The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: misogyny

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 992: THE VAHINES

    (Jungle Comics 013, 1941)

    The Vahines, aka the Tiger-Women of Wildmoon Mountain, have a plan: kill every other woman in the world, which will then give them ultimate power over all men. Some thoughts on this setup:

    1. The logistics of this plan are trash. There are maybe 15 to 20 Vahines total and estimates put world population at around 2.3 billion in 1940, so murdering half of those people will be a full-time job that will probably take the rest of their lives*. And if they succeed, what then? They rule over a population that is going to die out in a single generation? They certainly can’t repopulate the planet because they spent their fertile years slaughtering people.

    *It’s just possible that “the world” referred to by the Vahines is the weird liminal Jungle-Dimension that Fantomah comics seem to be set in, but seeing as how that’s mostly something I made up to explain how weird the worldbuilding in these stories is, I doubt it.

    2. I keep saying that we’re almost out of Fletcher Hanks stories but I really mean it this time, so it’s nice to get one last instance of women surfing around on the backs of big cats.

    3. “The Vahines have come down off of Wildmoon Mountain to murder all other women” sounds like the synopsis of a MADtv sketch about PMS. 

    Regardless of the canonicity of the liminal Jungle, that’s where their mountain is located and so that is where they start murdering women. This goes against Fantomah’s mission to protect Jungle life, and so they meet resistance in the form of All Animals. The Vahines, however, are no fools. They knew that Fantomah wouldn’t be cool with their insane mission and so they have prepared a salve that makes them glow in a way that is scary to animals. Problem solved!

    Or is it? in a classic blunder, the Vahines have failed to contend with the fact that Fantomah a) is not afraid of a mild glowing effect and b) is a minor deity. It takes the merest exertion of her powers to remove the glow, and soon the Vahines’ tigers are a mere smudge on the jungle floor.

    As for the Vahines themselves, it is now the time for the extreme retribution. Fantomah begins this by extracting the enormous moonstone called the Wild Moon from inside of Wildmoon Mountain – it seems that the name was more than just cool but that it also meant something – and sticking the Vahines to it. This is initially very concerning to the Vahines because of a prophecy about their lives ending if the Wild Moon leaves…

    … and then very, very concerning, as the Wild Moon, with its Vahine cargo, is blasted off to slam into the surface of Mars. The prophecy was correct! If unhelpful!

    Categorized in: Animals (Tigers), Ideologies (Misogyny), Murder (Mass Murderers)

  • ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 035

    Aliens! Aliens? Aliens.

    the Black-Light Men:

    Like the Emerald Men of Asperus, the Black-Light Men travel on a mobile planet (the Black-Light Planet, natch, so named because it is not visible using conventional light) and like so many Fletcher Hanks villains they are looking to take over the Earth, in this case by pulling the whole planet out of orbit and freezing it solid before selling it on to the Martians. Due to the Black-Light Planet’s perpetual cold, the Black-Light Men are all blubbery. Just what the little rhino horn situation they have going on is for is beyond me. 

    Luckily for the Earth, space hero Whirlwind Carter is on the case and the planet-jacking is halted before more than a measly few million people are killed. Carter leads the Earth military in a retaliatory strike on the Black-Light Planet but it quickly turns into a hand-to hand battle that leaves the human forces ata severe disadvantage.

    Thanks to Whirlwind Carter’s companion Brenda, the Black-Light Men are discovered to have a crippling fear of fire and armed with that knowledge the Earthian forces are able to drive them to self-destruction. (Daring Mystery Comics 005, 1940)

    Serviles: 

    Flip Falcon’s portal to the Fourth Dimension allows him to do a whole lot of different things, for instance: look at images of the planet Mercury and notice that there is a cool-looking city there, then visit that city with his partner Adele. We soon learn that the city is called Servil, and it is inhabited by some truly delightful aliens with the bodies of plucked chickens and the heads of bargain-basement mannequins and who are revealed to be called Serviles in a text box several issues after this appearance.

    The Serviles communicate using extremely cute golden helmets. Up until this point they might just be the perfect alien species, but they have to go and ruin it all by being weird 1940s misogynists and denying women the ability to speak (!) because they “talk too much.”

