack Zambini directly (and looking at them here I must say that there are two faces in the devil nation: the classic devil face of the black haired Devil Men and the more cavemanish look of the red haired ones). They fare no better than the tidal wave and are transformed into a flock of presumably infernal penguins that presumably must be bedevilling the seas to this day.

    Zambini decides to take the battle to Satan, and here’s where I’ll give the ol’ Prince of Lies a little credit: he did plan for this eventuality, in the form of a really horrible cage that takes advantage of Zambini’s weakness to human touch by being made entirely out of human hands. It’s honestly one of the worst things that I have seen in a depiction of comic book Hell!

    Satan of course follows this up with the worst plan ever devised: he has his guys push the cage into a big fire in an attempt to kill Zambini, without reckoning with the fact that the unprotected human hands will probably be destroyed more quickly than the asbestos suit-clad magician. Sure enough: Zambini emerges from the flames unharmed and strikes Satan dead.

  • REAL PERSON ROUND-UP 019

    For various definitions of the word real. 

    Adolf Hitler: 

    Just why this nonsense-language-speaking pilot henchman of the Mask is named Reltih is a mystery, but it’s also a fact. BONUS VERY ANNOYING THING: I can decipher the nonsense in that second panel as “I’ll murder the bum” but this makes me think that I should be able to do the same with the rest of his half-dozen or so lines of dialogue but I can’t. Utterly vexing!

    The Mask also employs an English-speaker with the very annoying name of Inilossom in the same issue. (Whiz Comics 010, 1940)

    Here’s straightforward Hitler analog King Rodend of Kalnar about to be beaten up by the Flame. (Wonderworld Comics 011, 1940)

    Wretched humour comic “Don Quixote in Modern Times” features villain “Adolphus Stalini”. (Wonderworld Comics 020, 1940)  

    Devil’s Island: 

    Newsreel camerawoman Patty O’Day covers a prisoner’s revolt on the penal colony in what might just be the least sympathetic portrayal of Devil’s Island in comics. (Wonderworld Comics 015, 1940)

    J. Edgar Hoover:

    Minor appearances: 

    Whiz Comics 003a, 1940 

    Whiz Comics 005, 1940 

    John Galt: 

    File this one under “amazing coincidences”. A character named John Galt, a full seventeen years before Atlas Shrugged is published. And to top it off:

    Dr John Galt’s radium has been stolen by Dr James Kirk (aka Doctor Death), a full twenty-six years before Star Trek debuts. Would it be a bit more narratively satisfying if John Galt was the selfish shitheel and James Kirk was the selfless hospital administrator? Sure, but that’s just details. (Whiz Comics 002, 1940)

    the Koh-i-Noor Diamond:

    Reporter Scoop Smith is sent on assignment to find the fabled South African Rooirand Emerald, which his editor sees as a direct parallel to the Koh-i-noor. Just how this is the case is what baffles me – I initially thought that it might have been stolen and editor Lane was thinking of the Agatha Christie novel in which that happened, but the more I look at it the more I think that it’s just a big gem that some white guys are trying to steal. 

    (this story also has one of the more stupid desus ex machina endings in all comics, when the sacred snake handler of the isolationist tribe that worship the emerald turns out to be Sam Jones, African American train porter and eternally loyal to Smith because of a five dollar tip) (Whiz Comics 004, 1940) 

    Lázaro Cárdenas del Rio: 

    You know me: I love to dunk on old comics for their portrayals of in-office world leaders, and let’s just say that if you look up a picture of Lázaro Cárdenas, president of Mexico from 1934 to November of 1940, he doesn’t have a long white beard. I didn’t bother to check if the President of Mexico has an enormous ornate throne to sit in, but I can only hope. (Whiz Comics 005, 1940)

    Mata Hari: 

    Hundanian spy Mata Dara, the latest in a long line of women in espionage to have a sound-alike name to Mata Hari. (Zip Comics 001, 1940)

    Senusret III: 

    Mentioned as being a cousin of Taia’s in Whiz Comics 002, “King Senwosri” aka Pharaoh Senusret III then makes an appearance in person as he rises from the dead to punish an American explorer for violating the sanctity of his tomb. He returns to his eternal slumber after an intervention by cousin Taia and cousin-in-law Ibis the Invincible. (Whiz Comics 003b, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 871: THE MONSTER

    (Zip Comics 002, 1940) 

    Mr Satan is summoned to the charmingly-named Shadow Pond to solve a series of disappearances among a group of scientists who have secluded themselves there. Upon arriving he immediately finds himself in the middle of an attack by a humanoid monster (the Monster, of course. Annoyingly, it is never once referred to as the Monster of Shadow Pond, which would be a pretty great name). He manages to pull a young woman away from the attack and is shortly thereafter introduced to the cast of characters at Shadow Pond:

    Professor Heaslip: Mr Satan’s client and the de facto leader of the scientific group.

    Mrs Heaslip: the Professor’s younger wife, recently rescued from the clutches of the Monster by Mr Satan.

    John Heaslip: the Professor’s brother, a scientist in his own right. Narrowly avoided being killed by the Monster in its first attack.

    Blake: Scientist and acquaintance of Mr Satan. Blake gets mentioned a fair amount throughout the story but only makes one appearance. Probably killed by the Monster.

    Richards: Scientist. Killed in the first attack by the Monster.

    Slade: Scientist. Killed in the attack that Mr Satan witnessed.

    Unnamed Scientist: Killed at some point by the Monster.

    Is someone in this motley crew actually the Monster? Not the dead ones, obviously. 

    Mr Satan does some investigating and is himself almost killed by the Monster. In the process he discovers that the scientists’ missing bodies are caught in a whirlpool beneath the surface of the pond, explaining why they have not surfaced.

    A plan to kill the Monster with a bomb goes awry when the device, built by John Heaslip, goes off without warning and almost kills both his brother and Mr Satan

    This explosion provides Mr Satan with the final key to the puzzle: he tracks down the conveniently-not-at-the-site-of-the-explosion John and Mrs Heaslip and confronts them with the truth: this whole affair has been about the illicit love that they share. The Monster was born out of an attempt to murder Professor Heaslip so that his widow and brother could be together (and also so that they could steal his radium ray, a device that literally had not been mentioned before it was revealed to be a motivation for murder, and which I think was added late in the game to make the story a bit less sordid). A sad and grubby resolution indeed.

    We also get to see the full Monster getup, and while some of the other diving-suit-modified-to-look-like-sea-monster examples we have are a bit more monstery, this might just be the best looking weird diving suit. Lust look at that eye stalk/periscope!