The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: Mask

  • CATALOGUE OF WOUNDS 009

    How can we have nice things if they keep getting so dinged up?

    the Black Terror:

    It might look like the Black Terror (‘s secret identity) is knocked out by falling down a flight of stairs onto his head, but according to him it was actually a bullet creasing the old skull that did the trick. (Exciting Comics 010, 1941)

    This is a tough one: the Black Terror is shot and nearly killed, and he kind of seems to be clutching his head but the gun is aimed at his torso as it fires. Guess we’ll file this under “shot, unspecified.” (Exciting Comics 012, 1941)

    the Black Fury:

    Shot in the left shoulder and tossed out of a moving car. (Fantastic Comics 020, 1941)

    Chuck:

    The Black Fury’s sidekick Chuck is shot in the ever-popular left shoulder and knocked clean off of a building by one of the Fang’s henchmen, but makes out okay nonetheless. (Fantastic Comics 019, 1941)

    Dr Hypno: 

    I never expected a fellow whose whole shtick is putting his mind into animal bodies to get mixed up in the action enough to take a wound, but here he is: poor ol’ Dr Hypno getting branded on the chest by a crook. (Amazing-Man Comics 018, 1940)

    the Mask:

    The Mask, in his civilian identity of District Attorney Tony Colby, joins the “skull creased by a bullet” club. EDIT: I wrote this without checking and it turns out that this is the second time that the Mask’s skull has been creased, so he was already a member of the club. My apologies. (Exciting Comics 011, 1941)

    Mighty Man:

    Mighty Man gets shot through the left shoulder. Considering his size at the time (enormous) he’s lucky that the guy didn’t score a headshot. (Amazing-Man Comics 014, 1940)

    the Shark:

    The Shark (temporarily weakened by the loss of his magic knife) gets whipped with belts by a bunch of jerk Nazis. (Amazing-Man Comics 011, 1940)

    A couple of issue later, the Shark gets stabbed in the gut by his own dang knife. Yes, the stab wound is swiftly turned back on his attacker by the weapon’s magic, but you can’t tell me that the Shark doesn’t get stabbed first. (Amazing-Man Comics 013, 1940)

    Super Ann:

    In one of Super Ann’s handful of adventures she gets a real one-two: a bullet-creased scalp followed by a near-drowning. (Amazing-Man Comics 025, 1941)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 963: THE GENTLEMAN

    (Exciting Comics 015, 1941)

    The Gentleman, “the most elusive jewel thief in the country,” is after the fabulous Orloff Necklace, and District Attorney Tony Colby, aka the Mask, is on the case.

    I initially had my money on the goateed gallery manager being the Gentleman in a classic double bluff, but once this comically-affronted old lady showed up it became clear that my instincts were wrong. The Gentleman’s modus operandi turns out to involve a combination of disguise and smuggling gems out of places in his dog’s hollow collar, a very specialized grift indeed, considering that you need a place that allows dogs and that also has small, high-value items to steal.

    Is the masculine name/ feminine disguise an intentional attempt at misdirection or merely a coincidence? Sadly this is not addressed in the text and so we must take it as equally likely that the Gentleman dresses up in a variety of disguises as it is that he always cross-dresses.

    Categorized in: Accessories (Dogs), Origin (Cross-Dressing Characters), Royalty (Gentlemen)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 963: THE GENTLEMAN

    (Exciting Comics 015, 1941)

    The Gentleman, “the most elusive jewel thief in the country,” is after the fabulous Orloff Necklace, and District Attorney Tony Colby, aka the Mask, is on the case.

    I initially had my money on the goateed gallery manager being the Gentleman in a classic double bluff, but once this comically-affronted old lady showed up it became clear that my instincts were wrong. The Gentleman’s modus operandi turns out to involve a combination of disguise and smuggling gems out of places in his dog’s hollow collar, a very specialized grift indeed, considering that you need a place that allows dogs and that also has small, high-value items to steal.