    Anyway, Servile civilization is plagued by these cool-looking dragonoid beasts called Heidites that crawl over from the hot side of Mercury to eat them, but who could care? (Fantastic Comics 005, 1940)

    Hoof-Men: 

    The Hoof-Men are 1. extremely burly 2. hoofed and 3. of a class of science fiction alien that can best be described as “space bullies,” who exist to give humans a hard time. In this case they have captured the (also very burly) space explorer Professor Darrel and are threatening to turn him into a bug if he doesn’t say that Hoof-Men are better than humans, and it all gets a little too real until space hero Cosmic Carson has to step in and break things up. (Science Comics 003, 1940)

    Hoppers:

    The Hoppers are yet another group of Fletcher Hanks aliens who live on a wandering planetoid, in this case on that looks just like a cartoon tropical island and seems to just aimlessly float through space. As might be expected given their name the Hoppers a big on jumping and can seemingly do so to get from planet to planet. They have the beefiest legs in comics and show them off in what I can only describe as bicycle shorts, in an astounding bit of predictive design-work.

    Unlike most Fletcher Hanks aliens, the Hoppers don’t have some sort of over-the-top plan to destroy humanity – they aren’t even hostile, as far as I can tell. They do hop on over to Space Smith’s ship as soon as it comes into range, which he interprets as a hostile act, but I’m inclined to disagree. The only aggression the Hoppers display is after they are trapped under a big metal net, and even then it is nonlethal.

    Perhaps Smith agrees with me after all, because instead of gruesomely killing the Hoppers he instead essentially pranks them by bringing them to New York City to be spooked by the hustle and bustle of big city life, with its bodegas and whatnot. Unable to hack the Big Apple, they hop back to their small-town planetoid. (Fantastic Comics 005, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 953: THE COUPLE KILLER

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 953: THE COUPLE KILLER

    (Daredevil Comics 006, 1941)

    New York’s dating scene is in trouble, as courting couples are being murdered at a blazing clip: six couples in two weeks as the story begins and a seventh just one page in – that’s fourteen people! That’s a person a day! On average!

    Nightro is on the case, but merely patrolling the parks and other canoodling spots is a bust as the killer knows to look out for costumed vigilantes and even leaves a taunting note with the bodies of the unfortunate Mert and Rita. 

    Nightro’s next move is to set up a sting, featuring him in a dress alongside a dummy boyfriend that he can “make love to,” and here I must pause to say that the physical transformation achieved by the Streamlined Robinhood by merely putting on a dress is phenomenal, no matter what kind of shaping undergarments he has on. He goes from a fairly beefy superdude to a slender woman who might be a few inches shorter than he is normally, despite wearing high heels. His face changes shape! This is a Bugs Bunny-level crossdress, is what I’m saying, which means that once the Couple Killer takes the bait he is immediately attracted to the disguised Nightro and so leaves himself open to a left hook.

    There’s a full page of Nightro beating up the Couple Killer, which is a lot for a five pages story but you just have to get as much mileage as you can out of having your hero in a dress when it’s 1941 and that it the height of comedy.

    So, after all that bloodshed and gender-bending, just what was the Couple Killer’s motivation? Turns out that he is actually a fellow known as Lonesome Larry, a known arsonist and misogynist who just got dumped and went “a little loco” and killed fourteen people. It’s not quite a “boys will be boys” situation but these cops sure do give him a lot more grace than he deserves.

    Categorized in: Crime (Killers), Ideology (Misogynists), Murder (Serial Killers)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 934: THE LADY KILLER

    (Silver Streak Comics 012, 1941)

    The Lady Killer makes his debut at the glamorous Crane Club, in which he attacks and nearly kills rising stage star Betty Crawford and takes a moment to grandstand a bit before making his escape. The name is a somewhat presumptuous one here, given the fact that he has yet to kill a lady.

    He makes up for this over the next few days as he murders a whopping fourteen women and injures a similar number of people and leaves a “Lady Killer” calling card at the scene of each crime. Though this is a fast turnaround on murder, I think that technically he is a serial rather than spree killer as he seems to be choosing his victims rather than attacking targets of opportunity – it’s just that his pool of potential victims is so huge that he can kill whenever he feels like it.

    Presto Martin eventually lays hands on the Lady Killer in his usual manner, through disguise. Specifically, by announcing that the villain will reappear at the Crane Club and then impersonating him there at the appointed time, and sure enough, the Lady Killer’s ego is too great to allow this imposture to stand and he gets within range of the detective’s fists and has his big hat knocked off.

    This is the point at which a mystery story would pay off and one of the suspects would be unmasked, but the thing about this story is that there are no suspects. Like, literally none – the only named characters in the comic other than Presto and his supporting cast are Betty Crawford and her beau and they are the only ones who it couldn’t be. Instead the Lady Killer is just Some Guy who had a very bad breakup and lost all his money and decided to take it out on an entire gender instead of dealing with his issues in a more mature manner. As a fan of a mystery I feel robbed.

