This weekend’s escapist superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog looks at Timely Comics (later Marvel Comics) stories in March 1942. I reviewed their January 1942 stories HERE.
ALL WINNERS COMICS #4 (Mar 1942)
Story 1: The Terror of the Japs
Heroes: Human Torch and Toro
Villain: Reverend Moppino
Synopsis: New York City’s Sun Temple is directed by Reverend Moppino from Japan. He is secretly an Imperial Japanese spy and, now that America is officially in the war, he and his agents spread destruction and chaos throughout the city with their weapons, including an “atom-expansion ray.”
Comment: The Sun Temple was set up with all manner of high-tech death-traps for the Human Torch and Toro.
Story 2: The Sorcerer’s Sinister Secret
Heroes: Captain America and Bucky
Villain: Mysto the Magician
Synopsis: Mysto has sold out to Japan and uses his high-tech seemingly “magic” gadgets to kidnap and torture American officers in the Pacific Theater to get war secrets out of them. Cap and Bucky put an end to it.
Comment: Mysto was aided by his hulking, hunch-backed servant.
Story 5: Death to the Nazi Scourge
Hero: The Destroyer
Villain: Heinrich the Butcher
Synopsis: Heinrich Bungler aka the Butcher is a Gestapo leader notorious for torture and other atrocities. The Destroyer fights off all the Gestapo men that the Butcher has scouring Germany for him and also engineers the escape from a prison camp for a minister who had been arrested for speeches attacking Hitler.
Comment: The Destroyer used milk bottles full of benzene to rig makeshift grenades to throw at the armored vehicles which he encountered in this adventure.
Story 3: Crime on the Rampage
Hero: The Whizzer
Villain: The Leet Branis Gang
Synopsis: Leet Branis leads his gangsters in a series of robberies at jewelers and ultimately at a theater. The Whizzer wages war on them and defeats them all.
Comment: Leet Branis is an anagram for Stan Lieber, Stan Lee’s real name, so Leet is another Stan cameo of sorts.
Story 4: The Sinister Horde
Hero: Sub-Mariner
Villain: Felix Sak
Synopsis: Nazi agent Felix Sak has been running a U-Boat base out of his seemingly innocent mansion on Long Island. The Sub-Mariner defeats all the U-Boats and manages the destruction of the base.
Comment: Sak’s U-Boats had been preying on Atlantic shipping, both military and commercial.
MYSTIC COMICS Vol 1 #8
Story 1: Hitler Meets the Destroyer
Hero: The Destroyer
Villains: Hitler, Von Maus and other Nazis
Synopsis: As usual walking around in his disguise, this time in Berlin itself, the Destroyer soon manages to free a British spy being tortured by Gestapo officer Von Maus and his men, kills the Nazis, then invades Hitler’s own office building to kill several more Nazis and taunt Hitler before escaping into the night.
Story 2: The Largest Diamond in the World
Hero: Black Marvel
Villains: Diamond Thieves, Vool-Kan and the Bari People
Synopsis: Black Marvel arrives in South Africa to investigate diamond mining deaths attributed to the curse of a huge Diamond of Death. Our hero survives death traps by a conspiracy of criminals and the leader of the native Bari People.
The Black Marvel outfights a gang of diamond thieves, a trio of lions and Vool-Kan, the Bari People’s leader who was posing as a god. It turns out the Diamond of Death is just a fake which was coated with toxic poison that killed everyone who touched it.
Story 3: The Gems of Doom
Hero: The Witness
Villains: The Imp and his men
Synopsis: The Witness’s precognitive abilities let him teleport to the site of armed robbers raiding a jewelry store. He defeats them but one escapes, so he forces the one he captured to talk. Our hero learns enough to shut down the stolen jewel ring led by the supervillain called the Imp, who is really mild-mannered jeweler Booie Dawdly. The Witness captures the Imp and his entire gang.
Story 4: Death Drews
Hero: The Terror
Villains: Nazi soldiers and marines
Synopsis: American Laslo Pevely, who periodically transforms into the monster called the Terror, is covertly helping refugees from the Nazis escape Europe by way of Lisbon, Portugal. Transforming into his supernatural alter ego, he first kills Nazis who have been abducting refugees to use as slave labor in North Africa.
From there, he goes to Senegal to free the previously taken slaves and kills all the Nazis involved.
Story 5: The Thing
Hero: The Blazing Skull
Villains: Dr. Fear
Synopsis: Private Investigator Mark Todd is hired to find the hideous creature who has been preying on innocent people. In his heroic identity of the Blazing Skull, Mark clashes with the murderous monster a few times. The creature eventually takes the audience and staff at a live radio show hostage and demands a million dollars or he’ll kill all of them.
The Blazing Skull confronts the beast at the radio station. As the hostages look on, our hero outfights the monster and exposes it as the villainous Dr. Fear.
Story 6: League of Crime
Hero: The Challenger
Villains: The League of Crime
Synopsis: Four master criminals led by Remu the Great are on a crime spree. The superhero called the Challenger steps in when the crooks repeatedly beat the cops. One by one, the Challenger defeats the League members at their specialties and turns them over to the police.
CAPTAIN AMERICA COMICS Vol 1 #12
Story 1: Rozzo the Rebel
Synopsis: To help keep a Pro-Allies ruler of a fictional South American country from siding with the Axis Nations, Captain America and Bucky protect him from multiple assassination attempts by a supervillain called Rozzo the Rebel and his men.
Rozzo uses explosives, a gun, a sword and several bolas in battle. Our heroes defeat Rozzo and his men.
Story 2: Dr. Crime
Synopsis: This is Captain America and Bucky’s first clash with the supervillain called Dr. Crime. With chemicals found in the jungles of South America Dr. Crime used his scientific genius to create chemical weapons for himself. His greatest threats are his shrunk-down henchmen, whom the villain uses as custom-sized thieves and assassins to sneak into places.
Our heroes find Dr. Crime’s lair but get shrunk down to doll-size by his shrinking gas. Even so, they outfight the doctor’s “Pygmies of Terror” (shrunken henchmen), his hungry cat and finally the villain himself. They force him to return them to normal size and arrest him.
Story 3: The Flaming Horror
Hero: Father Time
Villains: The Berretti Gang
Synopsis: Larry Scott becomes Father Time to save an old man from a burning building. He learns that the fire was set by the arsonists of the Berretti Gang so he confronts them in a running battle at a trainyard, defeats them all and saves the old man’s daughter from them.
Story 4: The Silent Death
Hero: Headline Hunter
Villains: Nazis
Synopsis: Stan Lee’s creation Jerry “Headline” Hunter, American reporter for the London Star newspaper, is suspected of spying for the Nazis. He clears his name, saves London from a Nazi bioweapons attack and exposes a rival newspaper editor as the real Nazi spy.
MARVEL MYSTERY COMICS Vol 1 #29
Story 1: The Moonlight Murders
Heroes: The Human Torch and Toro
Villain: The Javelin
Synopsis: A supervillain called the Javelin is killing people at random with his fire-proof javelins and taunts the Human Torch and Toro to stop him. They set out to do so but he kills his targets and escapes our heroes a few times via his javelins and his fire-extinguisher gun. At length he even attaches a bomb to a javelin and throws it to blow up a ship with passengers on it. In a final showdown the good guys defeat the villain.
