The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: Quality Comics

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO 045: YANKEE EAGLE

    (Military Comics 001-008, 1941-1942) 

    Yankee Eagle is the code name of Jerry Noble, an uncostumed adventurer who can communicate with and command the loyalty of all animals. Aside from some nice art, Yankee Eagle is a fairly run of the mill character until you drill down into his origin: being rich. His mother left him a fortune and he used it to buy a private zoo and that ‘s how he learned to talk to all animals. Step aside Bruce Wayne! Move over, Tony Stark! There’s a new chairman of the Rich Boy Super-Hero Club!

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO 044: THE Q-BOAT

    (Military Comics 001, 1941)

    This is stretching the idea of what a “minor super-hero” is quite a bit but I ultimately had to defer to my judgment rule about criminal groups: if one person were doing this would it make sense to categorize them such? And it would! The Q-Boat is just that, a warship disguised as a harmless four-masted schooner in order to prey on Nazi convoy raiders. Swap out the disguised ship for a submarine and you have the Red Torpedo, a personal fave!

    There are two interesting things about the Q-Boat the first is the fact that although it was a one-off story, whoever wrote it (probably Henry Kiefer?) left a lot of details to be filled in later. Specifically: what the heck is going on with the Q-Boat?

    As presented, the Q-Boat is not just a battle-capable schooner but a super-advanced miniature warship. It is crewed by Captain Foghorn (descended from John Paul Jones, speech balloons indicate that he’s speaking at top volume at all times) and a bunch of teen boys, including Bob Wayne, Dick Martin and Marmaduke “Freckles” van Weyden. Questions such as “where did the Q-Boat come from?” “why all the teen boys?” and “why is Freckles so good at making guided missiles?” all go unanswered (Captain Foghorn’s son-in-law is mentioned as having developed some of the tech on the Q-Boat but that just adds “who the heck is this son-in-law?” to the list).

    The second interesting thing about the Q-Boat is the fun sibling dynamic between the child soldiers.

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO 043: MISS AMERICA

    (Military Comics 001-007, 1941-1942) 

    I am not the first to note this by a country mile but it must be said every time she comes up: she wishes to have all of the powers of the Statue of Liberty and then the Statue of Liberty visits her in a dream and gifts them to her. If USA didn’t exist then this would be a shoe-in for “most outlandish patriotic hero concept” but as it stands I reckon that they’re tied.

    Those powers, by the way, aren’t “being enormous and made of bronze” like you might expect but rather a host of generic Golden Age magical abilities such as teleportation, telekinesis and transmutation – particularly of goons into birds and trees and such.

    Miss America gets brought back every once in a while but the most noteworthy thing about her, her wild origin, was retconned in the Eighties. Now instead of wishing for the powers of the Statue of Liberty and then getting them (absurd, laughable) she wished for the powers of the Statue of Liberty near the entrance to a secret government project underneath the statue and was given powers by them (high concept, realistic).

    In conclusion: I quite like Golden Age Miss America but find it hard to get excited about her later incarnations.

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO 042: THE BLUE TRACER

    MINOR SUPER-HERO 042: THE BLUE TRACER

    (Military Comics 001-016, 1941-1942)

    The Blue Tracer is your standard guy-with-a-super-vehicle hero: “Wild Bill” Dunn, an American engineer serving with the British in Ethiopia, finds himself the only survivor of an ambush by a race of would-be world-conquering superhumans called the M’bujies. He and Anzac Boomerang Jones team up to build the multienvironment supercraft the Blue Tracer and foil the M’bujie plans (by killing them all).

    There seems to be a consensus online that the vehicle is the Blue Tracer and Bill Dunn is not but I will not be joining them in that: there is a long tradition of super vehicle pilots sharing a name with their craft and anyone who goes to the trouble of putting together an outfit as ostentatious as Dunn’s is deserves to have a code name.

    The Blue Tracer itself just might have the distinction of being the ugliest super vehicle I have ever seen – it looks like something that really was kitbashed together out of random WWII vehicles in a homemade workshop. It’s so ugly, in fact, that I find it charming. 

    I looked up whether it was ever referenced again and evidently one of the Freedom Fighters teams used a cool plane called the Blue Tracer. Booooooo! Bring back the ugly Blue Tracer! The Blue Tracer can’t be cool.

