The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

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  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 916: THE STINGER

    (Cat-Man Comics 003, 1941)

    The Stinger is in most respects an extremely generic masked gang boss of the kind that we have seen so frequently before, right down to the fact that he is wearing one of those hanging cloth face masks, an item only worn by generic masked gang bosses of the 1940s. The real difference between all those other guys and the Stinger is that the Stinger’s very first move was to send out some goons to ambush and murder local vigilante and only credible threat to his operations the Ragman. 

    This important step having been completed, the Stinger launches a massive crimewave, that includes four simultaneous bank robberies and the kidnapping of the police commissioner. Mayor Not La Guardia is not happy about all this, as he expresses to conspicuous named character police Lieutenant Burns.

    The only major flaw in the Stinger’s plan is that his gang is made up of 1940s comic book gangsters who don’t think to check for a pulse when they are sent to murder someone. This is important because it turns out that the Ragman was wearing a bulletproof vest the whole time and was just playing dead when he was dumped in the river. 

    Having beaten up the Stinger’s entire operation, the Ragman is able to track him down and unmask him as, you might have guessed it, Lt, Burns, the only new named character in the story. It’s the old classic “crooked cop becomes masked crimelord” story again, though this is the first crooked police lieutenant we’ve seen. 

    Categorized under: Body (Nonhuman Body Parts), Location (NYC), Profession (Law Enforcement)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 916: THE STINGER

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 916: THE STINGER

    (Cat-Man Comics 003, 1941)

    The Stinger is in most respects an extremely generic masked gang boss of the kind that we have seen so frequently before, right down to the fact that he is wearing one of those hanging cloth face masks, an item only worn by generic masked gang bosses of the 1940s. The real difference between all those other guys and the Stinger is that the Stinger’s very first move was to send out some goons to ambush and murder local vigilante and only credible threat to his operations the Ragman. 

    This important step having been completed, the Stinger launches a massive crimewave, that includes four simultaneous bank robberies and the kidnapping of the police commissioner. Mayor Not La Guardia is not happy about all this, as he expresses to conspicuous named character police Lieutenant Burns.

    The only major flaw in the Stinger’s plan is that his gang is made up of 1940s comic book gangsters who don’t think to check for a pulse when they are sent to murder someone. This is important because it turns out that the Ragman was wearing a bulletproof vest the whole time and was just playing dead when he was dumped in the river. 

    Having beaten up the Stinger’s entire operation, the Ragman is able to track him down and unmask him as, you might have guessed it, Lt, Burns, the only new named character in the story. It’s the old classic “crooked cop becomes masked crimelord” story again, though this is the first crooked police lieutenant we’ve seen. 

    Categorized under: Body (Nonhuman Body Parts), Location (NYC), Profession (Law Enforcement)

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 075

    Every hero comes with a free sidekick! 

    the Deacon:

    An otherwise unnamed man headquartered in the disused Marshlands Church that is located in a kind of liminal space just outside of several urban areas (including but not limited to: Coast Town, Midland City and Central City), the Deacon was himself once a young criminal mastermind.

    Two years after his original gang is rounded up by the police, the future Deacon is still on the wrong side of the law as part of another crook’s gang, but he’s starting to have some doubts about the path his life is on, particularly the part where his boss Marty is going to murder a night watchman during their next job. He tips off the police and in return they shoot him in the arm as he runs away

    Making his way to the aforementioned abandoned Marshlands Church, the wounded ex-criminal puts on a suit of priest’s clothes that he finds there, and when Marty and his old gang track him down to extract some revenge for his betrayal he is able to muster up enough righteous vigour to beat them up and deliver them into the hands of the law.

    One thing about the  Deacon that might not be evident from my retelling is that despite the sort of gentle world-weariness that the character is portrayed with, based on the timeline presented in the story of his origin, he is at most about twenty-eight years old, and that is a pretty funny age to have already seen it all. (Cat-Man Comics 001, 1941)

    Mickey Matthews: 

    In common with his mentor, the Deacon’s sidekick Mickey Matthews is a former juvenile crook who decided that a life of crime was not for him and paid the price for it, in his case in the form of being beaten up and tossed out of a speeding car for dead. After the Deacon finds him and patches him up he decides to turn his life around and join his benefactor’s war on crime. (Cat-Man Comics 001, 1941)

    the Ragman:

    Millionaire newspaper columnist Jay Garson Jr has really been stirring up trouble with his column “Crime Does Not Pay,” so much so that he is lured into Central Park and murdered one night. Or so the criminal element think! What actually happens is that a nearby homeless man who looks exactly like Garson is accidentally killed instead of him, and so Garson swaps clothes with the corpse in order to fake his own death.