    Categorized in: Crime Theme (Killers), Language (Expressions), Murder (Serial Killers)

  • ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 018

    It’s time to return to spaaaaaace! 

    Urolians and Urians: 

    The “Blast Bennett” feature is set far enough in the future (5940 CE, according to the caption on a single panel that I’m taking as gospel until contradicted) that I generally assume that all of the human-looking aliens that Blast and his pal Red encounter are representative of far-flung Earth colonies rather than of lack of alien design imagination, but I just had to point out the fact that the two planets in this comic are named Urol and Ur. It’s very annoying!

    Anyway, Blast’s pal Red falls into the hands of the bearded and hostile peoples of Urol, then Blast shows up and frees both him and the princess of Ur, traditional enemies of the Urolians, and ultimately helps the Urians (never actually called that in-comic, but we must have a demonym) defeat the slow-but-powerful Urolian space fleet, ensuring peace at the barrel of a ray gun. (Weird Comics 008, 1940)

    Dwarf Men of Mars: 

    Flick Falcon (famously later changed to Flip because “Flick” and “Fuck” look very similar in comic book lettering) is a character who does all of his adventuring by jumping into an interdimensional teleporter in his laboratory and tooling around the universe. The first time he does this he ends up blasted to Mars so hard that his organs end up on the opposite sides of his body.

    Flick/Flip finds a Mars in conflict, with two native intelligent species under threat of conquest by invading aliens. He ends up allying with the so-called Dwarf-Men, who probably don’t call themselves that. They’re pretty standard humanoid aliens, with the obvious exception being their tininess. Plus they all wear hats with teacup handles on them for no stated reason. (Fantastic Comics 002, 1940) 

    Martian Slave-Giants: 

    The second of the Martian races are referred to as the Slave-Giants, as they have been subjugated by the invaders already. Their main duties seem to be wandering around looking for interesting things such as Flick Falcon to grab and throw toward the invaders’ headquarters. Please also note the wildly inconsistent scale.

    As mentioned in the last Divine Round-Up, the giants are controlled by way of their religious devotion, with the invaders delivering orders in the form of commandments issued by a radio receiver concealed inside of the idol of their goddess. Flick and his gal pal Adele disrupt this by smashing the idol and substituting her as a living replacement, and so the Giants are theoretically no longer enslaved. (Fantastic Comics 001, 1939)

    Three-Arm Invaders: 

    And what of the invaders themselves? These are appropriately known as the Three-Arm[ed] Invaders, and occasionally as the Three-Arm[ed] Ones, Tyrants, or at least once Swine. They are one or two steps more alien than the quite humanoid inhabitants of Mars, with little pig-trotter feet and tusks and that eponymous third arm emerging from their sternums. They also have the most distressing horns that I have ever seen, in that they are more akin to big hairy warts than anything else.

    The Three-Arm Invaders possess similar dimension-hopping technology to that used by Flick Falcon, which they intend to use to both comprehend and conquer the universe. They are held back somewhat by their comparatively frail physical forms, but I suppose that’s what the Slave-Giants are for.

    When the Three-Arm Invaders are last seen, they are reacting to the news of the Slave-Giants’ emancipation by raining hellacious destruction down on the Giants’ city in an attempt to destroy Flick and Adele. After escaping from this conflagration, the duo never bother to go back to Mars, so the struggle of the Martian peoples vs the Invaders is left unresolved. (Fantastic Comics 001, 1939)

     

    One more thing about the Three-Arm Invaders: they seem to be yet another species in which the males look like gross weirdos and the females like cute human women (they do have little pig trotter feet, but that can be cute!). Unfortunately for the Three-Arm women (who only have two arms, sure, but how else do I refer to them?) the whole deal with the Slave-Giants and their goddess means that having a bunch of cute girls around would only confuse things and break the Three-Arms’ control. Thus, the Three-Arm women are sealed inside of big fruits until they are too old to be cute any more. Three-Armed Invaders: not just evil conquerors, but also misogynists!

    The formerly fruit-bound Three-Arm woman in the above panels seems to be shaping up to be an ally to Flick Falcon, but somewhere in between issues 002 and 003 of Fantastic Comcis she disappears and Flick ends up allied with the formerly suspicious and hostile Dwarf-Men. Hopefully the unseen resolution to this whole invasion involves the liberation of the Three-Arm women, leading to an overthrow of Three-Arm society. (Fantastic Comics 002, 1940) 

  • ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 018

    It’s time to return to spaaaaaace! 

