The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: cyborg

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 923: PROFESSOR SKINN

    (Silver Streak Comics 007, 1941)

    The Skinn family is being killed off – at least seven of them have been murdered on their birthdays, leaving only the odius Mortimer Skinn, and he soon follows, despite police protection. 

    Boy Inventor Dickie Dean hasn’t been idle while this campaign of murder has been going on: thanks to a surveillance balloon he raised over the town for the purpose, he and his pal Zip Todd are able to track the culprit to his home. There. they learn that he is a blind beggar whom they had prevented Mortimer Skinn from beating some months prior, and that he is in fact Mortimer’s brother and the sole surviving member of the Skinn clan.

    Professor Skinn (unsettling name. unsettling family name) reveals that Mortimer and his other brothers attempted to kill him for his life insurance some years back but had only succeeded in blinding him and leaving him for dead. He spent at least some of the intervening time creating his frankly amazing looking cybernetic eye/helmet and planning a revenge that with the death of Mortimer is complete. And now he’s ready to put his skills to use in the world of crime!

    Dickie rebuffs Skinn’s attempt to recruit him as a partner, so out comes the scalpel, the bone drill and the brain injection fluid, because Professor Skinn is not one to take no for an answer. Dickie Dean is promptly evilized and turned on to the benefits of a life of crime.

    The new super-science criminal duo proceed to create a precious metal-attracting magnet and go ham on the town’s gold supply.

    Fortunately for Dickie’s long-term viability as the lead character in a comic strip, Zip Todd gets himself free after days (weeks?) of imprisonment and turns the tables on Skinn thanks to some lax lab safety procedures that mean there’s just vials of nitroglycerine lying around to grab. Skinn reverses the evilization procedure with a handy ray and is hauled away… FOR NOW.

    (also Skinn is vulnerable to attacks on his enormous weak point, like a video game boss)

    Professor Skinn returns in Silver Streak Comics 008, where he escapes prison with the help of his assistant Blubber’s berserker strength. Please not that the Castleton PD saw fit to take away Skinn’s helmet when they locked him up, thus rendering him blind – I’d call that cruel and unusual punishment.

    Dickie, rightfully concerned about Skinn being on the loose, works on an invention that he can use to counter anything that the Professor throws at him, while Skinn does the same and then forces a confrontation by kidnapping Dickie’s parents.

    It’s a tehnological showdown: disintegrator ray vs invisibility ray, and Dickie’s invisibility gives him just enough of an edge to free his parents and destroy the disintegrator, though he himself is captured in the process.

    Professor Skinn next sets out to loot Castleton again, this time with an army of remote controlled robots, but between Zip Todd (overlooked in the scuffle) leading the entirety of the Castleton PD back to his base and a still-invisible Dickie getting loose and causing a ruckus he and Blubber are ultimately forced to zipline down the mountain to freedom.

    This is enough for Professor Skinn: he challenges Dickie to settle things with a war of inventions via singing telegram.

    Silver Streak Comics 009: the war of inventions kicks off after both parties have had a couple of months to prepare, in a fairly horrific fashion as Professor Skinn shells the Castleton High School.

    After putting some distance between them and their surviving classmates, Dickie and Zip Todd wait out the initial shelling in an impenetrable fort before sallying forth in a similarly impenetrable tank equipped with a force ray cannon. They are accompanied by a squadron of small but mighty robots to counter Skinn’s own robot forces. Skinn, in addition to his mechanical infantry, has an air force comprised of trained, bomb-dropping birds, and is conducting his artillery barrage from a base concealed behind a waterfall. 

    I must say that I was disappointed by Skinn’s use of fairly conventional artillery, but he won me back with the robot army and sea gull air force.  

    Professor Skinn is extracted from behind the waterfall when Dickie uses his force ray to bounce a few artillery shells back to their source, and then makes a bid for victory by having his birds carry off Dickie and Zip while he and Blubber steal Dickie’s super tank. It all ends badly, however, as Professor Skinn and Blubber blow themselves up while trying to activate the force ray. Professor Skinn has finally joined the rest of his family in Hell.

