The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: kidnapper

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 752: CADAVA

    (Smash Comics 015, 1940)

    As we meet Cadava, he is all dressed up and off to attend a costume party, with some pretty harsh words and feeling for humanity in general and a lady named Diane in particular – seems that he has been shunned and rejected after some sort of accident. Also his little friend Soo Choo is there.

    Also in attendance – in his super-hero costume, no less! –  is the Ray, and luckily for Diane he is a naturally nosy guy. He sees the knight kidnapping her while creeping on random conversations (I assume) and while he doesn’t quite manage to prevent it, he is now on the case.

    Back in Cadava’s sewer lair, he reveals his identity to Diane, causing her to faint and effectively removing her from the story. This is a real shame, because Diane was really our major potential source of information on Cadava’s whole deal. Is he a man who has been so hurt by circumstance and an uncaring world that he is lashing out like the Ugliest Man in the World, or was he always just a jerk? Regardless, I think that we can all agree that his decision to smash up what is probably NYC with some sort of earthquake ray is an unnecessary escalation.

    Cadava and Soo Choo manage to put in a pretty good showing against the Ray, considering the fact that they are two regular guys facing off against a man made of light, but ultimately he just up and drowns them both. He who lives by the sewer dies by the sewer, as they say.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 751: THE MUMMY

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 751: THE MUMMY

    (Smash Comics 015, 1940) 

    Strange things are happening at the museum: knives are flying through the air, suits of armour are wandering around in a menacing fashion and things are getting pretty spooky. Head Curator Robbins asks his pal Kent Thurston (aka the Invisible Hood) to check things out, at which point the Mummy enters the picture, knocks out Thurston and kidnaps Robbins’ plucky daughter Betty.

    After grabbing Robins as well, the Mummy reveals his devious plan: Robbins must resign as curator. And that’s it. Unsurprisingly, the Mummy turns out to be Nolan, the Assistant Curator, who has admittedly hacked the whole promotion process with this bold scheme but who also has not done a particularly great job of deflecting suspicion from himself as the only person who is going to benefit from the scheme.

    As usual, the Invisible Hood’s power of invisibility is a real asset and he cleans up the gang with relative ease. He even does a bit of a challenge run by initially approaching dressed up as a second mummy, with a spooky twist once he removes his wrappings to reveal the nothingness within.

    Not the greatest fake mummy in comics history, but I’m happy to get any fake mummies.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 742: THE VOICE

    (Smash Comics 007, 1940)

    The Voice! A classic and popular alter ego for a reason – all you need is to be heard more than you are seen and you have yourself a gimmick, and if you have some sort of voice-based super power, well that’s a real bonus. In this case, the Voice is a mysterious figure who has kidnapped Lola Barnes, daughter of wealthy gem collector Sir Sidney Barnes. The Voice demands 100 000 pounds and the Red Star Diamond in return for Lola’s safe return and of course Captain Cook of Scotland Yard is brought in on the case.

    The Voice turns out to be Sir Sidney’s otherwise-unnamed servant, who seeks to recover the diamond because it was once owned by his ancestors, with the hundred grand as a sweet bonus. But how just is his quest? was the gem sold? stolen? Is this a case of colonialist injustice driving a man to the edge or is it just the scion of a formerly wealthy family taking a shortcut back to his perceived natural station? We will never know, because the Voice is a bad driver and dies while attempting to escape with the swag.

  • MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 016

    Can’t keep ’em down for long, these guys.

    Look, breeding up a giant amoeba in order to use it to spread terror and conquer the world is one thing, but deliberately going out of your way to feed it “pretty girls” is some real twisted incel shit. It’s a wonder that Dr Jorgen here just ends up in jail and not in the belly vacuoles of his creation. (Science Comics 006, 1940)

    Dr Borgia is a weird creep who becomes… infatuated? obsessed? with Marga the Panther Woman during a period in which she is working at a circus in the US. Stung by her rejection of his creepy overtures, Borgia conspires with the owner of a rival circus to kill Marga by using the same technique that von Dorf used to give her the power of a panther to give a tiger the added power of a lion, thus making it too powerful fro her to defeat.

