{"id":4203,"date":"2025-03-16T09:11:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-16T12:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/?p=4203"},"modified":"2026-09-27T18:30:05","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T21:30:05","slug":"minor-super-villain-745-the-bat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/?p=4203","title":{"rendered":"MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 745: THE BAT"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Smash Comics 010, 1940)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n

I had a little intro to this entry all mapped out in my head, something along the lines of how in a super-hero universe, super crimes are just as obvious a choice as mundane ones, like hiring a scientist to mind control your political opponents instead of merely blackmailing them,  and so we shouldn’t judge super-villains for over-complicating things, but as a part of actually writing it out I had to go over the details of the Bat aka Graystone’s plan in my head and… he over-complicates it.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n

I don’t think that I can lay this out properly in paragraph form, so we must once again turn to our old friend the bulleted list for aid. Here is the Bat’s basic plan:<\/p>\n

– systematically rob his neighbours<\/p>\n

– create a fake monster bat to terrify the countryside and draw suspicion away from himself by linking its appearances to the robberies<\/p>\n

– once everyone around him is poor and frightened enough, buy up all the local property for cheap.<\/p>\n

Up to this point, everything is fine. It’s a bit <\/i>complicated but appropriately so for a comic book world in which there are people running around putting human brains into gorillas and so forth. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n

Graystone’s downfall presumably begins when he realizes that being the only person in the area not targeted by the Bat is a bit suspicious. The obvious solution to this problem is simply to rob himself and join his neighbours in bemoaning their monster-haunted fate, but instead he:<\/p>\n

– fakes the kidnapping of his son (in on the scheme, flies the plane that the bat monster hangs off of, is arguably also the Bat)<\/p>\n

– calls in Scotland Yard and makes a bunch of noise<\/p>\n

– attempts to kill Captain Cook of Scotland Yard several times as he investigates the mystery<\/p>\n

– has the Bat demand that Cook deliver the ransom money so that Graystone can try to kill him again<\/p>\n

It’s like a list of things you shouldn’t do if you want to stay under the radar – heck, killing Cook would only raise<\/i> the profile of the case! Even the operation of the bat monster involves both a secret airfield and a hidden image projector (that doubles as an engine-killing ray for some reason) so that the bat image can be projected onto a sheet that is being pulled by a plane. Have these fools never considered the humble kite?  <\/p>\n

Graystone, his son and various of their servants are of course bundled off to jail to think about wot they done.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Smash Comics 010, 1940) I had a little intro to this entry all mapped out in my head, something along the lines of how in a super-hero universe, super crimes are just as obvious a choice as mundane ones, like hiring a scientist to mind control your political opponents instead of merely blackmailing them,  and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2079,732,480,18,1366,23,7,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-5","category-bat","category-captain-cook-of-scotland-yard","category-engine-killing-ray","category-fake-monster","category-land-grab","category-minor-super-villain","category-the","category-thief"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4203","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=4203"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4204,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4203\/revisions\/4204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}