The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: Fantomah

  • ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 052

    The aliens are very humanoid today. I hope that they are to your liking.

    Cavemen:

    There’s no real explanation of why these cavemen are just chilling out in a cavern not a day’s walk from an inhabited region of Africa, along with assorted mammoths and sabretooth tigers. They’re just what Fantomah finds when she follows a river to its source to see why it has been contaminated and is killing those who drink from it. The answer: the cavemen killed a mammoth and just kind of lift it to rot in the water. Unusually, all of these prehistoric remnants are still there when Fantomah leaves, rather than being buried in a cave-in or exploded by a volcano as so frequently happens. (Jungle Comics 022, 1941)

    Martians:

    These very human-looking Martians at least have the good grace to have a weird history, as explained to Earthling Flint Baker: Hundreds of years earlier the Martian government had enacted a draconian Tough on Crime approach and thrown all of their criminals into an underground pit known as the Shaft of Death. However, due to a perpetual high wind rising from the depths, the Shaft of Death was actually a weird area of neutral buoyancy, allowing the criminals and their descendants to form an entire civilization that floats in midair.

    Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this history is that the surface-dwelling Martians have no idea of what their ancestors did, and ignore Flint’s warnings about an impending invasion from sub-Mars until it’s  too late and the drilling machines are on their front doorsteps. Worry not, for everything works out in the end. The sub-Martians are defeated and the subjected to brain treatments to remove their “criminal tendencies” proving that while the surface Martians might have forgotten their history, they are still very much willing to go to moral extremes in the eradication of Crime. (Planet Comics 009, 1940)

    Martians: 

    These similarly-humanoid Martians from the same issue are much more straightforward evil conquerors out to hijack Uranus from its rightful human colonists. (Planet Comics 009, 1940)

    Martians:

    Finally, we have these still-humanoid-but-just-barely Martians encountered by junior space traveller Mitey Powers. These guys made me really excited when I saw them, as they represent a specific vision of what life on Mars might have looked like but which I frustratingly cannot find an image of due to the state of online image searching right now. 

    Essentially, this Martian represents a speculative evolution of humanity as it would look it it evolved on Mars, with huge lungs and ears thanks to the thin atmosphere, spindly limbs due to lower gravity, big flat feet to navigate the loose sandy surface, etc (one of the reasons I wanted to find another example of this is that there are justifications for the trunk and telescopic eyes but I can’t remember them). Very exciting to see these guys walking around and having a society rather than just standing around as an example of their anatomy.

    Speaking of their society, here are a couple of bonus tidbits: these Martians learn in their sleep (but must sleep sitting up due to their bulbous upper torsos) and play Blitzball from Final Fantasy X. (Superworld Comics 002, 1940) 

  • DIVINE ROUND-UP 032

    It can’t all be off-brand Greek gods. I’m elbow-deep in the 1941 issues of Jungle Comics, so here are some off-brand African deities.

    Damballah and Gbeji-Nibu:

    The evil witch doctor N’Goku has been using his magical abilities to cause problems in his area (plagues of snakes, a sickness among the cattle) and then solve them for cash money, and then when Fantomah (post-Fletcher Hanks) points out that he is doing so he attempts to do away with her. N’Goku invokes Gbeji-Nibu, the God of Steers, as well as Damballah the Snake God, and since the latter is a real deity in West African Vodún we must assume that the former is as well, though as far as I can tell he has been made up for this comic.

    Neither Damballah or Gbeji-Nibu are fictional in the world of the comic, however, as both of them are pretty mad at N’Goku for his misdeeds and send a divine animal avatar to punish him. To death. Interestingly, it seems that N’Goku’s fatal mistake was not in using his divine gifts for evil but in crossing Fantomah, who is on good enough terms with Damballah that she calls upon him a few issues later to deal with a snake-pit situation she finds herself in.

    God Style: Invoked (Real) (Jungle Comics 018, 1941)

    Tokpodu:

    We don’t learn anything about the entity called Tokpodu but it evidently does hold some power, as the wizard Guluba here is able to use his jackal-hair whip to shrink both people and animals after invoking this entity. He too crosses Fantomah and ends up paying for it with his life.