    OR HAS HE? 

    No, it turns out, because Silver Streak Comics 011 features a final appearance in which he attempts to chase Dickie and his pals away from fixing up an abandoned theme park that he has been hiding out in. This is a definite step down for the Professor, from legitimate threat to Scooby-Doo villain.

    Skinn’s main Teen Removal tool in this issue is a very Silver Age vehicle called the Gadget Octopus that is equipped with various gag tentacles (boxing glove tentacle, kicking foot tentacle, net tentacle, kid spanking tentacle etc) as well as a fire cannon for when things get serious.

    Once Dickie gets in a room with him, Professor Skinn is easily captured, as befits his fallen status. He’s taken off to jail once more (hopefully with a better lawyer who can successfully argue against eye confiscation this time) and is never seen again. Did he wisely retire or did the fact that Pennsylvania – where “Dickie Dean, Boy Inventor” is plausibly set – is a death penalty state and Skinn is a multiple murderer come into play? 

    Categorized in: Accessories (Various), Murder (Familicides), Origin (Blind Characters)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 848: DR HSIN

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 848: DR HSIN

    (Weird Comics 005, 1940) 

    There are exactly two reasons why I gave Dr Hsin his own entry rather than sticking him in the next Mad and Criminal Scientist Round-Up, and the first one is his creation/henchman Mako, aka the Perfect Man. I just can’t resist a man with a tube coming out of his head, especially when that man is some sort of cyborg frankenstein.

    The second reason is that Hsin’s plan – to steal the blood from hundreds of great men and women (up to and including Thor, God of Thunder!) and use it to create superhumans – is delightfully wackadoo. Is this how he created Mako? Is that what the tube is for? The mind boggles.

    As so often happens when one creates a perfect being, Mako eventually decides that Dr Hsin is surplus to requirements and tries to take over the entire operation. The rest of the issue is a series of punches: Mako punches out Dr Hsin, then Thor uses the Gauntlet of Thor to punch out Mako and then he does the same to Dr Hsin, making him the most punched man of the issue. 

    Dr Hsin gets turned over to the authorities, but poor Mako ends up getting blown up with the rest of Hsin’s experiments when Thor determines that they are too foul to exist. RIP to the Perfect Man. And also RIP Dr Hsin, because nobody thought to see if he had any poison on him.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 848: DR HSIN

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 848: DR HSIN

    (Weird Comics 005, 1940) 

    There are exactly two reasons why I gave Dr Hsin his own entry rather than sticking him in the next Mad and Criminal Scientist Round-Up, and the first one is his creation/henchman Mako, aka the Perfect Man. I just can’t resist a man with a tube coming out of his head, especially when that man is some sort of cyborg frankenstein.

    The second reason is that Hsin’s plan – to steal the blood from hundreds of great men and women (up to and including Thor, God of Thunder!) and use it to create superhumans – is delightfully wackadoo. Is this how he created Mako? Is that what the tube is for? The mind boggles.

    As so often happens when one creates a perfect being, Mako eventually decides that Dr Hsin is surplus to requirements and tries to take over the entire operation. The rest of the issue is a series of punches: Mako punches out Dr Hsin, then Thor uses the Gauntlet of Thor to punch out Mako and then he does the same to Dr Hsin, making him the most punched man of the issue. 

    Dr Hsin gets turned over to the authorities, but poor Mako ends up getting blown up with the rest of Hsin’s experiments when Thor determines that they are too foul to exist. RIP to the Perfect Man. And also RIP Dr Hsin, because nobody thought to see if he had any poison on him.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 553 UPDATE: LANDOR, MAKER OF MONSTERS (1940)

    When last we saw Landor, Maker of Monsters, he had just been exploded along with his castle and giant mosquito minions. But did you honestly expect a simple thing like a huge explosion to stop a villain of Landor’s calibre? No! He merely becomes more burned up and crusty and bitter! Landor has not shifted his goals since 1939 and is consumed with the twin urges to 1) make monsters and 2) get revenge on Tony Torrence and Marcia Merrill.