    (and how galling for the ghost of von Dorf to see that Borgia knows his secrets after dying in a fire he caused while trying to burn that very information)

    Marga is of course more than a match for even a tiger with the proportionate strength of a lion and proceeds to murder not only it but Borgia and his associate Randler. She also gets so fired up by this process that she acquires a kind of feral vampire-from-Buffy look that may not ever appear again.  (Science Comics 006, 1940)

    With a thesis like “I reckon that humans won’t do well when deprived of water,” Bulvo here isn’t exactly pushing the boundaries or even basics of science. It’s just as well that the Eagle ends up blowing him up as he tries to destroy NYC’s water supply, as he would have been eviscerated in court, not to mention the mad scientist trade shows. (Science Comics 008, 1940) 

    Like his nemesis Iron Vic, Dr Spagna here suffers from the fact that the sole story in which he appears is incomplete. What we do know about him is that he used to work with Vic’s benefactor Professor Carvel and possibly even on the very serum that Carvel used on the near-corpse that would become Iron Vic, but Spagna was too eager to share his findings and ended up being laughed out of scientific society. This is a common origin story for evil scientist types, but Spagna seems to have taken it harder than most and has been sowing murder and chaos throughout New York City even before the plot outlined in his letter to Vic above.

    Iron Vic manages to foil 2/3 of Spagna’s plot before the adventure is cut off, never to be resumed (as far as I can tell). Presumably, Vic prevented the bombing of Jefferson Square Garden and brought Spagna to justice somehow, but if that involved further hints or revelations about Vic’s past, we will seemingly never know. (Single Series 022, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 732: THE DOC

    (Silver Streak Comics 003, 1940)

    Like his super-heroic enemy the Silver Streak, the Doc’s story is complicated somewhat by the fact that it begins as an effort by Jack Binder and ends as one by Jack Cole. In the former, the Doc is a mysterious figure who is orchestrating the deaths of the drivers of Silver Streak race cars via giant fly attacks. The reason for this? Never made clear. 

    Once the Swami and his race crew are seemingly out of business for good, the giant fly turns to more conventional crime in an effort to extort what will eventually turn out to be New York City for 20 million dollars. This is both where we learn that the fly was created by Dr Katan, a mad zoologist and  also presumably the one writing notes signed “the Fly”.

    Though the New York authorities feel that they have no choice but to capitulate to the Fly’s demands, the Silver Streak has other ideas, and uses his hypnotically-enhanced physique to send the beast to a messy end.

    The Fly may be defeated and the monies returned, but Dr Katan is still out there, still capable of creating giant insects…

    Dropping the “Katan” (and also the “tor”) and now known also as “the Doc”, the villain’s second appearance is comparatively low stakes, with only one little extortion-based kidnapping before he is forced to marshal all of his insects and arachnids against a Silver Streak out for revenge. the real highlight is these cool-ass stinger bugs – if only there were little gremlinoid insects running around on two legs shooting spikes out of there mouths at one another.

    Unfortunately for the Doc, by his second appearance he is up against the super speed Silver Streak rather than the car driving one, so his various arthropods are disposed of and he is captured in fairly short order.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 725: THE SEA-WITCH

    (Science Comics 005, 1940)

    En route to the court of King Neptune to deliver a new invention to him, Navy Jones and Princess Coral find themselves the prisoner of a heinous-looking clarinet-playing mermaid who looks a lot like something out of a 19th Century political cartoon.

    I’ll be honest here: while the Sea-Witch is a notable-enough villain to cover here, the real attraction of this comic is that it all looks like an outsider art fever dream. The Grand Comics database says that the artist was Bert Whitman and that he did enough comics work in the 40s that I should have run into him, but either luck has conspired against me in that regard or this was just a more interesting assignment than usual for him, because it’s just really enjoyably weird.

    Navy Jones escapes the clutches of the One-Eyed Octopus when it turns out that it is fatally allergic to pepper, and he and Princess Coral are able to simply swim away under the cover of its dying ink-cloud. The Sea-Witch’s little imp minions give chase but are unable to contend with the sheer power of the “Speed Sea Tri-Motor” underwater jetapacks that the duo are wearing courtesy of Coral’s as-yet-unnamed father.

