Mystic Comics (1940 series) #2

Known publicly as society playboy Earl Everett, Excello is a naval intelligence agent whose extraordinary mental powers allow him to visualize distant events and people. Returning from a European assignment aboard a neutral ocean liner, Excello meditates on deck and his master mind conjures an unbidden vision of two spies plotting in cabin 42, third class. He investigates, is caught by Fritz and a second plotter, and deliberately allows himself to be taken to their superior. Late that night, a small boat transfers Excello and his captors to a Sovernian battleship anchored nearby, where Kadash, the chief spy, has him clapped in irons. The next morning Excello visualizes Kadash briefing the ship's captain: explosives are already planted under every major American city, all linked to a super power plant in Reedsville, New Jersey; Kadash will fly to New York first, then collect Dr. Marko and activate the system by remote control from the battleship.

Excello snaps his chains by brute strength, burns through the iron cell door with his secret chemical SF 44, fights past the ship's sailors with his triple-propeller pistol, and commandeers Kadash's giant seaplane — just as Kadash takes off ahead of him. Using his mind's eye to locate the spies' New York office on the 80th floor of the North Building, Excello sets the seaplane down in the harbor, scales the skyscraper with vacu-pads, crashes through the window, and overpowers Kadash's associates. He then disguises himself as Kadash with clothes and makeup taken from the unconscious spy, flies the seaplane to the power plant in Reedsville, and bluffs his way past the guards. Inside, Dr. Marko reveals the full scope of the turbine network before Excello drops the disguise and beats down Marko and the arriving guards, hurling a massive turbine into the troops. He then destroys the power house with a vial of high-explosive liquid and radios Naval Intelligence on his pocket transmitter; on his instructions, the Navy's coastal defense gun shells the Sovernian battleship, sending it to the bottom. The spies in the New York office are arrested, and a calling card reading "America First, Last and Always — Excello" floats in through the window.

The Stolen Weapon

Synopsis

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

Joel Williams and his brother Joshua Williams are scientists who have spent weeks completing a secret torpedo repeller for the U.S. Navy. Their creation, Flexo, is a rubber man — a figure of live rubber filled with a secret gas, capable of flight and remote-controlled by his masters. Joel takes off in their private plane to deliver the device to Washington, while Joshua remains in the laboratory. Watching from the woods, foreign agent Karl Damos and his henchmen bring Joel's plane down with a ray gun. Joel lands in a clearing and is immediately surrounded by Damos's men, who steal the repeller and leave him tied to a tree with a warning that wolves will come for him at nightfall. Joel taps a distress message on his vest-button transmitter key; Joshua receives it at the lab and launches Flexo to the rescue. The rubber man flies with Joshua on his back through the night sky and arrives just as a wolf pack closes in on the helpless Joel. Flexo wades into the animals, swinging them by the tail, then the brothers examine the downed plane: the coil is burnt out, and there is no clearing long enough for takeoff. Joshua devises a solution — Flexo lifts the plane bodily into the air until it has sufficient altitude to clear the trees.

Airborne again, Joel uses the repeller's magnetic rays to attract his compass toward the stolen device, steering the plane to a mine where Damos and his men have gone underground. Flexo carries both brothers down the elevator shaft and they confront Damos, who detonates a dynamite charge that collapses the ceiling on them. Flexo emerges from the rubble unharmed; the brothers surface with only scratches. Flexo crashes through to the lit room where the spies are hiding, absorbs their bullets without injury as the holes close up in his rubber body, hurls a loaded coal car into the gang, then winds himself up and spins like a windmill, knocking the remaining spies down with his whirling arms. During the melee, Damos and a few confederates slip away up the shaft with the repeller. Flexo floats the brothers to the surface and gives chase through the air; he plants himself in the road in front of Damos's speeding car, which rams him and is hurled backward over the embankment, dumping its passengers. As the repeller tumbles from the wrecked car, Flexo dives down the cliffside and catches the delicate instrument before it hits the rocks. He returns it to his masters, and the brothers resume their journey to Washington.

Characters
Good (or All)

 

Flexo
(Rubber Man)

Plus: Dr. Joel Williams (Joel Williams), Dr. Joshua Williams (Joshua Williams).

Antagonists
Karl Damos.

