The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: kidnapper

  • MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 001

    Like costumed villains, there are a lot of scientists out there doing crimes involving superscience but just missing the levels of interest, ambition or scale to graduate to true super-villain status. Sometimes this is because of poor planning or lack of vision and others just have the misfortune to run into a protagonist while still in the initial stages of their venture. And don’t they deserve a forum just as much as the generic costumed villains we all love?

    Julius Korn: 

    Our first science fiend is Julius Korn, who takes over a lighthouse with his crew of misfits in order to use his ray machine to sink passing ships. It’s unclear just why he does this – is it a weapons test, a piracy scheme, fifth column activity or plain sadism? – but he is thwarted by sea rover Dusty Dane and his pal Big Mike Cardigan and ends his days like so many other comic book scientists: exploding along with his invention. (Feature Comics 048, 1941)

    the Professor: 

    The Professor here operated a scheme whereby he used a magnetic engine killing ray to bring down mail planes in Arizona’s Painted Desert. As befits a scientist operating in cowboy territory, he was willing to get his hands a bit dirtier than your typical effete science-man, but even that wasn’t enough to save him from the Fargo Kid. (Feature Comics 051, 1941)

    Unnamed Scientist: 

    This unnamed fellow went to the trouble of developing anti-Flash technology – specifically, glasses with rotating lenses that allow him to see fast-moving objects – to protect his kidnap gang rather than, say, moving to another city (or marketing his glasses somewhere, natch) (Flash Comics v1 001, 1940)

    (Trophy Room bonus: the Flash keeps the glasses)

    Dr Jennings: 

    This here’s Dr Jennings, who works in a research lab with Jay “the Flash” Garrick and kidnaps a lot of people to live out his dream of establishing a colony on Mars but then is betrayed by his venture capitalist partner Enzil who just wants to establish himself as a Martian tyrant in a story that feels oddly prescient somehow? Anyhow the Flash is more focused on rehabilitation than your average Golden Age hero and so Jennings is allowed to go back to his old life after Enzil is vaporized by spider-aliens. (Flash Comics v1 024, 1941)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 166: LUGO, THE HARPIE OF HORROR

    (Blue Beetle Comics 006, 1941)

    I skip a lot of generic villains from the non-Marvel or DC families of comics, because everyone existing together in a big shared world is the thing about comics that makes me get out my spreadsheets and my extensive tagging system. A guy like Lugo, though, demands at least a little attention.

    One thing to know about him off the bat is: he’s an underwater guy. This happens a lot in comics starring underwater heroes such as Sub Saunders – just an surface thing transposed 1:1 to the depths. So Lugo is a bird-man, but he flies underwater and steals women to be his undersea brides off the coast of Florida. I really love his design, particularly his chicken feet and umbrella wings. Not so hot on the woman-kidnapping, but he gets his ass kicked successively by a snake-dragon, a stalactite and Sub Saunders before he gets the chance to take it any farther than abduction.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 085: BOSS X

    (Blue Beetle Comics 002, 1940)

    What makes them a super-villain? In thinking about this question I realized just how close comic book-style organized crime comes to supercrime to begin with and that Boss X represents the bare minimum of extra oomph required to make the leap to the super-villain designation: the name and the fact that he works out of a secret underground lair on an island.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 022: THE TARANTULA

    (Adventure 040, 1939)

    Standard masked crook, remarkable only for being the Sandman’s first foe. Shows up later in one or two crowd scenes.

    This story is also notable for being the only time Golden Age Wesley Dodds tucks in a little doll version of himself before heading out as Sandman, a charming bit that was later adopted as an ongoing thing in Sandman Mystery Theatre.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 009: THE COBRA

    (New Adventure 027, 1938)


     Just a kidnapper, but there’s something about a man who wears a snake, and he’s yet another Siegel and Shuster villain from a pre-Superman series – in this case, Federal Men, about Steve Carson of the FBI.