The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: Kong

  • GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 042

    GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 042

    Celebrated by none… until now. And then only mildly.

    Slavin:

    This masked man is the leader of a gang who have been systematically robbing warehouses and then burning them down. The culprit turns out to be Slavin, the general manager of the warehousing company, and not the red herring suspect Slivers, owner of the company (who is ugly, and therefore more likely to be evil than the handsome Slavin). PI Dan Williams is too enlightened to judge others based on their appearances though, and busts the right man.  (Exciting Comics 014, 1941)

    the Black Baron:

    After wandering around Europe and North Africa and only really hitting up the Crusades long enough to kill Saladin, Sir Richard of Warwick, aka the Golden Knight, returns home to find that his younger brother Roland is missing and a very rude man called the Black Baron is squatting on his lands.

    The Black Baron seemed like he might get a numbered entry by name alone but alas, he’s a true scrub. The Golden Knight and his friends murder all of his men with what I would call embarrassing ease and the Baron passes up an opportunity to get away with his life for another shot at the gold he is convinced that Roland is hiding from him. The Golden Knight then enacts a little Crusader-style justice on him. To death. (Fantastic Comics 014, 1941)

    Unnamed Fascists:

    What do you do when you’re notorious comic book oddball Fletcher Hanks and you need to draw a selection of Axis leaders but the US comics industry isn’t yet 100% on board with just explicitly depicting Hitler as an evil villain and so you need to have a bit of plausible deniability? Masked Axis leaders, obviously! (Fantastic Comics 014, 1941)

    Kong:

    This fellow, name of Kong, has a super-sub and is looking to use it to extort some quick cash from the future state of New America. A classic plan!

    Kong’s cachet is spoiled somewhat by the fact that the heroic Sub Saunders just walks in through the front door of his underwater base and lays him out with a single punch. As a villain it is very hard to come back from something like this. (Fantastic Comics 015, 1941)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 821: KONG

    (Thrilling Comics 003, 1940)

    I can’t really devote a lot of energy to Kong because he just kind of makes me tired, conceptually. He’s a Yellow Peril dictator who has devoted a fair amount of time and resources to stealing both military secrets and entire scientists from the US as a part of his bid for world domination, opposed only by Doc Strange and his companion Virginia Thompson. All very exciting stuff in theory, but it all resolves into a kind of mush – it’s not even as racist as it could be, which is good but not remarkable.

    In the spirit of writing something interesting, here are the good parts of Kong’s story: 

    1. Location: Kong is the dictator of the Asian kingdom of Kachukuo, which was pretty fun to recognize as a stand-in for Manchukuo, the Chinese puppet-state established by the Japanese in 1932. I’m always chuffed to see Manchukuo come up both because it doesn’t really do so very often and because I managed to get pretty far into adulthood before I learned about this entire country, and the joy of learning about it is still fresh in my mind. Not that the history of Manchukuo itself is particularly joy-inspiring, but learning is learning.

    2. Rays. I like Kong’s big chunky ray technology. He’s got a red ray that brings the scientists out of the suspended animation he put them in for transport, a blue mind control ray (blue and red seem to come from the same machine) and a green death ray. What can I say, I like a ray, and I like colours.

    3. Wild Hill Warriors. At one point Kong tries to get rid of Doc Strong by subjecting him to gladiatorial combat and I just really like the fact that he managed to scare up some Germanic warriors fresh from the sack of Rome for the task. They don’t do very well but they’re fun!

    That’s about it for Kong. Doc Strange inspires a revolution in Kachukuo, chucks the dictator into his own chemical soup and thaws out the scientists with a little Alosun, bish bash bosh, start the countdown to the next Fu Manchu knockoff showing up.