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"The Ray: "The Empire of Captain Blue"": Happy Terrill almost misses his plane out to the Orient, to look into an "Asiatic" uprising. However his plane's shot down in the middle of the Pacific. He destroys the attacking aircraft as the Ray, but turns back to normal to rescue the survivors. They

Quote1 I wouldn't want all its power for anything .. suppose it got out of my hands .. I would become its victim too! As for these other hands .. in time they'll simply turn to bone .. Quote2
Magno, the Magnetic Man

Smash Comics #21 is an issue of the series Smash Comics (Volume 1) with a cover date of April, 1941.

Synopsis for The Ray: "The Empire of Captain Blue"

Happy Terrill almost misses his plane out to the Orient, to look into an "Asiatic" uprising. However his plane's shot down in the middle of the Pacific. He destroys the attacking aircraft as the Ray, but turns back to normal to rescue the survivors. They wash up on the shores of a remote island, which by bad luck is the hideout for a crew of pirates led by the vicious Captain Blue.

Happy and Jackie, a young boy, go to scout the island and find footprints leading up to a dead stone wall. He investigates and finds himself in the pirates' headquarters. He becomes the Ray and attacks, but is pinioned when they shine an array of different-colored lights on him. Fortunately Jackie follows a guard inside, knocks him out and rescues the Ray from his luminous prison. Freed, the Ray uses his own light powers to make it so American fighter jocks can shoot down "Mongol" bombers in the growing darkness, then comes back to fight with Captain Blue. Though the pirate puts up a gallant fight, the Ray flings him off his own plank and over a cliff. Outside, Happy offers to take Jackie on as a junior reporter.

Appearing in The Ray: "The Empire of Captain Blue"

Featured Characters:

Supporting Characters:

  • Bud (First appearance)

Antagonists:

Other Characters:

  • Keefer
  • Rogers

Locations:


Items:


Vehicles:




Synopsis for Midnight meets ... "Gabby, the Talking Monkey"


Appearing in Midnight meets ... "Gabby, the Talking Monkey"

Featured Characters:

Supporting Characters:

Antagonists:

  • Slug McGurk
  • Julie the Jerk

Other Characters:

  • Alice O'Day (Dies)

Locations:


Items:

  • Midnight's Vacuum Gun

Vehicles:



Synopsis for Wings Wendall: "Trouble on San Paulo Island"


Appearing in Wings Wendall: "Trouble on San Paulo Island"

Featured Characters:

Supporting Characters:

  • Spinner Benson

Antagonists:


Other Characters:

  • Derek
  • Baron
  • Col Harrison

Locations:

Items:


Vehicles:



Synopsis for Purple Trio: "The Kidnap Ring"


Appearing in Purple Trio: "The Kidnap Ring"

Featured Characters:

  • The Purple Trio:
    • Rocky Hill, strongman
    • Tiny Todd, midget
    • Warren, ventriloquist

Supporting Characters:


Antagonists:


Other Characters:


Locations:


Items:


Vehicles:



Synopsis for Invisible Justice: "One Way Inn"

From newspaper reports, Kent Thurston forms a hunch that a gang of enemy saboteurs, under pressure from the FBI, would soon be making a hasty exit from the scene. That night Thurston drops in at an old waterfront tavern, the "One Way Inn." Here he meets Mr. Mite, the small, old proprietor, just as an armed robber walks in the front door and sticks up the timid old man. One patron, a bearded seafarer (Black John), leaps up and punches out the stick-up man, who drops his gun on the floor, which Kent stoops to examine; the gun is empty. Black John has whisked the robber out of the barroom by a back exit. Slipping out of the room, Thurston changes identities, and prowls the back of the saloon. He finds the seafarer and the fake holdup man, in cahoots, sneaking down a tunnel. The holdup man is a spy, paying handsomely to be smuggled out of the country, along with three other spies, aboard Black John's two-masted schooner.

