The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: undead – ghost

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 507: THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN KIDD

    (Blue Bolt v1 008, 1941)

    The Sergeant Spook writers, having exhausted the storytelling possibilities inherent in an ultra-powerful ghost taking on mere mortals and having established that ghost-on-ghost violence is essentially consequence free are now trying a new angle: ghost crooks preying on mortals and Sergeant Spook bringing them to justice.

    This time, it’s the Ghost of Captain Kidd – like Jesse James before him, Kidd is compelled to return to the patterns of his life, and having obtained a ghost ship from somewhere he sets to looting mortal cargoes. Sergeant Spook of course does not stand for this and pursues in a ghost battleship crewed by John Paul Jones, Admiral Dewey and Sir Francis Drake, plus a lot of no-names.

    Captain Kid has a moment of triumph when it is revealed that he has somehow obtained and installed a ghost motor on his ghost ship (and it is here that I will note that I have absolutely no idea how any of these large objects become ghosts in the first place – are they all ghost ships in the traditional sense or are there different rules for ghost vehicles?) followed by the more entertaining revelation that none of his crew have any idea how to work an internal combustion engine and thus the ship ends up sailing in a circle. The forces of ghost law thus are able to catch up, Captain Kidd gets socked in the kisser and everyone goes home.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 507: THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN KIDD

    (Blue Bolt v1 008, 1941)

    The Sergeant Spook writers, having exhausted the storytelling possibilities inherent in an ultra-powerful ghost taking on mere mortals and having established that ghost-on-ghost violence is essentially consequence free are now trying a new angle: ghost crooks preying on mortals and Sergeant Spook bringing them to justice.

    This time, it’s the Ghost of Captain Kidd – like Jesse James before him, Kidd is compelled to return to the patterns of his life, and having obtained a ghost ship from somewhere he sets to looting mortal cargoes. Sergeant Spook of course does not stand for this and pursues in a ghost battleship crewed by John Paul Jones, Admiral Dewey and Sir Francis Drake, plus a lot of no-names.

    Captain Kid has a moment of triumph when it is revealed that he has somehow obtained and installed a ghost motor on his ghost ship (and it is here that I will note that I have absolutely no idea how any of these large objects become ghosts in the first place – are they all ghost ships in the traditional sense or are there different rules for ghost vehicles?) followed by the more entertaining revelation that none of his crew have any idea how to work an internal combustion engine and thus the ship ends up sailing in a circle. The forces of ghost law thus are able to catch up, Captain Kidd gets socked in the kisser and everyone goes home.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 506: THE GHOST OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

    (Blue Bolt v1 007, 1940)

    We have entered the era of Sergeant Spook battling villainous ghosts! It’s not quite as low stakes as Sergeant Spook just manhandling mortal crooks while they have no ability to affect him but since the worst that ghosts can do to each other in this fictional milieu is to knock one another out it’s still missing a bit of something.

    Still, the setting of Ghost Town is a fun one and we’re still getting lots of details about how it works and who exactly lives there. Firstly it seems that there is a suburb called Spirit Town and secondly Napoleon Bonaparte lives there and is attempting to conquer the entire ghostly realm for his own.

    Any time something happens in Ghost Town, famous dead people crawl out of the woodwork to lend a hand. In this case, Sergeant Spook’s army is first bolstered by the addition of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table and then the Duke of Wellington himself decides to offer his expertise in beating up Napoleons.

    Like I said, it’s a bit low stakes since everyone’s already dead and Sergeant Spook for example was only mildly inconveniencing his enemies rather than slaying them while he was laying about with a mace from ghost horseback (as always the rules of the Sergeant Spook afterlife elude me. Are these horses with unfinished business? Do all horses have restless spirits? Are they just accessories to human ghosts like clothing?). Napoleon himself is very chill about the whole thing and everyone is good friends by the end.