The Sabotage Ring

Synopsis

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

Curt Cowan, the Dynamic Man, is an FBI agent with superhuman strength and powers of concentration. A sabotage ring led by the mysterious Dr. Vee has just blown up a major dam, and Cowan discusses the wave of attacks with his Chief at FBI headquarters. Dr. Vee's next target is the Westbound Express: his men plant a powerful time bomb under a railroad trestle. Cowan rides the train, and using his strong powers of concentration he visualizes the bomb being placed. He flies ahead of the locomotive, tears the bomb from the trestle, and drops it into the river below just before it detonates. He then pursues the fleeing saboteurs by air, uses his magnetic ray to stall their car engine, and smashes into the gang with his fists, ignoring their guns. Questioning a surviving thug, Cowan learns Dr. Vee's location, though a hidden microphone in the car transmits the exchange back to the spy chief.

Dr. Vee prepares an ambush, and when Cowan charges through the front door he is overpowered by the assembled mob and clubbed unconscious. He wakes in a cell with spiked walls closing in on him; he escapes by boring straight through the ceiling with a mighty leap. Finding plans left behind by the departed gang for sinking the ocean liner Batavia, Cowan races to the docks. He tips off the police, knowing they will arrive too late, and dives into Dr. Vee's men as they board the ship with dynamite. He scatters the gang and confronts Dr. Vee directly; one blow sends the spy leader over the ship's side, half-drowned. The police arrive for the mopping up, Dr. Vee is pulled from the water and confesses, and Cowan reports back to his Chief at FBI headquarters, noting only that he had "a little trouble."

Characters
Good (or All)

 

Dynamic Man
(Curt Cowan)

Antagonists
Dr. Vee.

Against the Black Hawk

Synopsis

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

In the year 2300 A.D., interplanetary travel is so widespread that Earth has organized a corps of Space Rangers to protect travelers. Rangers Bob Raleigh and his partner Nibbs haul in a space bandit carrying stolen Plinium Ore — the only known substitute for radium — and return him to New York. Their Commander immediately dispatches them on a harder assignment: the Black Hawk, a criminal who lives on an asteroid near Mercury, has been terrorizing the space lanes and must be stopped. At his asteroid hideout, the Black Hawk surveys his stockpile of stolen ore and boasts to his followers that within a month he will control the heavens. His daughter Alyse overhears him and is angrily dismissed. Bob and Nibbs land on the asteroid hoping to surprise the Black Hawk, but are spotted and met by a horde of Mercurian Bandits. Outgunned and outnumbered — having lost their ray pistols in the fight — the two rangers are captured and brought before the Black Hawk, who has them locked up.

Left alone, Bob and Nibbs free themselves from their bonds, slip out of the cell, and fight their way past a pursuing Mercurian patrol back toward the ship. At the ship they are intercepted by Alyse, who urges them to destroy her father before leaving, explaining that he is cruel and she hates him. She guides them back to the vessel and reveals that the Black Hawk plans to use the Plinium Ore to power a device capable of conquering the entire universe. Alyse warns that he will attack from his own ship in the air. Bob mans the disintegrating ray while Nibbs takes the controls, and as the Black Hawk's ship closes in and fires its paralyzing ray, Bob pulls up to get exact range and fires. The Black Hawk's ship is blown to bits. With peace restored to the space lanes, Bob and Nibbs credit Alyse for the victory.

Blue Blaze

Synopsis

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

Spencer Keen, known only as the Blue Blaze, is a scientist who was buried alive after crossing paths with a mysterious blue phenomenon, but emerged from his coffin endowed with superhuman strength and electronic energy. When an explosion destroys Mine No. 2 of the American Anthracite Company and buries scores of miners, the Blue Blaze races to the scene in his supercharged speedster. He leaps down the mine shaft to find all the miners dead and recovers a metal fragment he identifies as part of a bomb, confirming the explosion was sabotage. A second cave-in buries him under rock and timber, but he channels his electronic energy to smash free and surface. At the mine superintendent's office, he interrupts a visit by Barko, a crackpot inventor trying to sell the company a new safety device. The superintendent identifies Barko as a suspect, and the Blue Blaze deduces he may be heading to Mine No. 3 to plant another bomb.

