The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: creep

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 684: THE TERROR OF ROCKY POOL

    (Pep Comics 002, 1940)

    Like the Mayfair Monster before him, the Terror of Rocky Pool is interrupted mid-murder by Inspector Bentley of Scotland Yard. Just like last time, his trusty stick has little effect, though instead of breaking over a head of iron it meets no resistance at all. Unlike last time, Bentley is too late to save the victim, who swiftly bleeds to death from a too-small wound. Bentley is informed that the culprit is the Terror of Rocky Pool and that it makes its vampiric lair at the bottom of that same body of water.

    A subsequent interview with the victim’s family introduces a couple of suspects: his adoptive cousin Joan Edmunds and biological cousin John Blake, who are in love, even though Joan was the victim’s fiance. They only marry cousins in Little Rockham it seems. Also the victim’s uncle, a kindly man who raises leeches as a hobby and Joan as his daughter. Can’t be him, obviously.

    After a few vampire chases and a lot of yelling, Bentley gets to the bottom of things and it’s even more unsavoury than all of the cousin-marrying and cousin-cuckolding. It turns out that kindly Uncle Blake was the Terror all along, using in order, a local superstition, anticoagulant leech saliva and an underwater tunnel from the pool to his house in order to kill one nephew and attempt to frame the other because he was in love with his own adopted daughter. We truly are dealing with the most depraved depths of supercrime here.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 678: AMNOZO

    (National Comics 003, 1940) 

    Cyclone is an extremely minor Quality Comics future spaceman hero of the year 3000 who, in National Comics 001, participates in a competition between the planets of the solar system to see which one gets to colonize the newly discovered planet Vito. He wins of course, and the remainder of his four appearances are spent dealing with various threats to the new colony, including at least one civilization native to the planet, because colonialism. Do they leave once they realize that the planet is not, in fact, free real estate? Reader, they do not.

    But enough interpreting space opera through a historical lens, check out Cyclone’s sky skis, possibly the greatest personal flight device in the history of sci fi: little planes that you strap to your feet! And as a bonus, what is possibly the most appetizing food pill I have ever seen.

    Cyclone’s explorations are interrupted when he and his paramour Joy Sue Mary stumble upon an ancient, Ancient Egyptian style tomb, remnant of yet another civilization endemic to this uninhabited, ready-to-colonize planet. Even more troubling: the tomb’s occupant is not a mummy but Amnozo, a living man! He’s been waiting for people to show up so that he could… rule them? It’s a bit unclear.

    What is clear is that Amnozo is pulling the classic Creep’s Gambit of attempting to kill off the male protagonist so that he can capture and “romance” (or in this case “marry”) the female protagonist – we’ve seen it all a thousand times before. This is however a very nice rendition of the crushy room style of deathtrap.

    Amnozo fold like a house of cards once Cyclone’s troops show up to see what happened to him, despite a last-ditch attempt to roast them all with sick blue flame. What an achievement: waiting 4000 years only to end up rotting in whatever repurposed woodshed Cyclone’s colonial government is using as a jail just because you couldn’t not be a horrible creep to the first woman you saw.

    Also: does Amnozo’s loincloth not have a back?

  • MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 013

    Progress! Science! 

    It’s blood that this nameless inventor wants, blood to make his super fuel! Too bad for him that he chose to steal it from US Marine Strut Warren because he ends up extremely dead for his efforts (and the world remains dependant on fossil fuels. Thanks, Strut). (Fight Comics 003, 1940)

    Professor Pierre Villon, refugee from the Paris Medical Academy, has set himself up on a tropical island to further his scientific research into making human/animal hybrids. His method of acquiring test subjects by knocking aircraft out of the sky with an engine killing ray attracts the attention of Chip Collins of the Skull Squadron, and Villon ends up perishing at the hands, claws and teeth of his own creations. (Fight Comics 008, 1940)

    Professor Gustoff’s one interest is in administering his mutagenic fluid to people to turn them into “weird creatures”, aka bald guys with webbed hands and feet.He sets his sights too high when he tries to creaturize South Sea adventurer Shark Brodie and ends up beat up and presumably in some sort of colonial penal system. And the worst part? The poor weird creatures aren’t even fully amphibious – they all end up drowning. (Fight Comics 009, 1940)

    This is Dr Wratt, who lives on an isolated island populated by hypnotically controlled man-apes. He kidnaps Kaänga’s love interest Ann Mason for what I can only assume are weird creep reasons, based mostly on the fact that Wratt’s outfit consists of a short lab smock and nothing else. (Jungle Comics 002, 1940)

  • MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 013

    Progress! Science! 

