{"id":2682,"date":"2025-05-22T09:24:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-22T12:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/?p=2682"},"modified":"2026-09-27T17:14:42","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T20:14:42","slug":"minor-super-villain-792-the-octopus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/?p=2682","title":{"rendered":"MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 792: THE OCTOPUS"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Target Comics v1 003, 1940)<\/p>\n

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I’m going to start out by saying that I have no idea why this story is called “Return of the Octopus!” as this is as far as I can tell both the first and last appearance of the character. Both the title and the Octopus’ costume seem to be dramatic flourishes that don’t really play out in the text of the story.<\/p>\n

I do really like<\/i> the Octopus’ costume, though. It’s got a lot of low-effort charm, though now that I think of it I have no idea how easy it would be to source a green sweater with a large octopus decal on it c. 1940.<\/p>\n

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Sadly, the Octopus shucks his disguise after one panel when he has to answer an inquiry from Treasury Agent Chick Farrell at his funeral home front, and this is where the other <\/i>part of his character design comes into play, as physically he embodies a whole set of characteristics that were associated with undertakers in the early 20th Century and beyond: cadaverous face, unnerving stare, unnatural posture, old-fashioned clothing – general creep vibes. This is of course a slander against the hard-working undertakers of the world, but what can you do?<\/p>\n

The extant copy of this comic is unfortunately missing the one or two pages that close this story. At the end of the part that is<\/i> available, the Octopus has just murdered his accomplice (his kidnap victim’s crooked uncle) and is about to get away on a boat, so based on my long experience in reading comic books I’d say that there’s a 70\/30 split on the odds of whether he eventually drowns or is arrested.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Target Comics v1 003, 1940) I’m going to start out by saying that I have no idea why this story is called “Return of the Octopus!” as this is as far as I can tell both the first and last appearance of the character. Both the title and the Octopus’ costume seem to be dramatic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,44,54,23,20,198,1582,1741,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-5","category-dead","category-kidnapper","category-minor-super-villain","category-murderer","category-novelty-press","category-octopus","category-t-men","category-the"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2682","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=2682"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2685,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2682\/revisions\/2685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}