    Taking inspiration from his new wardrobe, Garson dubs himself the Ragman (also Rag Man and Rag-Man) and sets out to solve his own murder, and then decides to continue fighting crime rather than resuming his old life.

    Though Garson declines to inform his fiance Joan that he is in fact alive, he does continue to send his newspaper column to the Daily Star to get printed, much to the consternation of his editor. (Cat-Man Comics 001, 1941)

    Tiny: 

    Jay “Ragman” Garson might not have thought it necessary to loop in his fiance re: him being alive, but one person who he does make sure to inform is his chauffeur, Tiny, who immediately joins him as a sidekick. 

    Tiny is an annoying character to write about: he is a very good sidekick, especially by the standards of African American characters in 1940s comics, who tend to get assigned all kinds of stereotypes (laziness, superstition, cowardliness, stupidity) in the name of comic relief. Tiny doesn’t have any of those qualities – aside from a bit of understandable nervousness at meeting what he believes to be a dead man – but he certainly talks like a character who does. Various sources assure me that the accent is toned down eventually, but the 1941 version of the character makes it rough for someone (me) trying to find good pictures of him. (Cat-Man Comics 001, 1941)

    Categorized under: Minor Super-Heroes, Origin by Choice (Face Turn, Faking Your Own Death), Profession (Religious)

  • ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 025

    ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 025

    We got Fish-Men, we got Fishmen, we got other kinds of men.

    Fishmen:

    Adventurer Lance Rand has acquired a map showing the location of the sunken continent of Atlantis and so naturally he sets out to see if it’s accurate and more importantly to find out if there’s any ancient Atlantean treasure there for him to loot. Making his way to the ocean floor, Lance and his pal Tubby are almost immediately accosted by a Fishman riding on a sea monster. This is a good sign!

    The sunken city of Atlantis does indeed turn out to me right where the map said it was, complete with some monumental bare-assed statuary. Lance and Tubby are able to drive their submarine tractor right up to the base of what must have been an important Atlantean idol and pry the disco ball-sized diamond out of its forehead, upon which they have to deal with another squad of hostile Fishmen. Though the implication is of course that these fellows are the descendants of drowned Atlantis, the fact that they never say anything really makes it hard to confirm. Perhaps they are unrelated underwater humanoids who just disapprove of Lance and Tubby’s wanton looting. Whichever it is, I really dig the little wing-fins that grow out of their backs. (Cat-Man Comics 001, 1941)

    Fish-Men: 

    When oceanic adventurer Navy Jones’ submarine is lost at sea, he is rescued by an undersea race of aquatic humanoids who don’t really have an official name but who are more often than not called Fish-Men or something similar. Despite some early conflict engineered by the scheming Prime Minister, Jones soon becomes the Fish-Men’s champion.

    Fish-Men society is ruled over by a more humanoid nobility, represented here in the forms of their unnamed king and his daughter/ Navy Jones’ love interest, Princess Coral. As usual, the reasons for these morphological differences are not explained and likely boil down to “we didn’t want our hero to be romantically involved with a fish.”

    Like many Fiction House heroes, Navy Jones passed through a lot of hands over the course of his career, and the Fish-Men had a correspondingly large number of looks, each of them charming in its own way.(Science Comics 001, 1940)

    Fishmen:

    This Fishman is encountered by Tabu, Wizard of the Jungle in what is probably a prehistoric underground enclave that a group of explorers stumble across “far to the Southeast of the Congo”. I say probably because Tabu gasses on about how they have gone back in time, which might be meant literally and might just be a bit of excessively flowery exposition. 

    The above is virtually all of the on-panel time that the Fishmen get, as the narrative is much more focused on the drama of one of the explorers falling in love with a cave woman. (Jungle Comics 011, 1940) 

    Flame-Men: 

    Just as Rex Dexter of Mars and his companion Cynde are about to leave the planet Nexis and its friendly inhabitants, the Nexis as part of their never-ending attempt to reach Mars, the world is attacked by some sort of apocalyptic flame weapon.