    God Style: Invoked (Real?) (Jungle Comics 019, 1941)

    Leopards:

    There’s
    not much info on what this fellow is actually up to. Certainly he is
    sacrificing lambs (and attempts to sacrifice a human) to some leopards
    that he has in a pit in an ancient lost Egyptian temple, but whether he
    is worshipping them specifically or they are acting as avatars of a
    deity that was worshipped in the temple is unclear. I can’t find an Egyptian god
    with an especial link to leopards but that might just be a sign of poor
    research on my part. Complete understanding of this issue is hampered by the fact that the story’s protagonist is a lion and thus not equipped to do exposition or offer any real insight at all.

    God style: Animist (I guess) (Jungle Comics 020, 1941)

    the Elephant God:

    This nameless Elephant God is worshipped by the Goru people, who hold all elephants sacred, except for a brief period when wealthy hunter Ali ben Yusi rolls through and convinces them that ivory hunting is more profitable. This ends when a herd of elephants smash up the village and the Goru reconsider their allegiances.

    God Style: Idol (Real?) (Jungle Comics 020, 1941)

  • DIVINE ROUND-UP 032

    It can’t all be off-brand Greek gods. I’m elbow-deep in the 1941 issues of Jungle Comics, so here are some off-brand African deities.

    Damballah and Gbeji-Nibu:

    The evil witch doctor N’Goku has been using his magical abilities to cause problems in his area (plagues of snakes, a sickness among the cattle) and then solve them for cash money, and then when Fantomah (post-Fletcher Hanks) points out that he is doing so he attempts to do away with her. N’Goku invokes Gbeji-Nibu, the God of Steers, as well as Damballah the Snake God, and since the latter is a real deity in West African Vodún we must assume that the former is as well, though as far as I can tell he has been made up for this comic.

    Neither Damballah or Gbeji-Nibu are fictional in the world of the comic, however, as both of them are pretty mad at N’Goku for his misdeeds and send a divine animal avatar to punish him. To death. Interestingly, it seems that N’Goku’s fatal mistake was not in using his divine gifts for evil but in crossing Fantomah, who is on good enough terms with Damballah that she calls upon him a few issues later to deal with a snake-pit situation she finds herself in.

    God Style: Invoked (Real) (Jungle Comics 018, 1941)

    Tokpodu:

    We don’t learn anything about the entity called Tokpodu but it evidently does hold some power, as the wizard Guluba here is able to use his jackal-hair whip to shrink both people and animals after invoking this entity. He too crosses Fantomah and ends up paying for it with his life.

    God Style: Invoked (Real?) (Jungle Comics 019, 1941)

    Leopards:

    There’s
    not much info on what this fellow is actually up to. Certainly he is
    sacrificing lambs (and attempts to sacrifice a human) to some leopards
    that he has in a pit in an ancient lost Egyptian temple, but whether he
    is worshipping them specifically or they are acting as avatars of a
    deity that was worshipped in the temple is unclear. I can’t find an Egyptian god
    with an especial link to leopards but that might just be a sign of poor
    research on my part. Complete understanding of this issue is hampered by the fact that the story’s protagonist is a lion and thus not equipped to do exposition or offer any real insight at all.

    God style: Animist (I guess) (Jungle Comics 020, 1941)

    the Elephant God:

    This nameless Elephant God is worshipped by the Goru people, who hold all elephants sacred, except for a brief period when wealthy hunter Ali ben Yusi rolls through and convinces them that ivory hunting is more profitable. This ends when a herd of elephants smash up the village and the Goru reconsider their allegiances.

    God Style: Idol (Real?) (Jungle Comics 020, 1941)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 669: ARCO

    (Jungle Comics 011, 1940)

    Arco, aka “the immortal mummy of Ancient Egypt! Old Arco, the super-scientist of long ago!” comes to the attention of Fantomah when he begins blinding the inhabitants of her home jungle using a ray with the fairly awesome name of the Scarlet Shadow. His ultimate goal – like so many Fantomah foes – is to conquer the jungle and establish an empire for himself.

