The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: Quality Comics

  • HONOURS – THE STRANGE TWINS

    (Hit Comics 013, 1941)

    The Strange Twins get a medal from the San Francisco PD.

    (Since they may never come up again: the Strange Twins were a set of English twins (natch) separated as infants when an enemy of their father had one kidnapped as revenge. That one, Rodney, was raised as a criminal and became a feared gang boss, while his brother Douglas grew up to become a Scotland Yard Inspector.

    The first year or so of Strange Twins strips involved a lot of mistaken identity intrigue including Doug going to prison for several years and multiple near-fratricides on both sides until Rod’s foster father Wing Low revealed the truth, upon which they reconciled (Doug conveniently ignoring Rod’s multiple on-panel murders for the sake of family) and became an adventure team – not as fun, but still okay.

    The best thing about them is that it’s more interesting to have Rod go up against his old crime rivals, so they meet guys named London Joe and Limehouse Lew no matter what part of the globe they find themselves in. The second best is that the only way to tell them apart is that Rod smokes cigarettes and Doug smokes a pipe)

  • HONOURS – THE STRANGE TWINS

    (Hit Comics 013, 1941)

    The Strange Twins get a medal from the San Francisco PD.

    (Since they may never come up again: the Strange Twins were a set of English twins (natch) separated as infants when an enemy of their father had one kidnapped as revenge. That one, Rodney, was raised as a criminal and became a feared gang boss, while his brother Douglas grew up to become a Scotland Yard Inspector.

    The first year or so of Strange Twins strips involved a lot of mistaken identity intrigue including Doug going to prison for several years and multiple near-fratricides on both sides until Rod’s foster father Wing Low revealed the truth, upon which they reconciled (Doug conveniently ignoring Rod’s multiple on-panel murders for the sake of family) and became an adventure team – not as fun, but still okay.

    The best thing about them is that it’s more interesting to have Rod go up against his old crime rivals, so they meet guys named London Joe and Limehouse Lew no matter what part of the globe they find themselves in. The second best is that the only way to tell them apart is that Rod smokes cigarettes and Doug smokes a pipe)

  • TROPHY ROOM – DON GLORY

    (Hit Comics 010, 1941)

    Patriotic numbskull Don Glory gets a new set of wheels after foiling a plot to drag the US into WWII, a very mid-1941 thing to be against and presumably a thing that everyone conveniently forgot about from 1942 onward.

  • TROPHY ROOM – DON GLORY

    (Hit Comics 010, 1941)

    Patriotic numbskull Don Glory gets a new set of wheels after foiling a plot to drag the US into WWII, a very mid-1941 thing to be against and presumably a thing that everyone conveniently forgot about from 1942 onward.

  • HONOURS – HERCULES

    (Hit Comics 010, 1941)

     

    Hercules cleans up the Giller Mob and gets the key to… a city. Probably New York? Who can say for sure – he moved around more than most 40s super-heroes.

    This also leads to a brief and harrowing Hollywood career in which he stars in one – alas! – unnamed jungle action movie.

  • HONOURS – HERCULES

    (Hit Comics 010, 1941)

     

    Hercules cleans up the Giller Mob and gets the key to… a city. Probably New York? Who can say for sure – he moved around more than most 40s super-heroes.

    This also leads to a brief and harrowing Hollywood career in which he stars in one – alas! – unnamed jungle action movie.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 259: THE POWER STEALERS

    (Hit Comics 008, 1941)

    I gotta say: I really like these guys. Now, obviously they’re stinkers of the highest order – their plan involves siphoning all electrical power in the US until they are paid an unspecified amount of big bucks or possibly even placed in charge – but when you spend a little (or a lot of) time thinking about supercrime in a super-hero universe you get opinions about these kinds of things. If these guys had developed this technology I’d have something to say about the risk/reward of crime vs commercial application, but they’re clearly a bunch of criminal goons and probably stole it, so using it for crime makes sense!

    Further, they are genre-savvy enough to recognize Hercules as the only super-hero in their particular pocket of the Quality Comics proto-universe. Setting out to preemptively take care of the super-opposition never actually works, but I always appreciate the effort involved.

    (also I love that they call Hercules a hick. So often the little interesting details about a character fall by the wayside – it’s great that Hercules is consistently the super-hero from the country)

    The guy in purple is a bad liar.

    The guy in green is a loveable jerk.

    The gang of shirtless goons is everything I could wish in a bunch of cannon-fodder henchmen, down to the guy with a knife clutched in his teeth.

    Finally (well, for my purposes. Finally finally, they get beat up), they actually have a plan! They manage to chuck Hercules into quick-drying cement and cheekily make him into a statue to be displayed on their front porch! And he’s there for weeks! Very good job, boys.

    (though if they hadn’t chiseled off all that extra cement then maybe he wouldn’t have managed to get free. Food for thought, dead fictional men)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 258: THE FOUR LAMAS

    (Hit Comics 007, 1941)

    If Tibetan Lams aren’t the top religious figures cast as super-villains then they at least have to be in the top three, along with druids and Catholic priests – we won’t see any of those for a while but once they get going they go hard.

    This bunch of Lamas have decided to turn their formidable mental powers (natch) to the task of world conquest, and have chosen to do so by influencing the mind of one President Karla of an unnamed European state to become a rabid warmonger.

    The “Scheming Oriental Mastermind” bit was old before comics existed, and honestly I’d be tempted to skip these guys if this story didn’t include two truly incredible bits: 1. Neon the Unknown flies Karla across Europe and Asia as a sort of human dowsing rod to determine exactly where the mental influence is being broadcast from.

    2. Neon resolves things via mental combat with all three of the Four Lamas (the artist lost track of one of them midway through the story). He of course wins…

    … and their brains explode! Truly a redeeming end for some cliched characters.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 258: THE FOUR LAMAS

    (Hit Comics 007, 1941)

    If Tibetan Lams aren’t the top religious figures cast as super-villains then they at least have to be in the top three, along with druids and Catholic priests – we won’t see any of those for a while but once they get going they go hard.

    This bunch of Lamas have decided to turn their formidable mental powers (natch) to the task of world conquest, and have chosen to do so by influencing the mind of one President Karla of an unnamed European state to become a rabid warmonger.

    The “Scheming Oriental Mastermind” bit was old before comics existed, and honestly I’d be tempted to skip these guys if this story didn’t include two truly incredible bits: 1. Neon the Unknown flies Karla across Europe and Asia as a sort of human dowsing rod to determine exactly where the mental influence is being broadcast from.

    2. Neon resolves things via mental combat with all three of the Four Lamas (the artist lost track of one of them midway through the story). He of course wins…

    … and their brains explode! Truly a redeeming end for some cliched characters.

  • CELEBRATION

    (Hit Comics 006, 1940)

    Just a couple of cool bank robbing bad boy brothers living high on the hog. 

    Just a fun panel from the same adventure. Jimmy darling indeed.