Marvel Mystery Comics (1939 series) #10

The Gasoline Profiteering Racket

Synopsis

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

With the Sub-Mariner gone, the Human Torch returns to police duty and is called to the scene of a bombed gas station on East 4th Street. He and a fellow officer find a grenade fragment in the debris — proof the explosion was deliberate. At headquarters, the Chief dismisses the Torch's theory, but before the argument ends, Atwell, owner of the Atwell Gasoline Company, storms in. He explains that a syndicate has been bombing the stations of any operator who refuses to raise fuel prices, and that his main plant is next. The Chief assigns the Torch to the case.

En route to the Atwell plant with the gas man, the Torch spots two syndicate agents who attempt to run them down and flee on foot. He and a cop subdue both men and book them for attempted murder. At the plant, Riley, head of Atwell's private guards, meets the Torch — but is secretly in league with the syndicate boss, Palmer. A runaway gas truck with a stuck wheel careers toward the plant's tanks; the Torch melts it to liquid with his flame, and the wreck crashes harmlessly into a wall. The Torch then catches Riley phoning Palmer and presses him for the name, singeing Riley's hair until he talks. When the Torch reveals what he knows to Atwell, Riley throws a switch that cuts the Torch's flame and Palmer's men knock him cold. Palmer orders the Torch weighted and dumped in the river. Meanwhile, Palmer's men position a bomb-laden plane over the Atwell tanks using a floodlight beacon. The Torch revives, defeats his captors, and flies after the plane. He dives beneath the wing, melts the bomb racks, and detonates the missiles in mid-air; the crew is forced to land and the surviving pilot names Palmer as head of the syndicate. The Torch traps the pilot in a ring of fire, burns through the floor into Palmer's headquarters at 339 North 11th Street, and — after Palmer's man Limpy clubs him from behind — is overpowered again. Palmer orders him dumped in the river a second time, but the Torch burns free, cages the entire gang in a wall of flame, and phones the Chief to report the syndicate smashed.

Characters

Good (or All)

 

Human Torch
(Jim Hammond)

Plus: Mr. Atwell, Police.

Antagonists
Limpy.

Hostilities Renewed

Synopsis

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

Grounded from flight after the Human Torch burned his ankle-wings, Namor swims to his aerial-submarine and sets course for the undersea city. Two days later he arrives at the gates, where his old friend Gurard greets him, only to escort him straight before the Emperor. In the great reception hall, the Emperor strips Namor of active duty indefinitely for failing his sworn mission against American civilization, and Namor walks out disgraced and friendless.

Meanwhile, on the northern coast of Maine, Luther Robinson reads a newspaper account of Namor leaving New York and resolves to go after him. He phones Cap'n Bob to outfit the armed yacht Colleen with forty cold-weather seamen, and that afternoon departs south with Lynne beside him. Many days later the Colleen pulls into the Antarctic ice-fields and anchors under an iceberg. That evening, Luther plans to use searchlights to lure Namor in, then hit him with everything the ship has. Underwater, Namor is swimming with his cousin Dorma when they surface to investigate the lights. The ship's watchman spots them and the crew opens fire. Namor orders Dorma to dive and reports the attack to the Emperor, who mobilizes the entire undersea navy. Namor leads a battalion of aerial-submarines to the surface; they rake the Colleen's deck with scalding steam-guns, routing the gun crew. Namor boards the yacht alone, knocks out a watchman, and reaches the bridge, where he finds Luther and Lynne directing the battle. He seizes Lynne and leaps with her into the icy water, racing her to his aerial-submarine as leverage to make Luther stand down. Luther descends to the yacht's belly, launches a two-man submarine commanded by Stevens, and fires a torpedo that scores a direct hit on Namor's craft, blasting Lynne free. Luther rescues Lynne from the cold sea but Namor is found floating near the wreck by two of his soldiers, badly hurt. Back on the yacht, Luther vows to finish Namor off before leaving, while underwater Namor revives and swears the Americans will never leave the ice alive.

Characters

Good (or All)

 

Lady Dorma

 

Sub-Mariner
(Namor)

Plus: Emperor Tha-Korr.

The Ghouls of the Blue Ridge Mountains

Synopsis

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

Weird green creatures with red eyes and twisted minds rampage through the wooded hills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, smashing their way into homes and dragging young women off through the brush and into dark caverns below the earth. A girl fleeing one of the creatures collapses from exhaustion until the Angel swoops down from a treetop, scoops her into the branches for safety, and then drops onto the pursuing creature, squeezing it until it dissolves into a gummy substance. He deduces these are ghouls — beings released from the earth's core by volcanic activity — and deposits the rescued girl with a nearby hunting party of armed men, directing everyone toward the caverns at top speed.

