Daring Mystery Comics (1940 series) #6

The story of Marvel Boy begins in ancient Egypt, where the belief in reincarnation was among the lost secrets of a superior civilization. When Hercules, son of power, draws his last breath as a mortal man, his soul ascends to Valhalla. Witnessing a mad dictator unleash war upon the world, Hercules appeals to Jupiter: America needs a champion. Jupiter warns that rebirth means years as a child, but Hercules insists on acting at once. His soul descends and is reborn in a crowded metropolis as Martin Burns, a boy of alarming and puzzling strength. 

On the night of his fourteenth birthday, a cloaked messenger delivers a box to the Burns household. A shadow then visits the sleeping Martin and reveals his true nature: his body holds the soul of Hercules, he shall bring down men who hold power over millions, and he is the Marvel Boy — with the strength of twenty men. Martin dons his costume and strikes his first blow against the Fifth Column, intercepting a truckload of Nazi agents landed from the submarine U-9 on the Hudson River. He captures the spies, recovers their orders, and delivers them to the Department of Justice building. He then forces spy leader Stohl to radio the U-9 a new course, directing it into Navy Yard internment. His task complete, Marvel Boy slips home and arrives tardy for school the next morning.

The Legion of the Doomed

Synopsis

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

Hill-folk avoid the desolate cabin on Hollow Bluff, speaking of it in hushed tones, but mountaineer Ab Waltin and his wife Ella live there undisturbed. One stormy night a ghostly apparition forms from an eerie mist in Ella's bedroom, presenting her with an infant it claims is sent from the Legion of the Doomed to carry out plans on earth. The figure warns that if she harms the child, it will pluck her soul from her body. 

The next day, Dr. Jack Castle — secretly the Fiery Mask — receives a call about Ella's mental shock and visits the cabin. He finds a baby with the bass voice of a man and an otherworldly quality he cannot explain. Days later, a series of brutal nightly murders terrorizes the district. Castle, operating as the Fiery Mask, stakes out the Waltin cabin and watches the infant stir in its cradle, its face twist into a malignant leer, and then transform in a burst of flame into a towering green monster, which draws a knife and stalks into the night. 

The Fiery Mask follows, saves a young woman from attack, knocks the creature unconscious, then uses hypnosis to erase the woman's memory of the ordeal. Returning to the cabin, he finds Ab Waltin murdered. The monster has fled through a glowing portal; the Fiery Mask leaps in after it. He emerges in a hellish realm and battles two demons, sending one over a cliff and fighting the second to the upper hand before a colossal figure rises from the flames and blasts him with twin bolts of light. He awakens in his laboratory, scratched and shaken, his costume gone. A newspaper confirms the murders have ceased, though Ab Waltin's killing remains unsolved.

Characters

Good (or All)

 

Fiery Mask
(Jack Castle)

Plus: Ab Waltin, Ella Waltin.

Antagonists
Demons, Legion of the Doomed (Legion of the Damned).

Stuporman vs. Mike Muskrat

Synopsis

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

Marmaduke Snood Jr., Ph.D., D.S., L.L.D., and holder of various other letters acquired by eating alphabet soup, is introduced as a great hunter of celery, a pianist capable of playing Chopin's Minute Waltz in eleven seconds with one hand, and a man sometimes called "the Man in the Iron Mask without the Mask." While breakfasting at a ritzy cafeteria, he makes the startling discovery that vanilla ice cream does not go with brown suits, whereupon he disrobes and becomes Stuporman. Using coffee grounds, an apple turnover, and secret Ray X-698½R, he builds a flying machine to reach his sylvan retreat, where he is promptly awakened from a nap by a police chief: Mike Murphy's house has burned down, the eighty-second such fire. Stuporman has himself carried to the scene to conserve energy, deduces in secret code that the culprit is M

ike Muskrat, killer of Hardcider County, and flies — occasionally backwards — to Muskrat's castle stronghold. He lands in the courtyard, catches all bullets fired at him, forges them into a bowling ball, and knocks the firing squad flat. He then naps in a hammock while investigating the laboratory of Dr. Krotz, Muskrat's henchman, who has perfected a uniform sprayer that transforms soldiers' uniforms into the suits of Muskrat's slaves. When the Governor's troops arrive, Krotz sprays them, but Stuporman returns and punches Muskrat silly with two telephone poles. He reveals that Dr. Krotz is actually Professor Plotz of Bale College, turned evil by pressure on his brain; relieved by Stuporman's punch, Plotz is restored to his genial self. At the Governor's Mansion, Stuporman receives his reward: first choice of any park bench in the state.

