Marvel Mystery Comics (1939 series) #8

The Sub-Mariner and the Human Torch finally meet! Namor continues his path of revenge against humans. So he does a series of attacks on New York city, including planting a bomb under the Hudson river, and letting lions, elephants, and snakes free from the zoo to attack citizens. But not all his acts are evil intended. He sees a baby in the path of elephants and saves him.

While Namor breaks the Washington Bridge, the Human Torch appears to stop him. Torch melts a metal grinder thrown his way, and flames Sub-Mariner who must flee into the water. Has Namor meet his match?

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The Search for Sub-Mariner

Synopsis

By Julio MM
Rating:

This tells what happened before the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner met at the George Washington bridge (from the previous story, “The Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner Meet“).

Torch, now a police officer, follows his chief's command to bring Namor in. He finds the Sub-Mariner’s path of destruction and helps amend things. Officer Betty Dean, Namor’s only friend, has a word with Torch. She says that Namor is not as bad as he seems. But the “water man” lunatic has crashed the Empire State’s mooring mast on the ground, trapping innocents. Torch helps free them. He also captures the zoo animals liberated by Namor. And fights a tough gorilla, too.

Finally, he faces Namor on the bridge, retelling his encounter .

Namor knows Torch won’t be easy to defeat.

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Characters

Good (or All)

 

Human Torch
(Jim Hammond)

Plus: Betty Dean (Betty Dean Prentiss).

Antagonists

 

Sub-Mariner
(Namor)

The Captive in the Cabin

Synopsis

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

A cold wind sweeps through a hidden mountain cabin where several thugs hold a young woman captive. The Angel makes his entrance through an upper window, drops on the guard left with the girl, and draws the rest of the gang back inside to fight. Outnumbered, he battles fiercely before being knocked unconscious from behind with a gun butt. When he comes to, the girl tells him that despite the apparent ransom motive, something is wrong: her father has lost all his money except for his stake in the Meltmore Steel Company, and the papers have been full of that fact. A well-dressed man in a blue suit then arrives at the cabin — he is the true mastermind, and he reveals to the thugs that by forcing the girl's father, Rogers, to liquidate his $250,000 in Meltmore stock, the man will acquire a controlling interest in the company.

The Angel, hands tied behind him, edges toward the fireplace and burns through his ropes, steeling himself against the pain. Freeing the girl, he creeps up behind the group studying a map and launches back into the fight, battering the gang one by one. He sends the girl toward the car, but a thug shoves her sprawling across the room, and the Angel turns cold-eyed and tears into him. After tying the remaining men up and loading them into the car, the Angel prepares to drive the girl home — only for her to faint from the ordeal. He catches her, grumbling about her timing, and the story closes with the girl quietly pulling him in for an embrace.

Characters

Good (or All)

 

Angel
(Tom Halloway)

The Boomeranged Hold-Up

Synopsis

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

A gang of outlaws raids the town bank in broad daylight, shooting a teller dead during the robbery and galloping off with the money sacks. Mexican Pete, a local character dozing on the bank steps, witnesses the crime and recognizes one of the riders; he follows the gang on horseback and on the road encounters the Masked Raider, to whom he reports what happened. The two ride to the bank together, where the Masked Raider notes that the teller was killed despite offering no resistance — and that scraps of old newspaper were stuffed in the money bags. Mexican Pete identifies the gang leader, Brady, as a man he has seen before in the border town of Rio Cacques. The Masked Raider leaves Pete outside and enters the saloon alone to arrest Brady; he gets the drop on Brady but is stunned from behind by a chair, overpowered by the gang's numbers, bound, and locked in an old shack.

As the gang prepares to flee, one of them accidentally knocks a kerosene lamp from a table, setting the shack ablaze. Seeing his chance, Mexican Pete dashes into the burning building, frees the Masked Raider, and recovers the money pouch. The Raider and Pete ride hard to Indian Gulch ahead of the fleeing outlaws and string a rope across the pass; the horses stumble and several men are thrown. Pete collects their guns while the Masked Raider covers them, and together they herd the prisoners back to town and deliver them to the sheriff. In the bank, the Masked Raider reveals that the bank president himself was the brains of the scheme — he had staged the fake robbery one week before an annual state audit because he had been using the depositors' funds for his own purposes, and had Brady murder the teller who knew the truth. The money bags, the Raider shows, contained only newspaper cut to size.

Characters

Good (or All)

 

Masked Raider
(Jim Gardley)

Plus: Mexican Pete.

The Crook Who Controlled Electro

Synopsis

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

Professor Zog's robot Electro has previously captured gang boss "Boss" Sarpo, who has since vowed revenge from prison. Sarpo's lieutenant "Scar-Face" Joe rallies the gang and sends three carloads of men to raid Zog's administration building at midnight. A sentry is knocked out, an intruder trips an automatic burglar alarm, and a firefight breaks out. The gang overpowers Zog's guards and drags the professor across town to a deserted warehouse, where they force him at gunpoint to use the Electro control-machine to summon the robot. When Electro arrives, the gang orders Zog to command the robot to free Sarpo from prison. Knowing Electro in criminal hands would bring far worse destruction, Zog complies. Electro storms the prison walls, scatters guards like toys, tears open Sarpo's cell, and carries him out under a hail of bullets.

