The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: local superstition

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 564: THE GHOST OF WINTER RANCH

    (The Funnies 030, 1939)

    This fellow is from a story starring Gene Autry, singing cowboy. It’s printed in a comic put out by Dell that mostly features reprints of comic strips and that’s probably what this is? Even though online sources suggest that the first Gene Autry comic strip started in 1940 and this came out in 1939? Ultimately, these are mere details. The important fact is that this is my most favourite style of putting a film cowboy actor in an adventure comic: the real Gene Autry is just riding around in the Western US – Montana, in this case – with some sixguns and a guitar, having adventures but also doing all of the singing and movies that are his bread and butter. It’s somehow slightly less plausible than when they just drop Tom Mix or Buck Jones into the Old West with no justification but the weirdness makes it fun.

    As for the comic itself, we find one “Rowel” Collins (I had to look this one up – a rowel is the pointy wheely bit on a spur, so this is just a more Western version of calling someone Spike) who has just discovered that the mine full of useless ore that he sold as part of his former ranch is in fact a mine full of extremely valuable pitchblende and since Rowel Collins is a dastardly character (just look at his evil mustache!) he vows to get the money that the mine is worth by hook or by crook.

    Lucky for Rowel, there are a lot of local superstitions for him to take advantage of: the ranch is situated on a piece of land called the Devil’s Ironing Board; the pitchblende is in the Devil’s Cave and crucially the ranch is supposed to be haunted (by a cow leg-stealing ghost?). Rowel immediately heads to a nearby shack to activate his old crony Smoky Plants.

    Smoky, as the glowing Ghost of Winter Ranch, only really takes one pass at scaring off ranch owners Dan and Peg Winters and since they have the moral support of Gene “ain’t scared of no ghosts” Autry Rowel has to resort to gunplay and kidnapping to force the sale.

    Rowel and Smoky almost get away with it, in fact, but it turns out that hatching a scheme to sell a mine full of radioactive ore and knowing anything about radiation are two different things and they both end up dropping dead of radiation poising due to the radium they used to make the Ghost’s glowing robes. It’s terrible, terrible poetic justice.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 539: THE CLAW

    (Silver Streak Comics 001, 1939)

    The Claw is a character we will be returning to – he’s one of the most prominent Golden Age super-villains, after all – but this entry is concerned only with his first appearance in accordance with my new policy of approaching things as they come. And while the Claw who eventually battles super-heroes like the Ghost and Daredevil and massacres thousands in an attempt at world domination is a size-changing monster-man this first version reads more like an elaborate hoax.

    As the story opens, “chemist-adventurer” Jerry Morris and “America’s only female ambassador” Eloise Pearsall dock at the Pacific island of Ricca on their way to China with a shipload of gold to aid in the war with Japan. One hitch: Ricca is home to the Claw, a giant who holds the whole island in the grip of fear and incidentally also runs the submarine pirate operation that is looting ships in the region.

    The Claw maintains his grip on the island using his own fearsome looming presence, plus a “maddening hum” that also influences Eloise Pearsall to jump overboard and make her way to the castle because the Claw is also a creep who wants a “queen” and doesn’t care if he has to do a little mind control to get it.

    Jerry Morris of course goes after his travel companion and it’s a good thing that he’s a chemist-adventurer because he manages to whip up a useful serum in his stateroom/ laboratory, a radium-based solution that renders one immune to “any mental or physical attack”. Jerry infiltrates the Claw’s organization by feigning interest in signing up and discovers that the Claw ensures loyalty in his henchmen by giving them addictively pleasant dreams (and also punishes them with nightmares, natch). Eloise is in the first stages of the addiction treatment but lucky for her the radium serum covers that too and one shot later she is free.

    Thanks to his complete immunity to harm, Jerry goes on to foil a submarine raid on the gold shipment and returns with a load of sailors all hopped up on serum. They rout the Claw’s men only to find the villain’s throne empty and abandoned.

    (due to a flamethrower attack by the Claw’s defenders there is also an unusual amount of male nudity thanks to the invulnerable men not thinking to wear invulnerable clothing)

    Like I said, if I didn’t know that the next issue would feature the Claw walking around and demonstrating his power to grow to colossal sizes I would assume that he was a fake, engineered to keep the island people under the thumb of some schemer like the Purple Monster – the enthroned Claw actually a robotic shell, the towering Claw some sort of projection or inflatable. The mind control? Sonics and drugs. After all, why would such an enormous man flee from a handful of nudists, even if they are invulnerable?

    UPDATE 1940

    UPDATE 1941 Part 1 

    UPDATE 1941 Part 2 

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 539: THE CLAW

    (Silver Streak Comics 001, 1939)

    The Claw is a character we will be returning to – he’s one of the most prominent Golden Age super-villains, after all – but this entry is concerned only with his first appearance in accordance with my new policy of approaching things as they come. And while the Claw who eventually battles super-heroes like the Ghost and Daredevil and massacres thousands in an attempt at world domination is a size-changing monster-man this first version reads more like an elaborate hoax.

    As the story opens, “chemist-adventurer” Jerry Morris and “America’s only female ambassador” Eloise Pearsall dock at the Pacific island of Ricca on their way to China with a shipload of gold to aid in the war with Japan. One hitch: Ricca is home to the Claw, a giant who holds the whole island in the grip of fear and incidentally also runs the submarine pirate operation that is looting ships in the region.

    The Claw maintains his grip on the island using his own fearsome looming presence, plus a “maddening hum” that also influences Eloise Pearsall to jump overboard and make her way to the castle because the Claw is also a creep who wants a “queen” and doesn’t care if he has to do a little mind control to get it.

    Jerry Morris of course goes after his travel companion and it’s a good thing that he’s a chemist-adventurer because he manages to whip up a useful serum in his stateroom/ laboratory, a radium-based solution that renders one immune to “any mental or physical attack”. Jerry infiltrates the Claw’s organization by feigning interest in signing up and discovers that the Claw ensures loyalty in his henchmen by giving them addictively pleasant dreams (and also punishes them with nightmares, natch). Eloise is in the first stages of the addiction treatment but lucky for her the radium serum covers that too and one shot later she is free.

    Thanks to his complete immunity to harm, Jerry goes on to foil a submarine raid on the gold shipment and returns with a load of sailors all hopped up on serum. They rout the Claw’s men only to find the villain’s throne empty and abandoned.

    (due to a flamethrower attack by the Claw’s defenders there is also an unusual amount of male nudity thanks to the invulnerable men not thinking to wear invulnerable clothing)

    Like I said, if I didn’t know that the next issue would feature the Claw walking around and demonstrating his power to grow to colossal sizes I would assume that he was a fake, engineered to keep the island people under the thumb of some schemer like the Purple Monster – the enthroned Claw actually a robotic shell, the towering Claw some sort of projection or inflatable. The mind control? Sonics and drugs. After all, why would such an enormous man flee from a handful of nudists, even if they are invulnerable?

    UPDATE 1940

    UPDATE 1941 Part 1 

    UPDATE 1941 Part 2 

  • PROBLEMATIC ROUND-UP 001

    The kinds of character that are a part of comics history so it would be wrong to ignore them but are also pretty racist (usually – I’m sure that eventually I’ll find something else distasteful enough to put here) and unpleasant to dedicate a whole lot of time to. We’re going with a round-up!

    Our first culprit is George Harvard AKA Big Sun, a guy with a way too complicated plan to sell oil to the Axis out of the Florida Everglades under the cover of being a geological surveyor or prospector or something. He comes to the attention of adventurer Clip Carson due to not accounting for his partner maybe poking around looking for samples like their job is supposed to be? It’s a bad plan.

    I’m mad at myself for finding Big Sun’s mask so cool looking, but it’s mitigated by how dumb his gimmick is: he has a shiny breastplate on under his robe and he reveals it flasher-style to blind his foes. Hence the name, I guess. (More Fun Comics 069, 1941) 

    I didn’t even know that Zingaro was an Italian slur for people of Romani descent until I looked up this guy – just why it was used as the name of a fellow trying to take over Mexico I will never know. On the one hand he is stopped by weirdo character the Voice so that’s good. On the other, he gets away so there’s a chance he could appear again, which is bad. It’s okay though: the Voice only ever had two adventures and this is the second one.

    Thankfully there aren’t too many characters whose names are racial slurs. (Amazing-Man Comics 022, 1941)

    I don’t know if you could call it lucky, per se, but it is kind of fortunate for the purposes of this round-up that I’m hitting a lot of the major categories of racist super-villains all in one go. We’ll see if this questionable luck holds for the fourth entry.

    So: Banga the Elephant God is predicated on the old trope that indigenous peoples are so credulous and superstitious that they will believe that anything (eg, a big mean elephant with a guy in a skull mask on it) is a god or other supernatural occurrence – in this case the people of the hidden jungle civilization of Yenya are helped along by the fact that the human part of the Banga gestalt is actually their witch doctor (called a “wizard doctor” in this case, which is kind of a neat linguistic variation if nothing else). Banga is eventually unmasked by jungle hero Morak the Mighty and meets his dual ends.

    As with so many racist characters it is very unfortunate that Banga the Elephant God looks sick as hell. (Super-Magic Comics 001, 1941)

    The very next issue we have more of the same: a bunch of white guys dress up like the very cool looking Lizard-Lion Men of local legend and fleece ivory out of villagers in… Malaysia? If Rex King aka Black Fury stayed put between issues then it’s Malaysia.

    There’s not too much to these guys: one of them hides inside the statue of the Lizard-Lion in the local temple and says for the locals to bring all of their ivory hence and then costumed goons go beat up anyone who refuses. And then Black Fury beats them up. (Super-Magician v1 002, 1941)

    We didn’t hit all the greats in one go – there’s a lot of untapped racism coming up once we hit the comics of 1942 after all – but it’s a good – bad? – sample.

  • PROBLEMATIC ROUND-UP 001

    The kinds of character that are a part of comics history so it would be wrong to ignore them but are also pretty racist (usually – I’m sure that eventually I’ll find something else distasteful enough to put here) and unpleasant to dedicate a whole lot of time to. We’re going with a round-up!

    Our first culprit is George Harvard AKA Big Sun, a guy with a way too complicated plan to sell oil to the Axis out of the Florida Everglades under the cover of being a geological surveyor or prospector or something. He comes to the attention of adventurer Clip Carson due to not accounting for his partner maybe poking around looking for samples like their job is supposed to be? It’s a bad plan.

    I’m mad at myself for finding Big Sun’s mask so cool looking, but it’s mitigated by how dumb his gimmick is: he has a shiny breastplate on under his robe and he reveals it flasher-style to blind his foes. Hence the name, I guess. (More Fun Comics 069, 1941) 

    I didn’t even know that Zingaro was an Italian slur for people of Romani descent until I looked up this guy – just why it was used as the name of a fellow trying to take over Mexico I will never know. On the one hand he is stopped by weirdo character the Voice so that’s good. On the other, he gets away so there’s a chance he could appear again, which is bad. It’s okay though: the Voice only ever had two adventures and this is the second one.

    Thankfully there aren’t too many characters whose names are racial slurs. (Amazing-Man Comics 022, 1941)

    I don’t know if you could call it lucky, per se, but it is kind of fortunate for the purposes of this round-up that I’m hitting a lot of the major categories of racist super-villains all in one go. We’ll see if this questionable luck holds for the fourth entry.

    So: Banga the Elephant God is predicated on the old trope that indigenous peoples are so credulous and superstitious that they will believe that anything (eg, a big mean elephant with a guy in a skull mask on it) is a god or other supernatural occurrence – in this case the people of the hidden jungle civilization of Yenya are helped along by the fact that the human part of the Banga gestalt is actually their witch doctor (called a “wizard doctor” in this case, which is kind of a neat linguistic variation if nothing else). Banga is eventually unmasked by jungle hero Morak the Mighty and meets his dual ends.

    As with so many racist characters it is very unfortunate that Banga the Elephant God looks sick as hell. (Super-Magic Comics 001, 1941)

    The very next issue we have more of the same: a bunch of white guys dress up like the very cool looking Lizard-Lion Men of local legend and fleece ivory out of villagers in… Malaysia? If Rex King aka Black Fury stayed put between issues then it’s Malaysia.

    There’s not too much to these guys: one of them hides inside the statue of the Lizard-Lion in the local temple and says for the locals to bring all of their ivory hence and then costumed goons go beat up anyone who refuses. And then Black Fury beats them up. (Super-Magician v1 002, 1941)

    We didn’t hit all the greats in one go – there’s a lot of untapped racism coming up once we hit the comics of 1942 after all – but it’s a good – bad? – sample.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 340: THE SEA-DEVIL

    (Master Comics 007, 1940)

    Let’s start with the good things about the Sea-Devil: he’s part of one of my favourite super-villain traditions: the guy who dresses up like a creature in order to play off of local superstitions. Nothing specific in this case – he’s just banking on the local oyster divers not wanting to contend with a mysterious horned humanoid while they’re trying to earn an already dangerous living. To that end, his costume isn’t the most elaborate fake sea monster in comics, though it does have a certain minimalist charm.

