The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: big head smart guy

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 601: THE THINKER

    (Fantastic Comics 004, 1940) 

    After a couple of stories worth of interruptions, Space Smith and Dianna either finished the Brain off between issues or they and/or Fletcher Hanks forgot that he was an immanent threat to life on Earth because this issue finds them following a mysterious radio signal to sight-see a rare gold comet as it passes by the moon.

    Instead of watching the comet on its flyby, Space and Dianna are hit with a ray that disables their spaceship before being drawn to the surface. There they find themselves the captives of the Thinker and his army of headless goons. And here let me say that while it is not great that the Thinker’s only stated goal is to acquire Dianna as his “Empress-Goddess”, there is a clarity of purpose there that is a bit refreshing after seeing so many villains attempt to wed unwilling women as a mere opportunistic afterthought.

    Whether the Thinker had greater plans or if getting married to a woman and keeping her in a “flame-girdled Cage of Solitude” was his only goal in life will have to go unanswered because he learns the same hard lesson as so many other big-headed creeps in comics do: all of your big-head smart plans can be undone in an instant by some thoughtless violence. 

    RIP the Thinker: you should have controlled for muscleheads.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 534: THE BRAIN

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 534: THE BRAIN

    (Fantastic Comics 001, 1939)

    We open on Space Smith and his girlfriend Dianna (sometimes Diana) having a trans-Lunar space-date ruined by Martian Imp Men and I am immediately struck with the dilemma engendered by nearly all Fletcher Hanks stories: follow through on my impulses and post most if not all panels or be judicious for the sake of space and readability? I went with the latter but it hurt.

    So in lieu of my posting every panel that features the great/horrible Martian Imp Men let’s just pause and appreciate how great they are.

    Space Smith and Dianna awaken in the laboratory of the great Martian scientist Skomah and learn that they have been kidnapped by Skomah’s 7th son, also called Skomah, aka the Brain, aka the Central Brain aka the Great Martian Central Brain.

    Really appreciate the detail that the Brain’s head is so big that it has to be held up with two special robot arms.

    Like a lot of big head smart guys, the Brain is convinced that it is his destiny to rule all of creation and is planning to start with Earth. He’s also a huge creep in the same was as a lot of those guys and a lot of super-villains in general, in the “capture a woman and declare that she will be your queen” way.

    Luckily for Dianna, a guy with a head so big he is literally bolted to the ground is not the hardest guy to get away from, even if he has a bunch of D&D 5e kobolds working for him. She and Space Smith get away incredibly easily, in fact, and spend the next few issues trying to get back to Mars to put a permanent end to Skomah the 7th (they never do actually get there. Perhaps they just lost interest when it became clear that the Brain was all talk. Or Fletcher Hanks just forgot).

    BONUS MAN-EATING MARTIAN MOSQUITO

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 505: MARTO

    (Blue Bolt v1 006, 1940) 

    Blue Bolt is a fine comic book character in the classic setting of a vast underground world full of sci-fi/fantasy concepts but 100% the best thing about him is that 10 or so of his first dozen appearances were by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon and boy does Marto here show it. Just look at this classic Kirby creation!

    Marto was originally Martin Hall, a scientist who accidentally bombarded himself with the very cosmic rays he had been studying and found himself mutated into your prototypical future human: big brain, tiny shrivelled body and compulsion to change his name to something short that sounds like an Australian gave him a nickname. 

    “Martin Hall” doesn’t sound like a Voltoran name to me (they trend more to things like Count Gorth, Major Kadronin and Captain Drogar), so Marto presumably made his way to the Green Sorceress’ underground kingdom from the surface in his little chair-bot.

    Marto’s initial offer is to help the Green Sorceress in her quest to conquer the underground world but he pretty swiftly reveals that he is a little incel creep and his real plan is to either stick his head on Blue Bolt’s body or to merely transfer his mind into Blue Bolt’s head. Either way, his next step is to mate with a mind-controlled Green Sorceress, create a super-race and subjugate the world (and the way that he says this makes it clear that he is racist against everyone). 100% creep, in other words.

    Luckily for literally everyone, Marto failed to factor “armed resistance” into his plans and he is crushed by rubble during an attack by Doctor Bertoff’s air force.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 484: BARON SIVA

    (Big 3 004, 1941)

    Baron Siva is a regular-style science-type villain who attempts to conquer the US via a campaign of fear and espionage before being captured by Samson and David. Perhaps the most interesting thing about him are the things about him that go completely unaddressed:

    -the fact that his head is enormous

    -the fact that he has no ears

    -his weird transparent blouse

    -the fact that he possesses advanced technology like paralysis rays

    -is his surname just Siva or is this a reference to the Hindu god?

    -are those walnuts in his hand in the second panel above or is he crushing some model testicles?

    The fact that he has weird tech is admittedly not that weird in a super-hero comic but given the first three factors I spent the entire comic expecting him to be revealed as an alien, time traveller or mutant. It seems like he might just be an earless bighead with avant garde fashion tastes.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 230: ALEXANDER THE GREAT

    (Flash Comics v1 002, 1940)

    On the one hand, Alexander the Great is your standard criminal scientist with an ego as big as his great big head who tries to extort the city of New York just as soon as he has developed the technology necessary to do so, in this case a density increasing ray.

    On the other hand, I like him a whole lot more than most criminal scientists. He’s cool! he wears a tux and is kind of suave! He does have that big ol’ dome, which I love on a science villain. He invites Carter Hall and Shiera Sanders over for dinner in an attempt to negotiate Hawkamn’s uninvolvement with his scheme in a sequence that is so cordial and charming that he might have also been angling for a threesome. Hawkman stabs him in the neck with a trident, which is if nothing else, not a common way to die. 

    Top marks to Alexander the Great, in other words. I wish he had showed up again outside of that one All-Star Squadron story that also had Sieur Satan in it.

    BONUS:

    Hawkman takes the density ray as a trophy!