{"id":5119,"date":"2022-10-19T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-19T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/?p=5119"},"modified":"2026-09-27T19:32:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T22:32:09","slug":"minor-super-villain-185-the-sapphire-king","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/?p=5119","title":{"rendered":"MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 185: THE SAPPHIRE KING"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Crack Comics 005, 1940) <\/p>\n

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What makes them a super-villain? <\/b>As his name suggests, the Sapphire king is motivated by his desire for and love of sapphires – he seems to love them for themselves and also for the wealth and by extension power they grant him. And he gets<\/i> sapphires by using giant eagles to kidnap ships’ crews and take them to his island in the Indian Ocean, there to labour in his underwater sapphire mines (?) until giant octopus or some other death claims them. So: ruthless pursuit of an obsession using extreme methods over practical ones (kidnapping an endless stream of sailors vs draining the sapphire pool): that’s a super-villain.<\/p>\n

But even an eagle-rich island sapphire colony is not immune to interference from meddling super-heroes: the Black Condor shows up and slays both the birds and the Sapphire King himself, sending the former mine slaves on their way with some compensatory gemstones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Crack Comics 005, 1940)  What makes them a super-villain? As his name suggests, the Sapphire king is motivated by his desire for and love of sapphires – he seems to love them for themselves and also for the wealth and by extension power they grant him. And he gets sapphires by using giant eagles to kidnap […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,936,61,935,44,23,56,2290,169,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-5","category-black-condor","category-capitalism","category-crack-comics","category-dead","category-minor-super-villain","category-quality-comics","category-sapphire-king","category-slaver","category-the"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5119","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=5119"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5120,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5119\/revisions\/5120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}