The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: creep

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 486: THE MONSTER

    (Big 3 006, 1941)

    The Monster, while an imposing figure engaged in some extremely villainous and questionable activities – kidnapping wealthy young women from some sort of summer camp – ultimately fails to satisfy.

    And here is exactly why: this is the kind of story that benefits from a bit of mystery: a red herring or two; a few suspects – but this George Benson guy not only is the singular suspect but has spent twenty-plus years saying things like “you will live to regret the day” and trying to ruin the lives of the woman who turned him down, the man she chose over him and their child. Worst of all, the inciting incident that lead to him dressing up in orange jodhpurs and a stupid mask is him pursuing the affections of the child and very reasonably being turned down for being an old creep (to be clear, she is an adult at the time. He is just a double or even triple adult). 

    He doesn’t even have the dignity to get killed at the end. Just a sad old spiteful creep in a mask.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 486: THE MONSTER

    (Big 3 006, 1941)

    The Monster, while an imposing figure engaged in some extremely villainous and questionable activities – kidnapping wealthy young women from some sort of summer camp – ultimately fails to satisfy.

    And here is exactly why: this is the kind of story that benefits from a bit of mystery: a red herring or two; a few suspects – but this George Benson guy not only is the singular suspect but has spent twenty-plus years saying things like “you will live to regret the day” and trying to ruin the lives of the woman who turned him down, the man she chose over him and their child. Worst of all, the inciting incident that lead to him dressing up in orange jodhpurs and a stupid mask is him pursuing the affections of the child and very reasonably being turned down for being an old creep (to be clear, she is an adult at the time. He is just a double or even triple adult). 

    He doesn’t even have the dignity to get killed at the end. Just a sad old spiteful creep in a mask.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 342: THE MASTER

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 342: THE MASTER

    (Master Comics 007, 1940)

    Once more we find ourselves with a cult on our hands, and it’s my favourite kind of cult: a) completely fictional and b) just a bunch of bored rich people taking what probably started as an excuse for some light swinging or BDSM way too seriously. It’ the Cult of Jama the Devil-God, folks! Officially broken up by the US government in 1919, they have in fact been lurking in the shadows of the probably-New York upper crust since then, with a particular focus on molding wealthy orphan Imelda Loree (born on the Feast Day of Jama, parents possibly murdered by the cult) into a living goddess figure. This process seems to require either virginity or some sort of spiritual isolation because the main thing tat they do to prepare her is to murder any man who even seems like he might be interested in her.

    And of course this is where my favourite Golden Age adventurer Zoro the Mystery Man comes in, because if there’s a society event where people are trying to hook up, it’s a fair bet that he’ll be there. He witnesses the fourth “keep Imelda Loree from getting any” murder and it’s at that point that the cult is finished.

    But what of this Master character, you ask? Why he’s Murdock Daw, leader of the cult and huge creep. In classic cult leader fashion, Daw has been duping the Jama cultists for decades in order to enrich himself, and in true creep fashion he seems to have been angling to marry Imelda Loree since she was roughly two years old, and even if I’m reading things wrong he has absolutely been having her suitors murdered in order to make her desperate enough to marry him – real creep behaviour, if you ask me.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 318: DORK

    (Daring Mystery Comics 005, 1940)

    There’s a great temptation when dealing with an evil scientist named Dork to focus on easy, puerile humour rather than appreciating the other things that make him a good super-villain.

    I had a whole bit about how his big plan was to flood the city with white goo (hur hur) and kidnap women to experiment on their bodies but it wasn’t sustainable. Ironically, I would have had to jump through more hoops to obliquely reference his monster looking like jizz than if, as here, I just said it.

    Good costumes on the henchmen!

    This is where the joke fell apart, by the way. There was no good way to link this guy with the jizz jokes that wasn’t a huge stretch. Appreciate the cool monster, I guess.

    And then he was killed by his own jizz!

    Excuse me. He was dissolved by his own blob-monster in a classic example of irony.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 316: THE VAMPIRE

    (Daring Mystery Comics 002, 1940) 

    The Vampire has the distinction of appearing in the only Golden Age featuring Mister E, possibly the biggest nonentity in the collection of heroes brought back in The Twelve. He’s whatever: he has a drug that makes your heart explode and his major plot involves trying to get control of an oil company (and marry a woman against her will after killing her father, in case you though he might be a bit sympathetic). He is one of the few comic book super-villains to dress like the villains from 1940s super-hero movies though, so that’s something.

    Probably the most interesting thing about the Vampire is the fact that like so many features in Daring Mystery Comics Mister E was a one-off, which means that he is still at large to this day. Fun! BRING BACK this very very old man and his old machinations! Mister E has retired – who can save us from the Vampire?

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 252: EGON

    (Flash Comics v1 021, 1941)

    This one’s got a lot of setup. First, Hawkman sees a spaceship crash, as you do. Venturing inside, he finds a deceased Neptunian couple, their egg son and a Rosetta Stone of a  ship’s log. He makes off with the egg and the journal and just leaves the ship and its former crew to rot.

