The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: cult

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 284: KAI-MAK, THE SHARK-GOD

    (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 023, 1941)

    Kai-Mak here (AKA God of Sharks, Lord of Sharks, Lord of the Deep, Master of the Deep, the Man-Shark) is one of my very favourite things in comics: a weird monster pretending to be a god in order to score power or riches or, as in this case, snacks.

    I’m so fond of this trope, in fact, that I have to make sure to frontload the acknowledgement that it is predicated on the idea that a lot of the varied people in the world are credulous primitive savages with no critical thinking skills or I’ll focus too much on the monster and gloss over the racism. Someday we’ll get to M’nagalah the Cancer God, who at least has the decency to manifest in small mining towns and suburbs.

    That having been said, we must acknowledge how great both Kai-Mak and his high priest look. Jack Kirby’s finest shark-based work, I reckon. Just look at his nose and his greasy hair!

    The Vision shouts a bunch of guesses at what Kai-Mak is that are neither confirmed or denied – he could be right and Kai-Mak could be the last remnant of a race of sharkfolk, sure. He could also be a mutant, an Inhuman, a Deviant, some sort of alien or science experiment or heck, a demi-god spawned by Poseidon in a moment of weakness. Rather than spell out his origin, Kai-Mak opts for a no-holds-barred underwater deathmatch.

    After a cool battle under the waves, Kai-Mak is killed and both his worshippers and a selection of human sacrifices are free to go.

    Now, if there’s one thing that any super-hero universe is simply crawling with, it’s humanoid sharks. On a strict market saturation metric there’s no logical reason to campaign for the return of Kai-Mak. Too bad for Adam Smith that I think the free market sucks eggs: BRING BACK the Shark-God! There’s always room for another giant shark-man! Particularly one who’s been nursing his wounds at the bottom of the ocean for 80 years and is after a new community to subjugate. Have him pop up in New England, Deep One style! The old fish-for-sacrifice trade! It literally can’t go wrong!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 284: KAI-MAK, THE SHARK-GOD

    (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 023, 1941)

    Kai-Mak here (AKA God of Sharks, Lord of Sharks, Lord of the Deep, Master of the Deep, the Man-Shark) is one of my very favourite things in comics: a weird monster pretending to be a god in order to score power or riches or, as in this case, snacks.

    I’m so fond of this trope, in fact, that I have to make sure to frontload the acknowledgement that it is predicated on the idea that a lot of the varied people in the world are credulous primitive savages with no critical thinking skills or I’ll focus too much on the monster and gloss over the racism. Someday we’ll get to M’nagalah the Cancer God, who at least has the decency to manifest in small mining towns and suburbs.

    That having been said, we must acknowledge how great both Kai-Mak and his high priest look. Jack Kirby’s finest shark-based work, I reckon. Just look at his nose and his greasy hair!

    The Vision shouts a bunch of guesses at what Kai-Mak is that are neither confirmed or denied – he could be right and Kai-Mak could be the last remnant of a race of sharkfolk, sure. He could also be a mutant, an Inhuman, a Deviant, some sort of alien or science experiment or heck, a demi-god spawned by Poseidon in a moment of weakness. Rather than spell out his origin, Kai-Mak opts for a no-holds-barred underwater deathmatch.

    After a cool battle under the waves, Kai-Mak is killed and both his worshippers and a selection of human sacrifices are free to go.

    Now, if there’s one thing that any super-hero universe is simply crawling with, it’s humanoid sharks. On a strict market saturation metric there’s no logical reason to campaign for the return of Kai-Mak. Too bad for Adam Smith that I think the free market sucks eggs: BRING BACK the Shark-God! There’s always room for another giant shark-man! Particularly one who’s been nursing his wounds at the bottom of the ocean for 80 years and is after a new community to subjugate. Have him pop up in New England, Deep One style! The old fish-for-sacrifice trade! It literally can’t go wrong!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 232: THE THOUGHT TERROR

    (Flash Comics v1 004, 1940)

    I have complicated feelings about the Thought Terror! He has both good and bad traits! 

    Off the bat, the basics. His costume choice is pretty entry level for the Golden Age, but suitable for a guy who employs eye-based super-powers (which he does) and wants to project a certain aura of fear. 

    His name, by contrast, is both unusual and bad, and made all the worse for the fact that it’s almost good. Terror is usually a decent word to use in a name but it just doesn’t have the gravitas to work with a mealy word like Thought. The Thought Tyrant, the Thought Titan, the Thinking Terror… there had to be a better name.

    But maybe a poorly thought-out name is appropriate for this guy, because he’s not a very good planner in general. See, he has these amazing hypnotic powers, and he uses them to convince a little cult of people that he has amazing precognitive powers. He tells fortunes at a hundred bucks a pop and then fulfils them by planting hypnotic suggestions in his subjects’ minds, causing them to act out his predictions.

    Ordinarily, I’d be cheering for this guy – the thing that thinking a lot about super-villains does is give you a lot of opinions about how they should all just stick to easy small-scale scores and that’s what this is – but TT must be getting bored, because he’s making predictions like “you’re going to get drunk and wander into traffic,” and if you’re running a cult complete with costumed goons in New York City in a SUPER-HERO UNIVERSE the thing you absolutely do not want to do is draw attention to yourself by, for instance, killing someone.

    (this does of course happen – Hawkman shows up and ruins the whole operation, including the Thought Terror’s mind)

    One point in the Thought Terror’s favour is his use of costumed goons, in this case dressed just like him and given a dose of hypnotic mind-over-matter treatment such that they are physical powerhouses. Always a great choice, costumed goons. Plus they’re called the Mesmerized Men, a great name!

    Wildly, Thought Terror (without the “the”, not that it improves the name) was brought back in the year of our Lord 2005 along with several other Golden and Silver Age Hawkman foes (Thought Terror specifically in Hawkman v4 039). He’s just kind of a super-torturer, though, and he just kind of disappears halfway through the issue. I guess that’s about as good as he could hope to get.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 152: NYOLA

    (All-Star Comics 002, 1940)

    Nyola is an Aztec priestess of Yum-Chac, the god of rain. As you might expect, the indigenous religions of the Americas are treated with utmost dignity and she is not portrayed as a fanatic who, for example, would kidnap a woman for human sacrifice based on tangential offense done to her faith. Also, Hawkman doesn’t then follow her back to Mexico and bring the might of the authorities down on an indigenous religious group that is, yes, killing people but still doesn’t quite seem like the right call. Or wouldn’t if he had. Which he didn’t.

    Despite her seeming death at the end of her first appearance she later shows up in the Roy Thomas version of the Monster Society of Evil in All-Star Squadron with actual powers! Guess Yum-Chac is on the list of legit deities in the DCU!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 035: THE CULT OF THE TIGER

    (Action v1 017-018, 1939)

    There’s a lot of ancient murder-cults in comics, and a lot of them are orientalist nonsense about primitive superstitions and such. I present this one (duped into doing the bidding of a couple of no-good brothers) solely because of the magnificent crotch-throne.