    Is the masculine name/ feminine disguise an intentional attempt at misdirection or merely a coincidence? Sadly this is not addressed in the text and so we must take it as equally likely that the Gentleman dresses up in a variety of disguises as it is that he always cross-dresses.

    Categorized in: Accessories (Dogs), Origin (Cross-Dressing Characters), Royalty (Gentlemen)

  • GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 041

    Mamas lock up your radium, because the z-tier villains are back in town.

    the Fuhrer of Brazil:

    Larry North is a US Naval Reserve Lieutenant and airline pilot who turns hand to Nazi spy-hunting when he and his companion Betty Harmon are hijacked by fascists in Rio di Janiero. They spend their first few adventures dismantling a scheme to conquer Brazil, and when in the course of this the traitorous and toothbrush-mustached Doctor Sanchez mentions a figure called the Fuhrer of Brazil, I naturally figured that he would be the final boss of the saga. No dice, it turns out, as he never personally appears and  probably dies when the Brazilians bomb all of the Nazi bases using North’s intel. (Exciting Comics 012, 1941)

    Billings:

    Billings, along with four other men (Hawkins, Griffith, Stanton and Carton) own the zoo of the as-yet-unnamed city that the Black Terror calls home, I think? They own a zoo, at any rate. Perhaps it is in direct competition with the city’s.

    The thing is that Billings a) holds the mortgage for the zoo and b) is broke while the others are wealthy and c) wants to change that by foreclosing on the zoo and selling the land for a huge profit. He probably could have accomplished this with a bit of underhanded business trickery or possibly by admitting to his three friends that he needs the money, but as is so often the case in comics he instead chooses to put on a mask and murder the other four. Confusingly, he does a pretty good job of framing Carton for killing the other three before attempting to murder him as well. We’ll never get a chance to see how he was going to spin this because it is at this point that the Black Terror knocks his block off. (Exciting Comics 013, 1941)

    Al Walsh:

    This masked blackmailer is actually reporter Al Walsh, who digs up dirt on people in the course of his job and then makes them pay big bucks to keep it under wraps. The Mask settles his hash, but not before getting one of his victims killed in an ill thought-out plan. (Exciting Comics 013, 1941)

    Dr Cobra:

    Dr Cobra is the recurring enemy of Ted Crane, who is one of those 1940s adventurers who compulsively seeks out action and excitement and today would probably be an extreme freeclimber or something like that. Given that he appears seven or eight times and that I have not read most of those issues, I might be selling him short when I say that his cool name is all that he has going for him, but I’m willing to risk it. (Exciting Comics 014, 1941)

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 091

    Have a few mid-tier minor super-heroes, for a change.

    the Black Terror:

    Pharmacist Bob Benton is the kind of guy who will step in when a little kid is being roughed up by thugs, but despite this he is pretty relentlessly bullied by city Comptroller Rodney Clark* and (in a less overt but still insidious way) their mutual love interest Jean Starr.

    * Clark is such a bully, in fact, that I assumed that he was going to eventually turn out to be crooked but instead he gets murdered** after a couple of issues.

    ** In fact I was wrong when I wrote this: he is merely almost  murdered and seemingly never recovers sufficiently to return to the comic. I guess I was just hoping that he would get murdered because he is, again, such a bully.

    Perhaps because of this, Benton spends his spare time working on a “tonic for run-down people,” or so he says. I assume that he’s going for something closer to anabolic steroids, and thanks to his new assistant Tim Roland (the kid who was getting beaten up earlier), he stumbles upon the formula for something even better: formic ether! 

    Thanks to those sweet sweet formic ether fumes, Benton becomes a super-human and in a real break for society decides to keep on being a decent guy rather than setting out for revenge on all those people who pushed him around when he was weak (though he does take the opportunity to give Rodney Clark a black eye every issue until he’s murdered he retires). He gets his super suit in the most efficient way possible: by sending Tim down to the costume shop to see what they have in stock.

