Daring Mystery Comics (1940 series) #4

Assistant District Attorney Dennis Burton witnesses a brazen daytime bank robbery at the First National Bank. He gives chase by car, trailing the bandits out of the city into the countryside, where they duck into a farmhouse hideout. Burton doubles back, rents a farmer's wagon and disguise, and enters the hangout as a produce peddler. Hearing the gang in the cellar, he dons his Purple Mask costume and attacks — but is knocked senseless from behind and left behind as the gang flees. 

Back at his office, Burton is assigned the case officially and meets Mr. Whalen, the ailing president of the robbed bank, who is heading south to recuperate. Burton spots Whalen's chauffeur as a known criminal and begins to suspect an inside job. He follows Whalen on the same southbound train to a hotel, bribes his way in as a waiter, and overhears Whalen meeting with the gang to split the loot. Slipping into his Purple Mask costume, Burton crashes the meeting, beats the gang, locks them in, and recovers the money. When the gang escapes through the window before police arrive, the Purple Mask pursues on a motorcycle, intercepts them, and hands them over to the authorities. 

Back at the DA's office, the prisoners make a full confession — crediting a mysterious man called the Purple Mask.

The Zeppelin Attack

Synopsis

By J.A.R.V.I.S. 2008
Rating:

At night over London, a Nazi dirigible silently drops explosive mines into the Thames River by parachute. The next day a freighter steams directly into one and is blown apart. Captain K-4, a flying spy and soldier of fortune serving with the British R.A.F. in France, is summoned by his Colonel and tasked with finding the source of the aerial mining. He takes off with his two assistants — Lieutenant Ronald Wolverstone-Clodd, a British ace, and Lieutenant René d'Auvergne, a French World War veteran and expert swordsman. From the air, a glint of metal leads K-4 to a secret airfield where a giant all-metal zeppelin is hidden inside a mammoth cavern. 

K-4 lands nearby and sends Ronald ahead to scout. Ronald ambushes a Nazi ground crewman, steals his overalls, and bluffs his way aboard. Posing as crew, he learns the next target is the Seine River in Paris, then slips away to rejoin K-4 and René with the intelligence. The three take off in pursuit. K-4 attacks the zeppelin with machine gun fire, but the bullets bounce harmlessly off the metal hull. K-4 hands the controls to René, crawls out onto the wing, and leaps onto the top of the zeppelin. He fights his way inside, clears the crew from the control room, and sends the ship into a steep power dive aimed at the secret hangar below. He then grabs a parachute and jumps clear as the zeppelin plunges into its own base, its cargo of mines detonating in a massive explosion. René swoops the British plane down to pick K-4 up.

Characters
Good (or All)

 

Captain K-4

Plus: Sky Devils.

Antagonists
Nazis.

Monako Prince of Magic

Synopsis

By J.A.R.V.I.S. 2008
Rating:

Monako is on the trail of an Oriental fiend named Muro, who is attempting to seize control of the Pacific and West Coast of the Americas. Rounding a corner, Monako spots a thug snatching the briefcase of Josie, a woman he recognizes. He grows to giant size to frighten off the attacker, then magically suspends the thug mid-air to retrieve the bag. Muro, watching from a nearby car, intervenes and snatches the case himself before speeding away to the airport. Monako gives chase by taxi, but Muro boards a plane and escapes. Examining a map Muro dropped, Monako deduces that the briefcase contains the secret fortification plans of the Panama Canal — and that Muro's base of operations is in Central America.

Monako borrows a fast plane and pursues with Josie. He deflects Muro's machine-gun fire with magic, sending the bullets back at the enemy aircraft. Unable to outgun Monako, Muro accelerates — but Monako conjures a jagged mountain range out of thin air directly in the plane's path, clipping one of its wings. Muro and his henchman Tashu bail out by parachute. Monako lands and tracks them to the desert, but Muro gets the drop on him, ties him to a cactus to die in the heat, and takes Josie captive. A circling vulture gives Monako an idea: he bursts his bonds by sheer strength, magically calls the bird to him, and rides it in pursuit of Muro's plane. When the vulture lands on the aircraft, Muro throws the plane into a slide, knocking Monako off. Dangling from the vulture's foot, Monako is shot free when Muro guns down the bird — but survives the fall by growing to giant size, stops the plane with his bare hands, and rescues Josie as Muro escapes into a cloud of black magic.