    Next night is the Scientist Society Ball, where monocled botanist and creep Noel Ratchford makes a play for Shiera Sanders and is rebuffed. There’s an egg-based sequence of events as follows:

    -Noel is germinating seeds in eggs

    -Carter “Hawkman” Hall thinks this is dumb

    -Shiera stumbles across the boy-egg and assumes that Carter is also experimenting with eggs. She steals the egg as a joke and tells Noel about it

    -Noel decides to steal the egg and take credit for Carters egg-based research. He ends up hatching out the boy Egon.

    Thanks to Neptunian genetics, Egon hatches into a rapidly-growing boy with cool eye-beams and full powers of speech. Noel then hits upon the idea to raise him up to a) hate him and b) believe that his name is Carter Hall, so that he will go out and do evil giant stuff and blame it on Carter, thus presumably sullying his good name enough for Shiera to reject him? it’s a flimsy plan at best, but when all you have is a giant you look for rampage-based solutions to your problems.

    Everything kind of goes according to plan, except that Carter Hall is of course Hawkman, and that he has the journal and knows all of the Neptunians’ weak points and kills Egon and brings Noel to justice. But other than that stuff, A-OK.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 243: CRIME & CORRUPTION INC

    (Flash Comics v1 013, 1941)

    I almost didn’t include these guys because Johnny Thunder lives in a heightened cartoon reality that only exists within the same world as the Spectre or Hawkman because of the technicality of them all being in the same club and hanging out together. But then, is the fact that New York is full of goofy-ass cartoon people in Johnny’s reality any more implausible than Alexander the Great blowing up a portion of the city without apparent consequence in Hawkman’s? I say thee nay. Besides, Johnny’s adventures almost never verge into super-villain territory… we gotta strike while we can!

    So: we find Johnny and his best gal Daisy Darling attending a production of “the Creep”, starring actor Jan Marrimore (!) as the titular Creep (a stand-in for a real person playing a fictional villain in a super-hero universe: all my very specific interests are colliding!).

    At the end of the play, Marrimore reveals that the show is a stunt designed to publicize the existence and uniform of a crime syndicate operating in the city. Johnny of course immediately encounters one of these men, does not recognize him and is pickpocketed by him. After some back and forth involving ridiculous magic powers, the pickpocket swears to reform and all is well. OR IS IT?

    It’s not! The remaining members of the gang (which we only now learn the name of – thanks for nothing, Marrimore) swear bloody vengeance and set out to murder Johnny. It’s only the fact that he’s juiced up on Badhnisian thunderbolt magic that saves the poor oaf.

    And that’s that, really. Just a gang of costumed crooks, but they’re Johnny’s gang and he almost never gets to fight proper villains. Since they’re comedy characters they end up as paper-thin props for Johnny to bounce around, so there’s not much to say about them beyond what I will always say about the suit/cape combo: that I love it.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 243: CRIME & CORRUPTION INC

    (Flash Comics v1 013, 1941)

    I almost didn’t include these guys because Johnny Thunder lives in a heightened cartoon reality that only exists within the same world as the Spectre or Hawkman because of the technicality of them all being in the same club and hanging out together. But then, is the fact that New York is full of goofy-ass cartoon people in Johnny’s reality any more implausible than Alexander the Great blowing up a portion of the city without apparent consequence in Hawkman’s? I say thee nay. Besides, Johnny’s adventures almost never verge into super-villain territory… we gotta strike while we can!

    So: we find Johnny and his best gal Daisy Darling attending a production of “the Creep”, starring actor Jan Marrimore (!) as the titular Creep (a stand-in for a real person playing a fictional villain in a super-hero universe: all my very specific interests are colliding!).

    At the end of the play, Marrimore reveals that the show is a stunt designed to publicize the existence and uniform of a crime syndicate operating in the city. Johnny of course immediately encounters one of these men, does not recognize him and is pickpocketed by him. After some back and forth involving ridiculous magic powers, the pickpocket swears to reform and all is well. OR IS IT?

    It’s not! The remaining members of the gang (which we only now learn the name of – thanks for nothing, Marrimore) swear bloody vengeance and set out to murder Johnny. It’s only the fact that he’s juiced up on Badhnisian thunderbolt magic that saves the poor oaf.

    And that’s that, really. Just a gang of costumed crooks, but they’re Johnny’s gang and he almost never gets to fight proper villains. Since they’re comedy characters they end up as paper-thin props for Johnny to bounce around, so there’s not much to say about them beyond what I will always say about the suit/cape combo: that I love it.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 166: LUGO, THE HARPIE OF HORROR

    (Blue Beetle Comics 006, 1941)

    I skip a lot of generic villains from the non-Marvel or DC families of comics, because everyone existing together in a big shared world is the thing about comics that makes me get out my spreadsheets and my extensive tagging system. A guy like Lugo, though, demands at least a little attention.

    One thing to know about him off the bat is: he’s an underwater guy. This happens a lot in comics starring underwater heroes such as Sub Saunders – just an surface thing transposed 1:1 to the depths. So Lugo is a bird-man, but he flies underwater and steals women to be his undersea brides off the coast of Florida. I really love his design, particularly his chicken feet and umbrella wings. Not so hot on the woman-kidnapping, but he gets his ass kicked successively by a snake-dragon, a stalactite and Sub Saunders before he gets the chance to take it any farther than abduction.