    The formic ethers give Benton tremendous strength and a sort of mid-tier invulnerability: he can shrug off a sock on the jaw no problem, and eventually proves to be bulletproof, but he gets knocked around and knocked out an awful lot. (Exciting Comics 009, 1941)

    Tim Roland:

    Though Bob tells Tim that he can’t join him on his quest for vigilante glory, he also just kind of leaves a smoking bottle of super power serum sitting out where anyone can get it – frankly he’s lucky not to have to team up with Rodney Clark. Instead, Tim – who has had the foresight to pick up a second costume for himself, but not to pick a super-hero name – huffs a little formic ether and gets straight to busting heads.

    Tim is the rare Golden Age sidekick who appears to be legitimately around eight to ten years old, instead of a stocky thirteen to fifteen like so many of his peers. Even more remarkably, he stays roughly in this age bracket for a couple of years, as far as can be ascertained (multiple artists mean that his height fluctuates quite a lot, but he pretty consistently wears short pants in his civilian identity). He’s also one of those orphan boys who just kind of falls into a super-guy’s orbit and becomes adopted by default. (Exciting Comics 009, 1941)

    The Black Terror dabbles in the common practice of leaving a calling card in his first appearance, and makes the baffling decision to go with his domino mask as a design, rather than the cool skull-and-crossbones on his chest.

    Categorized in: Accessories (Calling Cards), Body (Emotions – Terror), Origins (Chemical Mutates), Origins (Sidekicks)

    the Sphinx **UPDATE**:

    The Sphinx adopts the identity of the Domino Kid in order to have a very brief boxing career. (Exciting Comics 012, 1941)

    Categorized in: Origins (Secondary Identities)

    the Liberator:

    Like many super-heroes, the Liberator starts out as a weedy nerd. Specifically, he is Dr Nelson Drew, lecturer in Chemistry at Claflin College. He is, troublingly, in love with Annabel, one of his students, who also serves as one of his major bullies – she is not only bored by chemistry (but you chose to take the course, Annabel!) but also scornful of Drew for caring about it when so much is afoot in the world, but… I don’t actually know what her problem is? Like, chemistry was wildly consequential to the US war effort? Perhaps if he taught a social science I could see her point of view, if not agree with it. 

    While doing a little light research into Ancient Egyptian poisons (okay, this is arguably inconsequential), Drew discovers the lost formula for a drug called Lamesis which will supposedly make one into their physical ideal. Though skeptical, he brews up a batch and since his lab safety appears to be nonexistent (troubling indeed for a guy who is researching poisons) he immediately gets a snootful of the stuff, and  turns into a big ol’ hunk. I really enjoy how viscerally unpleasant the transformation process looks here – sadly this transformation conceit doesn’t last more than a couple of issues.

    This unexpected transformation isn’t a dream come true for Drew, and he spends his first outing in his new body – the Lamesis turns out to be a temporary thing, you see – trying to figure out how to turn back, and engages in his first bout of super-heroism after discovering that the scientist he was trying to consult with had been murdered by fascists. 

    I also enjoy the origin of the Liberator’s costume: there are plenty of super-heroes going around in their old Halloween costumes, but he might be the only one who gets his outfit by stealing someone else’s. Would he have become such an explicitly patriotic hero if he hadn’t ended up in a star-spangled shirt? (Exciting Comics 015, 1941)

    Categorized in: Accessories (Drugs), Day Jobs (College Professors), Origins (Patriotic Heroes)

    VERY MINOR UPDATES:

    John Thesson, aka the Son of the Gods, after being a character of no fixed address for his first several appearances, finally settles down: he was in Washington DC in Exciting Comics 006, but it wasn’t until 007 that it became clear that that is where he chose to hang his hat and offer his services to the US Government.