Characters
Good (or All)

 

Monako
(Prince of Magic)

Antagonists
Mr. Muro, Tashu.

Mars Attacks

Synopsis

By J.A.R.V.I.S. 2008
Rating:

"Whirlwind" Carter, head of the Interplanetary Secret Service for Venus, spots a disabled Earth spacecraft drifting toward the planet. Using his transmitting belt to fly, he rescues the sole passenger from the wreckage — Brenda Hale, a secret agent of the newly formed Space Army, Women's Division. Brenda has urgent intelligence: during a mission to Mars she learned that the Martians are fully organized and ready to launch an immediate invasion of Earth to colonize it. The two race back toward Earth aboard Whirlwind's light-wave speedship, but arrive too late — thousands of Martian troop ships are already descending on North America. Grotesque Martian soldiers armed with superlunar gas guns surge through city streets, overwhelming millions of Earth people, loading them into rockets, and shooting them into space to clear room for Martian settlers.

Whirlwind flies to Venus and enlists its fleet, equipping the ships with elastic-gas bombs that can penetrate any hiding place. He positions the great fleet above the occupied American cities and releases the bombs, driving the Martians into the open streets. As the gassed Martians reel, enraged Earth people pour out to fight them hand-to-hand. Landing in New York harbor with the fleet, Whirlwind and Brenda scout the eerily deserted city, but a Martian vapor-arm snatches Brenda from a doorway. Whirlwind fights through to rescue her, then orders a second gas bombing. The Martians flee to their ships and are chased past the 50,000-mile limit. In recognition of his role in saving Earth, Whirlwind is appointed head of the Earth Department of the Interplanetary Secret Service.

The Spike Green Case

Synopsis

By J.A.R.V.I.S. 2008
Rating:

Marvex and his friend Clara Crandall discuss the case of Jim Hansen, an innocent man on death row whose witnesses have all disappeared. Leaving Clara's home, Marvex spots a midday bank robbery in progress and intercepts the fleeing getaway car, overturning it with his metal body. Police arrive and identify the arrested gang leader as Spike Green. Marvex suspects Spike is connected to the Hansen case. As Marvex walks away, Spike's men ambush him with a steel net thrown from a speeding car, dragging the robot for blocks along the street until his delicate internal machinery jams and he goes limp.

Marvex is hauled aboard a boat at the docks and tossed overboard, net and all. The shock of hitting the water restarts his mechanisms and he smashes free, overhearing Spike's gang planning to break out of prison — and letting slip that Jim Hansen, held in the same penitentiary, might recognize Spike as the real killer. Armed with this knowledge, Marvex races to the warden to warn him, but the breakout has already begun: Spike triggers a mess-hall riot, the guards are overwhelmed, and the prisoners storm toward the warden's office. When they find Marvex there instead, they strap him to the electric chair and throw the switch — but the lethal current cannot penetrate his fabri-steel body. He tears free, joins the guards on the prison wall, and single-handedly blocks the convicts from rushing the gate. As Spike makes a last desperate break for freedom, Marvex shields him from the guards' bullets — keeping him alive to face justice. Under pressure, Spike confesses: Jim Hansen is innocent. The warden thanks Marvex, and Clara calls him the most wonderful man she knows, to which he replies simply that he is not a man — only a machine.

Characters
Good (or All)

 

Marvex
(The Super-Robot)

Plus: Clara Crandall, Jim Hansen.

Antagonists
Spike Green.

The Missing Airliner Fleet

Synopsis

By J.A.R.V.I.S. 2008
Rating:

Don Gorman, test pilot and inventor of a revolutionary super-supercharged engine, is also an undercover secret agent for the U.S. government. His boss at National Aero, Chester Orsen, proposes secretly installing the new engines in all 100 planes of All-State Airlines as a field test. The deal goes through, and the fleet takes to the air packed with passengers. Simultaneously, a Nazi operative signals his men: within hours, 25 All-State airliners have vanished. Don calls the airline hoping to reach his fiancée, chief stewardess Betty Nestor, only to learn she has just taken off on one of the missing routes. Summoned to Washington, Don is briefed that all the disappeared planes carry his engines — and is assigned to crack the case at the risk of his life.