    Rocketing into space to investigate, Rex and Cynde discover that the source of the attack is a fiery comet that is being directed by a massive spacecraft, by which they are swiftly captured. Inside they find the Flame-Men from Planet Emalf, who are attacking Nexis as the first move in their attempt to destroy the rest of the universe. Why are they doing this? No idea.

    The Flame-Men are unprepared for Rex’s freeze-ray gun, and shrivel up into little burnt matchstick men in a way that is as aesthetically pleasing as it is unsettling. (Mystery Men Comics 010, 1940) 

    Categorized under: Aliens, Animals (Fish), Elements (Fire), Generica (Men)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 915: THE BAT

    (Cat-Man Comics 002, 1941)

    While rescuing the inhabitants of the mining town of Red Creek from the forest fire that threatens their town, Flying Legion leader Chute Harmon learns that the fire might in fact have been deliberately set and that the arsonist might be nearby. Donning his Asbestium suit, he sets off to investigate and soon finds himself in a confrontation with a masked man who calls himself the Bat.

    The Bat has a very succinct five-panel appearance, which is just long enough to explain his plan (burn down the town and then steal all of the miners’ gold after things cool down), get bopped on the head and flee into a raging inferno.

    There is some implication that the Bat might have lived to vex Chute Harmon and the Flying Legion another day, but as this was their only published adventure we must instead conclude that he was burned to a crisp.

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 074

    Some more of those “minor super-heroes” you like so much. 

    the Cat-Man **Update**:

    Hey, it’s the Cat-Man! As you may or may not recall, the Cat Man (sans hyphen) debuted in Crash Comics Adventures in 1940 and was the only survivor of that comics short run. The most obvious change to his character is his costume, which goes from its former jungle chic look through a blue-and-orange phase  before settling on the orange-and-darker orange look that he will stick with for the rest of his career.

    In addition to the costumes and the hyphen, Cat-Man got a slight tweak to his origin: rather than being orphaned by a hostile tribe in India, David Merrywether’s parents are now said to have been killed by bandits in Burma. David also has a job now: he’s a private detective for the first four issues of Cat-Man Comics, after which he enlists and becomes a lieutenant in the US Army.

    The Cat-Man also gets a couple of new powers in 1941: he is able to see otherwise-invisible radiation and displays some degree of super strength.

    Finally: his nine lives. Though he still has this power, David manages to only die once during the whole of 1941, bringing his total remaining lives down to six.

    the Kitten: 

    Actually, not quite finally, as this is also the year that the Cat-Man gets a sidekick. While en route to investigate a series of train explosions, Lt David “the Cat-Man” Merrywether picks up a hitchhiking man and his niece. The man turns out to be a real scumbag, but the girl, named Katie Conn, turns on her uncle rather than see him rob and possibly murder Merrywether. Once the uncle is tossed in the hoosegow it’s a classic case of a child just entering a super-hero’s orbit and getting auto-adopted.

    Katie turns out to be the orphaned child of a pair of circus acrobats, which as we know is a perfect background for a potential super-hero’s sidekick to have. She also appears to be a few years younger than your typical kid sidekick – if they average in at about 13-15 I’d call her 11 or 12, though as usual the limitations of Golden Age art make estimating the age of kids difficult at best.

    Merrywether does his best to conceal his dual identity from his new ward but doesn’t quite manage it, and her self-assigned new role as the Cat-Man’s sidekick is announced in the final panel of the last Cat-Man story of 1941. More specifics on her in action as a sidekick in 1942. I will say that it’s nice to see a kid sidekick with both a costume and a code name. (Cat-Man Comics 005, 1941)

    Blaze Baylor: 

    Blaze Baylor is the son of the famous fire chief Smoky Baylor, who was killed by arsonists, and who is now a very specific anti-arson crimefighter. Though the name of the strip is “‘Blaze’ Baylor and the Arson Ring,” there is no indication in any of his adventures that the arsonists he battles are connected to one another in any way. (Cat-Man Comics 001 1941)

    Dr Diamond: 

    Dr Drake Gorden is bound for the South Seas when the freighter he is travelling on is sunk by a waterspout. He passes out after washing up on a beach at the base of an unscaleable cliff and is carried off by an eagle that takes him to the home of a frankly weird guy who has dressed him in a generic super-hero costume.

