The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: Sergeant Spook

  • CATALOGUE OF WOUNDS 012

    If I keep at this long enough then we will find the super-hero with the most comically-long list of wounds sustained in the course of their adventures. Currently in the lead: the Green Mask! Unless we’re talking about head traumas, in which case I must direct your gaze to the Blue Beetle.

    Domino the Miracle Boy:

    Shot in the right shoulder by Dr Moru while heroically leaping in front of a gun to save the Green Mask. (Mystery Men Comics 029, 1941)

    the Green Mask:

    Slashed on the left side of his head by the Manx’s weird wrist-claw. (Mystery Men Comics 026, 1941)

    Mr Justice:

    Mr Justice is a ghost-type super-hero, so his origin involves a gruesome death, in this case being hacked to pieces by some historically-questionable Englishmen. (Blue Ribbon Comics 009, 1941)

    It’s not quite as universal a trait, but Mr Justice also maintains a human form for times when he is not engaging in super-heroics, and since he’s already dead it doesn’t matter how often he sustains mortal wounds, such as this instance of him being riddled with bullets. (Blue Ribbon Comics 009, 1941)

    Or here, when he is fatally blasted by a beam. (Blue Ribbon Comics 010, 1941)

    (and again a few minutes later)

    Or just plain shot in the head. It’s just a shortcut to the emergence of Mr Justice from his mortal shell. (Jackpot Comics 002, 1941) 

    Sergeant Spook: 

    And speaking of ghostly super-heroes and their fatal origins, here’s Sergeant Spook blowing himself up with his poor lab safety. (Blue Bolt v1 001, 1940)

    Simba:

    Simba, newly-reformed nemesis of Dick Cole, gets his skull creased with a bullet by Dr Karno (Blue Bolt v2 006, 1941)

    Sub-Zero:

    Sub-Zero also gets his skull creased, but since he’s so cold he’s bulletproof Professor X has to use a white-hot bullet to do it. (Blue Bolt Comics v1 005, 1940)

    the Wraith: 

    Finally we have the Wraith, who becomes a ghost thanks to being riddled with bullets during a drive-by.  (Mystery Men Comics 027, 1941)

  • REAL PERSON ROUND-UP 001

    REAL PERSON ROUND-UP 001

    I have a lot of these in a spreadsheet somewhere but we’ll get to those later. For now it’s as we encounter them: real people and versions of real people and analogs of real people and also the same but famous fictional people in comics.

    Admiral Dewey, John Paul Jones, Sir Francis Drake:

     Their ghosts all volunteer to help Sergeant Spook go pirate hunting (Blue Bolt v1 008, 1941)

    Adolf Hitler: 

    “Gustave Ritter” isn’t really very close to “Adolf Hitler” but I have a finely-honed sense for when someone is making a Hitler analog and this world-conquering barbarian from the year 2041 is just that. I think. (Blue Ribbon Comics 004, 1940)

    Clark Gable:

    As “Stark Brable” in Rang-a-Tang the Wonder Dog’s trip to Hollywood (Blue Ribbon Comics 005, 1940)

    Lana Turner:

    It’s a classic first letter switcheroo as actress Lana Turner shows up as “Tana Lurner” in a Rang-a-Tang the Wonder Dog comic. (Blue Ribbon Comics 005, 1940)

    Maid Marion:

    The “Green Falcon” feature, as far as I can tell, takes place in a Robin-Hood era England with no Robin Hood but with Lady Marion here occupying the Maid Marion role. (Blue Ribbon Comics 004, 1940)

    Orson Welles:

    “Nawson Swelles” is a troublesome “Boy Wonder” and the villain of Rang-a-Tang the Wonder Dog’s visit to Hollywood. (Blue Ribbon Comics 005, 1940)

    Prince John:

    Essentially playing the same part as he does in the Robin Hood stories in the Green Falcon’s adventures. (Blue Ribbon Comics 004, 1940)

    Richard the Lionheart:

    The key to Prince John’s villainry is that the good king is off being a dipshit in the Holy Land and this version of Richard I does not fail in that. (Blue Ribbon Comics 004, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 519: THE GHOST OF THE CYCLOPS

    (Blue Bolt v2 004-005, 1941)

    We open on a bit of… not hubris but it’s often framed as hubris. I’m sure that TV Tropes has a name for it but danged if I’m going to go hunting for it. It’s the phenomenon in which a character in an ongoing fictional setting jokes about how they’re sure glad that *SPECIFIC THING* isn’t real etc and that thing is the focus of the next story. In this case, Sergeant Spook says he’s glad that mythology doesn’t real and so Ghost Town doesn’t have to contend with the ghosts of mythological characters and BAM the ghost of the Cyclops starts destroying Alaska.