Back at the hideout, Sarpo puts Electro to work looting banks across the city. The robot rips open vault doors, carries away safes whole, and shrugs off every bullet the police and militia fire at it. District Attorney Rupert Haden, a fierce enemy of the underworld, is seized and held hostage. Tanks and militia are deployed, but Electro smashes them against each other and sends officers fleeing. Meanwhile, on the distant planet Ligra, Jago — King of the ferocious Dragon-Men — observes Electro through a giant telescope and dispatches a rocket-ship to capture the robot for use against Empress Nara's peaceful Lion-People. The Dragon-Men land beside Sarpo's hideout just as Electro returns with more loot; they seize the robot and force Zog to shut off the control-machine. Zog is led aboard the rocket-ship alongside the helpless Electro, and the craft blasts off into space, leaving the story on a to-be-continued cliffhanger.

Characters

Good (or All)

 

Electro
(Robot)

Plus: Philo Zog (Philo Zogolowski).

Antagonists
Boss Sarpo, Dragon-Men of Ligra, Scar-Face Joe.

Battle with Blackie Giles

Synopsis

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

Ferret arrives at the Utopia Savings Bank to make a deposit and finds the door guarded by a lookout trying to turn him away. Seeing people inside, Ferret pushes past and walks into an armed robbery in progress led by a crook he recognizes: Blackie Giles. The gang leader, Eaglebeak, shoots Ferret at close range, but Ferret's bulletproof vest absorbs the bullet. He grabs Blackie as a human shield, and the lookout's entrance at the wrong moment allows Ferret to clock him and scatter the gang, who flee with the money. Ferret reports to the Commissioner, bets him a thousand dollars he can catch the gang first, and drives to the city's biggest newspaper to plant a false story. The paper runs a headline stating that police are baffled and have no leads — a deliberate lure.

When Ferret returns home, two of Blackie's men are waiting for him. He is taken at gunpoint to Blackie's cruiser, the Fortuna, moored at a Hudson River dock. Blackie strips Ferret of his bulletproof vest, takes the ship out to open water, and announces he will buy Ferret's silence with bullets rather than money. Ferret is shot, but the bullet only creases him; he comes up fighting, knocks out Blackie's men one by one in a brawl on deck, and takes the wheel himself. He later explains to the astonished Commissioner that the planted newspaper story worked exactly as planned — Blackie assumed Ferret had withheld information from the police and brought him aboard to silence him, which put Blackie directly in Ferret's hands.

Characters

Good (or All)

 

Ferret
(Leslie Lenrow)

Plus: Police.

Antagonists
Blackie Giles.

Gold and Greed

Synopsis

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

An introductory caption establishes that Barrie Richards, a young Englishman, has inherited a gold mine in the Belgian Congo. On his way to examine it, he falls in with Lester Drake, a crooked mining engineer who suspects the mine holds a rich vein. When Richards falls into a concealed game pitfall and breaks his ankle, Drake shoots him dead, intends to forge papers proving Richards sold him the mine, and travels to the village of the corrupt native chief Abwama. Drake bribes Abwama with whiskey and gifts to supply him with men from peaceful tribes to work as slaves, and later to capture elephants for hauling ore. Months pass as Drake operates the mine profitably, growing wealthy on forced labor and ivory. Meanwhile, in another part of the jungle, Ka-Zar is sought out by a native chief whose tribe has been raided and enslaved by Abwama at Drake's orders; the chief begs Ka-Zar to drive the white man away before everyone is killed.

Ka-Zar calls on his lion companion Zar and travels for days to reach the plateau above Drake's mine. Leaving Zar nearby, he scouts the buildings alone that night but steps on a cleverly hidden game trap and falls into a deep pit. Drake and Abwama haul Ka-Zar up at gunpoint, tie him, and throw him into the elephant pen to be trampled. Pinned under an elephant's foot, Ka-Zar spots his dropped knife on the ground; he instructs one of the elephants to hold the blade steady, works his bound hands across the ground to cut his ropes free, and then tells the whole herd his plan. He roars the deep call of a lion, summoning Zar from the jungle, and the elephants surge as one against the walls of the pen, trampling Abwama's sentry warriors. Ka-Zar leads the stampede to the building where Drake and Abwama sleep; the charging elephants flatten it, crushing both men to death. Ka-Zar sends the freed slaves home and walks back into the jungle with Zar.

Characters

Good (or All)

 

Ka-Zar
(David Rand)

Plus: Zar (lion).

Antagonists
Aswama, Lester Drake.