The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: giant monster

  • MONSTER, CRITTER AND CREATURE ROUND-UP 002

    It’s time for more monsters! And also critters and creatures!

    Prehistoric Gorilla:

    This carnivorous cave-dwelling ape lives in a hidden valley in Africa and has a pretty sweet deal going with the local pterodactyls, whereby they bring him things to eat and he seemingly doesn’t have to do anything. This arrangement does eventually backfire after the pterodactyls grab Kaänga’s mate Ann and the justifiably miffed jungle lord follows them and slays the gorilla. (Jungle Comics 017, 1941)

    A few bonus dinosaurs from the hidden valley: some generic carnosaurs, the aforementioned pterodactyls, and a mean aquatic sauropod.

    Creatures of Argus:

    When the wicked Sklar, tyrant of the planet Argus, attempts to invade the Earth of the far-off Year 1982, he sends these fairly cool flame-spewing robots to do his dirty work for him. While I always appreciate a good killer robot, these ones are especially satisfying because they conform to the proportions of the people of Argus and it’s always nice to see non-humans adhering to their own aesthetics rather than defaulting to ours. 

    Though the robots are smashed up by champion of the people Power Nelson in short order the risk of invasion remains, so he and his love interest/companion Zora head to Argus to settle things once and for all. During their time there, they are forced to take a detour that leads them through the through the Cave of Terror, a monster-haunted locale containing such beasts as…

    … the beefy, fire-breathing Dreaded Cave Monster! (smashed against a wall)

    The cephalopoid Creatures of the Quicksand! (deprived of their meal but otherwise unharmed)

    The extremely compelling giant rodentoid Saber Tooth Crawler! (punched out) (Prize Comics 006, 1940)

    Morg:

    Adventurer Planet Payson encounters this morg while investigating malfeasance on Mars, and manages to escape its clutches by merely making it sleepy rather than killing it. A true win for xeno-conservation! (Planet Comics 006, 1940)

    Pteridons:

    Analogous to our own woolly mammoths, these pteridons were once native to Pluto but now lie frozen beneath a layer of ice. Though a gang of crooks attempt to exploit these curiously adorable beasts by thawing them out and deploying them as rampaging engines of destruction, they are stopped by Buzz Crandall before things get too out of hand. (Planet Comics 006, 1940)

    Aqua-Scorpio:

    Despite the fact that people in the 40s thought that octopuses were inherently gross, menacing and deadly,  sometimes the comic book people felt the need to up the ante a bit and so we get things like the aqua-scorpio her, as encountered by oceanic adventurer Captain Gallant. I really like this guy’s head, especially the combination of the compound eyes and chinless beak, but the hooked tentacles might be overkill. (Super-Mystery Comics v1 005, 1940)

    Arena Monsters:

    The wicked ‘bdula Khan pits these three beasts against the Golden Knight seemingly purely for the love of being evil. Only one of them, the bat wing monster, gets anything approaching a name, but that doesn’t prevent it from being slain as easily as its companions generic dragon and land kelpie. (Fantastic Comics 006 1940)

    Bat-Serpent:

    The Rocket is confronted with and slays this bat-serpent while he is the captive of a group of Ape-Men, and it’s a good thing that he does so because it moves him out of the category of “prisoner” and into that of “potential leader.” I do feel a little bad for the bat-serpent here, though. Sure, the caption box says that it is a “blood seeking enemy of all animal and human life” but that face says “adorable puppy-cow” and that holds a lot of weight with me.

    As part of his ascent to chiefdom, the Rocket must venture into the Cave of Horrors and face the various horrors therein. He only gets to one of them before being interrupted, but it’s a good one, the fire-breathing, flashlight-headed rayoceros, which look like the kind of creature you’d find in an early Sixties comic set on Krypton. (Pep Comics 005, 1940)

  • MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 016

    Can’t keep ’em down for long, these guys.