    Also charming: Boomerang Jones, Bill Dunn’s Australian gnome of a sidekick. It is both weird and refreshing to encounter an Australian character in an era before the tropes of the accent were really embedded in the popular consciousness.

  • MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 002

    Back again with another collection of science-villains who didn’t quite make the grade!

    Fritz Cardif here has a gunpowder-exploding ray and a lot of big plans. He probably would have made the main list except that I personally find his antics very dull, with the exception of the lil’ stinker moment pictured above. (Hit Comics 006, 1940)

    Dr Marko figured on using kidnapped scientists as research slaves in his Grand Canyon hideout, but he too was corralled by Neon the Unknown. (Hit Comics 013, 1941)

    Professor Dorn here is your typical Nazi scientist obsessed with replicating the powers of the Sub-Mariner for the glory of the cause. He ends up lasting about fifteen minutes after meeting the real deal. (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 023, 1941)

     Dr Sunga has a pretty good scheme going wherein he seeming kills people by sending them a cursed wand that is actually harmless – seemingly the perfect crime! But the Golden Age Falcon figures out the trick: it’s actually the box that the wand is sent in that does the killing. Sunga of course ends up dead by his own fiendish device. (Daring Mystery Comics 005, 1940)

  • MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 002

    Back again with another collection of science-villains who didn’t quite make the grade!

    Fritz Cardif here has a gunpowder-exploding ray and a lot of big plans. He probably would have made the main list except that I personally find his antics very dull, with the exception of the lil’ stinker moment pictured above. (Hit Comics 006, 1940)

    Dr Marko figured on using kidnapped scientists as research slaves in his Grand Canyon hideout, but he too was corralled by Neon the Unknown. (Hit Comics 013, 1941)

    Professor Dorn here is your typical Nazi scientist obsessed with replicating the powers of the Sub-Mariner for the glory of the cause. He ends up lasting about fifteen minutes after meeting the real deal. (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 023, 1941)

     Dr Sunga has a pretty good scheme going wherein he seeming kills people by sending them a cursed wand that is actually harmless – seemingly the perfect crime! But the Golden Age Falcon figures out the trick: it’s actually the box that the wand is sent in that does the killing. Sunga of course ends up dead by his own fiendish device. (Daring Mystery Comics 005, 1940)

  • GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 005

    They’re back! They’re insufficiently interesting! They’re costumed! For the fifth time! 

    This fella is just a regular degular Nazi spy, but I like his confidence, even if Super Spy G-5 does wrangle him almost instantly. (Hit Comics 015, 1941)

    These fellas are a rare example of subway pirates, who derail and loot in the New York underground. My delight in this is dampened somewhat by their habit of carrying off ladies for unspoken but surely unpleasant reasons – happily the Human Torch gets ’em pretty quickly. (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 013, 1940)

    This here fellow is another Nazi, operating out of London. His plan to simultaneously turn the US against England by pinning the murder of a movie star on an Englishman and also enrich himself by making that Englishman his wealthy cousin is overturned by reporter ‘Headline’ Hunter. I do appreciate how grotesque his weird mask makes him look. 

    If I was feeling a bit more generous some of these guys would get entries of their own under the name the Leader, but low-effort Nazi spies can be happy with a tag and go screw. (Captain America Comics 007, 1941)

    This trio of bank robbers might not have made the cut if they weren’t constantly hamming it up like this while battling Father Time. Mike, Mugsy, Other Guy: welcome to the club. (Captain America Comics 008, 1941)

  • GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 005

    GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 005

    They’re back! They’re insufficiently interesting! They’re costumed! For the fifth time! 

    This fella is just a regular degular Nazi spy, but I like his confidence, even if Super Spy G-5 does wrangle him almost instantly. (Hit Comics 015, 1941)

    These fellas are a rare example of subway pirates, who derail and loot in the New York underground. My delight in this is dampened somewhat by their habit of carrying off ladies for unspoken but surely unpleasant reasons – happily the Human Torch gets ’em pretty quickly. (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 013, 1940)

    This here fellow is another Nazi, operating out of London. His plan to simultaneously turn the US against England by pinning the murder of a movie star on an Englishman and also enrich himself by making that Englishman his wealthy cousin is overturned by reporter ‘Headline’ Hunter. I do appreciate how grotesque his weird mask makes him look. 