    This never-named man explains that thirty years prior he had come into possession of a legendary black diamond that conferred great physical power to its wielder, and that he had retired to the island to await the arrival of someone worthy enough to receive it. Dr Gorden, a man who he just met and who has spoken all of thirty-three words to him, several of which were to refer to a pair of brown pants as his “American clothes,” is his pick.

    Whatever the opposite of the Refusal of the Call part of the Hero’s Journey is, that’s what Dr Gorden has. He immediately renames himself Dr Diamond and launches into a monologue about just how hard he’s going to bust up crime that is so over the top that it would make me personally reconsider giving him any sort of power whatsoever. Despite my misgivings, Dr Diamond does an adequate job of using the powers conferred by the gem (super strength, enhanced speed, some degree of invincibility) to battle crime for four issues before fading into the mists of obscurity. (Cat-Man Comics 001, 1941) 

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 074

    Some more of those “minor super-heroes” you like so much. 

    the Cat-Man **Update**:

    Hey, it’s the Cat-Man! As you may or may not recall, the Cat Man (sans hyphen) debuted in Crash Comics Adventures in 1940 and was the only survivor of that comics short run. The most obvious change to his character is his costume, which goes from its former jungle chic look through a blue-and-orange phase  before settling on the orange-and-darker orange look that he will stick with for the rest of his career.

    In addition to the costumes and the hyphen, Cat-Man got a slight tweak to his origin: rather than being orphaned by a hostile tribe in India, David Merrywether’s parents are now said to have been killed by bandits in Burma. David also has a job now: he’s a private detective for the first four issues of Cat-Man Comics, after which he enlists and becomes a lieutenant in the US Army.

    The Cat-Man also gets a couple of new powers in 1941: he is able to see otherwise-invisible radiation and displays some degree of super strength.

    Finally: his nine lives. Though he still has this power, David manages to only die once during the whole of 1941, bringing his total remaining lives down to six.

    the Kitten: 

    Actually, not quite finally, as this is also the year that the Cat-Man gets a sidekick. While en route to investigate a series of train explosions, Lt David “the Cat-Man” Merrywether picks up a hitchhiking man and his niece. The man turns out to be a real scumbag, but the girl, named Katie Conn, turns on her uncle rather than see him rob and possibly murder Merrywether. Once the uncle is tossed in the hoosegow it’s a classic case of a child just entering a super-hero’s orbit and getting auto-adopted.

    Katie turns out to be the orphaned child of a pair of circus acrobats, which as we know is a perfect background for a potential super-hero’s sidekick to have. She also appears to be a few years younger than your typical kid sidekick – if they average in at about 13-15 I’d call her 11 or 12, though as usual the limitations of Golden Age art make estimating the age of kids difficult at best.

    Merrywether does his best to conceal his dual identity from his new ward but doesn’t quite manage it, and her self-assigned new role as the Cat-Man’s sidekick is announced in the final panel of the last Cat-Man story of 1941. More specifics on her in action as a sidekick in 1942. I will say that it’s nice to see a kid sidekick with both a costume and a code name. (Cat-Man Comics 005, 1941)

    Blaze Baylor: 

    Blaze Baylor is the son of the famous fire chief Smoky Baylor, who was killed by arsonists, and who is now a very specific anti-arson crimefighter. Though the name of the strip is “‘Blaze’ Baylor and the Arson Ring,” there is no indication in any of his adventures that the arsonists he battles are connected to one another in any way. (Cat-Man Comics 001 1941)

    Dr Diamond: 

    Dr Drake Gorden is bound for the South Seas when the freighter he is travelling on is sunk by a waterspout. He passes out after washing up on a beach at the base of an unscaleable cliff and is carried off by an eagle that takes him to the home of a frankly weird guy who has dressed him in a generic super-hero costume.

    This never-named man explains that thirty years prior he had come into possession of a legendary black diamond that conferred great physical power to its wielder, and that he had retired to the island to await the arrival of someone worthy enough to receive it. Dr Gorden, a man who he just met and who has spoken all of thirty-three words to him, several of which were to refer to a pair of brown pants as his “American clothes,” is his pick.

