{"id":4494,"date":"2024-06-10T09:34:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-10T12:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/?p=4494"},"modified":"2026-09-27T18:41:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T21:41:10","slug":"minor-super-villain-540-the-will-o-wisp-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/?p=4494","title":{"rendered":"MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 540: THE WILL-O-WISP"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Silver Streak Comics 001, 1939)<\/p>\n

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As we open, simply everyone’s<\/i> worried about the Will-o-Wisp, a mysterious crook who shows up at crime scenes and steals what other crooks were about to make off with. The police chief looks bad because he can’t catch the Will-o-Wisp! The gangs are mad because they keep getting robbed by the Will-o-Wisp!<\/p>\n

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The Will-o-Wisp’s big mistake comes when he butts in on the mugging of Neal Carruthers III, aka Mister Midnite, which of course arouses his interest. I guess you could argue that that wasn’t precisely a mistake because the Will-o-Wisp didn’t know that he was making it, but what about the fact that his next move was to extort the police chief for $50 000? Even without knowing that the chief and Neal Carruthers were friends that’s just plain playing with fire.<\/p>\n

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Mister Midnite of course crashes the cash handoff and manages to figure out the Will-o-Wisp’s secret: that he is not in fact a small ball of light capable of speech but a very gutsy ventriloquist who just saunters up and takes the loot while his victims are distracted by a light on a fishing line or some other apparatus. It’s a bold, bold plan, with one huge point of failure: the first time someone looks away from the light and says “who’s that guy?” you’re screwed.<\/p>\n

Speaking of “who’s that guy?”, one thing that never gets resolved is who exactly that guy is. I assume that he’s meant to be an unknown outsider but thanks to the ambiguity of the simple art combined with the spot colouring everyone looks very similar to one another. I honestly can’t say if one of the cops or crooks introduced in other scenes are supposed to also be the Will-o-Wisp. <\/p>\n

All we can do is wait for someone to do a gritty reboot of Mister Midnite and give us a satisfying Will-o-Wisp origin (dark sorcerer who gained the ability to gorily eject a glowing orb from his nasal cavity in exchange for the souls of the innocent, I assume).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Silver Streak Comics 001, 1939) As we open, simply everyone’s worried about the Will-o-Wisp, a mysterious crook who shows up at crime scenes and steals what other crooks were about to make off with. The police chief looks bad because he can’t catch the Will-o-Wisp! The gangs are mad because they keep getting robbed by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,51,960,139,23,349,7,26,2240],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-69","category-extortionist","category-fake-supernatural","category-lev-gleason","category-minor-super-villain","category-mister-midnite","category-the","category-thief","category-will-o-wisp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4494","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=4494"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4497,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4494\/revisions\/4497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}