    The Mask sheds two of his assistants, Silk and Butch, as of Exciting Comics 007, and becomes of interest to the law somewhere between 009 and 010. 

  • GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 040

    GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 040

    Once again I am plagued by the absolute dregs of villainy.

    A Vampire:

    Vampires are one of the types of character that are statistically likely to make it through my classification system and be certified as super, but this particular one who a) lives in a swamp shack, b) has two meals in a row taken away from him by the Green Knight, c) doesn’t even get a name and d) ends up dead with his shack burned down around his ears, is too much of a loser to make it to even minor villain status. He does, however, provide the Green Knight with a sidekick in the form of one of his prospective victims, which is something. (Dynamic Comics 002, 1941)

    Hank Rutter:

    This fellow might have been called the Mask or the Masked Man if it weren’t for the fact that his heroic foe is already called the Mask. As such, he’s just a gambling focused villain with a bit more interest in concealing his identity than usual.

    It’s no surprise that the unnamed masked villain is in actuality Hank Rutter, big-time gambler. What is surprising is that he manages to learn the Mask’s secret identity as DA Tony Colby. Especially to him, as Colby responds by knocking him off a roof to his death. (Exciting Comics 007, 1941)

    Henry Devoe: 

    When this masked drug kingpin shows up with a very visible withered left hand and then civic leader Henry Devoe is on the front page of the newspaper, also with a very prominent withered left hand the next day, my assumption as a longtime consumer of comic books and detective fiction was that Devoe was being framed, but no, he’s the guy. While I commend him for making his disability visible and thus normalizing it, I do question his decision not to disguise such a distinguishing characteristic while out and about doing drug-related murders. (Exciting Comics 012, 1941)

    Black Terror impostor:

    When the Black Terror decides to play nice with the police and inform them about Henry Devoe’s perfidy, he is surely disappointed to learn that Police Chief Nelson is a crooked cop who guns him down on sight and then steals his uniform in order to extort Devoe. And we wonder why most vigilantes have an adversarial relationship with the police.

    Nelson’s plan is hindered by the fact that Henry Devoe’s response to having the Black Terror show up in his living room is exactly the same as his own had been: to shoot him on sight. And unlike Bob “the Black Terror” Benton, Nelson hasn’t been huffing enough formic ether to survive a close-range gunshot. (Exciting Comics 012, 1941)

  • CATALOGUE OF WOUNDS 008

    CATALOGUE OF WOUNDS 008

    Everybody gets shot now and then.

    the Bronze Terror: 

    The Bronze Terror is shot in the left arm during his first adventure by the wicked Scar Thornton, which gives him an excuse to show off his penchant for knocking out crooks’ teeth. (Daredevil Comics 002, 1941)

    Whiz, King of Falcons: 

    Whiz is shot through the left wing by a Lord Haw-Haw analog, and since this is the one issue in which he has the power of speech, he gets to complain about it. (Daredevil Comics 001, 1941)

    Trojak the Tiger Man: 

    Clawed across the chest by a lion. (Daring Mystery Comics 002, 1940)

    the Mask:

    The Mask gets his head creased by a bullet. (Exciting Comics 007, 1941)

    Sub-Zero: 

    Sub-Zero has an eventful 1941: first he gets shot in the right shoulder while parachuting… (Blue Bolt v1 012, 1941)

     … then breaks his right leg while in pursuit of a suspect… (Blue Bolt v2 001, 1941

    … and finally gets his skull creased by some trigger-happy miscreants.  (Blue Bolt v2 005, 1941

    the White Rider:

    The White Rider gets himself generically shot during his very first attempt to mete out vigilante justice, and it’s a lucky thing for him that he has Super Horse or there wouldn’t be a second. (Blue Bolt v1 001, 1940)

    Dr Miracle:

    Dr Miracle takes a thrown stiletto to the right shoulder while he is physically merger with his manservant Akim, which might also make this a stiletto to Akim’s shoulder as well. The physics of the situation are unclear. (Champ Comics 012, 1941)

    the Sphinx:

