The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: capitalism

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 594: RIP-THE-BLOOD

    (Fantastic Comics 002, 1940)

    As weird as Fletcher Hanks stories are, sometimes the hardest thing to parse are the seem-like-they-should-mean-something names. Take Rip-the-Blood here: is this just a weird way to present a fellow named Rip with the nickname of “the Blood” or does his name mean something more? Is he so tough he’ll “rip the blood” out of you? I never know with this guy.

    Whatever his name means, Rip-the-Blood is a bad dude: through his influence over US politics and control of the munitions industry he plans to push the world into total war and become the most powerful man alive. 

    EDIT Jan 2026: I just learned about New York underworld figure Harry Horowitz, aka “Gyp the Blood” and can only assume that Rip here is named in reference to him.

    The inciting incident that will start the big war is the kidnapping of FDR by a foreign-looking plane. This is not a bad plan! I have no notes on the big “plunge the world into war” scheme! 

    EXCEPT. Rip-the-Blood knows about Stardust the Super Wizard. He knows what Stardust did to the Spy Army (not covered here but they got messed up) and that he will probably be targeted as well – it should be no surprise to him when FDR is rescued from his kidnappers almost immediately. It shouldn’t, but it really seems to mess up Rip’s whole day/world domination scheme.

    Rip’s big anti-Stardust plan is to use a wind generator to blow him into something called a “glue pit” which I put in quotes only because I don’t know what it actually is – it gets name-checked several times during the course of the story but never actually comes into play. Given Golden Age naming conventions I’m not willing to just assume that it’s a literal pit full of literal glue – it could be anything from that to a cave with a giant slug in it.

    Rip-the-Blood’s associates get off surprisingly lightly for Stardust foes, being sent to some sort of private prison near Polaris, but the man himself is tossed from a cliff to his death. I personally would have involved the much-discussed Glue Pit, but who am I to judge a weird enormous spaceman?

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 592: ORRO

    (Exciting Comics 006, 1940)

    The Space Rovers are Ted Hunt and Jane Martin, two young adults whose dads built a spaceship and who were compelled to steal that ship rather than see it and its ray cannon fall into the nefarious hands of some ambiguously foreign spies. Subsequently, they have just the worst luck at getting back to Earth, with each issue of Exciting Comics featuring some space danger that derails their progress.

    This time around they come across another spaceship in the Asteroid Belt, seemingly dead in space. Upon boarding they find a bunch of solid gold statues in unpleasant poses.

    Suddenly, an alien! This is Orro, a very cool space monster with a stupid and sinister plan: hang out in the middle of nowhere one of the more hazardous places in the Solar System until fellow space travellers happen upon his spacecraft and investigate, then use his special gas to turn them to gold. Then, once this has happened enough times, Orro will simply melt down all of the statues and be rich forever!

    Setting aside the morality of the whole situation… surely logistically it would be far easier to buy a few cows or the alien equivalent than to just wait an unknowable amount of time for space travellers who may or may not be coming (and that’s assuming that every passing spaceship would even bother to check out a seeming derelict. What of the space-cowards, Orro?). Even if you have no problem with murder, victims must be easier to source on a planetary surface, right? Plus, you can have access to TV and take-out food while you perpetuate evil.

    The greatest surprise and betrayal of the entire story is not that there is a murderous gold-hungry alien lurking on a derelict ship preying on the altruistic and curious but that the cool-looking alien murderer is actually just a bald guy.

    One small comfort to salve my disappointed soul is the fact that though Orro is not in fact a cool green tentacle alien, he is almost certainly an alien of some kind, as the Space Rovers have in their travels discovered human-shaped aliens on Mercury, Venus, Mars and the asteroid Ceres and are about to meet the same on the Jovian moon Ganymede and on Jupiter itself. Orro could be from just about anywhere (okay probably not Mercury or Venus or Ceres based on observed tech levels but any of the rest).

    Ted and Jane manage to subdue Orro during an attack by Ganymedean space pirates and doesn’t actually make it to the second half of the story as he is killed by a stray ray cannon blast – an unusual time for such a distinctive villain to die, but I suppose he was surplus to requirements in the ensuing capture by and escape from the pirate fleet. 

    Farewell to Orro: you may have over-complicated a plan more than anyone else on this blog.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 589: THE TANKONAUT

    (Exciting Comics 005, 1940)

    Stretching the definition of “super-villain” to the very limits here: the Tankonaut is a superweapon developed by US arms manufacturer M.V. Gage under contract to a man who is very clearly meant to be Hitler but is referred to only as the Dictator. Whether this would have qualified as treason in mid-to-late 1940 is beyond me but the next part, where the Tankonaut is tested on US targets (including Washington DC!) extremely is.