The Black Ace

Synopsis

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

Morning finds Captain Red Ruff and his scarlet plane, the Flying Flame, patrolling over the English Channel above a troopship convoy. Spotting a submarine surfacing near the transports, he radios the cruisers and dives on the U-boat, shattering its periscope with tracer fire and forcing a crash dive — depth charges from the closing cruisers finish it off. Ruff is then ordered to Auxville Airdrome in France, where a Colonel briefs him on a desperate situation: a long-range gun battery behind the Siegfried Line is devastating the countryside, but every bomber flight sent against it is destroyed mid-air by an unseen force, then set upon by the staffel of the Black Ace — a German pilot who dresses entirely in black and flies a sleek black Heinkel marked with a white death's head. That night Ruff lands the Flying Flame behind enemy lines near the tower. 

No sooner does he leave the plane than the Black Ace's troops surround and capture him. Inside the tower the Black Ace reveals the weapon: an underground ray machine that destroys aircraft at two thousand feet. Ruff is thrown into a barred room to await execution, but over hours of painful effort tears a stone loose from the wall, squeezes through, races up the stairs, and crosses the wires of the ray machine, short-circuiting it. He knocks out a guard, reaches his plane, and takes off under fire. Back at Auxville, he requests three bombers and a convoy of pursuit planes. The flight strikes the tower and hillside while Ruff pursues the fleeing Black Ace and shoots him down. The Black Ace's entire staffel is destroyed. Back at the airdrome, Ruff warns the Colonel that the enemy knew his every move — there is a spy-ring operating inside the base.

The Schustak Case

Synopsis

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

Near closing time, a gang of hold-up men storms the Romany National Bank. A cashier reaches for his gun, triggers the alarm, and is shot down — but the robbers escape before police arrive. The next day, Carl Burgess, assistant district attorney, is leaving the courthouse with his friend Judge Martin when a sedan rounds the corner and opens fire with a machine gun. Judge Martin is killed on the sidewalk and a policeman is shot dead trying to intervene. Burgess grabs the fallen officer's gun, hits the driver, and crashes the car; two gangsters are captured. At the precinct, the prisoners demand their lawyer, James Buttersworth. Over dinner that night Burgess's friend Tony Wells mentions that Bo Schustak — bank-robber pal of a gangster Burgess once sent to the electric chair — was freed three days ago. 

Suspecting a connection, Burgess transforms into the Falcon and confronts Buttersworth in his home study. Buttersworth goes for a desk gun; the Falcon disarms and knocks him out, wrings Schustak's location from him, but is then overwhelmed when a squad of gangsters bursts in and beats him unconscious. He is driven to the gang's hideout, where Schustak orders him taken for a ride. En route the Falcon secretly cuts his wrist ropes on a tin can in the car, spots the gang heading toward the Midland Bank, and attacks the driver. He leaps clear as the car crashes, then races ahead to surprise the gang as they tunnel up through the vault room floor. After a tear-gas bomb flushes the bandits into the tunnel, police waiting below round them all up. The captain thanks the Falcon for the tip-off, and admits he has no idea who the Falcon might be — a question Burgess, standing at his elbow, answers with a smile.

Characters

Good (or All)

 

Falcon
(Carl Burgess)

Antagonists
Bo Schustak, James Buttersworth.

The Kidnappers and the Magician

Synopsis

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

During Monako's premiere performance at the Elite Theater off Times Square, he spots a man sitting apparently dead between two thugs in a box near the stage. He conjures the illusion of a lion at the box exit, scattering the thugs onto the stage and out through the exit while he revives the victim with his assistant Pere at his side. The man, coming around, explains that his sister Louise was kidnapped hours ago — he followed the gang to a house and was drugged. He passes Monako an address before fainting again. Monako and Pere race to the address, where Monako gestures the building transparent and spots Louise in the hands of the kidnappers. Pere breaks down the door. Inside an old hag and two thugs deny any knowledge of the girl; Monako uses his hypnotic glare to make one thug see him as a giant, sending the men fleeing through a hidden panel, but not before they shove Louise into a cellar snake pit. 