    Although the human world sees these attacks as merely a bizarre and terrifying natural disaster the ghosts of Ghost Town know what’s up and dispatch Sergeant Spook northward. On arrival he is met and guided by several of the Cyclops’ recent victims – always a handy part of being a ghost cop.

    Spook’s encounter with the Cyclops follows a fairly predictable pattern: cornered in a cave, he anages to temporarily blind the other ghost and then trace him back to his lair by clinging to his cyclopean sandals. This encounter does serve to further muddy the waters of how ghosts workin Sergeant Spook comics, however: can a ghost hit another ghost with a corporeal snowball? Is Alaska covered in a layer of ghost snow? Or is the Cyclops just super-vulnerable to eye-damaging attacks like a video game boss?

    The second issue of this two-parter is a bit perfunctory: Spook arrives at the Cyclops’ lair where we learn that when not translucent to signify that he is a ghost in the corporeal world the Cyclops is green. He is also served by other, unidentified ghosts who are presumably being bullied into servitude with the threat of violence like the Ghost of King Tut’s slaves. He also captures Sergeant Spook with very little trouble. Things look bad, but then:

    HERCULES! Because of course if the Cyclops is real then there’s gotta be guys like Hercules (famous foe of the Cyclops) running around too. There’s a bit of a scuffle and then he plants a slobberknocker on the Cyclops that decisively concludes things.

    Hercules’ reward: eternal vigilance. His ghost pledges to guard the Cyclops’ ghost for the rest of time, which will presumably entail regular brawls whenever his charge wakes up and wants to cause more chaos. Maybe this is a good outcome for Hercules? I just hope that someone in Ghost Town thinks to ship him some ghost books or the like.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 516: THE GHOST CROOK

    (Blue Bolt v2 003, 1941) 

    Sergeant Spook’s actual jurisdiction as a ghost cop is both broad and vague, but when he opens up his presumably black market mortal paper one day and learns that a ghost is seemingly wreaking havoc among the living it’s a no-brainer: he’s on the case. And it seems that he’s up to the task of tracking the Ghost Crook down, because just about as soon as he steps foot in the mortal world he happens across a spooky mugging!

    It doesn’t take long for Sergeant Spook to discover that the Ghost Crook is not, in fact, a ghost but an invisible man of some kind. So not a criminal ghost but something just as bad: a criminal besmirching the good name of ghosts everywhere!

    Sergeant Spook seemingly just starts visiting all of the supernatural-adjacent locales in town and once more gets incredibly lucky as his first port of call is the theatre at which Suez, Master Magician and Super Spiritualist is performing and Suez is in fact the Ghost Crook. Why is he named the overwhelmingly-Egyptian-associated Suez when he is touted as being from “the mystery shrouded land of India”? My money is on him being a white guy who chose his name on vibes. My evidence? The history of entertainment.

    This is where things get a bit confusing. Once the Ghost Crook is revealed to be a stage magician there is some effort to reframe his invisibility as mere slight-of-hand, whether via trickery with mirrors and clouds of dust or the old standby explanation of mass hypnosis. But… we saw the Ghost Crook be fully invisible! He was running down a city street in broad daylight! And just like every time hypnosis is wheeled out in a Zatara story to explain all his wild powers, the sheer scope of what Suez could supposedly do (hypnotize everyone with eyes on him in a city street, including a ghost that he could not see and was not aware of who had just showed up while he was busy wresting a bag from a man’s hand) is so wildly over-the-top that merely turning invisible via magic is by comparison mundane.

    This question is not resolved, by the way. The Ghost Crook is felled with a spectral sock to the jaw and carted off by mortal police. Who then had to figure out if he really was an Indian citizen, presumably.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 515: DR ZORKA

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 515: DR ZORKA

    (Blue Bolt v2 002, 1941)

    Dr Zorka is a probably-mad scientist who gets up to experiments in reanimating the dead on a small island off the coast of Cuba, like Dr Bruno Varoz before him. Unlike Dr Varoz, Dr Zorka has no overt intention of unleashing his creations on an unsuspecting populace.

