The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: super-villain teamup

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 939: THE BLACK PHARAOH

    (Silver Streak Comics 014, 1941)

    After his initial defeat at the hands of Thun-Dohr, the villainous Sin Khaii is on the lookout for an ally in his war on humanity and he finds one in the pages of a tome called the Book of the Dead, and presumably it’s the Egyptian Book of the Dead because the candidate he lines up is called the Black Pharaoh, the only Pharaoh evil enough that he was cursed and sealed up in a pyramid to think about what he had done for all time. The only way he would be able to go free is if a) the pyramid moves, which will free the Pharaoh’s servant Tut-Mut, who b) must then find new guys to take the place of the Black Pharaoh and his cronies. All of this stands as a real lesson for those inclined to mete out mystic justice: if you’re going to seal away evil or otherwise prevent awfulness from getting everywhere and your work can only be undone by a very specific set of circumstances, don’t write those circumstances down anywhere.

    As usual, I attempted to figure out just who if anyone the Black Pharaoh is supposed to be, with the only real clue being that he was buried in “the oldest pyramid in Egypt,” and while there are a few contenders for that title due to the gradual development of pyramid technology, the oldest pyramid-shaped pyramid like the depicted in the story seems to be the Red Pyramid near Cairo. What does this tell us? Only that the Black Pharaoh was interred some time after 2563 BC, alas.

    Sin Khaii isn’t one to be deterred by any Ancient Egyptian mystics. He uses his dark majicks to transport the pyramid to the former site of the New York World’s Fair and then deploys a bug from the criminally-underutilized Pandora’s Box to infect passersby with Curiosity so that they will enter the structure and fall prey to Tut-Mut.

    The innocent people of Queens need not fear, however, for Thun-Dohr and his mentor the Dalai Lama (not that one) are on the case. Thun-Dohr ambushes the Black Pharaoh’s servants as they ransack a museum, only to be captured via some pretty cool shadow magic.

    Finally, the Black Pharaoh and Sin Khaii get down to business and formulate a plan: they are going to recreate Ancient Egypt on a grand scale by smothering the entire United States in a layer of sand. This is why the Pharaoh’s men are looting museums, to get all of their boss’ stuff back before it is buried forever.

    (the duo’s apocalyptic sandstorm is shown blowing across the Atlantic from Egypt, and there’s a part of me that wants to get really pedantic about the relative sizes of the two countries and point out just how thin the available sand would be spread, but we are dealing with magic after all. Presumably the sand would be multiplied somehow? I’m much more concerned about the state that Egypt was left in – just how much of that sand was load-bearing?) 

    If there’s one thing about shadow magic, it’s that you need shadows to use it, and the Dalai Lama deals with that by blowing out the candle that was supplying the particular shadows keeping Thun-Dohr bound. Thun-Dohr disrupts the ritual – is the sand just hovering somewhere in the mid-Atlantic? This has to be the kind of thing that inspires conspiracy theories in a comic book universe, particularly in the kind where super-heroic stuff isn’t front page news.

    Thun-Dohr and the Black Pharaoh engage in Thrilling Astral Combat (I think. Whenever two people are battling on a cloud I assume that this is shorthand for their astral forms duking it out in the Aetherial Realms, but in this case it’s possible that they have merely chosen the clouds as their battlefield for some unexplained reason) with Our Hero emerging victorious and the villainous Pharaoh at the bottom of the ocean, weighed down by his sins. After that it is a simple matter for Thun-Dohr and his mentor to restore the pyramid and sand to Egypt.

    As always, it’s kind of disappointing when an ancient evil that was sealed away for untold eons is dispatched with relative ease in the present day. After all, why go to all the trouble with the curse of eternal slumber if you could just murder the guy in the first place? I suppose the fact that the Black Pharaoh was royalty might have played into it somehow, though on the other hand “being murdered” has to be the most expected way to die for a historical royal. Give me more formidable primordial evils!

    Categorized in: Colour (Black), Origin (Resurrected Mummy), Royalty (Pharaoh)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 898: THE DEATH BATTALION

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 898: THE DEATH BATTALION

    (America’s Greatest Comics 001, 1941)

    Like Mr Skeleton before them (and possibly because I first encountered them both in the same comic), the Death Battalion is one of those super-villain concepts that really lodged itself in my brain and which I am glad to have finally appear here. Unfortunately, unlike Mr Skeleton, the Death Battalion isn’t quite as great as I’d remembered. For one thing, I’d long thought that they were a Mr Scarlet revenge squad, but despite the fact that he put them all in jail, they seem to bear him very little ill will. Comparatively.