    (Arco is also, somewhat surprisingly, our first actual mummy. The current ratio of fake to real mummies stands at 5:1)

    While an ancient mummy attempting to take over a quasi-mystic omnijungle using a blindness ray might be relatively normal as far as comic book plots go, Arco’s next move is amazing. In order to finalize his conquest he requires a population, and what better subjects for a mummy emperor than more mummies? What seems like most if not all Egyptian mummies in the world are reanimated and flown in on the wings of Arco’s ancient magics. Presumably he also protects their dry, dry bodies from the jungle humidity, perhaps using another ray to do so.

    Arco of course rejects Fantomah’s ritual attempt to warn off her foe. In his defense he is riding a justifiable high based on the fact that he and his followers are all already dead – how could he know that his mummy troops, so effective at attacking blind and confused people, would prove easy prey to the most powerful beasts of the jungle?

    (I can’t imagine what a blow this must have been to the fields of Anthropology and Archaeology in the world of Fantomah. Museums all over the world must be full of little plaques saying “this sarcophagus formerly held the mummy of Amenhotep III, preserved from 1353 BC until the Great Mummy Reanimation of 1940. Recent expeditions have brought back evidence that the mummy was subsequently dismembered and partially consumed by a lioness (see bone fragments in case to your left)”)

    Arco attempts to blind Fantomah in revenge for the defeat of his forces but finds himself on the receiving end of sequentially, his own ray, a fall, and a river full of crocodiles. What an end for an immortal mummy man.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 667: ANGEL EYES

    (Jungle Comics 010, 1940)

    It’s a c-c-c-combo breaker! Ordinarily Fantomah swans around observing the villains of her comic adventures and periodically telling them that they should stop what they’re doing before it’s too lat, ie, before she delivers unto them an ironic punishment. This issue features one of the few foes to catch her completely flat-footed and she is as surprised as anyone when giant flaming hands start tearing through the jungle, indiscriminately murdering both people and animals. Who or what could be behind this?

    The culprit turns out to be a scientific prodigy called Angel Eyes, who has the Batman origin except his parents were killed by a jungle and so he has vowed to destroy all jungles. He has created artificial life forms out of chemicals and known as the Flaming Claws for the simple reason that they are completely invisible except for their huge flaming clawed hands.

    I really appreciate Angel Eyes’ design! He really captures the look of a person who would be extremely attractive if they didn’t constantly wear their foul mood in their facial expression.

    Not that Fantomah ever has much of a hard time dealing with guys like this, but Angel Eyes is an especially easy one: she just hangs him from a tree and has his own creations attack him until he has a heart attack and dies. As for the Flaming Claws, why, they get melted back into the constituent chemicals that they were made of.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 666: MARK LORD

    (Jungle Comics 009, 1940)

    Minor Super-Villain 666 is somewhat in line with how underwhelming our milestone numbers in the past have been. Just two entries away from being the Devil his own two-headed self. I suppose I could have shuffled things around to make it work out in a more satisfying way but that would really taint the pure joy we’ll experience when entry 1000 or 1600 or 69420 turn out to be amazingly apropos.

    Who we have instead is poor little rich boy Mark Lord, a villain in the classic Fletcher Hanks sense in that he has a real problem with civilization and wants to destroy it. To that end, he has seemingly been flying aimlessly around until he finds something that he can use to advance his plans – in this case a valley full of royal panthers, the largest big cats in the world! Hanks really seems to enjoy writing about and drawing these beefy felines and dedicates large swathes of the narrative to the mechanics of Lord capturing and transporting 50 000 of them.

    Lord’s plan – bomb New York and release tens of thousands of enormous hungry panthers into the ensuing panic – is certainly an effective terror attack but I can’t see it leading to a total dissolution of human civilization. For one thing, you probably wouldn’t get even half your panthers back if you wanted to keep up the momentum and move on to another city quickly. Hell, NYC’s population was about 7.5 million in 1940 and I don’t know that you’re going to kill or scare off enough of them with this stunt that you could declare human civilization ended in the city. I suppose we aren’t looking to a guy like Mark Lord for cold rational thought but come on.