    Though he has in the past proved himself broadly invulnerable, the Sphinx is not immune to getting his skull creased by a bullet. (Exciting Comics 008, 1941) 

  • CATALOGUE OF WOUNDS 008

    CATALOGUE OF WOUNDS 008

    Everybody gets shot now and then.

    the Bronze Terror: 

    The Bronze Terror is shot in the left arm during his first adventure by the wicked Scar Thornton, which gives him an excuse to show off his penchant for knocking out crooks’ teeth. (Daredevil Comics 002, 1941)

    Whiz, King of Falcons: 

    Whiz is shot through the left wing by a Lord Haw-Haw analog, and since this is the one issue in which he has the power of speech, he gets to complain about it. (Daredevil Comics 001, 1941)

    Trojak the Tiger Man: 

    Clawed across the chest by a lion. (Daring Mystery Comics 002, 1940)

    the Mask:

    The Mask gets his head creased by a bullet. (Exciting Comics 007, 1941)

    Sub-Zero: 

    Sub-Zero has an eventful 1941: first he gets shot in the right shoulder while parachuting… (Blue Bolt v1 012, 1941)

     … then breaks his right leg while in pursuit of a suspect… (Blue Bolt v2 001, 1941

    … and finally gets his skull creased by some trigger-happy miscreants.  (Blue Bolt v2 005, 1941

    the White Rider:

    The White Rider gets himself generically shot during his very first attempt to mete out vigilante justice, and it’s a lucky thing for him that he has Super Horse or there wouldn’t be a second. (Blue Bolt v1 001, 1940)

    Dr Miracle:

    Dr Miracle takes a thrown stiletto to the right shoulder while he is physically merger with his manservant Akim, which might also make this a stiletto to Akim’s shoulder as well. The physics of the situation are unclear. (Champ Comics 012, 1941)

    the Sphinx:

    Though he has in the past proved himself broadly invulnerable, the Sphinx is not immune to getting his skull creased by a bullet. (Exciting Comics 008, 1941) 

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 903: SMASHER SPY

    (Whiz Comics 015, 1941)

    As seen in his recent update, Spy Smasher’s arch-foe the Mask eventually gets a bit too good at villainy for his own sake. While he succeeds at warping Spy Smasher’s mind and turning him against the US government that he once sought only to defend, the Mask’s enthusiasm means that he is a bit too loose with his commands to “Kill! Kill! Kill!” meaning that the first that Spy Smasher does is to kill the Mask.

    Spy Smasher’s fervour for his new mission is intense, driven as it is by the Mask’s mind control. He starts blowing up arsenals and machine gunning defense meetings across the country, much to the despair of his erstwhile allies Eve and Admiral Corby.

    Though he is mostly still called Spy Smasher throughout the four issues in which he is evilized, there are a couple of instances of “Smasher Spy” instead and so we shall be using that name for clarity’s sake.

    There’s a lot of cool and interesting stuff happening with regard to Smasher Spy: having a hero become a villain, having such a huge change to the status quo persist over several issues, plus the fact that Smasher Spy is technically a Captain Marvel villain due to the fact that Whiz Comics 016-018 are in fact a crossover event! How very exciting! 

    So: from Whiz Comics 016 to 018, both the “Captain Marvel” and “Spy Smasher” features are concerned with the ongoing efforts of the former to capture the latter and restore him to his heroic ways. A lot of it plays out like the above, with Captain Marvel showing up in time to foil but not capture Smasher Spy. Rather than detail each individual plot, here’s a list of Smasher Spy’s nefarious undertakings:

    – Organizing a mass breakout of Federal Penetentiary

    – Stealing plans from a defense committee meeting and leaving a bomb to kill the committee members

    – Delivering those plans to a fascist submarine (and then sinking that submarine when Captain Marvel turns out to be on board)

