Marvel Mystery Comics (1939 series) #11

A black plague epidemic sweeps through the New York slums. Dr. Stone and his associate Reed attempt to fight the disease by clearing the infected tenement buildings, but Frank Simmons, the slumlord who owns the properties, physically blocks them and is defended by a beat cop. The Human Torch arrives on the scene, sides with Dr. Stone, and threatens Simmons — who promptly pays crooked ward boss Roddy $50,000 to use his political connections to have the Torch thrown off the police force and to stop the doctor. The result is felt at police headquarters, where officers Casey and Tom are ordered to arrest the Torch on arson charges, equipped with asbestos suits and air-pressure guns.

The Torch fights off the officers in the burning slum block, evades the asbestos squad by hiding his flame inside the fire itself, and reunites with Dr. Stone on a rooftop. Learning the plague is spreading beyond control, he devises a plan: he instructs Stone to evacuate all infected residents into a ten-block area, then soars high and creates a wide circle of flame that crashes down to melt the condemned houses and form a fire barricade around the quarantine zone. He writes a warning in the sky and then breaks into the Civic Center Hospital to pressure the staff into sending a medical corps. An ambulance convoy arrives, the Torch melts a path through the barricade to let them in, and the operation succeeds — even the officers who had pursued him pitch in once they see the barricade. Police planes then spray carbon dioxide snow on the flames, extinguishing the Torch mid-air; he crashes two planes together, escapes the wreckage when the heat re-ignites him, but sustains a wound to his arm that will not burn. Dr. Stone bandages him while Reed makes rounds inside the quarantine. Meanwhile, inside the barricade, Simmons collapses from the plague just as he was about to shoot Roddy for failing to stop the Torch; Roddy pockets Simmons's gun and is himself struck down moments later. At the hospital, the dying Simmons tells the Torch to watch out for "J.B." — the hidden mastermind behind the rackets — before expiring.

The Capture of Luther Robinson

Synopsis

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

Following a prior skirmish, American adventurer Luther Robinson has tracked Namor to his Antarctic iceberg home aboard a super-yacht. Robinson organizes a landing party and rows ashore with his crew, but they are ambushed by Namor's green-skinned warriors and quickly overpowered. Only Robinson and one other crewman survive; the guards march them up the ice cliffs and into a magnificent sculpted hall of ice — the throne room of the Emperor — where they are thrown into a pit. When Namor is summoned before the Emperor, he lunges at Robinson, is restrained by guards, and is sent away. Isolated in his chamber, Namor resolves to destroy the Americans on his own terms, without the Emperor's knowledge, and seeks out his cousin Dorma for help. Dorma suggests sneaking aboard the yacht and sinking it with one of its own depth-bombs; Namor agrees, adding that he will also bring Robinson's companion — a young woman named Lynne Harris — back to the castle as a prisoner.

Namor and Dorma fly on winged feet to the yacht's deck, where Dorma silences and carries off the unconscious Lynne while Namor is spotted by a watchman and raises the alarm. Bullets ricochet harmlessly off Namor's steel-like hide; he rips a seaplane from its catapult, strafe-attacks the yacht with its machine guns, then lands it in a cove and slips back aboard through the anchor chain and chain-locker. He locates the arsenal, plants a depth-bomb with a three-minute fuse, and swims clear as the yacht explodes and sinks. Meanwhile, Dorma delivers Lynne to her own chambers in the ice-castle and tends to her near-frozen state. Namor visits the captive Robinson and coldly informs him that Lynne is his prisoner, his yacht is at the bottom of the sea, and his men are lost. Later, Robinson and his aide Mickey use a pocket-knife and the edge of a watch-case to chip through their ice-cell wall and escape into the castle corridors. They find Lynne's unguarded room, wrap her in blankets, and make for a hidden seaplane Namor had moored in the cove. As their plane lifts off, Namor arrives at the cove and watches them go — having anticipated the escape and let it happen, reasoning the Emperor would have tortured the girl and killed them all for information. He tells himself the Americans have now had a taste of what the Sub-Mariner can do.

Characters

Good (or All)

 

Lady Dorma

 

Sub-Mariner
(Namor)

Plus: Emperor Tha-Korr.

Antagonists
Luther Robinson, Lynne Harris.

