Spies led by Ludwig the Saboteur learn of Toro the Flaming Kid through the newspapers and hatch a plan to use him as a weapon against the United States. Two of Ludwig's agents, K-9 and his associate, approach Toro at Pop's Circus, presenting forged legal papers claiming his parents survived the railroad accident that supposedly killed them. The Human Torch is immediately suspicious, but Toro overrules him and leaves with the agents. The Torch trails the car to a penthouse, where impostors posing as Toro's parents await. The Torch bursts in, exposes them as frauds, and is thrown out — though not before warning the conspirators to behave. Ludwig secretly orders the impostors to proceed anyway, and Toro is escorted out by the same agents toward the Junior Ideal Club.
The Torch follows and watches through skylights as Ludwig — inside a warehouse — blindfolds Toro for his "initiation." While Toro is sent out blindfolded, the Torch drops into the room, burns out the lights, seizes Ludwig's plans from the desk, and cages Ludwig and his men in a ring of fire before racing to intercept Toro, who is heading blindfolded toward the electrified fence of the Red Munitions plant. The Torch stops him in time. Together they fly to the Junior Ideal Club headquarters, where Toro's fake parents and Ludwig's aide K-9 ambush them. Ludwig douses the Torch with carbon dioxide snow, extinguishing his flame, but the Torch — declaring he is still master of all fire — hurls Toro to the ceiling and uses radiant heat to fight on. Police and G-men storm the building and arrest the Torch along with Ludwig. In the patrol wagon, the Torch coerces a confession from K-9, learns the fake parents are taking Toro on a boat, knocks out the officer, and escapes through the roof. He reaches the waterfront just as the tramp steamer carrying Toro departs. The Torch boards it — but the captain orders a torpedo fired at the pursuing police boat, and the Torch dives to intercept the weapon, sacrificing his flame to detonate it underwater. He sinks to the river bottom as the steamer escapes with Toro aboard.
Give that special marvelite a timely gift
Story #2Toro's Parents--Alive?, Part 2
Writer/Penciler:
Carl Burgos.
Inker:
Harry Sahle.
Synopsis
The Human Torch survives the torpedo detonation and is pulled aboard a police boat. The tramp steamer escapes into the Atlantic under a smoke screen, carrying Toro into enemy waters. The Torch, his flame reignited once his skin dries, pursues the ship alone. He boards it disguised in a stolen crewman's uniform, discovers the cargo hold is stuffed with smuggled gold bricks, melts them out through a porthole, and engraves a message on the last brick calling for help from Sub-Mariner before dropping it into the sea. The ship reaches the shores of Slaveland — a fictional fascist nation — where Toro is brought ashore. Its leader, Chancellor Hiccup, tells Toro he is secretly a prince of royal blood and dresses him in a uniform, then puts him to work fueling furnaces at the Kilpem Munitions Works. The captain, meanwhile, shoots and kills the tramp steamer's crew and detonates the ship to cover his tracks. The Torch, having survived aboard, watches and deduces the full plan from the rooftop. That night he infiltrates the munitions plant and melts down bayonets, cannons, and aerial bombs, reshaping them into scythes, butter churns, and wastepaper baskets.
The Torch then swoops on Hiccup's palace, torching the uniform of Hiccup's right-hand man Herr Medals and melting the marble floors beneath him. Inside the conference room he finds Hiccup and his ally Benny Musclein signing a war treaty; the Torch burns the treaty and singes off Hiccup's mustache, depositing it on Musclein's bald head. Guards drag in Toro, who has been caught sabotaging the factory. Hiccup reveals the true plan: Toro is to be sealed inside an ice-packed rocket-bomb aimed at the United States. The unconscious Toro is loaded into the rocket, which is fired across the Atlantic. Toro revives inside the freezing missile, ignites his flame to keep warm, and inadvertently gives the rocket additional speed. The Torch races after it over the Atlantic, realizes Toro's flame is fueling the bomb, and catches up with it just as it descends toward New York City. Toro melts through the hull from inside while the Torch pulls him free. They land on a nearby pier, where Toro apologizes for his earlier distrust and admits the fake parents were never real. When a second rocket squadron from Slaveland arrives over the city, the reunited pair take to the air and use exploding fireballs to destroy the entire rocket flotilla before it can reach the coast.
Story #3Namor to the Rescue
Writer/Penciler/Inker:
Bill Everett.
Synopsis
Swimming in the Atlantic, Namor the Sub-Mariner discovers a gold brick engraved with a plea for help from the Human Torch. He races to New York and, unwilling to be seen, uses a police call-box to summon Officer Betty Dean to a secluded spot near the aquarium. Betty tells him the Torch was last known to be working an espionage case and hasn't been seen for days. Namor decides to investigate the waterfront, disguises himself in stolen clothes, and boards a foreign ship as a job-seeking seaman. The crew sees through his disguise — recognizing his pointed ears and winged feet from newspaper photographs — and knocks him out with gas. He wakes to find himself trussed in iron boots to immobilize his ankle wings, then lashed to a large bomb. The enemy captain loads both Namor and the bomb into a small gig, transfers them to a harbor seaplane, straps Namor to the wing, and has the pilot cut him loose in mid-air over the countryside north of Manhattan. Namor plummets — but the Human Torch, passing overhead and getting a hunch, spots him and melts the iron boots with a precisely directed fireball, freeing Namor's wings just in time for him to glide safely to the ground. The Torch frees him from the remaining bonds, and the two compare notes. Toro cheekily dismisses Namor as "just another heel," prompting Namor to privately plan to settle accounts with the boy later.
Learning from Toro that a foreign power is moving to invade by sea, Namor dives back to the Antarctic ice-castle and petitions his Emperor for command of most of the fleet. Granted eighty aerial-submarines, he leads them north by nightfall. At daybreak the fleet intercepts an enemy battleship squadron crossing the Atlantic. Namor's craft spray scalding steam at the warships' deck crews, and he boards one vessel alone, redirecting a fired torpedo back into the ship that launched it, sinking it. He repeats the trick on a second battleship until the surviving enemy vessels turn and flee. He then flies to Washington at the request of the War Department, where he learns that saboteurs have blown up the Panama Canal, severing the Pacific Fleet from the Atlantic. Namor devises a bold solution: his aerial-submarines, fitted with stolen steam-shovel scoops, dig a makeshift bypass canal while magnetic grapples airlift the American battleships bodily over the rocky barricade and deposit them in the new channel, reuniting the two fleets.
With the American fleet now whole and steaming into the Atlantic, Namor's armada intercepts the invading fleet and drops tear-shaped glass bombs that burst into a corrosive green gas, dissolving wood, steel, iron, and flesh on contact. The enemy fights back fiercely with anti-aircraft fire and machine guns, shooting down many of Namor's planes. The American warships, guided into range, open with their broadsides, and one by one the invading ships are destroyed; the survivors flee under a smoke screen. The battle over, Namor uses his magnetic grapples to haul lifeboats clear of sinking hulks and rescue survivors on both sides. The nation's radio broadcasts a summons for Namor to come to Washington, where the President of the United States personally thanks him in the Executive Mansion. Namor is then acclaimed throughout the country as the nation's hero.
CharactersGood (or All)Plus: Betty Dean (
Betty Dean Prentiss), Emperor Tha-Korr.