    Urolians and Urians: 

    The “Blast Bennett” feature is set far enough in the future (5940 CE, according to the caption on a single panel that I’m taking as gospel until contradicted) that I generally assume that all of the human-looking aliens that Blast and his pal Red encounter are representative of far-flung Earth colonies rather than of lack of alien design imagination, but I just had to point out the fact that the two planets in this comic are named Urol and Ur. It’s very annoying!

    Anyway, Blast’s pal Red falls into the hands of the bearded and hostile peoples of Urol, then Blast shows up and frees both him and the princess of Ur, traditional enemies of the Urolians, and ultimately helps the Urians (never actually called that in-comic, but we must have a demonym) defeat the slow-but-powerful Urolian space fleet, ensuring peace at the barrel of a ray gun. (Weird Comics 008, 1940)

    Dwarf Men of Mars: 

    Flick Falcon (famously later changed to Flip because “Flick” and “Fuck” look very similar in comic book lettering) is a character who does all of his adventuring by jumping into an interdimensional teleporter in his laboratory and tooling around the universe. The first time he does this he ends up blasted to Mars so hard that his organs end up on the opposite sides of his body.

    Flick/Flip finds a Mars in conflict, with two native intelligent species under threat of conquest by invading aliens. He ends up allying with the so-called Dwarf-Men, who probably don’t call themselves that. They’re pretty standard humanoid aliens, with the obvious exception being their tininess. Plus they all wear hats with teacup handles on them for no stated reason. (Fantastic Comics 002, 1940) 

    Martian Slave-Giants: 

    The second of the Martian races are referred to as the Slave-Giants, as they have been subjugated by the invaders already. Their main duties seem to be wandering around looking for interesting things such as Flick Falcon to grab and throw toward the invaders’ headquarters. Please also note the wildly inconsistent scale.

    As mentioned in the last Divine Round-Up, the giants are controlled by way of their religious devotion, with the invaders delivering orders in the form of commandments issued by a radio receiver concealed inside of the idol of their goddess. Flick and his gal pal Adele disrupt this by smashing the idol and substituting her as a living replacement, and so the Giants are theoretically no longer enslaved. (Fantastic Comics 001, 1939)

    Three-Arm Invaders: 

    And what of the invaders themselves? These are appropriately known as the Three-Arm[ed] Invaders, and occasionally as the Three-Arm[ed] Ones, Tyrants, or at least once Swine. They are one or two steps more alien than the quite humanoid inhabitants of Mars, with little pig-trotter feet and tusks and that eponymous third arm emerging from their sternums. They also have the most distressing horns that I have ever seen, in that they are more akin to big hairy warts than anything else.

    The Three-Arm Invaders possess similar dimension-hopping technology to that used by Flick Falcon, which they intend to use to both comprehend and conquer the universe. They are held back somewhat by their comparatively frail physical forms, but I suppose that’s what the Slave-Giants are for.

    When the Three-Arm Invaders are last seen, they are reacting to the news of the Slave-Giants’ emancipation by raining hellacious destruction down on the Giants’ city in an attempt to destroy Flick and Adele. After escaping from this conflagration, the duo never bother to go back to Mars, so the struggle of the Martian peoples vs the Invaders is left unresolved. (Fantastic Comics 001, 1939)

     

    One more thing about the Three-Arm Invaders: they seem to be yet another species in which the males look like gross weirdos and the females like cute human women (they do have little pig trotter feet, but that can be cute!). Unfortunately for the Three-Arm women (who only have two arms, sure, but how else do I refer to them?) the whole deal with the Slave-Giants and their goddess means that having a bunch of cute girls around would only confuse things and break the Three-Arms’ control. Thus, the Three-Arm women are sealed inside of big fruits until they are too old to be cute any more. Three-Armed Invaders: not just evil conquerors, but also misogynists!

    The formerly fruit-bound Three-Arm woman in the above panels seems to be shaping up to be an ally to Flick Falcon, but somewhere in between issues 002 and 003 of Fantastic Comcis she disappears and Flick ends up allied with the formerly suspicious and hostile Dwarf-Men. Hopefully the unseen resolution to this whole invasion involves the liberation of the Three-Arm women, leading to an overthrow of Three-Arm society. (Fantastic Comics 002, 1940) 

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 730: THE LITTLE MEN

    (Silver Streak Comics 002, 1940)

    Normally I try to put things in my own words and really work out the ins and outs of the motivations of the super-weirdos I write about, but I gotta be honest: I have so little idea of what the Little Men’s problem is (problems are?) that I’m just going to point to the intro caption: they’re trying to rid the world of all beautiful women. Simple as that.