    Instead, the six members of the Death Battalion are broken out of jail by a seventh fellow, the Brain, and enlisted into his plot to take over the US. Note the Nazi-ness of the Brain’s operation, but also that there is no real connection to the Nazi Party. Instead, the Brain and his Death Battalion appear to be independent Nazis, like your neo-Nazis and so forth will be later on. If it were just a few months later they’d be heiling Hitler, but as it stands we’re dealing with locally sourced indie hipster Nazis.

    Like I said, this isn’t a Mr Scarlet revenge squad – these just happened to be the six highest profile villains available to be broken out of El Catraz Penitentiary. But just what do they bring to the table?

    the Black Clown: Former circus owner. Murderer and bank robber. Circus connections.

    the Black Thorn: Fifth columnist. Murderer. Packs a mummy ray.

    Doctor Death: Former concert pianist. Murderer. Poisons.

    the Ghost: Former charity president. Embezzler. Sheet ghost costume.

    the Horned Hood: Academic. Jewel thief. No special equipment.

    the Laughing Skull: Former banker. Extortionist and murderer. Access to stone-cutting tools and shovels.

    A motley crew indeed. There’s a pretty wide range of skills and success levels on display here – like I said, the Brain seems to have prioritized breaking out the flashiest crooks over the most competent ones.

    The Brain’s plan is simple: murder six key men, thus setting in motion a destabilization of the US government that will allow the Death Battalion to swoop in and conquer the country. Let’s see how that goes. 

    Senator Hiram Dean: 

    Spoilers, but I must lead with the fact that Doctor Death is the only one of the six to successfully kill his target. Specifically, he appears to scare him to death? Regardless of how it was done, this is the event that puts Mr Scarlet onto the Death Battalion’s trail.

    Kudsen: 

    Kudson, head of a government defense program, comes very close to being killed by the Black Clown’s gorilla due to his refusal to turn around and see if the enormous gorilla-shaped shadow that is advancing on him might indicate some sort of danger. It’s only his dumb luck that his assistant is the one who gets aped first, and that Mr Scarlet shows up in time to prevent any further aping.

    FBI Chief Doover: 

    The Ghost is one the real odd men out in the Death Battalion. Consider that he was an embezzler whose main strength was the large group of men in spooky costumes in his employ and ask yourself just what chance he might have at assassinating the head of the FBI. It’s only due to Chief Doover’s nonexistent security that he almost manages to plant a knife in his back and only due to Pinky the Whiz Kid that he fails to do so.

    Secretary of State Simpson:

    The Black Thorn on the other hand, is quite a good choice when it comes to murder, particularly as he has somehow gotten his hands on another mummy ray. He comes pretty close to getting the Secretary of State but spends a bit too much time mummifying random committee members before Mr Scarlet turns up.

    General Dodd:

    The Horned Hood manages to screw up a simple murder while armed with a light machine gun from about ten feet away. This is absolutely on-brand for him as the biggest screw-up in the whole Battalion. The Hood’s presence on this team is proof of some sort of super-villain corollary to the Peter Principle.  

    Dollar-a-Year Man Phillips:

    Finally, the Laughing Skull is sent to kill dollar-a-year man Phillips, which leads to the question: what is a dollar-a-year man? Turns out that the term describes a wealthy person who takes a nominal salary in order to be counted as an employee while essentially doing government work for free, and Phillips is one of them. Lucky for him, the Laughing Skull insists that live burial is the only acceptable way to murder someone, which gives Mr Scarlet and Pinky enough time to show up and save the day.

    But what about the brain himself? What’s his deal? Well, aside from being the leader of the whole enterprise, the Brain has precisely two things going on: he has a weird mesh bubble helmet that makes the head inside look enormous, and he “deals in poisons,” which means that he tries to kill Mr Scarlet by dangling a tarantula at him on a stick in a display that is hilariously ineffectual looking even if you, like the creators of this comic, are working from the incorrect belief that the tarantula is massively venomous.

    Having foiled all of the Death Battalion’s attempted murders (but for that one), Mr Scarlet and Pinky make their way back to the group’s HQ by employing a little subterfuge and then beat all five of them (the Horned Hood and Laughing Skull already being in custody) to a pulp. And just who does the Brain turn out to be? Why, none other than ex-Warden Loomis, who so prominently retired after six costumed criminals escaped from his prison. Presumably he now gets to revisit his old workplace!