    It’s blood that this nameless inventor wants, blood to make his super fuel! Too bad for him that he chose to steal it from US Marine Strut Warren because he ends up extremely dead for his efforts (and the world remains dependant on fossil fuels. Thanks, Strut). (Fight Comics 003, 1940)

    Professor Pierre Villon, refugee from the Paris Medical Academy, has set himself up on a tropical island to further his scientific research into making human/animal hybrids. His method of acquiring test subjects by knocking aircraft out of the sky with an engine killing ray attracts the attention of Chip Collins of the Skull Squadron, and Villon ends up perishing at the hands, claws and teeth of his own creations. (Fight Comics 008, 1940)

    Professor Gustoff’s one interest is in administering his mutagenic fluid to people to turn them into “weird creatures”, aka bald guys with webbed hands and feet.He sets his sights too high when he tries to creaturize South Sea adventurer Shark Brodie and ends up beat up and presumably in some sort of colonial penal system. And the worst part? The poor weird creatures aren’t even fully amphibious – they all end up drowning. (Fight Comics 009, 1940)

    This is Dr Wratt, who lives on an isolated island populated by hypnotically controlled man-apes. He kidnaps Kaänga’s love interest Ann Mason for what I can only assume are weird creep reasons, based mostly on the fact that Wratt’s outfit consists of a short lab smock and nothing else. (Jungle Comics 002, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 635: KAOS

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 635: KAOS

    (Fantastic Comics 012, 1940)

    Kaos, a Venusian scientist, has a plan that in true comics book fashion is both simple (invade the Earth with overwhelming force, thus taking over almost immediately) and overly complicated (hypnotize the local population of giant vultures and then feed them super vitamins extracted from a specially-bred vine, thus making them even more giant and so fast that they are unbeatable, then teleport them to Earth as your main invasion force). Also: those are some crazy legs on those vultures.

    Kaos may be the villain who benefits the most from a frequent plot element in Stardust the Super Wizard adventures, that Stardust lives so gosh darned far away. Thus, despite the fact that Stardust watched Kaos’ entire plan unfold on his View-Plate and Thought-Recorder, Kaos has enough time to effectively conquer the planet while the Super Wizard is on his commute.

    Once Stardust actually shows up, Kaos is subdued in exactly two panels. The vultures take a bit longer but in short order both they and “Kaos-the-Worm” are on their way back to Venus. There’s no mention of removing the birds’ physical enhancements so I guess it’s now up to the Venusians to deal with millions of huge powerful super-fast vultures.

    This is the issue in which a young woman orphaned in the vulture attacks attaches herself to Stardust and ends up returning to his star with him to live. I don’t know if this was intended to be a sexy situation or not – the two of them certainly do seem to be giving each other significant looks, but the same panels are really emphasizing just how much bigger Stardust is than her. It’s unsettling! Though she never appears again in a Fletcher Hanks story, this unnamed character is a frequent feature of more recent Stardust works, so I felt I should include her.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 634: KING RATON

    (Fantastic Comics 012, 1940)

    King Raton is a fellow met by the Golden Knight and his companion/ lover Alice after the earth near a pool of water gives way and they are dropped into a cavern. He demands that they fetch a potion for him from Kataka, Witch of the Volcano, under threat of death – this is a source of conflict not only because of the threats but because he wants the potion in order to conquer Blackamoor Forest, home of their ally the Queen of Blackamoor.

    Kataka, Witch of the Volcano turns out to be Raton’s mom, which raises the question of why he has to send a couple of heroes up the volcano to get his precious potion. Families are complicated, I guess.

    On that note, Kataka goes completely off the rails and tries to kill Sir Richard and Alice as they exit her lair. Exactly why she does this is not elaborated on but it results in here death via magma pool, following which Our Heroes realize something that that seemed obvious to me: they are under no obligation or compulsion to complete this clearly evil quest.

    I had a whole thing written about how Sir Richard and Alice just took the word of this guy in a cave that he was a king and that they should be a bit less credulous about that sort of thing before embarking on hazardous quests but I’ll be danged if Raton doesn’t return in Fantastic Comics 013 with actual subjects!

    Raton’s plan to sneakily attack Queen Blackamoor and her Forest People using an Annihilating Potion (which is an explosive of some kind, I think) was a sound one because as it turns out, when they are ready for him the Forest people absolutely wipe the floor with his Sand People. 

    Raton must take after his mother, because like her he makes a poorly thought-out attack on the Golden Knight and his pals and ends up dying for it.

    (I’ve surely mentioned before that I try not to assign modern motivations etc to the characters in these comics but… the Queen of Blackamoor is explicitly into Sir Richard and I have to say that this reads like a proposition to me)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 629: QUEEN SULIA

    (Fantastic Comics 011, 1940)

    We begin with the old comic book trope of Ignoring Bad Feelings When a Woman Has Them, as Alice senses something in the wind and Sir Richard tells her to shut up just before a giant bird gets them both.

    They are flown to Soulless Isle and meet its ruler Queen Sulia, along with her coterie of beastly subjects. She wants a sword fight and Sir Richard of Warwick is who she wants it from. If this weren’t the 1940s I would suspect some double entendre was going on here. I kind of suspect it anyway.

    If this is an extended sex metaphor then things are heating up, as Alice jumps in to take over for her reluctant boyfriend only to be overwhelmed by Sulia’s technique, forcing Richard to join in. Phew!