    As is her way, Fantomah, though she has been watching and warning Lord the entire time, only steps in once things his a crisis point. We are treated to one of Hanks’ signature images, a bunch of levitating creatures, as Lord and the panthers are transported back to Africa.

    And of course Lord is ironically punished for his transgressions by being transformed into an uncivilized caveman and left to deal with a valley full of cheesed-off panthers on his own. Maybe next time he has a beef against civilization he’ll reflect on where his last one got him.

  • GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 016

     Bless ’em, they’re trying.

    The first few adventures of Hydroman, a character I have an inexplicable affection for, are concerned with what at first seems like some real standard Yellow Peril bullplop (“Oriental invaders” and so forth) but then there are gangsters involved and the two factions variously mention a higher-up named “the Great One” and “the Big Boss”, respectively. Still later, the whole operation seems to be run by this collection of pseudo-Nazis on a yacht in New York Harbor. It looks like the bald guy in the monocle might be in charge but the whole issue of just who exactly the Great One is is ultimately rendered moot by Hydroman blowing up the yacht and killing them all before their org chart is fully conveyed. 

    Good costumes on those henchmen, though. (Reg’lar Fellers Heroic Comics 001, 1940)

    I quite like “the Snarl,” the nom de crime that this fellow has chosen for himself, and he gets up to all sorts of classic villainy to boot: bank robbery, deathtraps, sending taunting notes to the police, mass murder, etc, but he gets caught with ease by semi-comedic actor/detective Fuller Spunk in just a couple of pages so there’s not quite enough meat for a full entry. (Hyper Mystery Comics 002, 1940)

    Jungle comics are crawling with guys like Zan Marzov, a crook who murders and pillages with the aid of a gang of men dressed in leopard skins. Few can match his look, however. Between the leopard scar, haunted eyes, shrunken head necklace and horrible goatee, Marzov may have achieved the pinnacle of the Evil Explorer aesthetic. He ultimately gets blown up by virtuous explorer Buck Barton, by the way. (Jungle Comics 001, 1940)

    This guy calls himself Mr X and he has stolen a sacred mask from a temple in the jungle dimension that Fantomah calls home, thus invoking a curse that threatens to flood the entire land with boiling mud. Needless to say, Fantomah does not look kindly on that sort of behaviour and he is rounded up post haste and sent to a weird cavern to “eat mud and fire for the rest of your days.” Tough but fair, Fantomah! (Jungle Comics 008, 1940)

  • GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 016

     Bless ’em, they’re trying.

    The first few adventures of Hydroman, a character I have an inexplicable affection for, are concerned with what at first seems like some real standard Yellow Peril bullplop (“Oriental invaders” and so forth) but then there are gangsters involved and the two factions variously mention a higher-up named “the Great One” and “the Big Boss”, respectively. Still later, the whole operation seems to be run by this collection of pseudo-Nazis on a yacht in New York Harbor. It looks like the bald guy in the monocle might be in charge but the whole issue of just who exactly the Great One is is ultimately rendered moot by Hydroman blowing up the yacht and killing them all before their org chart is fully conveyed. 

    Good costumes on those henchmen, though. (Reg’lar Fellers Heroic Comics 001, 1940)

    I quite like “the Snarl,” the nom de crime that this fellow has chosen for himself, and he gets up to all sorts of classic villainy to boot: bank robbery, deathtraps, sending taunting notes to the police, mass murder, etc, but he gets caught with ease by semi-comedic actor/detective Fuller Spunk in just a couple of pages so there’s not quite enough meat for a full entry. (Hyper Mystery Comics 002, 1940)

