The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: robot

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 467: DRAGO

    (Amazing-Man Comics 011, 1940)

    On the surface Drago seems to merely be a guy who looks like an evil cat and shoots his henchmen rather than paying them (not only a nightmare for HR but a bad financial decision as you’ll be spending more in headhunting and training new goons than you will save in salaries), and that’s just what he is. There are no hidden depths. He kidnaps world-class scientists and sells them to the Axis-equivalent belligerent governments of the far-off year of 1971.

    But though one-dimensional villain he may be, Drago has a lot of accessories. For instance, his henchmen are either drawn from or organized into a secret society named the Devils Cult, seemingly to promote fanatical loyalty (and this is perhaps why he can get away with bumping them off willy-nilly). Naming a group of henchmen? Why, that’s one of the keys to my heart, Drago.

    Other accessories include:

    Robot guards with charmingly doofy faces!

    A deathtrap that was demonstrably not custom-made to kill the Iron Skull because it commits the cardinal sin of allowing him to smash the spiked parts with his head before they kill him.

    And a dead man’s switch time bomb just in case one of his treacherous over- or underlings manages to bump him off (which is in fact what happens – his employers do unto him as he does to his own henchmen). 

    Drago: unmourned, unloved, well accessorized.

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO 049: FLEXO THE RUBBER MAN

    (Mystic Comics v1 001, 1940)

    It’s Flexo the Rubber Man! A rubber robot filled with some sort of gas created and remote controlled by scientist brothers Joel and Joshua Williams! Flexo can make huge gas-filled jumps and bound across the cityscape!

    Flexo can stretch!

    Flexo can squeeze through tight spaces and absorb small arms fire without harm! He can also expel his gas to subdue his foes! Truly Flexo is a marvel of the age!

    Flexo is also the recipient of a major retcon: recent stories have revised his origin such that the Williams brothers found a Venom-style symbiote and built a robotlike organism out of it. This is cool! Marvel’s frequent revisions to their own history are an interesting contrast to the DC Comics reboot style of doing things in which current comics have no retroactive effect. The only real downside to the Marvel approach is in online spaces, as fan-run wikis absorb retcons like Ancient Egyptian dynasties – actual information on the contents of old comics is metaphorically torn down and replaced by the sun-god of the retcon it can frequently be hard to find information on old comics that does not incorporate the retcons in a misleading way.

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO 049: FLEXO THE RUBBER MAN

    (Mystic Comics v1 001, 1940)

    It’s Flexo the Rubber Man! A rubber robot filled with some sort of gas created and remote controlled by scientist brothers Joel and Joshua Williams! Flexo can make huge gas-filled jumps and bound across the cityscape!

    Flexo can stretch!

    Flexo can squeeze through tight spaces and absorb small arms fire without harm! He can also expel his gas to subdue his foes! Truly Flexo is a marvel of the age!

    Flexo is also the recipient of a major retcon: recent stories have revised his origin such that the Williams brothers found a Venom-style symbiote and built a robotlike organism out of it. This is cool! Marvel’s frequent revisions to their own history are an interesting contrast to the DC Comics reboot style of doing things in which current comics have no retroactive effect. The only real downside to the Marvel approach is in online spaces, as fan-run wikis absorb retcons like Ancient Egyptian dynasties – actual information on the contents of old comics is metaphorically torn down and replaced by the sun-god of the retcon it can frequently be hard to find information on old comics that does not incorporate the retcons in a misleading way.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 402: THE BLACK KNIGHT

    (More Fun Comics 073, 1941)

    As our tale begins, a figure in black knight’s armour roams New York City, destroying statuary seemingly at random.

    Johnny Quick soon gets involved and ferrets out a link between the destroyed pieces: they all once belonged to a man implausibly named Black Knight, who went bankrupt and was forced to sell them. The statues turned out to be worth a great deal more than Knight paid for them and the prevailing theory is that he has returned for revenge.

    In actual fact it was the art dealer, Sam Kirby, who was behind the attacks. He had swindled not only Black Knight but his customers as well, by selling them fakes, and was now trying to cover up this fact via what turns out to be a remote-controlled automaton. 

    QUESTIONS NOT ANSWERED IN THE TEXT:

    Was the guy’s name really Black Knight? The Golden Age Comics Style Guide usually recommended signposting nicknames quite heavily and since he wasn’t referred to as “Black” Knight we just have to assume that one or both of his parents were real pranksters.

    What was Sam Kirby’s deal? As presented, he didn’t fleece Knight so much as not retroactively compensate him once the real value of the statues came out. But why did he sell the collectors counterfeits? Why destroy the counterfeits and keep the originals? Did he just want to own the real ones or was he planning to sell them a second time? Why go to all of this trouble? And speaking of that…

    What’s with the robot? I tend to go on about villains using technology that could make them a large fortune in order to acquire a small fortune but this is really egregious. I’m not even going to look up how much you could get for a really good statue before saying that a bipedal remote-controlled robot with full human articulation is orders of magnitude more valuable to industry. Mining! Manufacturing! Hazardous materials handling! The applications are endless!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 221: PROFESSOR KYLL/ MINOR SUPER-HERO 023: TRIX

    (Doc Savage Comics v1 004, 1941)

    Professor Kyll is your regular-style scientist who develops a working humanoid robot and immediately starts thinking in terms of world conquest. My eyes might have glazed over and completely missed him if not for the fact that in the very same town was another scientist, a benevolent one, working on a humanoid robot made of rubber!

    Now, Flexo the Rubber Man has not come up on this here blog yet because I’ve fallen behind on my Golden Age Marvel reading but know ye this: I love me a weird rubber robot and am absolutely thrilled that there are two of them, even if poor Trix here never made a second appearance as far as I can tell. It’s enough that they existed and beat the tar out of Kyll’s metal guy.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 221: PROFESSOR KYLL/ MINOR SUPER-HERO 023: TRIX

    (Doc Savage Comics v1 004, 1941)

    Professor Kyll is your regular-style scientist who develops a working humanoid robot and immediately starts thinking in terms of world conquest. My eyes might have glazed over and completely missed him if not for the fact that in the very same town was another scientist, a benevolent one, working on a humanoid robot made of rubber!

    Now, Flexo the Rubber Man has not come up on this here blog yet because I’ve fallen behind on my Golden Age Marvel reading but know ye this: I love me a weird rubber robot and am absolutely thrilled that there are two of them, even if poor Trix here never made a second appearance as far as I can tell. It’s enough that they existed and beat the tar out of Kyll’s metal guy.