    Landor makes his dramatic return at the perfect time: US officials, including Landor’s old foe Anthony “Tony” Torrence, are completely unable to deal with the menace of the Fire-Men. This gives Landor the perfect opportunity to get Torrence under his thumb, using the power of patriotism!

     

    As usual, Landor has not rested on his laurels. Rather than trot out a version of one of his prior creations, such as a frankenstein or a giant insect or a surprisingly flammable woman, he has dipped his toe into the twin fields of robotics and cybernetics to produce a giant robot powered by a human brain! A fireproof one!

     
    The brain-bot disposes of the Fire-Men without a problem. Well, I say without a problem, but in fact there is one tiny hiccup in Landor’s plan: the cyborg is not strictly 100% fireproof after all, and the Fire-Men’s last desperate flamethrower attacks end up driving it berserk and it makes a murderous beeline for Landor and Tony Torrence. Torrence manages to destroy it by luring it into an electrical substation, and since he has saved Landor’s life he is forced to relinquish his claim over Torrence’s. Foiled by his own sense of honour!

    In Speed Comics 005, Landor accepts a commission to help a couple of foreign agents rob the US Treasury. Being the Maker of Monsters that he is, Landor proceeds to create a giant mole to aid in the tunnelling process. This escapade ends with Tony Torrence gunning down the agents and collapsing the tunnel on top of Landor, but the “IS LANDOR DEAD?” cliffhanger lacks a bit of oomph as he is in fact standing next to the giant mole when last seen.

    If Landor had given up his quest for revenge following the giant cyborg incident then the tunnel collapse brought it back in force, and so in Speed Comics 006 he puts a very strange revenge scheme into motion: he creates the Cat-Girl, a two-foot-tall human woman with the head of a cat, and uses her to kidnap Tony Torrence’s niece Gloria as a test subject in an experiment to see if he can turn a human being into solid diamond. I’m a bit winded just typing all that out.

    Tony Torrence of course rushes Landor’s castle just in time to rescue Gloria and deal with both the Cat-Girl and Landor using his new fighting technique: throw your opponent at the nearest solid object. Landor of course survives though the Cat-Girl is not so lucky.

    Speed Comics 007 introduces eminent biologist Dr Sina Zurat, who has long admired Landor’s work and wishes to join him in it.

    Together, Landor and Zurat create the bestial woman Creeta, and at some point along the way the two fall in love! Could a stable home life and a loving partner who gets all of his jokes about gene-splicing finally cure Landor of his antisocial ways? We will never know, as poor Creeta was seemingly born already in love with him and only gets about an hour to grapple with having feelings at all, let alone powerful ones. Consumed with jealousy, Creeta attacks Dr Zurat.

    Tony Torrence of course shows up in time to stop Creeta (by turning a screw on the side of her neck that is attached to her steel wire nervous system – a particularly grisly failsafe!), but too late to save Zurat. And here is the point, I reckon, where the Landor/Torrence relationship could turn around. A little compassion from Tony could show Landor that there is a better way to live than in a constant cycle of revenge and biological constructs. Instead, Tony is a huge jerk about the whole thing, ensuring that the cycle continues.

    Landor’s final four appearances are exclusively revenge-oriented: in Speed 008, he goes with what he knows best and makes a humanoid monster, but unfortunately for him, he drops the dang thing before it’s finished… cooking?… and so ends up as a classic Igor rather than the Adonis that Landor had intended. Still, any creature in a storm, and so Ganda, as this particular creation is known, is sent to capture Tony.

    Ganda goofs and brings back Torrence’s house guest, criminologist Kung Fu Tse (sadly just a name in the “mash together a lot of vaguely Chinese-sounding syllables” mode and not a 70s style martial arts master), but that turns out to be okay, as it turns out that Landor, Tse and Torrence all went to the same college and that the beefs between them began back then.

    As usual, Tony shows up in the nick of time, and while Landor escapes unscathed poor Ganda is not so fortunate.