    If I was feeling a bit more generous some of these guys would get entries of their own under the name the Leader, but low-effort Nazi spies can be happy with a tag and go screw. (Captain America Comics 007, 1941)

    This trio of bank robbers might not have made the cut if they weren’t constantly hamming it up like this while battling Father Time. Mike, Mugsy, Other Guy: welcome to the club. (Captain America Comics 008, 1941)

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO 033: THE GHOST OF FLANDERS

    (Hit Comics 018-025, 1941-1942)

    I know I talk about how wild the origins of various characters are a lot on here, and I don’t think that I can justify declaring one or another “the most wild” anymore, but the Ghost of Flanders would absolutely have to appear on any reasonably comprehensive Top Ten Characters Who Will Amaze and Befuddle You With Their Wild Origins list.

    The Ghost of Flanders is in reality Rip Graves, who enlisted in the US Army during WWI and was basically immediately captured (as the Battle of the Marne took place in July 1918) and spent the rest of the war in a prison camp. This is not especially wild, although it does allow us to know that Graves is 37, a bit older than your typical super-hero (and of course if some enterprising comics writer decides to bring back the Ghost of Flanders for some reason he will automatically be the oldest living WWI veteran)

    The first really wild thing about Rip Graves is this: he is the Unknow Soldier, as in Tomb of the. Now, I looked up the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier the first time I read this story, and checked again just now, and not only is there, you know, a human corpse buried in it but it’s one that they went to reasonable lengths to make sure was, you know, unknown (in short, they located six unidentified US casualties and then had someone choose one at random). “This guy who we know the identity of but don’t have a body for” is almost exactly the opposite of that, in fact.

    Wanting to serve his country but not wanting to own up to being alive because for some reason he believes that the powerful symbolism of the Unknown Soldier will be ruined if it isn’t him specifically, Rip does a normal comics thing and decides to become a costumed vigilante. And what does every costumed vigilante need?

    A secret HQ under a solemn national war monument! Yes, the first thing that Rip Graves does is dig himself out a little man cave underneath the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, because it’s his.

    Other things about the Ghost of Flanders include:

    -he is the only WWI-themed super-hero that I know of

    -his calling card is a red poppy (natch)

    -he uses WWI-era equipment including bayonets and a biplane, in a kind of natural extrapolation of something like the archer-hero and other users of archaic weaponry

    -I can’t say why he chose the unwieldy Ghost of Flanders name over the excellent Unknown Soldier, but it would take nearly thirty years for someone to take advantage of the excelent name that was just laying there.

    In conclusion: the Ghost of Flanders, a bog-standard 1940s super-hero boom character in most ways, but one that makes me feel crazy to think about too much.

  • GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 004

    They’re back! They’re costumed! They’re generic!

    Shorty Jones/ Generic Mummy: 

    It’s a sad day for me but I fear I have to classify this fake mummy as a generic costumed villain, even though he has a shortsword, one of the top swords. Ultimately, he’s just a thief named Shorty Jones who robs the museum every night and even with the power of the fake mummy on his side Shorty just isn’t interesting enough to qualify as a minor super-villain. (Detective Comics v1 053, 1941)

    Gritter: 

    Doc Savage battled this guy (real name the pretty good Gritter; posing as the amazingly-named Captain Blackstone Toy) who had a very complicated plan to blackmail the US Armed Forces. Also his chief henchman was named Fuzzy. (Doc Savage Comics 004, 1941)

    Deputy Cal: 

    This lady bandit is in fact Deputy Cal of the Twin Forks Sheriff’s office. His idea to crossdress as a major part of his holdup persona totally pays off, but unfortunately for him he completely fails to disguise himself in any other way – same distinctive horse, same clothes, a very confrontational attitude to anyone looking into the holdups rather than keeping his head down – and he swiftly gets run in by the Fargo Kid. (Feature Comics 048, 1941)

    Unnamed Killer: 

    This unnamed stablehand is that most banal of killers, a jilted suitor going after the romantic rival. But he goes to such effort! It takes two tries – with a remote-controlled sailboat and a sniper rfle – to get the guy, at which point the Red Bee impersonates him and is attacked with battleaxe, scythe, pitchfork and trap door.

    Plus he dresses up as Death for one attempt! Truly this man was as close to non-generic as it’s possible to be while still being completely forgettable. (Hit Comics 014, 1941)