    Other weird and wonderful occurrences in this comic:

    An idyll with Queen Nina and her subjects in Mermaid City,

    This two-panel plot by a pair of incompetent undersea pirates,

    Navy Jones visiting the grave/locker of his great great great grandfather, Davy Jones (bah gawd, his name isn’t just a pun, it’s hereditary!),

    and the pomp, circumstance and wide array of weird sea creatures in King Neptune’s court. The question of whether this is the Neptune of myth or just some guy is overshadowed (and possibly answered) by the presence of, for example, a cutlass-wielding fish-man centaur in the background. Delightful!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 720: DR DOOM

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 720: DR DOOM

    (Science Comics 001, 1940)

    Dr Doom, another super-villain with his own series (I swear that they’re rare over all but 1940 sure is a fertile year for them), lives in an unspecified future and is your classic mad science polymath, as demonstrated by his various schemes:

    In his very first outing, Dr Doom decides to do some extreme testing of his latest formula and uses it to shrink Jan and Wanda, two otherwise-nondescript youths who just happen to also be his recurring nemeses going forward. They escape of course and, after defeating a crab and regaining their former size, haul him back home to Jupiter with them to face justice.

    Of course Dr Doom also escapes and makes his way back to his laboratory. His next two schemes are also shrinking-based: in Science Comics 002 he kidnaps people (including Jan and Wanda) and forces them to battle insects to the death, while Science Comics 004 sees him shrinking Jan and Wanda’s home city of Daru on Jupiter to use as his personal playground. This adventure ends with Doom himself shrunk and on display in a museum of oddities, an event which seems to put him off the field of shrinking entirely going forward.

    In Science Comics 005, Dr Doom unleashes cosmic ray mutations from the depths of the Grand Canyon in a bid to conquer the US. Also the Grand Canyon is expanding for some reason? This is perhaps the most incoherent Dr Doom story and ends with his equipment just exploding out of nowhere.

    The shock of his last scheme failing so thoroughly seems to have had a profound effect on Dr Doom, because at this stage he enters his “revenge on humanity” period. To that end, in Science Comics 006, he develops and unleashes the Grey Mold Disease and sets it loose on the world until he is forced to reveal the antidote by Jan and Wanda when they threaten to inject him with the even more deadly Green Mold Disease.

    Next, in Science Comics 007, Doom uses a magnetic ray in an attempt to throw the entire Earth off its orbit and into the Sun, but misjudges the gravity on his planetoid base and goes flying off into space himself while fleeing from Jan. As always there is no word on how he gets out of this seemingly inescapable doom, but this is the one I’m most curious about.

    Science Comics 008 is a bit of a break for Dr Doom, as he settles down in Long Island with his amazing screaming robot Lodi. Attempting to wipe out humanity is pretty hard work, so Doom and Lodi are taking it easy by merely blasting various humans into a hostile alternate dimension filled with cannibalistic ogres. 

    (this and the previous story also appear to be set in or around 1940, which likely means that they were either a) repurposed from some already-finished art or b) produced by someone who didn’t particularly care about continuity. See also: Jan and Wanda going from space adventurers to reporters for the New York Daily Star)

    Dr Doom’s appearance in Big 3 001 is another stab at destroying humanity, as he facilitates a Venusian invasion by producing deadly mists. Two notes about this one: 1) the Venusians are amazing looking little weirdos and 2) his attempted revenge on Jan and Wanda by making them but not their potential offspring immune to the mists so they must wander alone through a dead world is harsh as hell.

    Dr Doom’s final appearance (and only appearance in 1941) in Green Mask 004 involves him attacking passing space shipping from a base on Uranus. It’s a bit of a ho-hum scheme to go out on, but at least it features some weird little homunculus creatures that Doom makes out of cats. More villains need more little critters around just kind of being moderately useful.

    In a lot of previous adventures Jan and Wanda haul Dr Doom off to prison or just kind of leave him to rot in whatever bombed-out laboratory they just escaped from but this is the one where they genuinely attempt to kill him by bombing his lab from orbit. It’s pretty understandable after all of the trouble he’s caused them, but they don’t bother to confirm the kill and so we leave Dr Doom alive and stranded on Uranus. Did he ever get out of there to vex them again? We can never know.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 717: THE MASKED TERROR

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 717: THE MASKED TERROR

    (Rocket Comics 003, 1940)

    The Phantom Ranger is just minding his business one day when he receives a sternly-worded letter via throwing knife, warning him to “steer clear of the red-headed girl.” This is of course your classic case of warning the hero off before he has a dang clue what’s going on.