    It’s too bad for him, then, that this is a Sergeant Spook comic and in a Sergeant Spook comic the dead are likely to, for example, make a long journey North to Ghost Town in order to recruit the Ghost Law for your Crimes Against Ghosts. Which is exactly what happens when Dr Zorka attempts and fails to reanimate the corpse of a man named Kola.

    It’s at first unclear why Kola has such a problem with Zorka if his mortal shell is not in fact shambling around on its own but once they (and Dr Sherlock) arrive on the island everything becomes clear. While the the bodies of Zorka’s subjects are animated their spirits are doomed to wander the Earth as something much closer to a traditional ghost than Sergeant Spook and his contemporaries.

    Further, Dr Zorka has developed technology that allows him to see ghosts and a chemical that theoretically is able to destroy them but is not tested because Zorka is a Classic Nerd and unable to throw worth a damn. This is big stuff! And as with all of the other game changing revelations about the nature of life and death that occur in Sergeant Spook comics it is forgotten once the immediate threat is over and done.

    But no, the fundamental nature of the relationship between humanity and its dead is not altered, ushering in a new era of peaceful coexistence between all sentient beings. Instead Dr Zorka releases a gorilla in a futile last ditch attempt to kill what turn out to be three gorilla-proof ghost and is left to undo his zombifications under the watchful eye of Kola.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 514: THE GHOST OF ROCK ROOK

    (Blue Bolt v2 001, 1941)

    “Rock” Rook is a gangster with an incredibly annoying name: hard to parse, seems like it should mean something but doesn’t, plus its’ always written as “Rock Rook” and that’s probably just a quirk of early 20th Century English but it makes me think that his last name isn’t even Rook and that makes me think that it means something again but it still doesn’t.

    Anyway, he is sentenced to and executed in the electric chair, ostensibly for murder but his annoying name must have contributed some judicial bloodthirstiness.

    As this is a Sergeant Spook story, Rook’s vow to revenge himself on the judge and jury is not carried out by the traditional methods (fake your own death, hire a mad scientist to resurrect your corpse or put your brain in a gorilla, die but have your secret twin pretend to be your ghost, etc) but rather by his coming back as an actual, factual ghost.

    Unfortunately for Rock Rook the freedom to be a ghostly murderer comes with a major catch: your victim’s ghost can call the ghost cops on you. Sergeant Spook is on the case faster than Rock Rook can line up his next target.

    After that it’s just a matter of experienced ghost vs inexperienced ghost and Rock Rook finds himself in the ghost-proof jail lickety-split.

    Sergeant Spook is still a comic searching for its sweet spot and and for my money this kind of ghost-on-human crime is where it should focus, particularly if it involves stuff like the murder victim calling the ghost cops on the murderer.

    JUDGE AND JURY REVENGE KILLER SCORE: 1/19+ (very weak showing from a unstoppable killing machine)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 514: THE GHOST OF ROCK ROOK

    (Blue Bolt v2 001, 1941)

    “Rock” Rook is a gangster with an incredibly annoying name: hard to parse, seems like it should mean something but doesn’t, plus its’ always written as “Rock Rook” and that’s probably just a quirk of early 20th Century English but it makes me think that his last name isn’t even Rook and that makes me think that it means something again but it still doesn’t.

    Anyway, he is sentenced to and executed in the electric chair, ostensibly for murder but his annoying name must have contributed some judicial bloodthirstiness.

    As this is a Sergeant Spook story, Rook’s vow to revenge himself on the judge and jury is not carried out by the traditional methods (fake your own death, hire a mad scientist to resurrect your corpse or put your brain in a gorilla, die but have your secret twin pretend to be your ghost, etc) but rather by his coming back as an actual, factual ghost.

    Unfortunately for Rock Rook the freedom to be a ghostly murderer comes with a major catch: your victim’s ghost can call the ghost cops on you. Sergeant Spook is on the case faster than Rock Rook can line up his next target.

    After that it’s just a matter of experienced ghost vs inexperienced ghost and Rock Rook finds himself in the ghost-proof jail lickety-split.

    Sergeant Spook is still a comic searching for its sweet spot and and for my money this kind of ghost-on-human crime is where it should focus, particularly if it involves stuff like the murder victim calling the ghost cops on the murderer.