    Jungle comics are crawling with guys like Zan Marzov, a crook who murders and pillages with the aid of a gang of men dressed in leopard skins. Few can match his look, however. Between the leopard scar, haunted eyes, shrunken head necklace and horrible goatee, Marzov may have achieved the pinnacle of the Evil Explorer aesthetic. He ultimately gets blown up by virtuous explorer Buck Barton, by the way. (Jungle Comics 001, 1940)

    This guy calls himself Mr X and he has stolen a sacred mask from a temple in the jungle dimension that Fantomah calls home, thus invoking a curse that threatens to flood the entire land with boiling mud. Needless to say, Fantomah does not look kindly on that sort of behaviour and he is rounded up post haste and sent to a weird cavern to “eat mud and fire for the rest of your days.” Tough but fair, Fantomah! (Jungle Comics 008, 1940)

  • GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 016

     Bless ’em, they’re trying.

    The first few adventures of Hydroman, a character I have an inexplicable affection for, are concerned with what at first seems like some real standard Yellow Peril bullplop (“Oriental invaders” and so forth) but then there are gangsters involved and the two factions variously mention a higher-up named “the Great One” and “the Big Boss”, respectively. Still later, the whole operation seems to be run by this collection of pseudo-Nazis on a yacht in New York Harbor. It looks like the bald guy in the monocle might be in charge but the whole issue of just who exactly the Great One is is ultimately rendered moot by Hydroman blowing up the yacht and killing them all before their org chart is fully conveyed. 

    Good costumes on those henchmen, though. (Reg’lar Fellers Heroic Comics 001, 1940)

    I quite like “the Snarl,” the nom de crime that this fellow has chosen for himself, and he gets up to all sorts of classic villainy to boot: bank robbery, deathtraps, sending taunting notes to the police, mass murder, etc, but he gets caught with ease by semi-comedic actor/detective Fuller Spunk in just a couple of pages so there’s not quite enough meat for a full entry. (Hyper Mystery Comics 002, 1940)

    Jungle comics are crawling with guys like Zan Marzov, a crook who murders and pillages with the aid of a gang of men dressed in leopard skins. Few can match his look, however. Between the leopard scar, haunted eyes, shrunken head necklace and horrible goatee, Marzov may have achieved the pinnacle of the Evil Explorer aesthetic. He ultimately gets blown up by virtuous explorer Buck Barton, by the way. (Jungle Comics 001, 1940)

    This guy calls himself Mr X and he has stolen a sacred mask from a temple in the jungle dimension that Fantomah calls home, thus invoking a curse that threatens to flood the entire land with boiling mud. Needless to say, Fantomah does not look kindly on that sort of behaviour and he is rounded up post haste and sent to a weird cavern to “eat mud and fire for the rest of your days.” Tough but fair, Fantomah! (Jungle Comics 008, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 663: THE JUNGLE DEMON

    (Jungle Comics 006, 1940) 

    The Jungle Demon starts out as an unnamed boy lost in the jungle and true to the old trope he is found and nurtured by a beast – we’ve seen it many times before. The beast in this case is a mind-bogglingly large constrictor snake, which is fun. Boy grows to man and he and the snake (charmingly named “Powerhouse”) are at peace with the people and animals of the jungle until one day the still-unnamed young man chows down on what turns out to be some AD&D Alignment-flipping berries and Nice Boy becomes the Jungle Demon.

    My memory had filled in some details and I was thinking of this fellow as one of the big Fantomah villains but in fact although he talks a big game about conquering the Jungle, mostly he just steals jewels and defrauds his workers.

    Fantomah steps in a couple of times throughout the story to warn the Jungle Demon away from pursuing his darker impulses (pulling down a city to build a palace, enslaving people with dark majicks, etc) but he just can’t help but be evil and eventually she is forced to feed him an antidote salad to reverse the effects of the berries (and she exiles him and his snake to an isolated plateau, which seems a bit mean). I hadn’t really thought about it before but this tendency of Fantomah’s to watch the unfolding action but not really step in until she does so decisively at the moment of crisis is the equivalent to Stardust the Super Wizard’s very long commute: a way for there to be a story with an effectively omnipotent protagonist in which anything actually happens.