{"id":190,"date":"2023-06-27T13:34:00","date_gmt":"2023-06-27T16:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/?p=190"},"modified":"2026-09-27T15:29:37","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T18:29:37","slug":"minor-super-villain-311-the-gold-leeches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/?p=190","title":{"rendered":"MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 311: THE GOLD LEECHES"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Red Raven Comics 001, 1940)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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The Gold Leeches are not terrifically interesting villains, but there are precisely two interesting things about them and that’s enough for me. Uninteresting preamble: Zeelmo, the Gold Leech (unofficial name) is a gold-obsessed gang boss with a few super-scientific gadgets (the Gazegrapho Machine for remote  viewing and the Trembling Death gas which kills via accelerated aging) and a birds-and-skeletons decorating motif that I wish had come up more often.<\/p>\n

Zeelmo attempts to recruit B-tier Golden Age Marvel hero the Red Raven as a minion and ends up chucked into the Trembling Death gas and then blown up for his efforts. That’s interesting thing 1, by the way: being the only Golden Age foes of the Red Raven.<\/p>\n

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Interesting thing 2 is that Ratoga, one of Zeelmo’s lieutenants, immediately takes over his organization as Gold Leech II (name still unofficial) and I love it. I know that it can be a bit of a slippery slope from “what happens to the villain’s organization when to villain is killed?” or “who builds all those villain hideouts?” to deeply unfun comics about logistics but I love this sort of thing – more second fiddles should step up like this. <\/p>\n

Anyway, Ratoga gets smothered by Red Raven in a huge pile of gold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Red Raven Comics 001, 1940) The Gold Leeches are not terrifically interesting villains, but there are precisely two interesting things about them and that’s enough for me. Uninteresting preamble: Zeelmo, the Gold Leech (unofficial name) is a gold-obsessed gang boss with a few super-scientific gadgets (the Gazegrapho Machine for remote  viewing and the Trembling Death […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,46,44,47,281,282,27,24,23,283,7,26,63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-5","category-conquest","category-dead","category-gang-boss","category-gold-leech","category-gold-leech-ii","category-lieutenant","category-marvel-comics","category-minor-super-villain","category-red-raven","category-the","category-thief","category-unofficial-name"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=190"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":191,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions\/191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}