The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: mercenary

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 958: THE YELLOW HOOD

    (Dynamic Comics 002, 1941)

    In probably the cheekiest campaign of terror ever, American defense officials are being murdered and then their shrunken skulls are being sent along to places where people are waiting for them with notes reading “Don’t wait for me any longer, here I am.”

    You may have noticed that all of the skull deliveries involved a man named Professor Curran, and being seasoned comics readers you rightly would have suspected that he was involved in the scheme somehow. It can’t be him, however, as Curran is one of the victims, murdered just out of sight of a captured Major Victory.

    Just kidding: the Yellow Hood and Professor Curran are one and the same, and the murder was staged to throw suspicion off of him. Curran’s role as a Chief Air Warden meant that he was in a prime position to facilitate a Nazi invasion of the United States, and the murders were designed to weaken US defenses further. It’s a high risk/ high reward endeavour, as evidenced by the fact that Curran chucks himself off a cliff rather than be captured by Major Victory.

    Categorized in: Accessories (Calling Cards), Colours (Yellow), Objects (Hoods)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 957: THE PROFESSOR

    (Dynamic Comics v1 001, 1941)

    Unlike most Professors in comics, this fellow is seemingly not named that because he is a scientist but rather because he is a clever criminal. He and his powerful companion Hugo are hired by the evocatively-named Hell Gang to intercept and destroy some key evidence while it is en route from the District Attorney’s office to the courthouse where Hell Gang leadership is on trial.

    It’s not fair to blame the Professor for this because there’s no way that he could know, but Jim Hornsby, aka the Black Cobra, works at the very district attorney’s office that the records are coming from and so is in a perfect position to stick his nose in and foil the whole plan. The records are delivered just in time to convict the Hell Gang, and though the Professor and Hugo get away I am pretty concerned about the Professor’s spine after the punch he takes in that final panel above.

    Categorized in: Generica (Professors), Misc (Mercenaries)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 749: THE SABOTEURS

    (Smash Comics 015, 1940)

    Sometimes all you need is a group of mercenary saboteurs dressed in matching cloaks and gas masks to zazz up a story – Black X and his comic book contemporaries have faced and defeated hundred of sabotage plots in front of my now-jaded eyes over the course of my comics-reading career, and so it takes a bit more than your basic pseudo-Nazi in a suit and tie to get my attention. That there is a suit-and-tie pseudo-Nazi behind the scheme to blow up a city that is technically never called New York is irrelevant, as it’s the cloak-and-gas mask guys who matter.

    Black X and Batu do not of course let this campaign of destruction stand, and despite some unusually acrobatic fighting moves on behalf of the Saboteurs the whole bunch of them are brought to justice after only a moderate amount of infrastructure is exploded.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 749: THE SABOTEURS

    (Smash Comics 015, 1940)

    Sometimes all you need is a group of mercenary saboteurs dressed in matching cloaks and gas masks to zazz up a story – Black X and his comic book contemporaries have faced and defeated hundred of sabotage plots in front of my now-jaded eyes over the course of my comics-reading career, and so it takes a bit more than your basic pseudo-Nazi in a suit and tie to get my attention. That there is a suit-and-tie pseudo-Nazi behind the scheme to blow up a city that is technically never called New York is irrelevant, as it’s the cloak-and-gas mask guys who matter.

    Black X and Batu do not of course let this campaign of destruction stand, and despite some unusually acrobatic fighting moves on behalf of the Saboteurs the whole bunch of them are brought to justice after only a moderate amount of infrastructure is exploded.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 396: THE CIPHER

    (More Fun Comics 071, 1941)

    The Cipher is a fairly unremarkable oceangoing spy with a really great name. He attempts to extract some information on winter warfare tactics from a friend of Clip Carson (on behalf of unspecified employers – somewhat interestingly, the Cipher is explicitly a freelance spy) and gets blown up for his efforts.