    Look, breeding up a giant amoeba in order to use it to spread terror and conquer the world is one thing, but deliberately going out of your way to feed it “pretty girls” is some real twisted incel shit. It’s a wonder that Dr Jorgen here just ends up in jail and not in the belly vacuoles of his creation. (Science Comics 006, 1940)

    Dr Borgia is a weird creep who becomes… infatuated? obsessed? with Marga the Panther Woman during a period in which she is working at a circus in the US. Stung by her rejection of his creepy overtures, Borgia conspires with the owner of a rival circus to kill Marga by using the same technique that von Dorf used to give her the power of a panther to give a tiger the added power of a lion, thus making it too powerful fro her to defeat.

    (and how galling for the ghost of von Dorf to see that Borgia knows his secrets after dying in a fire he caused while trying to burn that very information)

    Marga is of course more than a match for even a tiger with the proportionate strength of a lion and proceeds to murder not only it but Borgia and his associate Randler. She also gets so fired up by this process that she acquires a kind of feral vampire-from-Buffy look that may not ever appear again.  (Science Comics 006, 1940)

    With a thesis like “I reckon that humans won’t do well when deprived of water,” Bulvo here isn’t exactly pushing the boundaries or even basics of science. It’s just as well that the Eagle ends up blowing him up as he tries to destroy NYC’s water supply, as he would have been eviscerated in court, not to mention the mad scientist trade shows. (Science Comics 008, 1940) 

    Like his nemesis Iron Vic, Dr Spagna here suffers from the fact that the sole story in which he appears is incomplete. What we do know about him is that he used to work with Vic’s benefactor Professor Carvel and possibly even on the very serum that Carvel used on the near-corpse that would become Iron Vic, but Spagna was too eager to share his findings and ended up being laughed out of scientific society. This is a common origin story for evil scientist types, but Spagna seems to have taken it harder than most and has been sowing murder and chaos throughout New York City even before the plot outlined in his letter to Vic above.

    Iron Vic manages to foil 2/3 of Spagna’s plot before the adventure is cut off, never to be resumed (as far as I can tell). Presumably, Vic prevented the bombing of Jefferson Square Garden and brought Spagna to justice somehow, but if that involved further hints or revelations about Vic’s past, we will seemingly never know. (Single Series 022, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 700: RADGIO

    (Planet Comics 003, 1940)

    We open on Spurt Hammond, the Planet-Flyer himself, intercepting an alarming series of images from the planet Mercury. Giants? Explosions? Girls!? What could it all mean?

    It turns out that the girl in question is Princess Zilla, erstwhile ruler of Mercury but recently deposed by her Prime Minister Radgio, who schemes to conquer the world using mutated Mercurians such as the previously-seen giant. Which I suppose strongly implies that Zilla was the ruler of only a part of Mercury – I’m so used to assuming that every sci-fi government is global in nature.

    Zilla and Hammond make their way to Radgio’s fortress and dispose of the unfortunate giant by means of an old reliable method, the portcullis. Move over, Rancor! Make way, two-headed dragon from Willow! there’s a new member of the “Killed by a Falling Portcullis” Club!

    It’s okay though: Radgio is done with boring old giants and has moved on to his ultimate creation, a huge six-armed robot. And unlike many so-called humans-turned-robots in 1940s comics, this isn’t merely a case of extreme mind control but, per the little x-ray cutaway, this poor Mercurian is being mutated into some sort of cybernetic organism with what are possibly horrible organic gears and everything.

    Spurt Hammond bursts in just before Radgio is able to release his creation from where it is shackled to the wall (either as part of the roboticization process or for display purposes, I cannot tell) and, as he believes in ironic punishments, pops the Mercurian into his own machine.

    Radgio is reduced to… somewhere between four inches and a foot in height. But even shrunken so, and nude, he almost manages to turn things back around by assuming voice control of the robot. Unfortunately for him, 1) he failed to make the robot ray gun-proof and it goes down with little effort on Hammond’s part and 2) a nearby rat also has a sense of ironic justice and chows down on his tender Prime Ministerial flesh. Mercury is saved!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 697: THE CREATURE

    (Planet Comics 002, 1940)

    Having defeated the evil Sarko, Flint Baker and his crew are ready to head home to accept their accolades as the as-fas-as-anyone-knows first humans to land on Mars, when word comes from Princess Viga that the city of Ru is facing yet another deadly threat. This time it’s a giant four-armed primate that attacks three times per year and hauls Martians away to an uncertain and terrifying fate. Will Flint Baker help them? Of course he will!

