Red Raven Comics (1940 series) #1

When a clipper ship crashes onto a mysterious floating island in the clouds, every passenger perishes except a small boy, the lone survivor of the wreck. The Bird-Men of the celestial island bring him before their King, who overrules those who would kill the child and instead raises him as his ward. Over fifteen years, the gravity-free island's accelerated evolution grants the boy a superior brain and body; on his twentieth birthday, the King names him the Red Raven, outfits him with membranous wings, and charges him to return to Earth and fight the forces that cause unhappiness in the world.

Back on Earth, the Red Raven witnesses breadlines and poverty and attempts to find work. A brawl outside a personnel office ends with police subduing him with tear gas. From his subterranean stronghold, Zeelmo — a ruthless tyrant who has been draining the world's wealth through nefarious means — observes the episode through his Gazegrapho machine and dispatches thugs to snatch the Red Raven from police custody. Brought before Zeelmo, the Red Raven refuses to serve him, and is hurled into a pitch-black dungeon where a gas begins aging him at one hundred years per hour. A woman named Andreya is thrown in after him; the Red Raven catches her as she falls, forces open the trapdoor despite his rapidly failing strength, and carries her to safety just as Zeelmo's lair explodes, showering the city with gold.

Returning to the Bird-Men's island, the Red Raven learns from the King that Zeelmo's henchmen remain at large. The Royal Scientist constructs an Element Detector to locate hidden gold caches, but aerial sweeps prove fruitless. Instead, the Red Raven plants a newspaper story about the device to lure the criminals out, defeats them in a brawl, and coerces one into leading him to their stronghold. There he discovers Ratoga, Zeelmo's successor, who has been watching through his own Gazegrapho machine. Ratoga springs a net trap and subjects the Red Raven to a Vibrato-Machine designed to shatter bones and snap minds; the Red Raven survives by feigning death, escapes, infiltrates Ratoga's fortress, and uses the Element Detector at 18,000 prelons to draw all the hidden gold out of the walls, burying the gang. He then leads police to the scene and departs, the city's stolen wealth restored.

The Origin of the Human Top

Synopsis

By None
Rating:

Mercury in the 20th Century

Synopsis

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

On Olympus, Jupiter laments that Pluto, Prince of Darkness, is stoking humanity's wars for his own amusement. Minerva suggests a champion be sent to oppose him, and Jupiter runs through the candidates — Vulcan is too similar to Pluto in temperament, Aeolus too complacent, Diana too easily exploited, Apollo too vain — before settling on his own son, Mercury. Tasked with spoiling Pluto's game, Mercury departs Olympus. His search for Pluto leads him to the nation of Prussland, whose people suffer under the dictatorial rule of Rudolph Hendler — a mortal guise behind which Mercury's celestial sight immediately recognizes Pluto himself. Mercury confronts his cousin directly, but Pluto, reveling in the slaughter he has engineered on a grand scale, refuses to stop.

Mercury withdraws and embarks on a different strategy. Over the Atlantic he spots a U-boat commander preparing to torpedo an unsuspecting liner; he dives into the sea and deflects the torpedo, sending it into the submarine instead. Back on land, Mercury begins systematically stealing battle plans from guarded military files across all warring nations, so that no offensive can ever be launched. Heinrich Goertz, head of Prussland's dreaded Sturm Staffel espionage organization, dispatches the spy Thea Shilhausen, alias L-5, to trap the plan-snatcher. Mercury walks through her crossfire unharmed, tells her peace cannot be stopped by bullets, and departs in a blaze of light. With his orders never reaching the front, Pluto rages helplessly as soldiers on opposing sides — idle in their trenches — begin treating one another as fellow men. Jupiter and Minerva look on approvingly as Mercury's campaign takes hold.

Characters

Good (or All)

 

Hurricane
(Hermes)

Plus: Aeolus, Apollo (Phoebus Apollo), Diana, Jupiter, Minerva, Vulcan.

Antagonists

 

Pluto
(Hades)

Comet Pierce

Synopsis

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

In the year 2150 A.D., rocket pilot Comet Pierce is competing in a gruelling race to Jupiter against three other ships, including that of his unscrupulous rival Avis Jort. Jort sabotages Pierce's rear rockets, sending the ship spinning off course and crash-landing on a small asteroid. A serpentine monster emerges from the asteroid's crust and seizes Pierce, but is blasted by a heat gun fired from a distance — the weapon belonging to a small Plutonian whom Pierce had apparently saved from the creature. Hours later Pierce wakes in the care of a mysterious blonde woman in a red suit who tells him she has followed his career and admired him; she gives him a solar engine capable of achieving the speed of light as a parting gift, kisses him, and departs before he can learn her name.

Pierce installs the solar engine in his crippled rocket, and the resulting speed so outpaces Jort that Pierce arrives on Earth well ahead of him. When Jort lands, confident he has won, Pierce is already there waiting; a brief fight leaves Jort on the floor. Pierce then sets off across the solar system to find the mysterious woman, a quest that takes him through the swamps of Venus, the scorched surface of Mercury, and the plains of Mars — where he questions a Gharu chieftain in sign language — before the grateful Plutonian guides him to a hidden city on icy Saturn. There he finds the woman, correctly deduces that she is Laraina, the rebel queen of Martian Zoranthus, currently in exile from the traitor Golak, and volunteers to join her cause.

Characters

Good (or All)

 

Comet Pierce

Plus: Murfi, Queen Larania.

Antagonists
Avis Jort.

Officer O'Krime

Synopsis

By None
Rating:

Re-Creator of Souls

Synopsis

By None
Rating:

Eternal Brain

Synopsis

By None
Rating: