The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: Register and Tribune Syndicate

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 054

    Whoops there are two more super-heroes in the Spirit Section. Should have included them with the Spirit himself, tsk tsk. 

    Lady Luck: 

    The Spirit’s home, the “Spirit Section” of newspaper comics also included two other Will Eisner-created but not -written or -drawn characters, the first of whom is Lady Luck. In actuality wealthy socialite Brenda Banks, Lady Luck is a costumed vigilante out of boredom with the day-to-day of high society. She is wanted by the law and specifically by her civilian life love interest Police Chief Hardy Moore, a cop so dumb that not only is he about to send a woman to the electric chair for the murder of her still-living husband in the above set of panels but he also is unable to recognize the object of his affections under the brim of a big hat (in fairness to him he does mention that Brenda and Lady Luck are very similar looking but then turns out to be cartoonishly easy to fool). Lady Luck does a bit of globetrotting here and there, but her focus is mainly on high society crimes. Her adventures are a bit lighter than the Spirit’s, but not by too much. (The Spirit Section, 2 June, 1940) 

    Mr Mystic: 

    The thing about the Spirit Section is that people love the Spirit and so his two companions tend to be overshadowed, particularly when it comes to widely-available archival work: the Spirit was reprinted while Lady Luck and our new friend here Mr Mystic languished in obscurity, and while Lady Luck’s adventures were eventually reprinted in Smash Comics, the archival record of Mr Mystic is much spottier.

    Mr Mystic is supposedly a retooling of Eisner’s prior effort Yarko the Great, and I can see it – luckily for him he got the look of Yarko rather than the terrible naming sensibility. Mystic is (or was, presumably) an American diplomat who, like so many characters before and after him, acquired great mystical powers from the mysterious and spiritual residents of Tibet, specifically a “council of seven Lamas,” and brought them back to the US to be put to use in beating up ne’er-do-wells. 

    Mr Mystic is a magic-using super-hero, which means that he is a nigh-omnipotent force of nature only occasionally slowed down by a lucky bop on the bean from a crook. His major mark of distinction from his peers is a literal one: a mystic tattoo on his forehead, which would mean that he’s almost certainly the first person to have to field a lot of well-meaning concern over the effect that that sort of thing would have on his employability. (The Spirit Section, 2 June, 1940)

    ADDENDUM:

    After all my talk about how a lot of the non-Spirit related parts of the Spirit Section were unavailable I thought to double check, and I had forgot that yes, they are. Granted, it’s as medium-quality photocopies, but that’s better than nothing, right?

    Having rediscovered that fact, I went back and read the first Mr Mystic story, and was shocked and surprised to learn that rather than being a student of the occult who spent long years studying in Tibet, our unnamed hero is a cultural attache serving somewhere in presumably-Eastern Europe when he is blown very off-course while fleeing an Axis invasion force. He crashes in Tibet and is given the forehead brand/tattoo that I did not realize was the sole source of his power while still unconscious. The whole thing is a pretty far cry from what I had imagined his origin to be!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 807: DR COBRA

    (The Spirit, “The Origin of the Spirit”, June 2, 1940)

    Poor Dr Cobra. He goes to all the trouble to put together a sewer lair and develop some weird green slop that puts people into a state of suspended animation and he doesn’t even get to lay out what his plans for the stuff were. No, PI Denny Colt has to show up and get doused in slop and become the Spirit and now that’s all that anyone ever remembers about the affair. 

    Dr Cobra ends up being the first collar by the newly-disinterred Spirit, with a little help from Police Commissioner Dolan. Oh the ignominy. 

    Unfortunately for Dr Cobra, he knows that the Spirit is Denny Colt, and so the laws of narrative demand that he be tied up as a looses end. In the second installment of “the Spirit” he escapes by bamboozling Dolan’s daughter Ellen, but of course he is immediately tracked down by the Spirit and ends up exploding.

    This all feels a bit thin, and that’s because there’s not too much to Dr Cobra beyond being an origin catalyst. It’s a terrible thing to happen to a villain. He has a handful of appearances over the years, but I’m 90% certain that every one of them is a retelling of the Spirit’s origin story, and though I can’t find an example I am certain that there’s at least one of those in which Cobra is replaced with the Octopus. It’s no way to treat a criminal scientist, I tell you.

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO SPECIAL: THE SPIRIT

    For almost two years, this blog had a huge post buffer thanks to its origins as a Twitter thread. At it’s height, the buffer was almost two months long, but for most of its life there were somewhere between two weeks and a month of pre-written posts sitting at my fingertips, and that meant that I could establish certain habits, like trying to make sure that a Minor Super-Hero Round-Up containing the relevant protagonist was published before talking about the villains that they had faced off against, stuff like that. But over time the buffer eroded, as do all things, to the point that now I’m posting about comics that I just finished reading, like some sort of animal.

    All this is to say that I don’t have the usual four super-heroes required for a proper Minor Super-Hero Round-Up but the villains are piling up in my now days-long buffer so here’s a special one-hero one-shot:

    the Spirit: 

    Yeah, yeah, I hear you: we all know who the Spirit is. Why, he’s got to be a median super-hero at least, right? Well, tough. I have too many categorizations to keep track of as it is, and as influential as the Spirit is odds are that your parents don’t have a clue about him, so he fits the brief as specified by yours truly.

    The Spirit is ambitious young private detective Denny Colt, who attempts to bring in criminal scientist Dr Cobra and is doused in suspended animation fluid for his trouble. Believed dead, Colt is buried in Wildwood Cemetery and upon waking decides to become a spooky vigilante, with a lot more emphasis on the “spooky” in the early days. 