    Not only does the Tankonaut have an excellent name (100% the only reason it made the grade as an entry here, even under my already very loose policies about super-vehicles) but it has a neat gimmick: it isn’t a tank at all! Rather, it is a big beefy truck that carries around its own armour plating and weaponry for rapid deployment/ quick and sneaky escape! It’s a neat variation on the old “drive the crime vehicle into the back of a truck” scheme for the truck to actually be the crime vehicle.

    Unfortunately for M.V. Gage and the Tankonaut, John Thesson, the Son of the Gods, is on the case. He discovers the Tankonaut’s secret identity of A Truck by the simple expedient of flipping it over with a long pole. As usual, once the super vehicle has been disabled the non-super humans are quickly rounded up.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 587: THE MASKED MEN

    (Exciting Comics 003, 1940)

    They may be an ordinary gang of Western Bandits but I can’t help but be impressed by just how many of them there are. Every time Texas Ranger Jim Hatfield meets up with the Masked Men he blows at least a couple of them away yet there are always more available to help top man Bull Jeffrey loot the boom town of Concho. They must’ve been planning a 72-man split of the loot originally!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 587: THE MASKED MEN

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 587: THE MASKED MEN

    (Exciting Comics 003, 1940)

    They may be an ordinary gang of Western Bandits but I can’t help but be impressed by just how many of them there are. Every time Texas Ranger Jim Hatfield meets up with the Masked Men he blows at least a couple of them away yet there are always more available to help top man Bull Jeffrey loot the boom town of Concho. They must’ve been planning a 72-man split of the loot originally!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 584: THE LEOPARD MEN

    (Exciting Comics 002, 1940)

    Recently graduated top college athlete Ted Crane and famed anthropologist Professor Hawkins (and Hawkins’ daughter Betty, who stowed away as all young women had to if they were going to have adventures in the 40s) set out to find Kenya’s lost Konogo Tribe but almost immediately meet opposition from one of the Leopard Men. Despite being a supposedly mythical group, this Leopard Man has a gas-dispenser in his mouth that really knocks Ted for a loop while it gets away.

    Even with the additional help of rubber plantation owner J. Atkins Bullard, the party is being harried by Leopard Men at every turn. Why if anything it seems to be worse after he joins them! How can this be?

    It turns out (of course) that Bullard is taking advantage of the local superstitions about the terrible Leopard Men in order to make it easier to kidnap the Konogo as slaves for his plantation. A terrible man! Also a very unobservant one, as somehow in the months and months that he had been leading raids on this poor community he never noticed that the centre of the Konogo village is dominated by a huge solid gold idol.

    Ted Crane, by the way, is a pretty by-the-book adventure character with the addition of a completely football-centric worldview: all of his allusions and most of his fighting are football flavoured. It’s novel!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 584: THE LEOPARD MEN

    (Exciting Comics 002, 1940)

    Recently graduated top college athlete Ted Crane and famed anthropologist Professor Hawkins (and Hawkins’ daughter Betty, who stowed away as all young women had to if they were going to have adventures in the 40s) set out to find Kenya’s lost Konogo Tribe but almost immediately meet opposition from one of the Leopard Men. Despite being a supposedly mythical group, this Leopard Man has a gas-dispenser in his mouth that really knocks Ted for a loop while it gets away.

    Even with the additional help of rubber plantation owner J. Atkins Bullard, the party is being harried by Leopard Men at every turn. Why if anything it seems to be worse after he joins them! How can this be?

    It turns out (of course) that Bullard is taking advantage of the local superstitions about the terrible Leopard Men in order to make it easier to kidnap the Konogo as slaves for his plantation. A terrible man! Also a very unobservant one, as somehow in the months and months that he had been leading raids on this poor community he never noticed that the centre of the Konogo village is dominated by a huge solid gold idol.

    Ted Crane, by the way, is a pretty by-the-book adventure character with the addition of a completely football-centric worldview: all of his allusions and most of his fighting are football flavoured. It’s novel!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 572: JULES CARTIER

    (Champion Comics 005, 1940)

    “Revenge of the Zombies” is a feature that ran in Champion Comics from issues 003-005 and reads kind like it was written in a free-jazz fugue state, like once the 10-12 characters were introduced by issue 003, page 2, events just proceeded on their own with no real input from the writer. A huge cast gathers at the home of Dr Karl Hartmann in Haiti for no reason that is ever given. Various people are kidnapped. Various people turn out to be other people: the novelist is a police detective; the voodoo cult leader is a gang boss; two guests are crooks but it never pays off. Several people die.

    The most striking and interesting thing about the serial is the death’s head moth attack in issue 004 that takes out one of the crooks… wait, maybe they were there as disposable victims? After all, who could care if a criminal dies horribly?

    Champion Comics 005 saw the wrapping up of several serialized adventure stories in favour of more hero-driven fare (I have Lyle Kenton tagged as the protagonist of this story but he was simply the most proactive member of the cast – it was an ensemble jazz-fusion voodoo mystery). And since gang boss/ voodoo priest Jaques “Frenchy” Atell was already dead: enter Jules Cartier!

