The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: capitalism

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 456: KING BASCOM

    (Mystic Comics v1 001, 1940)

    King Bascom, the first foe faced by Dynamic Man, is nothing more than a grubby little capitalist pig. I almost forgot to write him and his land-grab scheme up due to disinterest.

    Trouble is, while King Bascom is utterly uninteresting he is cocooned in a dense shell of interesting things: his land grab is aided by a drought that he himself is causing using a rain-prevention machine, he has anti-Dymanic Man weaponry and a deathtrap that involves both a descending ceiling and a flood of liquid nitrogen, he’s a traitor and a scumbag and a sneering pompous ass and yet I can’t bring myself to care about him enough to finish writing this.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 399: THE MURDER MAESTRO

    (More Fun Comics 072, 1941) 

    The Murder Maestro comes out swinging with a rapid-fire campaign of musical murder. Over the course of two days he delivers five musical warnings followed by song-inspired deathtraps to members of the Tin Pan Alley Club, e.g., “I’m Walking on Air” delivered via singing telegram followed by an attempt to hang the recipient from a light aircraft.

    This of course leads to one of my favourite setups: a collection of possible suspects. Not as much as could be is done with this bunch – two are almost immediately targeted by the Murder Maestro, leaving only two actual suspects – but I still appreciate the effort.

    The Murder Maestro of course is Blind Harry Thorpe, the least likely of the suspects, who turns out to have Dr Mid-Nite-style “can only see in complete darkness” blindness. His murder spree was inspired by the fact that the Tin Pan Alley Club was a collective enterprise in which royalties were pooled and shared among the songwriter members, and of course fewer members meant more royalties for the survivors. Whether Thorpe had an excuse ready for when he was the only one left alive was left unexplored.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 398: THE DARK VAPOR

    (More Fun Comics 072, 1941)

    The Dark Vapor (one of my trademark Unofficial Names) is just that: a misty entity that emerges from an old jar of mysterious provenance and possesses simple farmer Hiram Spiezel.

    The Vapor-driven Hiram immediately heads for the big city of Cliffland NJ and starts wheeling and dealing, becoming a stock marked player and a real estate tycoon almost overnight. And soon after that, he starts evicting tenants, bilking people and falsifying records: capitalism to Mega-Capitalism, all in a few short days.

    All this unwholesome business draws the attention of the Spectre, who quickly discovers that a) he cannot influence “Hiram Spiezel” like he could a normal man, b) “Spiezel” can see him, c) “Hiram Spiezel” is actually a banished evil entity from an ancient civilization picking up a bid for world conquest where it left off and d) the Dark Vapor entity is much more powerful than the Spectre. 

    The entity swiftly runs off the Spectre and gets back to the business of enacting a hostile takeover on the world. As an aside: I really appreciate the adaptability of this being – I mean, I assume that whatever civilization it originated in was not organized along the same lines as 1940s US capitalist society and yet it is perfectly comfortable in its new role as business mogul rather than Thunder Warlord or Priest-King or Grand Art Critic. Good job, Dark Vapor!

    Too bad for the Vape that the Spectre has an unspecified, vaguely Christian entity on speed dial, a literal deus ex machina for just such occasions. It supplies him with a power-boosting red aura, with which he in short order evicts the Vapor from Hiram Spiezel, hunts it down and imprisons it at the bottom of the sea, presumably to someday bedevil a civilization of intelligent octopuses with its preternatural pebble-stacking prowess.

    AND SPEAKING OF OCTOPUSES! I enjoyed the Dark Vapor’s machinations but absolutely the greatest thing about their adventure is this illustration of them as a metaphorical octopus ensnaring the US in their horrible flesh-toned tentacles. Always a delight!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 398: THE DARK VAPOR

    (More Fun Comics 072, 1941)

    The Dark Vapor (one of my trademark Unofficial Names) is just that: a misty entity that emerges from an old jar of mysterious provenance and possesses simple farmer Hiram Spiezel.

    The Vapor-driven Hiram immediately heads for the big city of Cliffland NJ and starts wheeling and dealing, becoming a stock marked player and a real estate tycoon almost overnight. And soon after that, he starts evicting tenants, bilking people and falsifying records: capitalism to Mega-Capitalism, all in a few short days.

    All this unwholesome business draws the attention of the Spectre, who quickly discovers that a) he cannot influence “Hiram Spiezel” like he could a normal man, b) “Spiezel” can see him, c) “Hiram Spiezel” is actually a banished evil entity from an ancient civilization picking up a bid for world conquest where it left off and d) the Dark Vapor entity is much more powerful than the Spectre. 

    The entity swiftly runs off the Spectre and gets back to the business of enacting a hostile takeover on the world. As an aside: I really appreciate the adaptability of this being – I mean, I assume that whatever civilization it originated in was not organized along the same lines as 1940s US capitalist society and yet it is perfectly comfortable in its new role as business mogul rather than Thunder Warlord or Priest-King or Grand Art Critic. Good job, Dark Vapor!

    Too bad for the Vape that the Spectre has an unspecified, vaguely Christian entity on speed dial, a literal deus ex machina for just such occasions. It supplies him with a power-boosting red aura, with which he in short order evicts the Vapor from Hiram Spiezel, hunts it down and imprisons it at the bottom of the sea, presumably to someday bedevil a civilization of intelligent octopuses with its preternatural pebble-stacking prowess.

