The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: Woman in Red

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 822: THE TERROR

    (Thrilling Comics 003, 1940) 

    The Valery family have a problem: they are set to inherit a fortune from their deceased relative John Valery, but on the condition that they all live in the family estate, Valery Grange, for a full year, and danged if a mysterious character called the Terror hasn’t started bumping them off just as they were about to complete the terms of John’s will. Enter undercover police officer Peggy Allen, aka the Woman in Red, once again posing as a nurse. 

    Please note the final panel above in which the Terror appears on-panel with almost every remaining Valery, thus removing them from the suspect list. It’s a dirty thing to do to me, a person who like to try to solve a whodunnit.

    One of the few viable suspects, assuming that the Terror isn’t in cahoots with one of the Valerys, is the disappeared Horace Valery, but the Woman in Red finds his skeleton after chasing the Terror from the scene of the murder of Elton Valery into the unexplored depths of Valery Grange.

    The Woman in Red reveals her identity to Eleanor Valery (terrible infosec) and sets a trap that nets her one (1) the Terror, and wouldn’t you know it, he turns out to be Greeley Butler the family lawyer, who has been fiddling the Valery books to his own benefit and was killing off the family (extremely major crime) to cover for his embezzlement (not that bad, crime-wise). But where would mystery stories be if people didn’t see murder as a handy solution for their problems all the time, hey?

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 820: THE MYSTERY MAN

    (Thrilling Comics 002, 1940) 

    Metropolitan Hospital* is in trouble! A mysterious masked figure dubbed the Mystery Man** has been conducting a campaign of terror against the august institution that includes both seemingly random and seemingly targeted murders, the installation of a gang boss and his henchmen in one of the wards, and the theft of $100 000 worth of radium! It’s the perfect case for the Woman in Red to make her debut, as undercover police officer Peggy Allen is sent to the hospital as a nurse.

    * I was prepared to do my usual song and dance about how this comic was probably set in NYC but that there was no way to really be sure, but danged if I didn’t check and to my surprise there seems to be exactly one Metropolitan Hospital in the world. 

    ** And speaking of rare names, I was certain that we already had a Mystery Man on the books and that there would be all kinds of one shot Mystery Men in comics, like how there are dozens of guys named the Mask and the Masked Man and the Hood, but all we have now is Zoro the Mystery Man and all I can find otherwise is the time that Commissioner Gordon dressed up like a super-hero and called himself Mysteryman. Colour me surprised.

    The Mystery Man is ultimately undone by his radium-thieving ways, as the Woman in Red is able to track it down with a radiation detector and pull the old “coat the loot in a florescent chemical gag” to expose the person who had been handling it (the fact that she was initially able to find it by feeling “an odd burning sensation” through both its container and a reasonably thick wall may be a bad sign for everyone involved, however).

    The Mystery Man turns out to be Dr Billings, the Assistant Superintendent of the hospital, and all this murder and mayhem was just a very extreme attempt to get a promotion. This kind of works, because he kills Hospital Superintendent Thorndyke about halfway through the story, but he doesn’t manage to stick the landing and dies in a fiery car wreck while fleeing the scene.

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 055

    Some more super-folk for your delectation. 

    Doc Strange:

    Doc Strange (called “Dr Strange” for the first half dozen or so of his appearances, but why cause unnecessary confusion) is an almost prototypical scientist-hero: no real origin beyond being a well-known brilliant scientist who is primed and ready for adventure having just perfected Alosun, a “formula distilled from sun-atoms.” After taking his first dose of Alosun in his initial adventure, Strange has super-strength and invulnerability sufficient to take on an entire gang single-handed, and if he takes a supplemental dose he becomes exponentially more powerful.

    Doc’s sidekick Mike won’t be showing up until 1942, but in the meantime his fiance Virginia Thompson (as so often is the case, the woman he rescues during his first super-heroic adventure) acts as his adventuring companion/frequent kidnap victim in the meantime.

     

    In Thrilling Comics 007 Doc Strange mixes up a new formulation of Alosun that completes his powerset by allowing him to fly while under its effects. This is also the issue in which he stops fighting crime in suits and adopts his classic red t-shirt/blue jodhpurs/brown boots look. 

    Finally, I’ve noticed a lot of sites listing his name as “Hugo Strange” or “Thomas Hugo Strange” and while the Thomas is definitely an Alan Moore addition from Tom Strong I can only report that the Hugo has not yet appeared in the 1940 issues of Thrilling. (Thrilling Comics 001, 1940) 

    the Ghost:

    Young George Chance is orphaned in India and so is of course raised by yogis. He learns all of their magical secrets and is eventually sent out into the world to fight crime, as I assume all yogis are. I must say that it is something of a change of pace to see a magic-man come into his powers in India after such a long string of Tibetan origins.

    Like most magical heroes, the Ghost is a nigh-omnipotent force of nature who can be stopped only by a sneaky blow to the head, and even then only temporarily. His adventures are distinguished by the fact that his long-time foe is Professor Fenton, a scientist who has developed time travel technology, so the Ghost’s adventures are distinguished by the sheer variety of times and places he ends up.

    The Ghost takes his name from his early habit of painting his face (all the way to the back of his neck!) so as to resemble a skeleton while he is fighting crime. Sadly though the name sticks the look doesn’t. 

    In Thrilling Comics 008, the Ghost travels back to Revolutionary America and meets a patriotic woman named Betty Morris who ends up coming back to the 20th Century with him as his companion/love interest. I keep seeing claims online that she is his wife, but strongly suspect that that is another swipe from Alan Moore’s version of the characters. (Thrilling Comics 003, 1940)

    the Lone Eagle: 

    Another classic example of a pilot-hero-with-a-cool-name and not much else going on. The Lone Eagle does seem to have been a World War I veteran, which I always like to note. (Thrilling Comics 003, 1940)

    the Woman in Red: 

    The Woman in Red (an extremely good name) has what just might be the simplest origin story in comics: she is really Peggy Allen, undercover police officer, and the Woman in Red disguise is her way of investigating crimes without blowing her cover if she is caught snooping around. See? Simple! 

    Woman in Red mysteries tend to be structured as whodunnit murder mysteries, which I obviously like, and so Peggy is also frequently wanted by her comic foil, the bumbling Inspector Cavanaugh, as a suspect because he sees her creeping around the crime scene and doesn’t have a lot of critical thinking skills. (Thrilling Comics 002, 1940)