    Landor’s revenge plot in Speed 009 involves kidnapping Marcia Merrill and injecting her with a chemical to make her blind. It’s not a particularly great plan, and Landor absolutely should have seen the end result coming: Tony beats him up until he gives up the antidote to the blindness serum. There are however two points of interest in the story:

    1) Landor’s chosen henchman for this one is the fantastically-named Stumbi the Fish-Man. It’s like I always say: if you’re going to be a biological construct created specifically to kidnap people off of boats then you might as well get a great name out of it. 

    2) From this issue onward Tony Torrence is instead called Jack Torrence, for no clear reason. Is it simple loose Golden Age continuity standards? Burgeoning anti-Italian sentiment relating to WWII? Something else? No idea, but what it certainly is is annoying, though mitigated slightly by the fact that it’s almost the name of the guy from The Shining.

    Landor’s lowest moment comes in Speed Comics 010, as this is the issue in which he doesn’t make a monster at all. At least unless you stretch the definition of “monster” to include a prominent criminologist who has been kidnapped and mind-controlled into a willing participant in a plot to frame Tony “Jack” Torrence as a jewel thief. And I do not do so.

    Tony ends up spending most of this issue in jail, so Kung Fu Tse is the one who hurls Landor into the nearest hard surface before freeing criminologist John Powers from the mind control.

    Speed Comics 011 marks Landor’s final appearance and fortunately for his reputation he does in fact make a monster in this one. Specifically, he tricks fugitive Spike Hart into accepting a job and some free plastic surgery and then proceeds to turn him into the Tiger-Man, i.e., Spike Hart with claws, oversized fangs and little stripes on his face.

    Sent to bring back Torrence alive or dead, the Tiger-Man comes closer to actually doing so than any creature since the Brute, way back in Speed Comics 001. It is not to be, however, as he ultimately meets his end at the hands of Torrence’s butler, a truly ignominious fate.

    As often happens in stories with recurring villains, Landor’s final appearance was not written as a final appearance. Tony/Jack socks him out the window and he scurries away into the night to get ready for their next encounter, which will never happen. 

    ADDENDUM: As I was about to publish this it occurred to me that Landor is of course a revenge killer, albeit one with a terrible score. Counting up all of the various attempts on Tony, Marcia and Kung Fu’s lives over the course of his career, he ends up with an abysmal final score of 0/9.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 734: THE ROBOT MASTER

    (Silver Streak Comics 004, 1940)

    We open on a flashback, as this unnamed scientist and Captain Ken Keen of the Planet Patrol reminisce about the Comet of Death which has returned to the Solar System 100 years after it initially laid waste to the cities of Earth, Mars and Venus. And since the adventures of the Planet Patrol unlike many if not most Golden Age sci-fi comics is set in a defined time period, we know that that initial attack took place in the futuristic world of 1965 CE!

    Back in the even more futuristic world of 2065 CE, Keen and his Martian companion Nirma set out to investigate the comet, only to discover that it is in fact an enormous hostile spacecraft. Making their way inside, they find it to be crewed by extremely cool-looking octopoid “robot animals” that attack on sight.

    Keen and Nirma get away from the robots in the objectively funny way of climbing inside a disabled one and sticking their feets out the bottom to scuttle way, tentacles dragging.

    This robot disguise is unfortunately not enough to fool the comet-ship’s owner, who turns out to be a huge, very cool-looking, robot with a human brain. This Robot Master (referred to as such in exactly one caption, but I have to call them something, don’t I?) is a Fletcher Hanks-style villain who hates humanity for unclear reasons and expresses that hate via attempted genocide. The 1965 attempt having failed, the Robot Master is back again for a second pass.

     
    Since the previous attempt to destroy humanity via drive-by death ray, the Robot Master seems to be gearing up for a more nuanced second approach, and is starting by converting Nirma and Keen to remote controlled cyborgs and sending them back as espionage assets. The rest of the plan is never elaborated upon, as Ken Keen’s cage is conveniently located within reach of a switch labelled “FOR MAGNETIC POWER” but which might as well say “PULL TO DEFEAT THE ROBOT MASTER” as it turns out to magnetize the entire ship in a way that completely immobilizes the ship’s robotic occupants. Keen and Nirma then escape and blow the entire place to high(er) heaven.