    The rest of the story is depressingly familiar. The Sea-Devil is a guy named Sam Mindoro, his motivation is to drive off the white guy who owns his ancestral lands and of course this makes him the worst kind of villain despite him not actually killing anyone while disrupting the extraction of wealth from the area. I mean he does try to kill Shipwreck Roberts and Deep Sea Doodle, which is a crime, but “wants his land back” and “inconveniences a white guy” are treated as much worse ones. Depressing stuff.

    ADDENDUM: Forgot to mention that this fellow is our first Filipino super-villain, for what it’s worth.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 265: THE MAD DOCTOR

    (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 009, 1940)

    This one, while not being particularly spectacular as a whole does contain a lot of fun elements. Let’s count them off!

    We open on our hero one a one-issue trip to Europe (1) where he pooh-poohs the local superstitions (2) about a castle full of vampires who steal young women (3).

    The Angel – for it is he who pooh-poohs – quickly gets mixed up in an attempted vampiric abduction and, surprise surprise, the guy isn’t actually a vampire at all (4). A shame, because I love it when vampires are wretched little weasels instead of cool guys in evening wear.

    It turns out that the supposed vampire clan is actually a front for an unnamed mad scientist – “Mad Doctor” is a captions-only unofficial name (5) – who is kidnapping the young women for use as test subjects (6) in his mind-swapping machine (7) and he intends to place his latest victim’s mind into the body of a gorilla (8).

    Lucky for the hapless fraulein, the Angel shows up, there is a fracas and the whole place ends up exploding (9).

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 228: THE PURPLE MONSTER

    (Feature Comics 049, 1941)

    The Purple Monster is a pretty lacklustre super-villain. He ticks all the boxes: volcano lair on an island somewhere off BC, army of costumed henchmen, subjugated population of poor island yokels to exploit complete with fake human sacrifices and an unexplained sinister use for the sacrificial victims… it’s a complete checklist of features designed to qualify him for this list. He even draws his name from a local superstition, albeit one he started himself by projecting a monstrous face on the purple clouds that billow from the volcano.

    It’s all so… low-rent. He’s set himself up with all of this super-villain infrastructure to what? Extort resources out of a small community? Maybe organ harvesting or something? If he plans on moving on to greater things he doesn’t get around to saying it on-panel – just as well he suffers the fate of most volcano-dwelling crooks: death by exploding volcano.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 226: THE BLACK BAT

    (Feature Comics 043, 1941) 

    Another example of the classic combination of someone posing as a spooky local legend-figure in order to scare folk away from a valuable area. In this case one Jean Dupre and his mother are trying to use the legend of the giant Black Bat (that they might have just made up) to scare their step sister/ daughter Marie away from the family ranch, which is just lousy with radium ore.

    It’s a good attempt, foiled by only a few factors: 1) Marie won’t leave and instead calls in the RCMP; 2) Reynolds of the Mounties and his guide/ skáld the Old Timer show up and basically immediately unravel the plot; 3) they both end up dead, from a rock to the head (Madame Dupre) and glider malfunction (Jean Dupre). As usual, the less profitable option of splitting the proceeds of your find with the rightful owner would have been the way to go.

    Unless I’ve been grossly negligent, this mother/ son duo is our first French Canadian representation on the list, so there’s that at least.

    MINOR EDIT: This is touted as Reynolds’ first case in the previous episode, but also he’s already a sergeant at the beginning of the story so I don’t know when it happened. Some time in the past!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 226: THE BLACK BAT

    (Feature Comics 043, 1941) 

    Another example of the classic combination of someone posing as a spooky local legend-figure in order to scare folk away from a valuable area. In this case one Jean Dupre and his mother are trying to use the legend of the giant Black Bat (that they might have just made up) to scare their step sister/ daughter Marie away from the family ranch, which is just lousy with radium ore.

    It’s a good attempt, foiled by only a few factors: 1) Marie won’t leave and instead calls in the RCMP; 2) Reynolds of the Mounties and his guide/ skáld the Old Timer show up and basically immediately unravel the plot; 3) they both end up dead, from a rock to the head (Madame Dupre) and glider malfunction (Jean Dupre). As usual, the less profitable option of splitting the proceeds of your find with the rightful owner would have been the way to go.

    Unless I’ve been grossly negligent, this mother/ son duo is our first French Canadian representation on the list, so there’s that at least.

    MINOR EDIT: This is touted as Reynolds’ first case in the previous episode, but also he’s already a sergeant at the beginning of the story so I don’t know when it happened. Some time in the past!