    The prize for defeating Queen Sulia in battle is her hand in marriage and Sir Richard of Warwick seems weirdly okay with doing so. If the beastmen hadn’t sent a representative to him to reveal that they were in fact not just weirdos but regular folk transformed by Sulia’s dark majicks I reckon that the tale of the Golden Knight would have ended with him shacked up on Soulless Isle.

    But no, Sir Richard takes advantage of the beastmen’s intel re: Sulia having a magical clotting disorder and  employs a spiked wedding band to fatally wound her finger. Oddly enough, this underhanded trick doesn’t trigger his “thou shalt not fight women” chivalry. With Sulia slain and the beastmen restored to regular, Richard is free to return to Alice and I assume apologize to her.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 618: THE GREAT WHITE CHIEF

    (Fantastic Comics 007, 1940) 

    The Great White Chief is a chubby scientist who wears stirrup pants with no shoes or socks and lives in a dormant volcano (that he makes look non-dormant using special effects) where he makes animal-headed monstrosities like Cinu the Unicorn Man here. This is all very good classic villain stuff.

    The name is pretty annoying. It implies a lot about his relationship with the native peoples of wherever his volcano is located (probably Africa as he has kidnapped the daughter of an ivory trader) and so I am constantly on edge while reading about him, waiting for him or Captain Kidd to say or do something really racist, but nothing concrete ever happens. But the name!

    I guess the only thing to do is to focus on how fun a design the unicorn man is. Look! Captain Kidd is stabbing him with his own horn!

    After finishing off poor Cinu, Captain Kidd gets the drop on the GWC and socks him into a boiling sulphur pit. I was going to make a joke about Kidd being just as weirded out by the name as I was but then I remembered that Captain Kidd is himself pretty racist. Welp…

    Hey look, more animal headed people! Check out that bird head!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 618: THE GREAT WHITE CHIEF

    (Fantastic Comics 007, 1940) 

    The Great White Chief is a chubby scientist who wears stirrup pants with no shoes or socks and lives in a dormant volcano (that he makes look non-dormant using special effects) where he makes animal-headed monstrosities like Cinu the Unicorn Man here. This is all very good classic villain stuff.

    The name is pretty annoying. It implies a lot about his relationship with the native peoples of wherever his volcano is located (probably Africa as he has kidnapped the daughter of an ivory trader) and so I am constantly on edge while reading about him, waiting for him or Captain Kidd to say or do something really racist, but nothing concrete ever happens. But the name!

    I guess the only thing to do is to focus on how fun a design the unicorn man is. Look! Captain Kidd is stabbing him with his own horn!

    After finishing off poor Cinu, Captain Kidd gets the drop on the GWC and socks him into a boiling sulphur pit. I was going to make a joke about Kidd being just as weirded out by the name as I was but then I remembered that Captain Kidd is himself pretty racist. Welp…

    Hey look, more animal headed people! Check out that bird head!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 615: SANGLOR

    (Fantastic Comics 007, 1940)

    Sanglor starts out strong. He immediately charms me with his aesthetic sense: his ‘Automatic Subplane’ spy drones are delightful, his ‘Flying Castle’ is simultaneously one of the most ridiculous and great-looking mobile bases I have ever seen and his costume manages to evoke the dress sense of a 1940s comic book movie villain in a way I have not seen since the Vampire, almost exactly 300 entries ago.

    He manages to mess things up almost immediately, of course. His plan is to take over the world by hypnotizing key politicians and diplomats etc., and then presumably induce them to shift the reins of political power his way. This is the kind of scheme that requires some degree of care to set up – you have to get all of your assets in place without causing undue suspicion, so having them for example act all weird and then disappear is problematic. People are noticing your plan, Sanglor.

    This is the first evidence of what I will call Sanglor Self-Sabotages. This one seems to stem from the fact that Sanglor works completely solo, without even a weird little lab assistant to test his hypnotic ray on to see if it makes people freak out in noticeable ways before using it in a sensitive espionage operation.

    The big upshot of this Sanglor Self-Sabotage is that Samson is on the case basically the instant that the scheme is put in motion

    The second Sanglor Self-Sabotage is an extension of the first: he has no real defenses. Once Samson makes his way to the Flying Castle his only real opposition is a crowd of tuxedo-clad diplomats flailing away with their soft fists.

    Sanglor does think to call out his drone army to deal with the intruder but they don’t seem to even be armed, despite their little gun barrels – they just fly at Samson until he smashes them all.

    The really big final Sanglor Self-Sabotage is revealed once Samson bursts into his inner sanctum: Sanglor is too busy being a weird creep to actively manage the defense of his headquarters. It’s not exactly clear what he’s doing with this young woman or who she is (it’s unlikely to be Miss Royce, a politician’s daughter in England and the only named female character in the story) but it’s real creep shit and it’s an unnecessary distraction from the approaching vigilante.

    Sanglor is probably still distracted as he flees through an industrial section of his base, because he can’t even run correctly – he manages to heave himself off what looks to be a pretty solid catwalk into the first available cauldron of boiling chemicals.

    I think that ultimately Sanglor serves as an object example of the need for villains to do a couple of trial runs before attempting world domination. If he’d attempted to take over a county or a small business first, maybe some of these kinks would’ve been worked out.