(Wow Comics 003, 1941)
The Laughing Skull specializes in extortion. They call it blackmail and it is kind of framed as being blackmail but over the course of the story it becomes clear that he has no concrete dirt on any of his victims and is just counting on carrying the day with vague threats and eventually by being able to point to all the people who he killed for not paying him. Straight-up threats-of-violence extortion, in other words.
To make sure that word gets out about the consequences of ignoring his demands, the Laughing Skull kills his victims by burying them alive and leaving cheeky tombstones on their graves. Horrible!
While very public murders might make for good business in the extortion industry they do come with a pretty specific workplace hazard in the form of super-heroes - in this case Mr Scarlet - knowing where and when to find you on most nights. We must assume that it's a huge cemetery, however, because somehow Mr Scarlet is too late to save the Laughing Skull's second victim even though he was already inside when they started digging. Or perhaps those henchmen are the world's greatest gravediggers.
Not that the Laughing Skull is a total pushover: his announced third victim is in fact a cover for a trap set for Mr Scarlet, and one that works well enough that Scarlet has to be rescued from his immanent burial by Miss Wade.
Not to buck the greater super-villain trend by adjusting his methods after clashing with a super-hero, the Skull is finally captured while in the process of burying the actual third victim. Unmasked via a tombstone to the head, he turns out to be banker John Dodd, aka the false third victim, who used his insider knowledge to select the wealthiest targets for his extortion attempts. But there's more! The Laughing Skull/ John Dodd is also revealed to be...
... this guy, who has been popping up throughout the issue and confessing to being the Laughing Skull to both DA Brian Butler and Mr Scarlet! This is kind of a smart move? It definitely allows the Laughing Skull to misdirect Mr Scarlet on at least one occasion as that guy was always just lurking around waiting for his chance to confess. The risk is very high, however, particularly as John Dodd is at least theoretically a witness to the attempted murder of Mr Scarlet - did the Laughing Skull have a plan for when DA Brian Butler came to ask him for a statement or was he just going to keep burying lawmen until they stopped trying to arrest him?
Anyway, the whole gang ends up dumped in a grave with a custom tombstone of their own (that opens up a whole world of questions about whether Mr Scarlet has stonecarving chops or is packing some sort of 1940s Sharpie in his belt). A dose of your own medicine, Laughing Skull!
SKULL SCORE: 3/5
(this ish also feature Mr Scarlet having a smoke while in costume - a real rarity!)
No comments:
Post a Comment