The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

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  • SPIDERS DRAWN WITHOUT REFERENCE

    As discussed elsewhere, the vast wealth of reference material that artists have access to nowadays simply wasn’t available back in the day. Sometimes a comic book required a drawing of something that the artist simply had no point of reference for.

    And while in light of that fact some of the wild octopus or dinosaur anatomy on display in old comics is entirely forgivable and understandable, the wild depictions of the humble spider are totally baffling – I could round up a spider in about 2 minutes, if needed. Hell, I can see a spider from where I’m sitting writing this.

    Hence, an ongoing roundup of spiders, drawn without reference.

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO 001: CAPTAIN DESMO

     (New Adventure Comics 026-More Fun 072, 1938-1941)

    Captain Desmo is a pretty standard Golden Age adventure character: together with his pal Gabby McGuire, the Brooklyn Terror, he jaunts around the world (mostly in Asia), getting into scraps with colonized people on behalf of white folks. 

    The only thing that really makes him stand apart (aside from the fact that he’s a WWI vet, making him a generation older than most Golden Age protagonists) is illustrated in the moderately homoerotic exchange above: Captain Desmo is kind of always in costume, which kind of makes him part of the “bridge between pulp hero and super-hero” crew, like early Crimson Avenger, early Sandman or the various guys like the Clock or the Mouthpiece who ran around in suits and domino masks in the early days.

    The final interesting thing about Captain Desmo is that he never actually got around to explaining just why he wore his goggles an helmet at all times, which I respect.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 011: THE MASKED MAN

     (Adventure 032, 1938)

    British Army officer who lined his own pockets supplying rebels in India. Fought Captain Desmo, a masked aviator whose comics were on the whole drawn as if they took place in North Africa even though quite a lot of them were set in India – not so uncommon a type of thing to happen in all the various times before reference materials became as easy to access as they are now.

    Anyway: the Masked Man. Fairly unremarkable, although it is interesting to note just how unsettling a domino mask can be when it’s made out of what looks like leather.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 010: EL DIABLO

     (New Adventure 028, 1938)


    Bog standard South American revolutionary villain who is hunted down by agents of the US Navy. Remarkable only due to the one-panel appearance of Rose del Muerte, the Rose of Death.


    What a good one-panel appearance! El Diablo can sit in a garbage can, but Rose del Muerte should show up all over the DCU, never as an actual culprit but just a red herring living her best life.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 010: EL DIABLO

     (New Adventure 028, 1938)


    Bog standard South American revolutionary villain who is hunted down by agents of the US Navy. Remarkable only due to the one-panel appearance of Rose del Muerte, the Rose of Death.


    What a good one-panel appearance! El Diablo can sit in a garbage can, but Rose del Muerte should show up all over the DCU, never as an actual culprit but just a red herring living her best life.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 009: THE COBRA

    (New Adventure 027, 1938)


     Just a kidnapper, but there’s something about a man who wears a snake, and he’s yet another Siegel and Shuster villain from a pre-Superman series – in this case, Federal Men, about Steve Carson of the FBI.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 008: THE HUMAN FLY

     (Detective Comics 009, 1937)


    A very marginal entry on the list, but he really makes the concept of “guy who can climb” work as a masterful crime skill. Plus he’s an early Slam Bradley foe, so more charming Siegel and Shuster fun as Slam demonstrates his early tendency to be amazing at all tasks by following him up the side of a building for a trademark fight.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 007: THE BRAIN

     (More Fun 020, 1937)


    Another common sub-type of masked criminal, the guy who runs his own pirate fleet. Other than being the first example of this on the list, a real snoozer. Taken out by Sandra of the Secret Service.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 006: THE LORD OF LIFE

     (More Fun 018, 1937)


    Used a drug to simulate death in others, then revived them post-funeral and made them do his bidding by claiming that without continual treatments they would die again. Unfortunately for him, he tried the same trick on Dr Occult and was unmasked as a fraud, leading to his swift murder at the hands of his former minions.

    SHOULD THEY BE BROUGHT BACK? My initial thought was that he would only be useful as a legacy name, but if, say, you were telling a Dr Occult yarn and worked in a recap of the original adventure early on then a reveal of the Lord of Life as someone who had really returned from the dead could be a nice cliffhanger/ ongoing mystery. Heck, tie it in with the Methuselah and Vampire Master stories (and maybe even work in something to do with the Master of Corpses, MSV No. 12) and you could have a neat little adventure where Dr Occult must reckon with the legacies of his earliest cases. Fun!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 006: THE LORD OF LIFE

     (More Fun 018, 1937)


    Used a drug to simulate death in others, then revived them post-funeral and made them do his bidding by claiming that without continual treatments they would die again. Unfortunately for him, he tried the same trick on Dr Occult and was unmasked as a fraud, leading to his swift murder at the hands of his former minions.

    SHOULD THEY BE BROUGHT BACK? My initial thought was that he would only be useful as a legacy name, but if, say, you were telling a Dr Occult yarn and worked in a recap of the original adventure early on then a reveal of the Lord of Life as someone who had really returned from the dead could be a nice cliffhanger/ ongoing mystery. Heck, tie it in with the Methuselah and Vampire Master stories (and maybe even work in something to do with the Master of Corpses, MSV No. 12) and you could have a neat little adventure where Dr Occult must reckon with the legacies of his earliest cases. Fun!