    Still, for all that this battle had all the consequence of a Civil War reenactment at its heart this comic was about the ghost of Napoleon Bonaparte raising up an army of the dead in an attempt to conquer the afterlife and that’s in fact a very sinister elevator pitch.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 503: THE GHOST OF JESSE JAMES

    (Blue Bolt v1 005, 1940) 

    Sergeant Spook, while a fun concept, had a problem as a super-hero: as an intangible, invisible ghost able to interact with the physical world he was possibly the most overpowered foe that a regular-style gangster or even your average super-villain could encounter. He was running the risk of becoming a bit boring just a few issues in, when the obvious solution presented itself: ghost crooks!

    Yes, Jesse James and his gang are back at it again, in ghost form! To be fair, Sergeant Spook doesn’t have much trouble rounding them up but at least it’s more of a fair fight – of note is the fact that James’ ghostly gun is able to stun but not kill other ghosts.

    Also of note is this interaction between Sergeant Spook and Robert Ford – Spook seems to hold to the popular notion that though James was a multiple murderer Ford was somehow worse because he had betrayed his pal. Even more interesting is the undercurrent of an idea that ghosts are condemned to act out the behaviours that they established in life, which is presumably why Jesse James is robbing trains of money he has no way to spend.

    And to answer any questions about how you punish a ghost: you haul him in front of Judge the Ghost of King Solomon,who mandates that he be placed in stocks presumably lined with the ghost-proof steel invented by the Ghost of Benjamin Franklin. Simplicity itself!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 503: THE GHOST OF JESSE JAMES

    (Blue Bolt v1 005, 1940) 

    Sergeant Spook, while a fun concept, had a problem as a super-hero: as an intangible, invisible ghost able to interact with the physical world he was possibly the most overpowered foe that a regular-style gangster or even your average super-villain could encounter. He was running the risk of becoming a bit boring just a few issues in, when the obvious solution presented itself: ghost crooks!

    Yes, Jesse James and his gang are back at it again, in ghost form! To be fair, Sergeant Spook doesn’t have much trouble rounding them up but at least it’s more of a fair fight – of note is the fact that James’ ghostly gun is able to stun but not kill other ghosts.

    Also of note is this interaction between Sergeant Spook and Robert Ford – Spook seems to hold to the popular notion that though James was a multiple murderer Ford was somehow worse because he had betrayed his pal. Even more interesting is the undercurrent of an idea that ghosts are condemned to act out the behaviours that they established in life, which is presumably why Jesse James is robbing trains of money he has no way to spend.

    And to answer any questions about how you punish a ghost: you haul him in front of Judge the Ghost of King Solomon,who mandates that he be placed in stocks presumably lined with the ghost-proof steel invented by the Ghost of Benjamin Franklin. Simplicity itself!

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 006

    MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 006

    Minor super-heroes need to be rounded up now and then.

    Blackstone the Magician: 

    There are a fair number of comic versions of real life people: movie cowboys by the dozen, big game tracker Clyde Beatty a couple of times, etc. Not too many of them quite cross over into the super-hero side of things, but here we have magician Harry Blackstone Sr, who absolutely did (Blackstone is also a great example of someone who was at one point wildly famous and has now receded far enough from the public consciousness that you might not have heard of him unless you’re really into the Dresden Files).

    Blackstone’s adventures fall more into the Action-Packed World Travel to Places Where Ethnics Live category of comics, with the gimmick that he uses stage magic to overcome various obstacles. But stage magic in a controlled environment using your own props and ad hoc stage magic using random items out in the world are different things, comic! (Super-Magic Comics 001, 1941)

    Black Fury:

    Rex King is an adventurer who spares the life of a panther in the jungles of Borneo because it has a white star marking on its throat. Later, that same panther saves Rex from a leopard attack and he takes this as a some grand life lesson about how animals can be full of humanity while men are bestial – long story short, he dresses up like something halfway between Black Condor and Wildcat and teams up with the panther (now named Kato) to beat up evil. (Super-Magic Comics 001, 1941)

    the Blue Bolt:

    Harvard University student Fred Parrish had the misfortune to be struck by lightning twice in the same storm, the second time while he was attempting to fly his light aircraft for help. Lucky for him, he crashed near the underground lair of Doctor Bertoff, a scientist looking for just such a lightning-charged person to experiment on and empower to fight in his ongoing war of Bertoff’s land of Deltos with the Green Sorceress and her kingdom of Voltor (later sumply “Bertoff’s Scientific City” vs “the Green Kingdom”).