    Whatever the opposite of the Refusal of the Call part of the Hero’s Journey is, that’s what Dr Gorden has. He immediately renames himself Dr Diamond and launches into a monologue about just how hard he’s going to bust up crime that is so over the top that it would make me personally reconsider giving him any sort of power whatsoever. Despite my misgivings, Dr Diamond does an adequate job of using the powers conferred by the gem (super strength, enhanced speed, some degree of invincibility) to battle crime for four issues before fading into the mists of obscurity. (Cat-Man Comics 001, 1941) 

  • GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 035

    GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 035

    Not every villain is super and they must learn to accept that.

    Miguel Greeze: 

    He may just be a regular style crooked gambler looking to murder Golden Arrow in order to win a bet, but Miguel Greeze here is decked out in too good a costume to just ignore. Plus it’s impressive that he can make his legs go like that. (Whiz Comics 023, 1941)

    Konrad Schtienker: 

    Fascist assassin Konrad Schtienker is all-in on a tobacco product theme: he uses a tobacco shop as his HQ, kills government agents via packets of the ominously-named Blood-Tipped brand cigarettes (not that the cigarettes do the killing – they just serve as a way to release a mosquito containing a serum that compels fatal bouts of sleepwalking into the targets’ rooms) and even employs single-shot cigar guns to get out of jams. Too bad for him that Spy Smasher doesn’t smoke. (Whiz Comics 023, 1941)

    Black Rufus: 

    There are three things to note about this fellow:

    1. His name is Black Rufus. It’s much more charming than menacing.

    2. I like his look. The hunched posture combined with the mantle/poncho/thing give him a real vulture-like air.

    3. He is the only villain faced by one-hit wonder the Rainbow, which I always find endearing. Did he ever get out of jail and take his revenge? We shall never know. (The Arrow 003, 1941)

    the Leader: 

    It’s time for yet another Nazi spymaster named the Leader! This Leader is a fellow named Phil Rogers, and he’s after a new super-bomb developed by one Professor Andrews for the US military, while wearing what I would describe as a charmingly homemade-looking hood if it didn’t have a swastika on the forehead. He fails of course, because he is entirely unprepared to deal with a completely invisible Solar, Master of Magic. (Captain Aero Comics 001, 1941)

  • CATALOGUE OF WOUNDS 001

    CATALOGUE OF WOUNDS 001

    Among the many things that I have found interesting enough to keep track of over the years is just how many times super-heroes get wounded while going about their business. What does a shoulder look like after it’s been shot a dozen times, for example? If I had been really on the ball I would have also been noting every time someone was knocked out with a blow to the head as well, but we can’t all be perfect.

    Full catalogue here, such as it is. 

    the Angel:

    The Angel chars his own hands at least a bit while escaping from some ropes. (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 008, 1940) 

    The Angel is wounded and probably shot while escaping from an ambush by the Cat’s Paw’s men (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 019, 1941)

    Batman:

    Batman is shot in the left shoulder during an altercation with the Wolf’s men. (Batman Comics v1 002, 1940)

    Shot in the right shoulder by a fleeing crook. (Batman Comics v1 004, 1940)

    While attacking a criminal hideout in a berserker rage, Batman is shot twice in the right shoulder and has a bullet glance off his ribs. (Batman Comics v1 005, 1941)

    Pirate Hook Morgan slashes Batman across the chest and hooks him in the left shoulder. (Detective Comics v1 054, 1941)

    Black Condor: 

    Black Condor is shot in the back by the Sapphire King’s men. (Crack Comics 005, 1940)

    Blackhawk:

    Blackhawk’s arm is non-specifically injured after an attack on Blackhawk Island. (Military Comics 001, 1941)

    the Deacon:

    The Deacon is shot in the right arm by the cops. (Cat-Man Comics 001, 1941) 

    Robin:

    Robin is beaten nearly to death by some gangsters (triggering Batman’s berserker attack above). (Batman Comics v1 005, 1941)

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 073

    It’s a fine day for a dose of minor super-heroes. 