    The Death Battalion never needs to return, unless perhaps a flashback story needs a team of Nazi super-villains in it to be stomped, but as always I must whoop and cheer for the concept of a bunch of low-grade villains teaming up like this. It’s just fun!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 766: COMRADE RATSKI

    (Speed Comics 009, 1940)

    Comrade Ratski’s first appearance is fairly undistinguished as far as comic book spymasters go. Sent to subvert US war preparations, Ratski targets an airplane factory operating out of Hollywood, California (for some damn reason) and sensibly decides to do so under the guise of a war movie shoot next door, though at the point that you have all of the equipment required for such an attack in place, why bother going through with the “we’re just filming a movie” deception? For the love of the game, of course.

    Ratski’s major distinguishing feature in this appearance is the fact that he is a pseudo-Soviet rather than the usual pseudo-Nazis who are the mainstay of the spy plot at this time. 

    Shock Gibson of course does not like all of this factory bombing, and Comrade Ratski, like Baron von Kampf before him, ends up stranded in the middle of the ocean. And he’s even more pessimistic about his chances at rescue!

    Ratski returns in Speed Comics 010 and immediately starts to collect top scientists from top universities: Dr Bronson from Yarvard, Prof Capchek from Rinceton, and… somebody from Hale. His goal? Force them to invent at gunpoint so that he can use their creations to destroy America

    Dr Bronson creates an earthquake machine which Ratski uses to attack democratic hub Western City. Ratski then makes the bizarre decision to send his men out to loot and plunder in the chaos, which is how Shock Gibson learns the location of Ratski’s base after using the tried-and-true method of capturing a henchman and threatening to kill them unless they talk.

    But even if Gibson hadn’t done so, Ratski just can’t stop signposting his location: after Prof Capchek develops an arthropod-enlarging serum Ratski just starts releasing giant beetles and flies from his front door in a way that I would call “highly visible.”

    Though Gibson does fight his way through various flies and spiders to make his way to Ratski’s mountain fastness, the Comrade’s ultimate undoing comes at the jaws of a freshly enlarged (and adorable!) cockroach with no sense of loyalty. He survives the encounter, but only with the help of a very ambitious mountain lion.

    Shock Gibson rescues Capchek and some guy we’ve never seen before, possibly the Hale man. Bronson is unaccounted for.

    Like Baron von Kampf before him, Comrade Ratski’s final appearance is in Speed Comics 011 when the two team up in a version of the Soviet/Nazi manouvres in Poland and Eastern Europe, though I don’t know quite enough about contemporary opinions on WWII to say if the fact that Ratski is clearly just exploiting von Kampf for cheap labour courtesy of his Zombie minions is further extrapolation of this relationship or just the writer favouring one villain over the other as the real heel.

    For an epic team-up between two men sworn to conquer and/or destroy the United States of America, the stakes on the Ratski/von Kampf plan are pretty minimal – essentially it’s just some run-of-the-mill piracy, only done by one-eyed green guys made of animal parts and flying a dirigible.

    More than anything this issue is an exercise in making the zombies look cool while also making Shock Gibson look cool: the Zombies are parachuting! The Zombies are firing a machine gun! Shock Gibson is posing on top of a whale! Shock Gibson is protecting the whale!

    Zombies in keen gas masks wielding cool gas guns! Zombies setting up a guillotine! Shock Gibson looking smug as hell while the guillotine blade smashes on his neck!

    After the guillotine fails to do its job, things go very wrong for Comrade Ratski and Baron von Kampf, culminating in the destruction of their base, the foiling of their plans and they themselves becoming a meal for at least nine alligators. Who presumably represent the Allied Forces.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 552 UPDATE: BARON VON KAMPF (1940)

    Making his triumphant return to comics, the dome-headed goblin of crime: Baron von Kampf!

    Baron von Kampf’s initial return in Speed Comics 004 involves him heading a sabotage ring for an unnamed European nation that is probably meant to be Nazi Germany, and it’s possible that this is a relationship that were were meant to understand was behind his actions all along, but frankly it seems to me to be beneath him.

    The Baron’s schemes on behalf of his fascist overlords bring him to a secret submarine base, which is how he ends up stranded in the middle of the Atlantic after a final confrontation with Shock Gibson. Will he survive?

    Indeed he will, and does! The Baron returns in Speed Comics 006, and I could not tell you if he’s still working for the fascists or if he just likes a uniform. The Baron spends much of this issue employing the services of a bunch of crooks called the Palooka Gang to hijack trucks, and though he claims that this is in aid of a larger world conquest scheme I’d be tempted to call it a bit low-rent as far as super-villainy is concerned. Fortunately for his reputation, he still knows how to accessorize, and his headquarters (Mammoth Cave, Kentucky) and minions (the Zombies, making their long-awaited reappearance) really save the day.