The Angel races ahead alone, fighting his way through ghouls that strike at him from the cliffs. At the cavern entrance he is ambushed by another ghoul but hurls it over the precipice. Inside, he finds the captive women being herded toward a lava pit for sacrifice. He shouts from a ledge to draw the ghouls' attention, then leaps into their midst and brawls until outnumbered and brought down. With the Angel and the women now being shoved toward the molten rock, the underground volcano suddenly intensifies: terrified that they have wronged their sacred volcano, the ghouls retreat into the earth's crevices as lava floods the cave floor. The Angel frees his bound hands and steadies the panicked women as the hunting party arrives and throws a rope ladder across the lava. He holds the ladder as the last woman crosses — then the ladder plunges into the boiling pit, taking him down with it. Deep below, however, a ledge catches him by inches, leaving him alive but trapped underground with a surviving ghoul closing in.

Characters

Good (or All)

 

Angel
(Tom Halloway)

Antagonists
The Devils of the Mist.

Master of the Living Dead

Synopsis

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

On a rocky island off the coast of Cuba, the dangerously insane Dr. Bruno Varoz — ex-genius of brain surgery — announces he has perfected an artificial blood formula. His hunchbacked servant Miguel brings in a corpse; Varoz performs a blood transfusion and applies electrical current, and the dead man rises. Drunk on the result, Varoz dispatches his hunchbacks to raid American cemeteries for hundreds of bodies. A fortnight later the sloop returns laden with corpses. Varoz reanimates them all, places them under his hypnotic control, and unleashes them on American cities to kill, steal, and burn. The corpse-beings invade city after city, take over an air-drome, steal planes, and loot jewelry stores and banks. The U.S. President wires Professor Zog begging him to act, and Zog immediately deploys Electro against the marauding dead.

Electro wades into the corpse-beings and begins tearing them apart, but Zog spots one fleeing in a stolen plane and orders Electro to follow. The trail leads to Varoz's island castle, where Varoz turns loose a two-headed monster on the robot. Electro grapples with the beast and hurls it into a well of foaming disintegrating acid — but Varoz slams the lid shut, trapping Electro inside as well. Satisfied that his robot is destroyed, Varoz sends his army back into the U.S. while the FBI pleads with Zog to locate Electro and end the slaughter. At his lab Zog starts up a massive generator, doubling Electro's power; charged to full capacity, Electro leaps clear of the well and advances on the castle. Varoz activates a transparent shell that encases the robot and lifts it on cables over a blazing inferno — but the intense heat renders the shell pliable, and Electro tears free and emerges unharmed. He gives chase as Varoz flees screaming, seizes the madman, swings him through the air, and hurls him into the well of acid. Professor Zog, having tracked the castle's location with his wireless compass, calls in army bombers, which reduce the entire structure to rubble. Electro then returns to the United States to destroy the last of the murderous corpse-beings.

Characters

Good (or All)

 

Electro
(Robot)

Plus: Philo Zog (Philo Zogolowski).

Antagonists
Dr. Bruno Varoz, Zombies.

Treachery in Two Forks

Synopsis

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

The Masked Raider, riding his white horse Lightning toward the town of Two Forks with his face unmasked but in disguise, spots signs of a struggle on the trail and investigates. He finds Jonathan Gregg, the town's tax collector, shot and dying in the brush. A sinister figure watches from cover as the Raider tends to Gregg, who manages to explain that an unknown man attacked him to steal papers proving his identity as tax collector — papers the thief can use to pose as Gregg and abscond with the collected tax money. Gregg warns that the killer is heading for Two Forks and is dangerous, then dies. The Raider rides for town, while the murderer races ahead by a shortcut, planning to beat him there and blame the killing on the stranger.

In Two Forks, the killer passes himself off as Jonathan Gregg to the Sheriff and his daughter Sally. That evening the Raider goes to the Sheriff's home, mask on, to warn him — but the Sheriff, not convinced by a masked man's word, threatens arrest. Unable to persuade him, the Raider takes Sally as leverage and hides her, then plants a forged letter at the hotel that will prompt the impostor's real contact to come to Two Forks. When the crook reads the message the next morning he panics and tries to flee with the stolen tax money, but the Raider cuts him off at the hotel room. The impostor attempts to shoot his way clear; the Raider disarms him and goads him into confessing in front of Sally, who has been secretly present. When the crook attempts to seize Sally as a shield, the Sheriff and the Raider subdue him together. Sally bears witness to the confession, and the Sheriff recovers the stolen money. The Raider rides off before he can be thanked.