    “The Spirit” might just be the perfect synthesis of the nascent super-hero genre and the established newspaper adventure comics. It also has a large barrier to entry for the modern reader in the form of Ebony White, the Spirit’s driver/sidekick/ethnic stereotype African American comic relief character. Frankly, I don’t really want to spend a lot of time talking about Ebony, so here’s his weirdly positive Wikipedia article that kind of deemphasizes the fact that Will Eisner removed Ebony from the comic after repeated complaints about him in 1946. And also completely omits the fact that Ebony was instantly replaced by Blubber, a sidekick/ethnic stereotype comic relief Inuit character, in what I personally have always seen as a fit of creative pique on Eisner’s part.

    Aside from Ebony, the Spirit’s supporting cast consisted of Police Commissioner Dolan, friend of Denny Colt and initially the only one to know the Spirit’s secret identity, and the Commissioner’s daughter Ellen, the Spirit’s primary love interest and thorn in his side. Over time, the Spirit would also collect a galaxy of femmes fatale occupying basically every square on the D&D alignment chart, but they’re a bit thin on the ground in the 1940 comics. 

    The Spirit is a two-fisted criminologist, probably the best to ever wear the “suit + domino mask” costume, and embodies the pulp detective technique of Getting the Tar Beat Out of You Until You Get to the Bottom of Things. And of course you probably already knew all of that.

     

    The Spirit also handed out little tombstone calling cards/messages for his first few appearances, which I think is neat. (The Spirit, “The Origin of the Spirit”, June 2, 1940)

    ADDENDUM:

    However could I have forgotten that the Spirit also had a flying car, and one of the goofiest-looking ones in comics, to boot. 

  • NOTES – JUNE 2025

    NOTES – JUNE 2025

    Letters to the Editor: 

    I rag on Novelty Press and their horrible and possibly fictional readership every chance I get, but I think I need to start presenting the letters they print in their comics so that I have some evidence to back up my grumbling. Here’s Clarence Pool of Seattle Washington advocating for the nice sensible adventures of an Army Air Force cadet who manages to foil a Fifth Column plot ever week over the exploits of a magic robot. (Target Comics v1 011, 1940)

    Skeletons with Jobs: 

    Driver is a job, certainly. Onto the pile! (The Funnies 047, 1940) 

    Honours: 

    Mickey Kelly, sidekick to swashbuckling newsreel cameraman Speed Martin, gets a medal from the French Army for foiling a spy. (The Funnies 048, 1940)

    Two issues later Mickey Riley (they forgot that he already had a last name, it seems) is decorated by the British for saving Gibraltar from the Axis. (The Funnies 050, 1940)

    Heroes Going to Costume Parties as Themselves: 

    Brenda Banks attends the Grand Costume Ball as Lady Luck, in an attempt to save a life. (The Spirit Section, “The Cinderella Murder Case”, 28 July, 1940)

    Mr Mystic also attends a costume party as himself in 1940, and a guy with no secret identity doing this might just be the most baffling thing I’ve read today, and this is the episode in which Mystic’s fiance is seduced by Death. (The Spirit Section, 22 December, 1940)

    Cops Shooting at Fleeing Suspects: 

    Sure, the Spirit has just confessed to a murder he did not commit for complicated reasons, but forgive me if I don’t agree with Mayor Aldrich here that that means that Commissioner Dolan has free license to shoot him in the back. (The Spirit “Eldas Thayer”, 21 July, 1940) 

    Interior Decoration: 

    This child’s ducky bed is just barely charming and not eerie. (The Spirit Section, 1 December, 1940) 

  • NOTES – JUNE 2025

    NOTES – JUNE 2025

    Letters to the Editor: 

    I rag on Novelty Press and their horrible and possibly fictional readership every chance I get, but I think I need to start presenting the letters they print in their comics so that I have some evidence to back up my grumbling. Here’s Clarence Pool of Seattle Washington advocating for the nice sensible adventures of an Army Air Force cadet who manages to foil a Fifth Column plot ever week over the exploits of a magic robot. (Target Comics v1 011, 1940)

    Skeletons with Jobs: 

    Driver is a job, certainly. Onto the pile! (The Funnies 047, 1940) 

    Honours: 

    Mickey Kelly, sidekick to swashbuckling newsreel cameraman Speed Martin, gets a medal from the French Army for foiling a spy. (The Funnies 048, 1940)

    Two issues later Mickey Riley (they forgot that he already had a last name, it seems) is decorated by the British for saving Gibraltar from the Axis. (The Funnies 050, 1940)

    Heroes Going to Costume Parties as Themselves: 

    Brenda Banks attends the Grand Costume Ball as Lady Luck, in an attempt to save a life. (The Spirit Section, “The Cinderella Murder Case”, 28 July, 1940)

    Mr Mystic also attends a costume party as himself in 1940, and a guy with no secret identity doing this might just be the most baffling thing I’ve read today, and this is the episode in which Mystic’s fiance is seduced by Death. (The Spirit Section, 22 December, 1940)

    Cops Shooting at Fleeing Suspects: 

    Sure, the Spirit has just confessed to a murder he did not commit for complicated reasons, but forgive me if I don’t agree with Mayor Aldrich here that that means that Commissioner Dolan has free license to shoot him in the back. (The Spirit “Eldas Thayer”, 21 July, 1940) 

    Interior Decoration: 

    This child’s ducky bed is just barely charming and not eerie. (The Spirit Section, 1 December, 1940)