{"id":734,"date":"2023-05-30T03:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-30T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/?p=734"},"modified":"2026-09-27T15:50:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T18:50:18","slug":"minor-super-villain-290-the-parrot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/?p=734","title":{"rendered":"MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 290: THE PARROT"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 024, 1941)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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There are two different comic book tropes that come together in the Parrot. The first is simple: the weird-looking guy adopts a criminal persona based on their appearance -. So: the Penguin, the Vulture<\/a>, the Chicken, the Platypus, the Skull<\/a> etc. This is basic stuff, but generally fun.<\/p>\n

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The second thing has to do with the nature of super-powers, that by their very nature they require countering Just as every penny-ante gangster who faced Superman in the 50s seemed to have gotten their hands on a chunk of kryptonite, the well-informed criminal in a Human Torch story will at the very least have asbestos clothing and some form of fire-suppressing chemical liquid or spray. In extreme cases like the Kryptonite Man or the Torch’s own Asbestos Lady the counter-weapon becomes the entire theme, but the Parrot here represents an intermediate step that I find quite compelling.<\/p>\n

See, a while back the Human Torch encountered a Tibetan cult called the Fire-Men who had fire-powers that they used to fight fire-monsters. One of those Fire-Men, named Culflam, was a crook who got sent to jail at the end of the story, where he shared a cell with the Parrot and taught him all the secrets of the Fire-Men Cult (unfortunately for Culflam, as the last part of the Learn Mystical Secrets in Jail trick is to murder your teacher on the way out). <\/p>\n

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So the Parrot is fireproof. He’s also something like seven and a half feet tall and completely ruthless. All of this makes for a very fun villain, even if all he really does is try to rob an opera crowd. I was pretty jazzed to read his second appearance, two issues later!<\/p>\n

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Very sad times had by all: all he does is escape from jail again and then accept a contract from a man with  a German accent to blow up a strategic sulphur supply – his flame immunity doesn’t even come up! And then<\/i> he dies in a car crash! Truly this is an example of squandered potential.<\/p>\n

Clearly the Parrot should be BRUNG BACK<\/b> in some form – unfortunately the only hook I can think of are his stolen Fire-Man powers perhaps coming with some sort of curse for shirking the duties of the cult and he comes back to haunt the California desert as a fiery ghost? Or a modern incarnation of the cult needs access to lost teachings and mistakenly resurrects him instead of Culflam?  Or maybe the US government just keeps the bodies of deceased super-villains in cold storage somewhere and he just gets mad scienced back from the dead, I don’t know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 024, 1941) There are two different comic book tropes that come together in the Parrot. The first is simple: the weird-looking guy adopts a criminal persona based on their appearance -. So: the Penguin, the Vulture, the Chicken, the Platypus, the Skull etc. This is basic stuff, but generally fun. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,42,44,47,93,847,131,24,40,23,28,846,7,470],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-14","category-bring-em-back","category-dead","category-gang-boss","category-human-torch","category-jailbreak","category-magic","category-marvel-comics","category-marvel-mystery-comics","category-minor-super-villain","category-multiple-appearances","category-parrot","category-the","category-toro"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734","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=734"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":735,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734\/revisions\/735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}