Characters

Good (or All)

 

Masked Raider
(Jim Gardley)

Plus: Lightning (horse).

The Murder of a Man without a Will

Synopsis

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

Schoolboy detective Terry Vance is in his attic laboratory with his monkey assistant Dr. Watson when his police radio picks up two murder calls at once: one at a penthouse on Prince Avenue, one at a Long Island estate. Terry loads Dr. Watson onto his large radio-controlled model airplane and sends him to Long Island while he runs to the Prince Avenue scene himself. At the penthouse a detective shows Terry a coat on a stand with a bullet hole exiting through the back — proof the murder was by remote control, not by any suspect present. Terry deduces the shot came through the wall from a hidden passage, then slips away to the Long Island estate, where Dr. Watson has already found a secret passageway and photographed a suspicious figure inside with his tiny candid camera. Using his "Detectoscope" — a sensitive microphone and earphone device — Terry eavesdrops through the wall and learns that the victim, Dr. Caldwell, was a wealthy physician whose playboy stepson Gregory stands to inherit the estate. The doctor had no known will, and Gregory had quarreled with him continually.

In the hidden passage, Terry finds a burned piece of paper and uses an ultraviolet bulb to read the chemically-preserved remnants: it is Dr. Caldwell's will, witnessed by a lawyer named Eric Stephenson. Terry photographs it as evidence — but Gregory ambushes him and snatches at the camera. Dr. Watson clunks Gregory on the head with a bottle, and Terry overpowers him. With everyone assembled in the library, Terry presents the bound Gregory and explains: knowing Caldwell had made a will leaving the estate to his young assistant and the assistant's fiancée, Gregory set up a clock-gun hidden in the passage to fire through a small hole in the wall at a preset time — which also put him in New York at the moment of the shooting. The lawyer Stephenson, whose name appeared on the will, was the man murdered at 208 Prince Avenue, killed to destroy all evidence of the will's existence. At police headquarters, developing Dr. Watson's photographs confirms everything, and the doctor's entire fortune passes to the assistant and his fiancée.

A Visit from Scotland Yard

Synopsis

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

In the South African diamond fields, two Scotland Yard detectives spot and arrest a wanted murderer known as "London" Jack, wanted for the killing of one Gregory Billings five years prior. Their informant, Kitty Smiley, turned him in after London Jack had tried to kill her too — and her surviving testimony will hang him. The detectives load their prisoner aboard a plane bound for England, flying over the Belgian Congo jungle. High above the jungle the plane's oil line breaks, forcing an emergency landing in a clearing. Ka-Zar, guardian of the Congo, watches from the trees with his lion Zar and moves in to observe. The pilot reports the oil line can be repaired, and while he works, London Jack asks to rest in the shade — then seizes his moment: as soon as the engine starts he overpowers the detectives, forces the pilot out of the cockpit at gunpoint, ties both detectives, and takes the controls himself, leaving the pilot and the detectives to starve in the jungle.

Ka-Zar instructs Zar to summon Nono the monkey, then sprints across the clearing and swings from a high tree onto the plane as it lifts off, grabbing the rudder from beneath. Clinging to the fuselage while the plane climbs, Ka-Zar punches through the fabric skin above the cabin and drops inside. London Jack spots his reflection in the cockpit window and the two fight in the air; the pilotless plane goes into a spin. Ka-Zar knocks London Jack unconscious and throws himself at the controls, recalling that he once watched a previous visitor fly from this same position. He wrestles the plane out of the spin before it crashes into the jungle canopy, then forces London Jack at gunpoint to bring the plane back to the clearing. Meanwhile Nono has retrieved Ka-Zar's knife and, directed by Zar, cuts the detectives' bonds. Ka-Zar delivers London Jack to the detectives, who offer to take Ka-Zar back to civilization as a reward. He declines, saying he must stay and protect his friends, and watches the plane depart with the murderer aboard.

Characters

Good (or All)

 

Ka-Zar
(David Rand)

Plus: Nono (monkey), Scotland Yard, Zar (lion).

Antagonists
London Jack.