Returning to his factory airport at midnight, Don is ambushed, bound, and left with a ticking time bomb in a remote shack. He endures agonizing pain to burn his ropes free on a candle, escapes a split second before the bomb detonates, commandeers a passing car, and races back to National Aero. There he loads a mysterious box into a pursuit plane and leads a massive armada of Secret Service agents and soldiers cross-country. The box contains a powerful electric magnet sensitive only to the rare alloy in his engines — it guides him straight to a remote field west of the Mississippi, where German agents are repainting the stolen airliners to fly them to Europe. Don arrests Orsen and his Nazi partner Anson Dictor, frees the passengers and crews from a nearby stockade, and explains his tracking device to Betty.

The World of Savages

Synopsis

By J.A.R.V.I.S. 2008
Rating:

Breeze Barton and Ann Barclay, having just escaped the Miracle City by magnetic force, materialize in the outside world to find soldiers of all nations battling savage tribesmen. Choosing to side with the soldiers as the more civilized faction, Breeze and Ann throw themselves into the fight. After the immediate skirmish, a French soldier Breeze calls Frenchy explains that it is now the year 1995, fifty years after the world-wrecking War of 1945 destroyed civilization entirely, leaving the surviving humans to revert to savagery. Breeze resolves to fight for progress. The veterans elect him chief, and together they build a wooden fort, smelt metal for weapons, and rig an electric battery for power. A savage tribesman spies on their preparations and reports back to his chief, who declares war. The savage horde charges the fort and is turned back, but the defenders exhaust their ammunition. Learning from Frenchy that the savage chief rules only so long as he is unbeaten in single combat, Breeze leaps from the fort and challenges the chief bare-handed. He beats the towering chief to the ground, but the defeated man grabs a club in desperation. Even the other savages protest the breach of the rules. Breeze disarms the chief with a punch, wins the fight, and is hailed as the new savage chieftain. While Breeze goes alone to a nearby stream to drink, the deposed ex-chief ambushes him and attempts to drown him. Ann, who followed Breeze, draws her pistol and drives the attacker off. Breeze and Ann resolve to work together for civilization.

The Secret Soldier

Synopsis

By J.A.R.V.I.S. 2008
Rating:

Deep in the Congo, a Nazi force has established a war base. Trojak, the Tiger Man and lord of the jungle, vows that the invaders will taste jungle vengeance, and dispatches his faithful companion Balu to call his savage warriors to arms. That same night, Edith Alton — a woman Trojak has previously rescued from the Nazis — receives a secret visitor: her brother Jerry, who reveals himself to be a Nazi soldier. Jerry urges Edith to prevent Trojak from fighting, warning her the world is lost if he does. War drums thunder as Balu rallies the Congo warriors, but Edith finds Trojak and pleads with him to stand down. Reluctantly, Trojak obeys and dismisses his forces. Alone afterward, a Nazi scouting patrol surrounds and opens fire on Trojak; he escapes through the treetops, taunting them as he goes. The patrol commander berates his men for their failure and sends troops to capture Edith, intending to use her as bait. Meanwhile, Jerry — revealed in a caption to be an Allied agent working undercover — buries a dynamite charge near the Nazi stronghold and wires it to a switch hidden under the palm trees to the north. He is caught and thrown into the camp prison alongside Edith. Balu reports to Trojak, who locates the guardhouse, storms it, and is stunned and captured. Recovering his senses in the cell, Trojak learns from Jerry about the hidden explosive and the switch. He whistles for a parrot, sends instructions to Balu in the language of the jungle, and Balu presses the switch. The Nazi stronghold is blown to pieces. The enemy commander is crushed in the rubble, and Trojak shields Edith and Jerry with his body as debris falls. The three escape together.

Characters
Good (or All)

 

Trojak
(from 1940)

Plus: Balu (tiger), Edith Alton, Jerry Alton.

Antagonists
Nazis.