{"id":2456,"date":"2025-01-18T08:16:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-18T12:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/?p=2456"},"modified":"2026-09-27T17:06:01","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T20:06:01","slug":"minor-super-villain-706-lepus-the-fiend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/?p=2456","title":{"rendered":"MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 706: LEPUS-THE-FIEND"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Planet Comics 007, 1940) <\/p>\n

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Lepus-the-Fiend has a lot of classic Fletcher Hanks villain qualities: the weirdly hyphenated name, the fact that he lives on a star (to be clear: not a poetic name for a planet. He lives on a five-pointed, flaming star) and of course his hatred of civilization, which is not given a particular motivation so I am left to assume is because he is a hairy and wild looking guy. He’s not the first Hanks character to yell about destroying all the civilized planets but it is his particular phrasing that makes the title of Paul Karasik’s<\/a> first collection of Hank’s comics.<\/p>\n

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Lepus has chosen to destroy civilization in a fairly dramatic fashion, by smashing inhabited planets together like so many pool balls. Effective but fiddly, it seems, as both Earth and Venus are saved by Lepus’ poor aim on his first attempt.<\/p>\n

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Lepus-the-Fiend doesn’t get another shot at planet-smashing, as it is at this point that Buzz Crandall and and his aide Sandra really get on top of the adventure and blow him to smithereens. These civilization-haters never seem to be particularly prepared for civilization to defend itself, do they.<\/p>\n

(note the second panel above. This is the answer to a question that had been bouncing around in my head: why would Fletcher Hanks take over an existing character (Buzz Crandall) rather than make up a new one as seems to be his usual modus operandi<\/i>? Because this was originally a Whirlwind Carter comic that Marvel evidently did not want. We’re solving mysteries here!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Planet Comics 007, 1940)  Lepus-the-Fiend has a lot of classic Fletcher Hanks villain qualities: the weirdly hyphenated name, the fact that he lives on a star (to be clear: not a poetic name for a planet. He lives on a five-pointed, flaming star) and of course his hatred of civilization, which is not given a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,71,814,44,99,246,1669,121,23,67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-5","category-alien","category-buzz-crandall","category-dead","category-fiction-house","category-humanity-destroyer","category-lepus-the-fiend","category-mass-destruction","category-minor-super-villain","category-villains-of-the-future"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2456","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=2456"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2457,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2456\/revisions\/2457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}