    Blue Bolt was a willing conscript in this war, although he tempered Bertoff’s bloodthirstiness somewhat by seeking to reform the Green Sorceress rather than kill her outright, destroy her kingdom and salt the earth. This could be traced to a “don’t hit girls 1940s sense of fair play and also because he had the hots for her.

    Up to Blue Bolt v1 010 the Blue Bolt comic was written by Joe Simon and drawn by Jack Kirby and it was full of all kinds of crazy fun sci-fi malarky. Sadly, the instant they left to create Captain America it all went out the window and Blue Bolt became a regular-syle super-hero fighting Nazis on the boring old surface of the planet.

    For a few issues, Blue Bolt follows his kid brother Kip Parrish around as he serves with the RAF but this gets boring after a while and he heads back to the States. Once the US enters the war he ditches the costume entirely and seemingly forgets that he has super-powers and becomes a regular-style soldier with the unusual name Blue Bolt. Ho hum.

    This, by the way, is part of a pattern with the good folks at Novelty Press. They had it in their heads that their readers didn’t want stories that were “too fantastic” and this was reinforced by their letters page which every month featured missives from little killjoys asking for more boy inventors and fewer giant robots. I assume that these kids grew up to be the people hectoring DC every time Batman cracked a joke in the 60s and 70s and that their children form the vanguard of the “gritty realism” movement.

    Sergeant Spook:

    Sergeant Spook here started out as a cop already named Sergeant Spook in a clear case of nominative determinism. After blowing himself up with a carelessly placed pipe in perhaps the least dramatic origin of any of the surprisingly large number of dead police officers to return as undead super-heroes, he basically just carries on as normal. He’s intangible and invisible, per regular ghost rule, but can interact with the material world just fine. (Blue Bolt v1 001)

    Then, in Blue Bolt v1 006 Sergeant Spook meets legally-distinct-from-Sherlock-Holmes ghost detective Dr Sherlock, who informs him that not only is he not unique but that there is a large community of ghosts that he is flouting the rules of by for instance beating the tar out of gangsters who can neither see nor touch him. He relocates to Ghost Town and becomes the de facto troubleshooter of its President, George Washington until rounding up the ghosts of dead troublemakers begins to get stale, at which point Spook heads back to the mortal world to deal with human/ghost conflicts.

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 001

    Some minor super-heroes I only have a small amount to say about:

    the Wraith:

    The Wraith is a very similar concept to the Spectre: a murdered cop comes back to mete out justice. They even have the same white/ green colour scheme, only reversed. A few things about the Wraith that sets him apart: though he does have some general ghost powers his main trick is possession, he is limited to the hours between midnight and dawn, and he has weird gross arms. A major difference between him and the Spectre is that whereas the latter broke up with his fiance the minute he became a dead guy, the Wraith is all about the romantic possibilities of being a ghost, as seen in the second panel above where he seems to be erotically passing through a nude woman. (Mystery Men Comics 027-031, 1941-1942)

    Dr Hypno: 

    Dr Hypno, “psychologist, chemist, hypnotist and criminologist” develops a technique for temporarily placing his mind into an animal and lucky for him there’s always one handy when he sees a crime go.(Amazing-Man Comics 014-021, 1940-1941)

    Dash Dartwell, the Human Meteor:

    Like a surprising number of other Golden Age speedsters Dash Dartwell (who incidentally has the most on-the-nose name I have seen in a long time) gets his powers from his teacher, in this case one Dr Moss. Dartwell remains a student at “Dravrah University” so his adventures hew closer to those of a college sportsman with lots of unscrupulous gamblers attempting to influence the results of sporting events between Dravrah and their rival Elay. Also, Dartwell’s powers wear off pretty quickly so he’s constantly popping Metabo-Accelerater pills while he messes up college track statistics for everyone. (Amazing-Man Comics 021, 1941)

    Tommy the Amazing Kid:

    Amazing-Man already had a cool sidekick named Zona Henderson but I guess Robin or some other kid sidekick was a bit too popular because she was replaced with her younger brother Tommy, who was hiding under a couch when Aman got a power boost and was left with enhanced strength and the ability to fly. He’s a little wiener who says things like “jumpin’ jellybeans!” all the time. It’s a real downgrade. (Amazing-Man Comics 023-026, 1941-1942)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 384: DEEJA KATHOON

    (More Fun Comics 067, 1941)

    Deeja Kathoon is an occultist and necromancer who has the ability to summon and bind ghosts to his service and uses this power to unleash a ghostly crimewave on Cliffland, NJ. He has what turns out to be an Indian surname but there’s no indication in-story that he’s supposed to be Indian and so I must assume that it’s a coincidence and that my first guess was correct and his name was chosen by picking random syllables out of a hat.

    Ordinarily this would be the point at which I say “unfortunately, he chose to do his crimes in the Spectre’s home town,” but not this time, for you see the Spectre is a ghost. Kathoon binds him just like any other ghost and almost forces him to destroy the Cliffland City Hospital before the Ring of Life manages to deus ex machina him out of that particular jam.

    One thing that goes unexplored and unexplained in the story is the zippy little rocket ship that Kathoon tries to escape in once the Spectre is free. In the absence of any hint or eleventh hour reveal that he is an alien or magical time traveller I must assume that it is a magic rocket ship, which is great. More magic rocket ships are what we need, in my humble opinion.

    It’s just possible that being forced to do Kathoon’s bidding rattled the Spectre, or at least convinced him that the guy was a legitimate threat, because not only does he kill him via rocket ship explosion, he then hunts down and kills his ghost. This is, yes, a step more extreme than 1939 Batman gunning down the odd monster, but then again this is the Spectre. He has a reputation for brutality for a reason.

    In conclusion, this little cloud guy that Kathoon made to intimidate the Spectre is the sensational character find of 1941.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 384: DEEJA KATHOON

    (More Fun Comics 067, 1941)

    Deeja Kathoon is an occultist and necromancer who has the ability to summon and bind ghosts to his service and uses this power to unleash a ghostly crimewave on Cliffland, NJ. He has what turns out to be an Indian surname but there’s no indication in-story that he’s supposed to be Indian and so I must assume that it’s a coincidence and that my first guess was correct and his name was chosen by picking random syllables out of a hat.

    Ordinarily this would be the point at which I say “unfortunately, he chose to do his crimes in the Spectre’s home town,” but not this time, for you see the Spectre is a ghost. Kathoon binds him just like any other ghost and almost forces him to destroy the Cliffland City Hospital before the Ring of Life manages to deus ex machina him out of that particular jam.

    One thing that goes unexplored and unexplained in the story is the zippy little rocket ship that Kathoon tries to escape in once the Spectre is free. In the absence of any hint or eleventh hour reveal that he is an alien or magical time traveller I must assume that it is a magic rocket ship, which is great. More magic rocket ships are what we need, in my humble opinion.

    It’s just possible that being forced to do Kathoon’s bidding rattled the Spectre, or at least convinced him that the guy was a legitimate threat, because not only does he kill him via rocket ship explosion, he then hunts down and kills his ghost. This is, yes, a step more extreme than 1939 Batman gunning down the odd monster, but then again this is the Spectre. He has a reputation for brutality for a reason.

    In conclusion, this little cloud guy that Kathoon made to intimidate the Spectre is the sensational character find of 1941.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 376: THE SHADOW

    (More Fun Comics 064, 1941)

    The Shadow is in reality the vengeful ghost of Elmer Watson, a bumped-off witness in a big corruption case. Slightly more reasonable reason for revenge than some murderous ghosts, certainly, but Watson’s vengeance eventually becomes so all-consuming that he attempts to derail an entire passenger train to get at one target and he ends up banished to whatever nether realm the Spectre sends bad ghosts to.

    This is two Vengeance Ghosts in a row for the Spectre! Is that all he is going to face now? No, I checked, it’s not. Close call though!