The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

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  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 083: THE UGLIEST MAN IN THE WORLD

    (Batman Comics 003, 1940) 

    The Ugliest Man in the World, AKA Larry Larrimore, was originally Carlson, a college student who was accidentally injected with a weird fluid during a frat hazing gone wrong. His face mutated and deformed, he lost his friends, fiancé and frat and vowed revenge. Years later, having developed a version of the uglification drug which also rendered its victims’ minds pliant he embarked on a campaign of revenge against both those who had deformed and rejected him and society itself, using his Ugly Mob to destroy beautiful people and works of art alike before being stopped by Batman and gunned down by the cops.

    Neadless to say I think this dude should be brought back. Rejected outsider is great villain fodder and as much as I love this guy smashing Greek marbles at the head of his Ugly Mob a more nuanced take on the relative value of attractive and unattractive people in our society would be aces too.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 083: THE UGLIEST MAN IN THE WORLD

    (Batman Comics 003, 1940) 

    The Ugliest Man in the World, AKA Larry Larrimore, was originally Carlson, a college student who was accidentally injected with a weird fluid during a frat hazing gone wrong. His face mutated and deformed, he lost his friends, fiancé and frat and vowed revenge. Years later, having developed a version of the uglification drug which also rendered its victims’ minds pliant he embarked on a campaign of revenge against both those who had deformed and rejected him and society itself, using his Ugly Mob to destroy beautiful people and works of art alike before being stopped by Batman and gunned down by the cops.

    Neadless to say I think this dude should be brought back. Rejected outsider is great villain fodder and as much as I love this guy smashing Greek marbles at the head of his Ugly Mob a more nuanced take on the relative value of attractive and unattractive people in our society would be aces too.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 082: THE PUPPET MASTER

    (Batman Comics 003, 1940)

    What makes them a super-villain? The Puppet Master controls the minds of men via drug-assisted mental compulsion. He even mind-grabs Batman for a while – surely a villainous feat.

    What makes them interesting? Aside from the brief end-run on Batman’s mind, the most interesting thing about this guy is I think he’s supposed to be a Cossack? His goons are certainly Cossacks. Have we lost a whole set of cultural signifiers about Cossacks or is this like the day in high school I went to a dentist appointment and missed learning how to cross-multiply and you all know this stuff?

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 081: THE WOLF

    (Batman Comics 002, 1940)

    Batman’s first Jekyll/ Hyde style villain is Adam Lamb, a meek museum curator who gets bonked on the head while reading a murder mystery and thereafter heads out at night to cause mayhem as crimelord the Wolf. Batman eventually figures out that his crimes are following the sequence of those in the book and the Wolf’s career ends with a second, fatal head bonking.

  • SPIDERS DRAWN WITHOUT REFERENCE

     (All-Star 006, 1941)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 080: THE EMPEROR OF AMERICA

    (All American Comics 021, 1940)

    An old man who lives in a cave outside of Calvin City, the Emperor of America takes a bunch of Al “the Atom” Pratt’s classmates prisoner as potential mind-controlled minions. Honestly, if it weren’t for the fact that he already has a cadre of identical huge men in his employ he might be more believable as a delusional hermit than a credible threat – and since he never actually gets to demonstrate his mind control techniques before dying in a cave-in, the jury is and will always be still out. He’s the Atom’s first super-villainous opponent, though, so we’ll allow it.

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO 005: RED, WHITE AND BLUE AND DORIS WEST

    (All American Comics 001-071 plus appearances in All-Star, World’s Finest, New York World’s Fair Comics and Comics Cavalcade, 1939-1946)

    They keep coming up, so I might as well spare a word for Red, White and Blue. The concept is simple: three childhood friends, each of whom went into a different branch of the armed forces (and each of whom has a convenient nickname) work for G-2/ US military intelligence to root out enemy plots, most often in partnership with G-2 operative Doris West. Red Dugan (Marine) is their leader, while Whitefield “Whitey” Smith (Army) provides muscle and Heermance B. “Blooey” Blue (Navy) is mainly comic relief.

    Their stories are great looking and generally pretty entertaining but if they have one great flaw it’s in the character personalities: Whitey and Blooey are both complete comic relief dum-dums, which leaves Red and Doris to do a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of moving the actual plot forward, which theoretically works great because they’re both portrayed as quite competent, particularly Doris. What really drags a lot of the stories down, though, is Red’s constant macho assertions that Doris shouldn’t go into danger and his pooh-poohing of her hunches etc as mere womanly fabulation. So many Red, White and Blue stories have an interminable middle portion in which Doris has basically figured everything out and Red refuses to listen to her.

    I’m less familiar with the RWB stories that take place after the US enters the war and the boys are deployed. The few I’ve read from that era take the form of letters home to Doris or one of their parents telling of their war exploits. I’ll check back in if there’s anything worth writing about there (especially if we eventually learn Red’s real first name – secret knowledge).

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 079: THE WASP

    (All American Comics 016, 1940)

    What makes them a super-villain? He’s a master spy called the Wasp who engages in submarine espionage while wearing a tuxedo – basically a checklist of qualifying traits. Unfortunately, that’s also the answer to the second question – he’s only interesting because of his checklist, just a fleeting antagonist for a throwaway story.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 078: MR GLIB

    (All American Comics 011 & 013, 1940)

    What makes them a super-villain? He’s a guy who kind of looks like Satan (named I.M. Glib, natch) who uses such as invisibility fields and food spoiling chemicals to ransom cities and US Senators. A slam dunk, definitional villain.

    What about them is interesting? He’s a Golden Age scientific villain who made two appearances and used the same technology in both of them. This is almost unprecedented, I assure you – ordinarily someone who made their first foray into crime with invisibility tech would be sporting a time machine or an army of robots in their second.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 078: MR GLIB

    (All American Comics 011 & 013, 1940)

    What makes them a super-villain? He’s a guy who kind of looks like Satan (named I.M. Glib, natch) who uses such as invisibility fields and food spoiling chemicals to ransom cities and US Senators. A slam dunk, definitional villain.

    What about them is interesting? He’s a Golden Age scientific villain who made two appearances and used the same technology in both of them. This is almost unprecedented, I assure you – ordinarily someone who made their first foray into crime with invisibility tech would be sporting a time machine or an army of robots in their second.