    Everything is okay though, because the young woman who shortly rides up and requests the Ranger’s help has blonde hair. The “red-headed girl” must be seeking aid elsewhere. Or the colourist and the letterer had some sort of miscommunication. One of the two.

    The girl, whatever her hair colour, is named Lindy Davis, and the Masked Terror has kidnapped her father for ransom, a crime you don’t see as much in a lot of Western comics but I am certain is an authentic Old West crime.

    The Phantom Ranger accompanies Lindy to the handoff, where we learn that a) the Masked Terror is one homely cuss and eventually b) that he has already killed Mr Davis. The Phantom Ranger sets off in hot pursuit.

    And of course the Masked Terror turns out to be Ansom, the Davis’ neighbour and, crucially, the only one Lindy told about her plan to contact the Phantom Ranger. Plus I assume that he is the only nearby man ugly enough to be a suspect. The Terror chooses to go for his gun and meets a swift end.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 717: THE MASKED TERROR

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 717: THE MASKED TERROR

    (Rocket Comics 003, 1940)

    The Phantom Ranger is just minding his business one day when he receives a sternly-worded letter via throwing knife, warning him to “steer clear of the red-headed girl.” This is of course your classic case of warning the hero off before he has a dang clue what’s going on.

    Everything is okay though, because the young woman who shortly rides up and requests the Ranger’s help has blonde hair. The “red-headed girl” must be seeking aid elsewhere. Or the colourist and the letterer had some sort of miscommunication. One of the two.

    The girl, whatever her hair colour, is named Lindy Davis, and the Masked Terror has kidnapped her father for ransom, a crime you don’t see as much in a lot of Western comics but I am certain is an authentic Old West crime.

    The Phantom Ranger accompanies Lindy to the handoff, where we learn that a) the Masked Terror is one homely cuss and eventually b) that he has already killed Mr Davis. The Phantom Ranger sets off in hot pursuit.

    And of course the Masked Terror turns out to be Ansom, the Davis’ neighbour and, crucially, the only one Lindy told about her plan to contact the Phantom Ranger. Plus I assume that he is the only nearby man ugly enough to be a suspect. The Terror chooses to go for his gun and meets a swift end.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 715: THE STEEL SHARK

    (Rocket Comics 001, 1940)

    The Steel Shark has a couple of distinctive notes right off the bat. Firstly, he is part of the elite society of villains who star in their own series and secondly that series is set in the far future world of the year 1960 CE, for no particular reason as far as I can tell. Indeed, I suspect that the people working on the strip did not themselves remember that is was set in the future as early as the second instalment but without some explicit indication of such I’m going to assume that all Steel Shark stories are set in the Swinging Sixties.

    The Steel Shark himself is a satisfyingly weird looking weirdo, right down to his weird green skin. After engaging in some submarine piracy using his vessel’s high-powered heat ray, he sets upon the idea of abducting the daughter of the governor of Monango Island, and does so handily after using unspecified technology to put the entire island into a deep sleep.

    (it’s not quite a calling card but I must take a second to point out this whimsical little detail: after the Steel Shark attempts to bash in the sleeping head of Lieutenant Dick Jones, his future nemesis, he leaves behind a… bruise? scab? in the shape of a submarine. Does the Steel Shark have a cool raised carving of a submarine on the butt of his revolver or has Fate stepped in to mark the pursuer with the sign of the pursued?)

    In a sad turn, the second and third instalments of the Steel Shark’s adventures are illustrated by a different hand, and though he continues to be an unstable madman he no longer looks like someone 2/3 of the way through a zombie metamorphosis. By his third outing even most of the high-tech accoutrements have fallen by the wayside and Lt Jones is merely having to contend with ordinary run-of-the-mill submarine piracy. Still: good name, good MO (submarine pirates is one of the best kinds of pirates) and of course it’s always fun when a villain’s series ends before they themselves are actually dealt with. Somewhere out there in th 1960s the Steel Shark even now.