    JUDGE AND JURY REVENGE KILLER SCORE: 1/19+ (very weak showing from a unstoppable killing machine)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 508: THE GHOST OF KING TUT

    (Blue Bolt v1 009-010, 1940)

    This is a simple one but there are a lot of Lore Implications so I had to use a lot of pictures. To start, Sergeant Spook and his pal Dr Sherlock notice that there are no North African ghosts in Ghost Town (aside from Cleopatra, who was mentioned a few issues earlier) and resolve to go solve that mystery. They get the permissions and passports necessary to enter the mortal realm and head out.

    Arriving in North Africa, Spook and Sherlock are captured by ghost soldiers and brought to a ghost city via ghost chariot where they meet the person in charge of the whole ghost shebang: the ghost of Tutankhamen! And tangentially learn that ghosts turn green when they get sunburned – LORE!

    Tutankhamen (and just why he rather than any other North African ruler ended up in charge is not explored) further reveals that the reason that no ghosts leave North Africa is that he has enslaved them all and is making them build him an enormous ghost pyramid, presumably so that he can be entombed in style if he every dies a second time (and forget my usual questions about how blocks of stone might have become ghosts – just why has this pyramid taken so long to make? Literally thousands of years longer than any other! And with an immortal workforce!).

    Sergeant Spook escapes, of course, and makes his way home to appeal to Ghost Town president George Washington for some good old American-style overseas interventionism.

    There is a big battle, with ghost camels and ghost horses and ghost siege engines throwing ghost boulders. Sergeant Spook lays about him with a flail which is always upsetting to me because it looks so cool and I am against arming living police officers with flails.

    Ultimately, the fact that everyone involved is a ghost and thus none of the fighting can have lasting consequence means that Sergeant Spook must solve things by bopping King Tut on the schnozz, thus showing his subjects that he is fallible and not worthy of the thousands of years of torment that they endured/ inflicted in his name. Everyone except for King Tut goes home happy.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 507: THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN KIDD

    (Blue Bolt v1 008, 1941)

    The Sergeant Spook writers, having exhausted the storytelling possibilities inherent in an ultra-powerful ghost taking on mere mortals and having established that ghost-on-ghost violence is essentially consequence free are now trying a new angle: ghost crooks preying on mortals and Sergeant Spook bringing them to justice.

    This time, it’s the Ghost of Captain Kidd – like Jesse James before him, Kidd is compelled to return to the patterns of his life, and having obtained a ghost ship from somewhere he sets to looting mortal cargoes. Sergeant Spook of course does not stand for this and pursues in a ghost battleship crewed by John Paul Jones, Admiral Dewey and Sir Francis Drake, plus a lot of no-names.

    Captain Kid has a moment of triumph when it is revealed that he has somehow obtained and installed a ghost motor on his ghost ship (and it is here that I will note that I have absolutely no idea how any of these large objects become ghosts in the first place – are they all ghost ships in the traditional sense or are there different rules for ghost vehicles?) followed by the more entertaining revelation that none of his crew have any idea how to work an internal combustion engine and thus the ship ends up sailing in a circle. The forces of ghost law thus are able to catch up, Captain Kidd gets socked in the kisser and everyone goes home.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 507: THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN KIDD

    (Blue Bolt v1 008, 1941)

    The Sergeant Spook writers, having exhausted the storytelling possibilities inherent in an ultra-powerful ghost taking on mere mortals and having established that ghost-on-ghost violence is essentially consequence free are now trying a new angle: ghost crooks preying on mortals and Sergeant Spook bringing them to justice.

    This time, it’s the Ghost of Captain Kidd – like Jesse James before him, Kidd is compelled to return to the patterns of his life, and having obtained a ghost ship from somewhere he sets to looting mortal cargoes. Sergeant Spook of course does not stand for this and pursues in a ghost battleship crewed by John Paul Jones, Admiral Dewey and Sir Francis Drake, plus a lot of no-names.

    Captain Kid has a moment of triumph when it is revealed that he has somehow obtained and installed a ghost motor on his ghost ship (and it is here that I will note that I have absolutely no idea how any of these large objects become ghosts in the first place – are they all ghost ships in the traditional sense or are there different rules for ghost vehicles?) followed by the more entertaining revelation that none of his crew have any idea how to work an internal combustion engine and thus the ship ends up sailing in a circle. The forces of ghost law thus are able to catch up, Captain Kidd gets socked in the kisser and everyone goes home.