Black John returns to the tavern, to meet his next two clients, one of whom is an undercover cop. That conversation goes south in a hurry, and John slams a harpoon thru the cop's shoulder, pinning him to the wall. Before he can try again, the Invisible Hood jumps him. He doesn't do so well against Black John, but he does beat down the other client right away, then rallies and punches out Black John. Just then, old small timid Mr. Mite steps into the room, brandishing a pistol, and turning out to be in charge of the spy-smuggling operation. The Hood jumps him, but gets shoulder-thrown across the room, and Mite is quickly atop him with the harpoon, but gets head-konked unconscious by a thrown vase, courtesy of the unnamed detective. The Invisible Hood, known to the police by good reputation, then tells him where to find a boatload of spies.

Appearing in Invisible Justice: "One Way Inn"

Featured Characters:

Supporting Characters:


Antagonists:

  • Mr. Mite
  • Black John
  • two fugitive spies

Other Characters:

  • unnamed police detective

Locations:

  • the One Way Inn

Items:


Vehicles:

  • Black John's two-masted schooner

Synopsis for Espionage Starring Black X: "Indian Adventure"

Batu has regained his telepathic mojo, and in a random encounter outside a nightclub, he takes out a stickup man. Black X goes to India to help Batu track down some infiltration of the British Raj, by terrorists. Madame Doom follows, for her own reasons; she seems to now be working for "the dictator powers" who are behind this plot.

In Bombay, Batu's plan for exposing the 5th columnists involves Black X impersonating some unnamed bigshot potentate at a schmancy ball held at the local mucktymuck's palace; Madame Doom also crashes this party in a veil and near-burka outfit. Bad guys quickly reveal themselves and Black X gets the drop on them and that's The Whole Fight. A few conversations later, the infiltrators are busted; Black X & Batu catch a steamship back to America.

Appearing in Espionage Starring Black X: "Indian Adventure"

Featured Characters:

Supporting Characters:

Antagonists:

Locations:

Synopsis for Abdul the Arab: "The Kidnapping of Mr. Young"


Appearing in Abdul the Arab: "The Kidnapping of Mr. Young"

Featured Characters:

Supporting Characters:

  • Hasan, the Turk

Antagonists:

  • Afta Ikur, bandit

Other Characters:

  • Cy Young

Locations:

  • Arabia

Synopsis for Scarlet Seal: "Seymour Blots"

Pat Moore's complaining to Barry about crooked investor Seymour Blots, who bilks everyone he takes into his confidence. Barry goes to talk to a man who claims he has evidence against Blots, only to find the guy murdered. Seeing a news article about the Chinese army on an arms-buying mission, Barry gets the idea of dressing up as the Scarlet Seal and pretending to invest with Seymour Blots. He pulls a hundred grand from the money he'd saved up as an actor, and goes to see the investor. However he recognizes Blots' assistant as the teller at the bank where he withdrew his money, who wrote down the serial numbers off the 1000-dollar bills Barry that cashed out, and so would recognize them on the Scarlet Seal's money. Figuring him for trouble, they tie him up and take him to Blots' house, which he announces he'll burn down and leave the vigilante's body inside, allowing Blots to fake his death and disappear with his ill-gotten gains. Scarlet Seal escapes his bonds and knocks out Blots, but a time bomb goes off and the house erupts in flames, the crooked investor succumbing to his own trap. Barry mails the key to the hiding place of Blots' other stolen money to the police commissioner, who's outraged the Scarlet Seal cracked another case for them.

Appearing in Scarlet Seal: "Seymour Blots"

Featured Characters:

Supporting Characters:

  • Captain Pat Moore, Homicide Squad
  • Police Commissioner

Antagonists:

  • Seymour Blots, investor (Apparent Death)
  • Mr. Thomas, bank teller, accomplice (Dies)

Other Characters:

  • Mr. Simms, witness (Dies)
  • Chinese arms-buying delegation

Locations:

  • Center City
    • Police Headquarters
    • Lt. Moore's Secret Laboratory & Loft Building
    • Blot's Estate & Country House

Synopsis for Magno, the Magnetic Man: "Murder on Park Avenue"