A Nestfull of Loot

Synopsis

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

A series of robberies in Piñon Pass has the Sheriff baffled. The Masked Raider arrives outside the sheriff's office and listens through a window as an old woman reports that a thief prowled near her hen-house but stole nothing from her. The Raider rides to the home of Deputy Horton and, introducing himself, learns that Horton was also robbed — yet his watchdog never barked. Suspicious, the Raider searches the deputy's house and finds a wanted poster, then rides to the old woman's chicken farm that night and discovers the stolen loot hidden beneath a nest in the hen-house. The next morning the Raider disguises himself as a rowdy cowhand, fires his guns in the air, and rides wild through the village to draw the Sheriff and his men into a chase — luring them away from the farm while he doubles back, discards the disguise, and heads for the hen-house.

At the farm, the Raider encounters Billy Horton — the deputy's son — attempting to set fire to the hen-house, and subdues him. The Sheriff arrives with his posse, smoke visible in the distance. The old woman comes out with a rifle and drives the lawmen off her land. The Raider intervenes, disarming Billy and turning him over to the Sheriff, then reveals his deduction: Billy was the only person friendly with every dog in town, which is why no watchdog barked during the robberies; the Raider also found a chicken feather at the deputy's place, confirming the hen-house as the stash. The stolen money and goods are recovered, and the Raider rides off.

Characters

Good (or All)

 

Masked Raider
(Jim Gardley)

Plus: Lightning (horse).

Rajah Sarput's Hunt

Synopsis

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

Belgian Congo Royal Commissioner Jan Vangelder is forced to relinquish a large tract of jungle land to Rajah Sarput, an Indian nobleman whose legal documents cannot be challenged. Sarput announces he will build a castle and hunt big game, driving out the animals Ka-Zar protects. In his jungle home, Ka-Zar — restless after the rainy season — sets out with his lion Zar and his elephant companion Trajah to explore. He discovers a native named Nono fleeing through the jungle and learns that Sarput has been slaughtering animals and burning villages with his slave army. Ka-Zar vows to stop him. Days later, the three companions track the source of the trouble and encounter Sarput's slaves driving a huge elephant herd directly at Rajah Sarput's platform — meant as a driven hunt. Ka-Zar charges into the stampede and, commanding the elephants by jungle authority, turns the herd away from Sarput's position and steers them to safety in a hidden ravine.

Ka-Zar then leads Trajah and Zar up to a high plateau and roars out the fierce lion's call, deliberately drawing Sarput's attention. Sarput spots the white man and his animals on the skyline and, using a high-powered telescopic rifle, shoots Ka-Zar in the side from a great distance — something Ka-Zar, unaware of the weapon's range, never anticipates. Ka-Zar falls backwards over the cliff. The sound of the rifle drives Zar berserk; the lion leaps onto Sarput's elephant but is shot down. Sarput orders Zar caged to be used for target practice and sends slaves to find Ka-Zar's body. Trajah locates the unconscious Ka-Zar in the bushes below — his fall broken by thick undergrowth — and carries him to a lake, where Nono bathes his wound. Ka-Zar recovers over several days. Meanwhile a big-game hunter named Bradley visits Sarput's camp hoping to buy the caged lion, is refused, and that night his men steal Zar's cage and load it onto a freighter bound for the United States. Ka-Zar, recovered and learning Zar's fate from the jungle animals, tracks the trail to the coast and boards the ship just as its whistle signals departure. The freighter steams out of harbor with Ka-Zar and Zar aboard, headed for America.

Characters

Good (or All)

 

Ka-Zar
(David Rand)

Plus: Jim VanGelder, Nono (monkey), Trajah (elephant), Zar (lion).

Antagonists
Rajah Sarput.

Mayhem at the Midget Race Track

Synopsis

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

Schoolboy detective Terry Vance and his monk assistant Dr. Watson are spectators at a midget auto race when a car suddenly hurtles through the fence. Watson photographs the crash just as it happens and spots a silvery liquid on the wreckage. Terry collects a sample of the substance — which he recognizes as mercury — and heads home to test it, instructing Dr. Watson to remain and photograph more. Bumping into a striped-suited spectator while leaving, Terry unknowingly jostles loose a tube of mercury the man was carrying. Suspicious, Terry secretly hides in the trunk of the gamblers' car as it speeds out of town to a country hideout. Using a detectoscope, he listens through the trunk lid and overhears the men discussing their race-fixing scheme: they inject mercury into tires through the air valve, which migrates to the wheel's edge under centrifugal force and eventually breaks the axle. At the hideout Terry finds an elderly mechanic being coerced into building rigged components, and learns the gang plans to sabotage car number eight that night at the oval track.