    Cartier, the former owner of Dr Hartmann’s mansion, has not been dead as everyone suspected but just been living in the basement, farming death’s head moths and using hypnotic mind control to turn people into zombies.

    When confronted, Cartier literally brings a knife to a gunfight, attempting to take on two armed men using only a throwing knife. It’s an honourable way to go for a complete dipshit. 

    Cartier’s plan comes out in the aftermath: discovering that he can produce high-quality silk from death’s head moths and that they enjoy drinking human blood, he researches a more sustainable alternative so that he can produce at a profitable level relocates to a cave to employ mind-controlled locals as both a labour force and blood supply. It’s a frankly ludicrous scheme – a cursory bit of searching indicates that Cartier is engaging in an astounding level of risk for something like thousands of dollars, which even in 1940 isn’t worth it. But of course, he was an insane textiles-based super-villain… who are we to dictate his priorities?

    And in the end it certainly was… a revenge of the zombies.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 489: THE GOLDMASTER

    (Big Shot Comics 002, 1940) 

    The Goldmaster is one of my very favourite subtypes of super-villain: the guy who really leans into the bit. Specifically, he is a fellow who has discovered the secret of making gold and subsequently adopted all of the trappings of a Medieval alchemist. Or possibly he was a guy who was really into the alchemy lifestyle who made the luckiest find ever. Either way, he doesn’t have to live like this! It’s a choice!

    No matter what the Goldmaster’s route to infinite gold production was, he certainly has all the fighting skills of a quicksilver-raddled mystic. He and his gang of would-be economic titans are gathered up with very little effort by the Face, with the Goldmaster himself ultimately choosing the coward’s way out.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 462: THE TRUSTEES OF HATE

    (Mystic Comics v1 004, 1940)

    The Trustees of Hate are a group of villains operating at least nominally along corporate lines, with strategy meetings, what appears to be a board of directors etc. Because their headquarters is in the evocatively named Horror Hall, on the border of the fictional European countries of Borsia and Gratzia, the Blue Blaze is given a new power especially so that he can go beat them up: he returns to his grave between cases and emerges from it again when he is needed, but the grave moves. Very eerie and also very funny if you picture his coffin burrowing through the dirt like a worm. Like I do.

    So just who are the Trustees of Hate?

    Dr Vortex: If the story hadn’t hit the “Trustees of Hate” angle so hard in the first few pages then this would be an entry on Dr Vortex with special mention of the Trustees as his well-named henchmen. As it stands, the Trustees were held up as a group threat and Dr Vortex is their leader. He’s your regular-style evil scientist and developer of the Hate Ray that is key to the Trustees’ plan.

    Lor: Lor is the Trustees’ hangman. There’s not a lot that you can say about him, as he keels over dead with a heart attack after seeing the Blue Blaze emerge from a lime pit (the second time this specific heart attack trigger happens in a Blue Blaze story, by the way). He does appear to love his job, so that’s something.

    Probably the most interesting thing about Lor is his design – I reckon that over the span of comics this sort of “generic punk” look might just be one of the more iconic designs for low-threat goons ad thugs but it’s fairly wild to see it in a comic from 1940.

    Lara: Every evil organization worth its salt has at least one hypercompetent woman making sure things run smoothly and for the Trustees of Hate that woman is Lara. Not only does Lara capture the Blue Blaze and make sure that the Trustees’ plans go off despite his interference but she is also the only member of the group to survive the adventure (spoiler). Here’s hoping that like Nalda after her she got away to some corner of the Marvel Universe to thrive in her own evil way. Perhaps they’re elderly evil business partners by now.


    Weasel: The only named member of the horde of gangsters and spies that make up the bulk of the organization. Weasel is shot by Lara after he is captured by the Blue Blaze and looks likely to spill his guts.

    The rest of them, meanwhile, are blown up by Dr Vortex in an attempt to kill the Blue Blaze.

    The Trustees’ actual plan involves Lara and others using Dr Vortex’ Hate Ray on the leaders of neighbouring European countries Borsia and Gratzia until a war happens. Once both countries have bombed each other to smithereens, the Trustees of Hate would move in and take over and/or loot both countries. Not a bad plan though if I were starting a war between two countries I might refrain from living on the border between the two. But what do I know – I’ve never invented any kind of ray.

    Despite the fact that most of the Trustees are already dead, Dr Vortex manages to capture the Blue Blaze. It’s hard to determine if he could have sealed the deal and actually bumped him off, because he commits the classic villain mistake and stops to gloat. COuld the Blue Blaze escape any time he wanted or was that cool cigarette just what he needed to recharge his power? We’ll never know.

    This is the last Blue Blaze story, and until someone brings him back again I’ll always picture him in his little coffin, burrowing through the earth like a worm, on his way to fight evil.