    AND SPEAKING OF OCTOPUSES! I enjoyed the Dark Vapor’s machinations but absolutely the greatest thing about their adventure is this illustration of them as a metaphorical octopus ensnaring the US in their horrible flesh-toned tentacles. Always a delight!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 378: THE THING

    (More Fun Comics 064, 1941)

    This is not a complicated one: Congo Bill is asked for help by his friend Jack Brent. Brent is trying to sell his plantation, one of the assets of which is his good relationship with the local labour pool. Just as he had found a buyer, a skull-headed goon called the Thing started murdering workers. It’s about par for course re: jungle comics portrayal of nonwhite folks and fairly standard otherwise and of course the Thing turns out to be Mr Tate the prospective buyer attempting to get a better price via wholesale slaughter. The one redeeming feature of the story is this:

    The Thing looks sick as hell. You’ll be hard pressed to find a better look than a skull in a hood and the cool dagger is a real bonus. The bulletproof vest is of course not visible but speaks to a thoughtfulness that is shamefully wasted in this grubby little scheme.

    And yes that is Congo Bill in blackface.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 353: THE PURPLE HOODS

    (Master Comics 013-014, 1941) 

    I’m not going to lie: when I started reading this story I got excited for one of the more niche reasons I ever have. See, the prior Buck Jones story – the one with the Ghost Killer gang – was still wrapping up and I had a moment where I thought there would be some very exciting gang continuity if any of the former Ghost Killers, already relict of the White Arrow gang, had joined up with the Purple Hoods. That’s an unprecedented three gangs! Alas, Snake and Cope were sent to jail and the counter reset.

    Ephemeral hopes and dreams aside, the Purple Hoods are crass capitalist crooks: their big scheme involves kidnapping Mexican farm labourers and pressing them into slavery in a secret oil refinery. Ah, the romance of the Old West!

    And speaking of the Old West, this story is a perfect illustration of the weird liminal space that the West occupied in the 40s imagination: is Buck Jones an Old West marshal or a contemporary one? Does this issue offer any clues? The ascent of oil as a valuable resource does overlap with the Old West, and steel oil barrels of the kind pictured above are a 20th Century invention, but one of the major conflicts of the story is a business rivalry between two competing stagecoach lines and while I can find evidence of stagecoaches being used into the early 20th Century I doubt that they were such a going concern as that.

    What I’m getting at here is that I don’t know which way the anachronisms are going: is Buck Jones an Old West marshal with forward-thinking villains or a modern marshal in an overly romanticized setting? Who knows!

    (I must note that I do appreciate the Purple Hood leader getting his own special version of the gang costume)

    ADDENDUM:

    Two issues later (Master Comics 016, 1941), the story is clearly set in the Old West! Answers have been forthcoming at last!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 316: THE VAMPIRE

    (Daring Mystery Comics 002, 1940) 

    The Vampire has the distinction of appearing in the only Golden Age featuring Mister E, possibly the biggest nonentity in the collection of heroes brought back in The Twelve. He’s whatever: he has a drug that makes your heart explode and his major plot involves trying to get control of an oil company (and marry a woman against her will after killing her father, in case you though he might be a bit sympathetic). He is one of the few comic book super-villains to dress like the villains from 1940s super-hero movies though, so that’s something.

    Probably the most interesting thing about the Vampire is the fact that like so many features in Daring Mystery Comics Mister E was a one-off, which means that he is still at large to this day. Fun! BRING BACK this very very old man and his old machinations! Mister E has retired – who can save us from the Vampire?

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 305: THE BLACK TOAD

    (Captain America Comics 007, 1941) 

    Here’s the problem with the Black Toad: he looks great. A really top-notch costume, like something Batman would have worn in a stage production in the 30s. No notes. And that’s the only interesting thing about him. He’s a baseball manager who wants to buy into the team and is killing players in order to drive the price down. HO HUM.

    (I guess he does use a bomb hidden inside a baseball at one point. That’s a bit interesting, I suppose)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 298: THE UNHOLY LEGION

    (Captain America Comics 004, 1941)

    This is one of those moments where the first examples of a thing that shows up here is not a great example of the thing. Blame the tyranny of alphabetical order, I suppose, because I know for a fact that Star-Spangled Comics will feature the Ring of Rags when I work my way down my list to it, and that is a good example.

    The thing in question is of course Poor People as a Horrifying and Existential Threat, and it’s going to crop up periodically. The poor end up as a creeping horde without real agency of their own who can be mobilized in service to some evil end, in this case the destabilization of the American military/ industrial complex.

    The reason that this is not the best example of the type is that the people in question are probably not actually poor beggars but Nazi spies. I mean, they are absolutely Nazi spies. The probably is in regard to the fact that there’s no indication that any of them are anything else. Actual poor people being portrayed as monsters will have to wait.

    (bonus: the thing that gets Captain America and Bucky on this case is that they give a guy money and then he turns out not to be disabled enough for them to have done so)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 288: THE KING

    (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 025, 1941)

    The King is your regular old gang boss who decides to pivot from running a numbers racket to selling counterfeit pharmaceuticals, and if that was it he wouldn’t be listed here. The dang guy just wasn’t content to be regular, though. Some salient features of his crime time:

    -he made the fake drugs in a sprawling underground lab using kidnapped doctors

    -recalcitrant doctors ended up in a giant vat of boiling acid

    -he has a full suite of gadgets including acid, gas and regular bombs and a remote controlled exploding car for blowing up excess henchmen

    -he leaves a king playing card at the scene of his crimes

    -he uses a cigar holder, which isn’t villainous per se but always stands out so much to me that I must make note of it.

    He’s also very dumb? Like, the calling cards tie together various crimes in a way that they might not otherwise have been, and he leaves a license plate that’s registered in his name on the bomb-car. Plus he does a lot of unnecessary murdering and kidnapping that does a lot less to make people respect him and more to make them want to stop him, or, as in the case of the henchman he fails to fully blow up, kill him.