    It’s a daunting beast to be sure, and it compounds the danger by immediately grabbing Princess Vigo and Baker Expedition stowaway-turned-crewmember Mimi, but Flint proves the old adage true once more: no matter how big you are or how many arms you have, you’re not walking away from a rocket ship to the mouth.

    I suppose that the old saying was only partially accurate in this case, actually, because the monster does walk away from the scene, if only to die elsewhere. Baker and his crew must pursue on “rocket-propelled degravitation pods” (i.e., pogo sticks).

    Arriving at the monster’s location, Baker and his men find that it is indeed dead, but also that it was not some wild creature with a periodic appetite for Martians but the creation of a little green guy with a big head. The Creature! Which, yes, is almost certainly not what they call themself but “the creature” is basically the only thing that is used to identify them in the caption boxes so I’m going with it.

    Not only does the Creature reveal that they were the creator of the monster, but that the beast was in fact made out of the kidnapped Martians! And they’re making another one! Just how many Martians were being kidnapped, and for how long?

    (this is honestly a pretty great slow burn horror concept that was certainly out of the realm of 1940 comic book storytelling: people start disappearing, nobody knows how or where, and then after a couple of years someone sees a creature grabbing someone. And then every time it comes back, it’s a bit bigger or has another limb, etc. Ideally the reveal comes while the beast is still alive, via DNA sequencing or something like that)

    Honestly, the Creature is an amazing villain. A bombastic weirdo living in a cave and making a monster out of people? Terrific. But also, they are super strong and invulnerable to ray gun blasts that destroy everything around them. Who is this little creep and why are they living in a cave making monsters?

    Sadly, though the Creature might have been immune to ray gun technology they were still susceptible to a good old fashioned sock on the jaw. Flint and his compatriots leave the Creature behind to be blown up with the rest of the laboratory in the obligatory final explosion – a sad end for a terrific antagonist.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 697: THE CREATURE

    (Planet Comics 002, 1940)

    Having defeated the evil Sarko, Flint Baker and his crew are ready to head home to accept their accolades as the as-fas-as-anyone-knows first humans to land on Mars, when word comes from Princess Viga that the city of Ru is facing yet another deadly threat. This time it’s a giant four-armed primate that attacks three times per year and hauls Martians away to an uncertain and terrifying fate. Will Flint Baker help them? Of course he will!

    It’s a daunting beast to be sure, and it compounds the danger by immediately grabbing Princess Vigo and Baker Expedition stowaway-turned-crewmember Mimi, but Flint proves the old adage true once more: no matter how big you are or how many arms you have, you’re not walking away from a rocket ship to the mouth.

    I suppose that the old saying was only partially accurate in this case, actually, because the monster does walk away from the scene, if only to die elsewhere. Baker and his crew must pursue on “rocket-propelled degravitation pods” (i.e., pogo sticks).

    Arriving at the monster’s location, Baker and his men find that it is indeed dead, but also that it was not some wild creature with a periodic appetite for Martians but the creation of a little green guy with a big head. The Creature! Which, yes, is almost certainly not what they call themself but “the creature” is basically the only thing that is used to identify them in the caption boxes so I’m going with it.

    Not only does the Creature reveal that they were the creator of the monster, but that the beast was in fact made out of the kidnapped Martians! And they’re making another one! Just how many Martians were being kidnapped, and for how long?

    (this is honestly a pretty great slow burn horror concept that was certainly out of the realm of 1940 comic book storytelling: people start disappearing, nobody knows how or where, and then after a couple of years someone sees a creature grabbing someone. And then every time it comes back, it’s a bit bigger or has another limb, etc. Ideally the reveal comes while the beast is still alive, via DNA sequencing or something like that)

    Honestly, the Creature is an amazing villain. A bombastic weirdo living in a cave and making a monster out of people? Terrific. But also, they are super strong and invulnerable to ray gun blasts that destroy everything around them. Who is this little creep and why are they living in a cave making monsters?

    Sadly, though the Creature might have been immune to ray gun technology they were still susceptible to a good old fashioned sock on the jaw. Flint and his compatriots leave the Creature behind to be blown up with the rest of the laboratory in the obligatory final explosion – a sad end for a terrific antagonist.