    Alias X: 

    Alias, aka just X, is a mysterious master of disguise who has been cleaning up crime in NYC for the better part of a year and who, as of his first appearance, has now deigned to tell his origin story to Police Commissioner Malley and newspaper editor Hunch Armstrong.

    Turns out that X was a small-town taxi company owner who was railroaded and sent to prison for a crime he didn’t commit, and that after two years in prison he managed to escape, became a master of disguise by sheer willpower and set out to battle crime until he could track down the crooks who really committed the crimes he was convicted for and clear his name.

    The police commissioner must be a trusting guy, because he refrains from putting out an APB or whatever on Alias X after he hears this confession. 

    As far as I can tell from a skim of the 1942 portion of Alias X’s dozen or so adventures, he never catches up with the crooks who framed him – just one of the many loose ends of the comics. Please also note that Alias X is a calling card guy. (Captain Fearless Comics 001, 1941)

    Citizen Smith: 

    Citizen Smith! Plain old John Smith, who could be any one of us regular Americans! Just a regular guy! So why are we reading a comic book about him?

    Citizen Smith is in actuality John Smith, an aircraft factory worker in Washington DC and also an orphan consumed with the desire to know just who his parents were. While stewing on this after work one day he wanders up to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, where he receives both great news and a great shock as a ghostly figure appears and tells him that he, the Unknown Soldier, is Smith’s father.

    Smith’s new ghost dad charges him to keep America safe, with the promise that he will appear and aid his son if needed (sadly this does not occur in either of the two recorded Citizen Smith adventures). The newly-created Citizen’s Guardian of Liberty and Guardian of the American Way then sallies forth to whale on fifth columnists with his two good all-American fists.

    Now, I try to take comics as they are presented to me and not engage in a lot of “what if they were dead the whole time”-style fan theory nonsense but I will say that if I were writing a gritty early-2000s Citizen Smith reboot… all this ghost stuff would just be a hallucination brought on by his obsessions, right? Just a lonely man giving his life meaning by latching on to a powerful symbol to fill the hole in his life. But of course that is not who we are here. Citizen Smith is as he appears: a divinely ordained champion of the American Way. (Captain Fearless Comics 001, 1941)

    Miss Victory: 

    Miss Victory is Joan Wayne, a woman who works in Washington DC in secretarial and similar roles and who seems to have seen an opening for a two-fisted vigilante and filled it, no further origin necessary. There is some hint that her vigilantism is officially sanctioned in the first couple of panels of her first appearance, but if so she has very little oversight. She is much more willing to resort to violence than a lot of her female contemporaries, which is kind of refreshing.

    Miss Victory does share with our old friend the Eagle the inability to really settle on a costume design, so I’m sure that we’ll be revisiting her in that capacity. 

    Case in point: this revised version of her costume from her second appearance, in Captain Fearless Comics 002. As with most of her costume changes it’s a variation on the theme of her previous look and is probably explained by the fact that she  (Captain Fearless Comics 001, 1941) 

    Mr Miracle: 

    Mr Miracle is of course among the ranks of the obscure Golden Age characters who have the same name as a more well-known modern character, but he is also a member of a much more select fraternity: of characters whose origin involves a suicide attempt, though the precise reason that the unnamed man had for jumping is never given.

    The future Mr Miracle is pulled out of the water by a helpful stranger and brought to the great scientist Professor Rietz, who revives him via a twenty hour session under his “mind-ray,” only to be betrayed and shot by his assistant Sango at the final hour. Sango turns out to have been a foreign agent who was laying in wait for the mind-ray to be perfected, and now the hour has come.

    The still-unnamed man wakes to a ruined laboratory and a dying Rietz, who reveals to him in addition to saving his life, the mind-ray has given him great if unspecified powers. He then extracts a pledge from the man that he will use this power to aid mankind and promptly dies.

    The man creates a costume, renames himself Mr Miracle and sets out to use is vast array of abilities (transmutation, teleportation, telekinesis, intangibility, size control, flight, etc, etc. Though Mr Miracle is technically some sort of psychic mutate he is in effect a nigh-omnipotent comic book magic user) to bring Sango to justice. 

    Mr Miracle gets to honour the promise he made to Prof. Rietz precisely one more time (by sinking a u-boat) before fading into the mists of comic book obscurity. (Captain Fearless Comics 001, 1941)