    Why are they trying to rid the world of all beautiful women (and/or all beauty, as their leader puts it)? Not a clue. Are they just weird incel creeps or is it something more? No idea.

    One point in favour of the Little Men not being a weird misogynistic serial killer cult (not just a weird misogynistic serial killer cult, at least) is the fact that they have an artificial man with the amazing name Noman, though as with his creators we have so little information to work from that we can’t say for sure if Noman is an android, a homunculus, a frankenstein or something else. It’s all very genre dependent!

    (Mister Midnite is also there)

    The only real clue that we get to the nature of the Little Men is unfortunately also very genre-dependent: during Mister Midnite’s battle with Noman a “strange gas” is released from a cool heart-shaped container. The gas is harmless to humans, but disintegrates the Little Men on contact, indicating that yes, they were not human, but what were they then? Were they: magical beings, aliens, homunculi, magical constructs, earthbound spirits, underground beings, extradimensional creatures, reified fictional beings, elementals, thought projections, time travellers, mutants, chronal echoes, genii loci, regular guys who all had an extreme allergy… there just isn’t enough information, and so we must simplify: they were a bunch of weird little creeps, and the gas was creep remover, which they shouldn’t have just left lying around.

  • 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 276: THE INVISIBLE SLAYER

    (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 019, 1941)

    There’s a bit in the introductions to the Top 10 anthologies in which Neopolis mayor John Q. Public lays out the exponential propagation of super-heroes, -villains, -pets, -monsters and so forth that takes place in a comic universe that I think of often as I read through these old adventures. Heroes inspire sidekicks and imitators; their enemies build robots and create doppelgangers to counter them, etc, until you have superhumans everywhere. 

    There’s one thing that isn’t brought up in that intro that absolutely contributes to the proliferation of the extranormal in a super-hero universe: any friend, family member or acquaintance (and especially any old college classmate, for some reason) is highly likely to either become a super-villain or to be targeted by one. Out of universe, it is of course an easy way to bring the hero in on a case, but in-universe: what a wild series of coincidences!

    In this case, we find Professor Zog summoned to the side of his old college pal Sir John Chadwick, who has seen almost his entire family killed by a mysterious set of floating hands in recent weeks. Zog is of course a bro and immediately flies to England to solve this problem via Applied Robot Violence. The first battle between Electro and the Invisible Slayer ends in a robo-defeat, but Zog manages to shoot the killer and follows its trail of blood to…

    The nearby mansion of Basil Drake, who turns out to be behind the whole thing to such a degree that one must wonder about Sir Chadwick’s powers of observation. Drake’s mansion contains a herd of gorillas, for heaven’s sake. His motivation for five murders and many more attempteds is that Chadwick’s daughter sensibly rejected his marriage proposal, which is, I must say, a stupid reason to delve into super-villainy.

    And of course even after Drake bumps himself off rather than be captured we must deal with the Invisible Slayer itself, or himself, as it turns out, because the Slayer is in fact Drake’s servant Chandi, cast as a monster due to his size and race.

    A story featuring disembodied hands and herds of gorillas, ruined for me by racism and misogyny. I hope you’re happy, Basil Drake.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 275: THE HAG

    (Marvel  Mystery Comics v1 019, 1941)

    I don’t have to go into how wild it is that this woman is called a Hag, right? The wild misogyny of it all? Great, thanks.

    Aside from her name, the Hag is a gang boss, and one who dreams big. Her plan involves causing a citywide power outage in NYC so that her men could  tamper with the Stock Exchange and then clean up the next day while everyone panics about a nonexistent stock crash that she engineered. And also for some reason she takes over a radio station to get access to incoming news? The motivation behind that one is weird to me.

    The real flaw in the Hag’s plan is that while she accounts for the presence of the Human Torch and Toro, she doesn’t really deal with them. Her men are equipped with flame-resistant clothing and fire-suppressing chemicals, but they just serve to help in avoiding the Torch. Ultimately, he catches up, there is an explosion (inevitable), and the Hag is no more.

    This adventure also features the concept of Toro needing a “flame transfusion” after being severely hurt, which is very terrific, and which seems to be a convoluted way for Carl Burgos to canonically establish that Toro’s powers are a little weaker than the Torch’s? For some reason? It’ll be interesting to see if this is ever referenced again, frankly.

    ADDENDUM: forgot to mention the Hag’s sweet calling card:

    ADDENDUM II: Toro’s reduced fire-power actually came up in the subsequent issue, so I’m going to go ahead and try to note every issue it came up in right here:

    Marvel Mystery Comics v1 019
    Marvel Mystery Comics v1 020
    Human Torch v1 004