    How can I complain about truck hijacking when they’re being done with such style?

    The coolness of living in a cave, of course, is offset by the ever-present threat of being crushed to death in a cave-in, and doubly so when you’re doing battle with a guy like Shock Gibson on the regular. Baron von Kampf manages to sneak out a side passage, but the Palooka Gang and this batch of Zombies are all toast, and the Harvey Comics version of Mammoth Cave is certainly the worse for wear.

    Baron von Kampf’s final appearance is in Speed Comics 011, in which he teams up with pseudo-Soviet spy and future entry Comrade Ratski, in what is probably a reference to the then-ongoing Soviet-Nazi nonaggression pact. What is certain about this alliance, however, is that Comrade Ratski is in charge – he seems to have taken von Kampf on as a partner mainly because he wants to use the Zombies as henchmen.

    Speaking of the Zombies, this is their final appearance, and while that is disappointing there is a silver lining, as we get a final bit of lore about the top band of henchcreatures of the 1940s: they can speak, and they speak in backward sentences. Fun!

    Like I said the scheme in this comic is basically all down to Comrade Ratski so we’ll cover it in his entry, but suffice to say it does not go well once Shock Gibson gets wind. Ratski and von Kampf make their escape into the depths of the Florida Everglades and end up as alligator chow.

  • SUPER-VILLAIN YEARBOOK: IAN KARKULL & WOTAN 1941

    What were Ian Karkull and Wotan up to in 1941?

    Ian Karkull is my Platonic Ideal of the Median Super-Villain: he has two
    Golden Age appearances (detailed here) and a handful of post-Silver Age
    ones but also was seemingly pulled out of a hat (probably by Roy Thomas) as the villain who did some sort of scheme that blasted the Justice Society with some sort of energies that made them age slower so that otherwise normal WWII veterans like Wildcat and the Sandman could be running around fighting crime well past retirement age. It’s a Big Deal and it means that Karkull has absolutely been mentioned far more than he’s actually appeared.

    1. More Fun Comics 069, ‘Untitled’:But we’re here to talk about 1941! What was Ian Karkull up to then? Well for one thing he wasn’t calling himself ‘Ian’ yet – that was presumably added at the same time that he was revived to irradiate the JSA. Karkull was seemingly just another scientist with a cool invention – a machine that turns people into shadows! – that he is determined to use for crime.

    Surprise of the year: Karkull has if not a good reason for turning to crime then at least a reason. While exploring the lost Saharan city of Ragnor with his partner Everett Dahlen he is betrayed and left for dead so that Dahlen could run off with a huge ruby. Is it the most rock-solid reason to turn to a life of crime? No, but it’s more of an origin than most Golden Age scientists get.

    Karkull’s first outing ends with him at large, albeit trapped in shadow form by Dr Fate as a sort of ad hoc punishment that is fairly out of line with his crimes of one murder and one bank robbery. That’s the Golden Age for you, I guess.

    2. More Fun Comics 070, ‘Untitled’: Not only is Karkull back in the next issue but he brought Wotan with him!

    In a development that is only a bit surprising, Dr Fate’s slapdash brand of vigilante justice has come back to bite him. Yes, Wotan was sealed in a stony cyst for all time and Karkull was left an intangible shadow but the problem with leaving enough foes just out and about like that is that they might team up, which is exactly what happened when Wotan’s wandering astral form (something you really should control for when imprisoning magic guys for all time) met Karkull’s shadowy one and they worked together to release Wotan’s actual body, albeit without his normal green skin for some reason (the colourist forgot that he was green).

    The Wotan/ Karkull team have a plan to conquer and/or attack the nations of Earth from their Arctic base using devices that control 3/4 of the classical elements, namely Earth, Wind and Fire. They accidentally (?) draw Dr Fate’s attention by attacking nearby teams of Arctic explorers with their wind weapon, leading to an ultimate 2 vs 1 confrontation in an Arctic dome!

    In a bit of an anticlimax, Dr Fate merely sidesteps their fire weapon, causing it to rebound and kill them both. Seemingly, at least – they’ll both be back when the continuity nerds start writing comics.

    IAN KARKULL

    Body Count: 6

    End-of-Year Status: Presumed Dead

    WOTAN

    Body Count:1905

    End-of-Year Status: Presumed Dead

    (Karkull kills his enemy; Wotan and Karkull jointly kill explorers; Wotan sinks battleship)