Noted archeologist Dr Harry Wood is murdered in his home, by a dagger-wielding killer; he's the 4th of a series of related murders and the three prior victims each had one of their hands removed. The killer removes one of Wood's hands, then gets away. The housekeeper finds the body, and Magno sprints up to the house with a warning for Wood, takes a shortcut through an open window, but arrives too late. The phone rings and Magno picks it up, the call is from Van Nest, the 5th member of a recently-returned expedition to Egypt, along with his late colleages Wood and the others. Van Nest is in a raving panic, and apparently in imminent danger. Magno drives to Van Nest's house in his powerful car. He breaks in through a window, finds signs of a violent struggle, but no body. He also finds traces of white clay, and knows that the swamps off Keystone Lighthouse are the only place in the East from which such clay could come, so he drives to the swamp, finds some footprints, and follows them to an old shack, with an unlocked door. Inside he gets jumped by a man with a dagger, and punches him until he falls down, then finds a trap door in the floor, and a whole secret structure, quite large, with masonry arches in it, underneath the shack. He punches out another sentry, then hears a shrill scream, and follows it to a torture chamber, where elderly Van Nest is strapped to a chair and interrogated by the Main Villain, and Suta, his giant henchman. M.V. is frustrated because Van Nest has previously had his own hand removed.

Here's why: A dangerous treasure, the Kali-Hana scriptures, was hidden in a secret tomb, to which a five-part map had been drawn, in tattoo ink, on the hands of five men, so that no one person could ever gain control of the ancient scripture's deadly powers, which were "more deadly … than a thousand armies put into one!" In a nearby display case are the other four hands; now the villain wants a detailed description of Van Nest's hand.

Magno meanwhile sneaks into the chamber, along the overhead beams that crisscross the upper reaches of this place, and uses his magnetic powers to snatch a torture device out of Suta's hands, then drops into the room and fights both villains, knocking out Suta and punching the still-unnamed villain boss into a vat of acid, fatally. Van Nest has heard of Magno's work, and offers to help Magno to reconstruct the map, but Magno wants no part of it.

Appearing in Magno, the Magnetic Man: "Murder on Park Avenue"

Featured Characters:

Supporting Characters:


Antagonists:

  • Unnamed thugs

Other Characters:

  • Dr. Harry Wood (Dies)
  • Van Nest

Locations:


Items:

Vehicles:



Synopsis for Chic Carter, Ace Reporter: "Lost in Tibet"


Appearing in Chic Carter, Ace Reporter: "Lost in Tibet"

Featured Characters:

Supporting Characters:


Antagonists:

Locations:

Synopsis for Bozo the Robot: "The Acme Insurance Racket"


Appearing in Bozo the Robot: "The Acme Insurance Racket"

Featured Characters:

Supporting Characters:


Antagonists:


Other Characters:


Locations:


Items:


Vehicles:


Notes

  • Espionage:
    • This is Madame Doom's 7th appearance in this series.
    • Based on internal evidence dating back to the first Black X story, this story is thought to have gotten started circa 1941-April-late. Batu's steamship voyage plus Black X's steamship voyage plus one return trip has to take up the whole rest of April and all of May.
  • Magno:
    • This story's unnamed main villain has exactly the same body type, face, and hair style as the unnamed main villain in Smash Comics #18 Jan.41, except for having a thin goatee instead of thick glasses.
    • This story's sub-swamp supervillain lair is the second one that Magno has found, in the vicinity of his East Coast home town. The interior looks exactly like the the hideout of the earlier main villain (the monster-maker) in Smash Comics #18 Jan.41, who also looks near-exactly like the main villain of this story (the torturer).
    • This is Magno the Magnetic Man's final appearance in Smash Comics.
  • Two sidekicks are introduced in this issue: a young boy named Jackie, later known as Bud, discovers the Ray's secret identity and becomes his sidekick, and Midnight teams up with Gabby, the talking monkey.
    • By next issue, with no explanation, Bud will have already forgotten Happy Terrill's secret identity.
  • The Scarlet Seal concludes his case, for the second time, without adorning anyone's forehead with his trademark "scarlet seal."



See Also


Links and References

Superboy Vol 4 69
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