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"The Ray: "The Empire of Captain Blue"": The synopsis for this issue has not yet been written.

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"


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

Featured Characters:

Supporting Characters:

  • Bud (First appearance)

Villains:

Other Characters:

  • Keefer
  • Rogers

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


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

Featured Characters:

Supporting Characters:

Villains:

  • Slug McGurk
  • Julie the Jerk

Other Characters:

  • Alice O'Day (Dies)

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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

Villains:


Other Characters:

  • Derek
  • Baron
  • Col Harrison

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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:


Villains:

  • 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 his telepathic mojo back, and opens the story by taking out a stickupman outside a nightclub. Black X goes to India to help Batu track down 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:

  • Batu

Villains:

Other Characters:


Locations:


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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:


Villains:

  • Unnamed thugs

Other Characters:

  • Dr. Harry Wood (Dies)
  • Van Nest

Locations:


Items:

Vehicles:



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


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

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Notes

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Also appearing in this issue of Smash Comics were:
    • Purple Trio: "The Kidnap Ring", art by Alex Blum
    • Abdul the Arab: "The Kidnapping of Mr. Young", art by Bob Powell
    • Scarlet Seal: "Seymour Blots", by Harry Francis Campbell
    • Chic Carter: "Lost in the Wilds of Tibet", art by Vernon Henkel



See Also


Links and References

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