![](\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/img\/b\/R29vZ2xl\/AVvXsEhYyrB9_1d_PEZdr-OWASSO4ZH8WSCDwbRG5rwv1rEtD-ScWrFlaPoH3vCfaHRP1yBUJFUAAtIZwMV3uV_OuZUwxodGHEL95BUxF_MxvWFY1iZSvZTSgVaQWdT3dtPOMgCZr_nrWNT4Zuxq1w_Lfu84X2tCGXaOLcX2j_fuZh2tnCp-QDABLY9NHDIKNQ\/w640-h570\/222.%20the%20phantom%20duelist%20doll%20man%20001%201941.JPG\" "\\"the")
<\/a><\/div>\nThe Phantom Duelist is and example of a couple of my favourite comic book story setups: 1. the eerie local legend used as a basis for crime and 2. the murder mystery with a whole passel of suspects. Plus there’s a dose of “aren’t Hollywood people weird<\/i>!” for flavour.<\/p>\n
So: movie producer Reynolds decides to drum up a bit of publicity by buying a haunted castle and importing it to Hollywood. The only problem: Reynolds is a bit of a shitheel and so is promptly murdered by someone posing as the castle’s resident ghost, the Phantom Duelist.<\/p>\n
The suspects: <\/p>\n
-Rocky Perrone, gangster who Reynolds refuses to pay off a gambling debt to<\/p>\n
-Pierce, Reynolds’ leading man who he antagonized and threatened to blacklist<\/p>\n
-Marrow, who wants to marry Reynolds’ leading lady but is unable to because of her contract<\/p>\n
The murder happens at a costume party and Pierce is almost a self-frame due to showing up as the Phantom Duelist. In the end though, the murderer is revealed to be… a fourth guy! Steve Morton the publicity agent who Reynolds has apparently been blackmailing for the past 25 years!<\/p>\n
So a couple of points off for presenting an unfair mystery (and another couple for so many of the characters not having first names) but over all top notch comic book tomfoolery.<\/p>\n
Number of Episodes of the “Super-Villains of Hollywood” podcast: <\/b>One episode only. SOme prurient attention paid to Reynolds’ shitty doings. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(Doll Man 001, 1941) The Phantom Duelist is and example of a couple of my favourite comic book story setups: 1. the eerie local legend used as a basis for crime and 2. the murder mystery with a whole passel of suspects. Plus there’s a dose of “aren’t Hollywood people weird!” for flavour. So: movie […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,44,968,55,23,20,1925,56,7,62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-14","category-dead","category-doll-man","category-fake-undead-ghost","category-minor-super-villain","category-murderer","category-phantom-duelist","category-quality-comics","category-the","category-villains-of-hollywood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3367","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=3367"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3370,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3367\/revisions\/3370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}