The gang catches Terry and ties him to a chair upstairs, planning to light a candle fuse connected to a TNT charge before departing for the races. Meanwhile Dr. Watson, finding Terry absent from the home lab, alerts newspaper contact Deadline Dawson, who reviews Watson's photographs. At the hideout, Terry rocks his chair until he overbalances and crashes to the floor — knocking the candle out before it can light. He frees himself and races to the track. Working with Dr. Watson via radio from a plane overhead, Terry directs Dawson to identify car number eight's position on the track; Dawson drops a note to the driver warning him to pull out, and the driver does so just in time as the rigged wheel gives way. The gamblers are arrested, and Terry explains to the sheriff how the mercury injection scheme worked, with the recovered photographs serving as evidence.

The Devils of the Mist

Synopsis

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

Continuing from a prior adventure in the Blue Ridge Mountain caverns, the Angel barely catches a jutting rock to halt his fall into a stream of molten lava. Climbing back up the cliff face he is immediately swarmed by a horde of huge, grey-skinned subterranean monsters with clawed hands and glowing red eyes. Fighting recklessly against their overwhelming numbers, the Angel has his cape tangled in one creature's claws and is crushed unconscious in a powerful grip. When his captors seize him, they freeze in place as if struck by rigor mortis — a paralytic effect that falls over them whenever they claim a victim. Hours later the creatures resume movement and carry the Angel through thick mist along a narrow path beside a seemingly bottomless pit, arriving at a monstrous city of stacked towers built into the pit wall. He is paraded through the streets, dropped through a trap door into a dungeon, and eventually awakens to find himself being nursed by a young woman dressed in ancient Greek attire.

The woman explains that she has lived for four thousand years: long ago these monsters ravaged her civilization until the combined powers of the ancient world drove them back underground and sealed their exit — but she was captured in the fighting and has survived in the subterranean world ever since, unable to leave because sunlight would instantly reduce her to a skeleton. She tells the Angel that whenever he defeats a creature a paralysis falls over it for hours, giving him a window to flee. She provides him with a garment that will let him fly faster than the most powerful eagle, warns that the monsters are magnetically drawn to any beam of sunlight and will stop at nothing to reach it, and refuses to leave with him, departing by a separate exit. Sunlight pours through a small opening at the top of the dungeon; the Angel zooms upward, and moments after he clears the exit the woman steps into the light and is instantly reduced to skeletal remains. Enraged, the Angel dives back into the underground city and drives the massing creatures toward the sunlit beam — as the falling monsters plunge into the abyss, their impact triggers an earthquake that brings tons of rock crashing down on the city, burying it entirely. The Angel streaks upward through the collapsing cave mouth barely seconds before it seals shut, escaping into the open sky.

Characters

Good (or All)

 

Angel
(Tom Halloway)

The Forest Fire Fiends

Synopsis

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

Lumber magnate Baldwin Drake, furious that his business rival John Borden has successfully acquired the rich Burton County forest lands and a lucrative government building contract, hires lumberjacks to set fire to the Burton County forests, intending to ruin Borden entirely. Forest ranger Jim Brent spots the fire from Mount Rugged and alerts the town of Midvale. Borden, watching the blaze spread toward town, telephones his old friend Professor Zog for help. Zog has just completed a new televisor device for his robot Electro — a system that transmits his image and voice directly into the robot's helmet, allowing him to operate it remotely — and uses the emergency as a live field test. Zog flies to Midvale with Electro aboard, meets Borden, and races up Mount Rugged to the ranger station. From the station, Zog activates Electro via the televisor and sends the robot into the fire line, where it begins hurling barrels of fire-extinguishing chemical onto the flames.

Drake, watching from a distant hillside with his henchmen, recognizes that Electro is being controlled from the ranger station and sends his men to seize the machine. The gang bursts in and holds Jim Brent at gunpoint while Drake sneaks up and shoots Brent through the window, knocking him unconscious, then turns off the Electro machine. The gang loads the immobile robot into a truck and drives it toward the still-burning forest to destroy the evidence. Brent, recovering, reactivates the televisor and guides Electro through the flames; by the time Zog himself arrives at the station the fire is beaten and the town is saved. Zog then takes over the controls, redirecting Electro to pursue Drake. Drake flees into his own lumber mill and triggers a trap door that sends Electro plunging into a log flume, propelling the robot directly into the teeth of a giant log-saw — which shatters against Electro's iron frame. Electro intercepts Drake's fleeing car and flips it through the air, and the criminals are captured.

Characters

Good (or All)

 

Electro
(Robot)

Plus: Philo Zog (Philo Zogolowski).

Antagonists
Baldwin Drake.