Monako waves his hand and transforms the snakes into harmless puppies, saving Louise. The thugs double back through another passage, knock Pere out, and make off with Louise again in a car. Cornering the hag, Monako reads her thoughts — a house in the mountains to the north — and marks the getaway car with a magical red X on its roof. He and Pere take his plane, spot the mark, land, and inform local police. When the thugs open fire on the approaching police cars, Monako creates an illusion of the house bursting into flame; the gang rushes out and is captured. Monako dismisses the flames, revealing the house and Louise unharmed, frees her, and credits Louise's brother with finding the hideout. With an hour left before his next show, he hurries Pere back to the theater.

Characters

Good (or All)

 

Monako
(Prince of Magic)

Plus: Pere.

The Origin of Dynaman

Synopsis

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

According to ancient legend, there once existed the Kingdom of Korug — a civilization so advanced its people could control the very forces of the elements. In this period a youth of extraordinary physical beauty and mental keenness reached his maturity, his remarkable strength astonishing even this super-race. He was called Lagaro, a name meaning Dynaman, Man of Power. He defeated the kingdom's champion gladiator bare-handed, memorized entire books at a single reading, and exercised by uprooting enormous trees. Then a great storm struck and the ocean swallowed the continent whole — no one escaped, save Dynaman, who defied gravity and soared into the air for days until he spotted dry land. He passes over the Great Pyramids and Sphinx of the Nile Valley. Below him in ancient Egypt, the war-like tribe of the Gurbans — giant warriors each ten feet tall — has massed under their chieftain Ribur to attack the castle of Pharaoh Khufor, hauling boulder-cannons drawn by dinosaurs. 

Dynaman descends, introduces himself to Khufor as the sole survivor of the Land of Korug, and promises to throw his powers in the Pharaoh's behalf. He leaps to the courtyard wall and flings attacking Gurban giants back into their own ranks. Ribur orders his wild war creatures released — lions, leopards, crocodiles, and cobras pour onto the field. Dynaman wrestles each beast in turn: he crashes a lioness against the wall, strangles a leopard, uses a crocodile as a club, and expands his mighty chest to snap a cobra's coils. When the last creature falls, a desperate Tibur, the Gurban champion, charges Dynaman directly — and is swung overhead and smashed against a tree. The surviving Gurbans flee in terror. Khufor's multitudes gather to pay tribute, and Dynaman, his task complete, soars away in search of new adventures.

Characters

Good (or All)

 

Dynaman
(Lagaro)

Plus: Korugians, Pharaoh Khufor.

Antagonists
Chief Ribur (Tifur), Gurbans.

The Coming of Tigerman

Synopsis

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

Professor Carson and his daughter Louise are on an expedition in the Indian jungle when they are ambushed by the Monolink men. Watching from a nearby tree is Tigerman, a powerful white youth raised by natives who rules the jungle alongside his tamed Bengal tiger Balu and his faithful companion Rangoo, an ape. Tigerman leaps to their defense but is netted by the Monolinks and captured alongside Louise while the Professor is taken separately. The Monolinks drag their prisoners underground to their hidden kingdom, Monoland — an awe-inspiring subterranean realm ruled by King Kuu, who announces he needs more subjects for the advancement of his kingdom. Carson is brought before the king as well, and Tigerman is reunited with him briefly before the prisoners are placed in separate quarters. Louise discovers an underground river that may offer escape. When a guard delivers food, Tigerman overpowers him and takes his keys, freeing all three captives. 

As they race to board a subterranean canoe on the river, the king's guards intercept them and hurl them back into their cells. Tigerman spots Rangoo lurking outside and calls to him; the ape tears through the cell bars. The group reaches the river a second time, overpower the guards at the boat, and board the mechanically advanced canoe, which sprouts wings when it goes over a waterfall and takes flight. Electrically-charged arrows from the king's guards strike the flying canoe and it begins to sink. All three are forced into the river and swim for an opening high on the mountain wall leading to the outside world. The current is too powerful for Professor Carson — he drowns before Tigerman can reach him. Tigerman hauls Louise through the opening and over the falls to safety on a rocky ledge outside. She tells him she never wants to leave him, now that her father is gone.