Barko, watching from a hilltop, rolls a massive boulder down onto the Blue Blaze's approaching car; the Blaze catches it with his bare hands and hurls it aside. A bullet from Barko punctures a tire, forcing a stop, and at the hilltop Barko sets attack dogs on him, but the Blue Blaze beats them off. Barko flees and doubles back, ambushing the Blue Blaze at his car with a ray gun that encases him in a block of ice. Barko's henchmen carry the frozen hero to the laboratory and leave him to suffer while Barko proceeds to the mine. Alone, the Blue Blaze concentrates his electronic energy, shatters the ice block, and speeds to Mine No. 3. He finds Barko and his men in an adjacent deserted shaft with lit dynamite, set to cause a cave-in over the working miners. The Blue Blaze fights through the gang; Barko empties his guns at him but the bullets bounce off. A single punch knocks Barko down, and the Blue Blaze defuses the dynamite. Barko is committed to an insane asylum, his men are handed to the police, and the Blue Blaze speeds back to his mountain retreat.

Characters
Good (or All)

 

Blue Blaze
(Spencer Keen)

Antagonists
Barko.

The Laboratory on Wheels

Synopsis

By None
Rating:

The Origin of Dr. Gade

Synopsis

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

Dr. Gade is a brilliant young scientist dedicated to advancing civilization through his inventions, but his work threatens the profits of powerful money interests. A hired assassin attacks Gade in his laboratory and hurls him into his own furnace, setting the building ablaze. Inside the fire, a strange miracle occurs: the chemicals saturating Gade's body react with the flames and transform him — he emerges alive, invisible, and charged with new vibrations. Pressing a button on his belt, he can reappear at will. Learning that his enemies — wealthy racketeers Sporvan and Wymac — had paid to have him killed because his inventions would make life too cheap, Gade resolves on revenge. Still invisible, he follows the two men to their high-rise office, hurls one of their thugs from a forty-story window in front of their eyes, and then materializes in their locked room, terrifying them. When Sporvan attempts to shoot him, Gade vanishes before the trigger is pulled, then reappears behind the two men and maneuvers Sporvan into shooting Wymac instead.

The police arrive at the commotion, and while Sporvan tries to blame a phantom, Gade appears just long enough to taunt him before vanishing again. Sporvan breaks free from police custody and, deducing the location of Gade's new laboratory, tracks him there with a ray device he believes can render the Invisible Man visible. The rays do bring Gade into view, and weakened by their effect he takes a beating from Sporvan — until he stumbles against his own power-giving machine, which instantly restores his strength. He batters Sporvan down, and when police burst in, Gade vanishes. Sporvan tries to accuse the Invisible Man but the police see nothing; Gade, still unseen, hurls his enemy into a disintegrator machine left running in the corner. Sporvan is blown to atoms, and the bewildered police are left to report Gade and Sporvan simply as missing.

Characters
Good (or All)

 

Invisible Man
(Leonard Gade)

Antagonists
Mr. Sporvan, Wymac.

Zara of the Jungle

Synopsis

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

Two native tribes in the heart of the jungle are locked in a battle of mounting casualties. Capt. Jeff Graves, commissioner of the territory, insists on heading into the jungle alone to stop the war over his assistant George's objections. A lion nearly ambushes him on the trail, and when Graves reaches a stricken village he finds a spent cartridge — a clue that the natives have had outside help. Before he can investigate further, a striking young woman drops from the trees and warns him to turn back. She introduces herself as Zara: her father, fleeing a crime-ridden civilization, raised her in the wilderness after her mother died, teaching her to live off the land, and charged her on his deathbed to never let cruelty or crime flourish in the jungle. Graves presses on despite her warning. After he fights off a second native attack, Zara watches from a distance and he backtracks along the warriors' trail, which leads him into a trap set by Bwana Gombo, a renegade who reveals he deliberately stirred up the war between the tribes so that, once they weakened each other, his own men could seize control of the territory.

Gombo orders an execution — his warrior levels a rifle at the bound Graves — but Zara's arrow strikes the gunman from a tree and frees the captain. As Gombo fires at both of them, Zara dives from the tree, seizes the gun, and deflects the shot. Graves knocks Gombo down with a punch and takes his pistol, then the three of them head into the jungle with Gombo as prisoner. Leaving Graves to guard Gombo, Zara swings alone through the treetops toward the still-battling tribes. Her appearance as the jungle goddess stops both sides cold, and when Graves arrives with Gombo he explains to the chiefs that the war was a fraud engineered by one man. A warrior calls for Gombo's death, but Graves insists the law will deal with him. Graves asks Zara to return to civilization with him; she declines, saying the jungle is her only home. With a wave she vanishes back into the trees, and Graves continues on with his prisoner.

Characters
Good (or All)

 

Zara
(Zara of the jungle)

Antagonists
Bwana Gombo.