    – Stealing a super poison gas and attempting to wipe out the US Army with it

    – Kidnapping and hypnotizing a busload of factory workers into helping him develop super-weapons 

    – Building a fleet in order to conquer and destroy all national governments 

    – Attempted murders: Admiral Corby x2, Captain Marvel x5, Eve Corby x4, Sterling Morris x1

    – Misc destruction: one aircraft factory, two arsenals, two bridges, one dam, one train derailment, one warship sunk

    Captain Marvel eventually allows himself to be captured by Smasher Spy as an intelligence-gathering exercise and so finds out about the Mask’s hypno-chair/brain-o-graph when it is unsuccessfully used in an attempt to turn him evil too. (Whiz Comics 016, 1941) 

    Smasher Spy is also the inventor of the nefarious Banana Bomb, which he uses in one of his attempts to murder Eve Corby. (Whiz Comics 016, 1941)

    Perhaps the Smasher Spy’s greatest creation, this giant motorized lawnmower vehicle was intended to shred whole armies. Truly a magnificent entry into the ranks of the giant superweapon. (Whiz Comics 017, 1941)

    There’s only so long that even a crafty fellow like Smasher Spy can escape the World’s Mightiest Mortal, however, and after a quick Billy Batson trip up the Gyro-Sub’s torpedo tube he is in super-custody.

    In a last-ditch effort to stay true to his programming, Smasher Spy destroys the hypno-chair, but Captain Marvel’s determination to restore him is such that he unlocks a hitherto-unknown power of super-hypnosis and restores his mind by pure will alone.

     Smasher Spy is no more! A symbolic sunrise occurs as our heroes share a manly handshake! Huzzah!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 044 UPDATE: THE MASK 1941

    Some highlights of the Mask‘s career c. 1941.

    The Mask starts off 1941 with a bag, quite literally, as he attempts to blow up a munitions factory with FDR inside of it. (Whiz Comics 012, 1941)

    He’s at it again in the next issue, with another plot to kill FDR – this time by dropping a time bomb on the roof of the White House. He’s an ambitious guy, the Mask. Fortunately for the President, he is also a guy who sets his bomb timers way to long, giving Spy Smasher plenty of time to defuse. (Whiz Comics 013, 1941)

    In his second-to-last appearance, the Mask uses mind control technology in concert with a huge goon named Grosso, to capture US officials and force them to divulge government secrets before sending them off to kill themselves. 

    This scheme is fairly air-tight and the Mask might have gotten away scot-free with a pocket full of secrets if he hadn’t gotten too greedy and kidnapped Eve Corby in an attempt to learn Spy Smasher’s secret identity from her. Spy Smasher shows up to prevent this and in the subsequent scuffle Grosso ends up in the hypno-chair, where he is given two commands: “kill Spy Smasher” and “Spy Smasher is the one in the white mask.” The Mask is then seemingly flung to his death. (Whiz Comics 014, 1941)  

    The next issue, however, we learn that he is alive after all! He is just very, very hurt! Despite this, the Mask captures Spy Smasher via ruse and finally learns his secret identity as Alan Armstrong! This is also incidentally the first time that we the reader learn that Armstrong is Spy Smasher, though as I have mentioned before he is literally the only possible suspect, assuming that he’s not just some guy.

    The Mask’s next move must have felt like a real no-brainer at the time: using the new and improved mind control device (the Brain-o-Graph, natch) he turns the former champion of the US Government into its enemy. This works, and Spy Smasher becomes the wicked Smasher Spy (something he is only actually called a couple of times, but a useful way to differentiate the good and evil versions of the character so I’m using it), and will remain that way for a while. The Mask’s triumph is tarnished somewhat by the fact that he went a little too hard on the brainwashing, meaning that he is the first victim of Smasher Spy’s murderous rampage. Proper safety procedures while creating unstoppable killing machines: they’re important. (Whiz Comics 015, 1941)