Feature Comics #67 is an issue of the series Feature Comics (Volume 1) with a cover date of May, 1943.
Synopsis for Doll Man: "The Ugliest Man in the World"
Matinee idol Frank Rollins, on his way to propose to stage actress Mary Black, has a car crash which nearly kills him and leaves him disfigured, beyond the ability of plastic surgery to help. He flees the hospital, and holes up in a dumpy room, forming a terrible obsession to destroy everything that's beautiful, and fixating on Mary Blake. At one night's performance of Mary's play, Frank leaps on to the stage and attacks both Mary and her leading man, actor Don Ryan, with a knife. Darrel Dane and Martha Roberts are attending this show; Darrel gets small and leaps to the rescue as Doll Man, using a snare drum as a trampoline to jump into the fight. He's winning, until the Ugly Man smacks him with a framed mirror, which seems to stun him for a moment despite his astonishing strength. Police charge into the theater but Rollins slips away. Doll Man races back to his box seat before Martha figures out why he's missing.
Shadowed by Darrel Dane, Mary goes looking for Frank, first at his house where she questions Frank's butler Jeeves, who reluctantly reveals that Frank is hiding out at 18 East Pembroke Road. She finds him but he's quite crazy; he ties her to a chair and gets ready to disfigure her face with some muriatic acid; Darrel arrives but can't break down the door, but he gets small and Doll Man slithers under it. There's a fistfight which Doll Man wins but the Ugly Man gets away while he's untying Mary. Figuring that Jeeves will be Frank's next target, they race back to Rollins' house and get there just in time to interrupt him from strangling Jeeves. Frank escapes by leaping out a closed window, runs into an amusement park, ducks into a hall of mirrors, which really upsets him, then flees onto the roof of that building with Doll Man close behind. He falls off the roof, survives, and in the emergency room a surgeon removes a bone splinter from his brain. He's still ugly but now his sanity returns, and Mary vows to get the country's best plastic surgeons to fix his face.
Some time later, Darrel shows up at Martha's house with flowers and candy.
Appearing in Doll Man: "The Ugliest Man in the World"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
Antagonists:
- Ugly Man (First appearance)
Other Characters:
- Mary Blake, Frank's former fiancee
- Don Ryan, an actor
- Jeeves, Frank Rollins' butler
Synopsis for Spider Widow: "The Will of Jacob Pendergast"
Dianne Grayton's Uncle John had become the executor of his friend Pendergast's considerable fortune, and the eccentrically-drafted will required that four randomly-selected people would have to compete for that fortune, by decoding a set of clues to the treasure's location. One of these contestants is Tony Grey, secretly the Raven, another is Miss Withington, who (using a silencer-equipped pistol) secretly murders a third, Mr. Sivalus. Grey slips out of the lodge, arousing Mr. Bagert's suspicions, while Miss Grayton and Miss Withington also slip into their rooms and put on disguises, Dianne as the Spider Widow and Miss Withington in a face-concealing headpiece and body-concealing robe. Withington has a handgun and has figured out S.W.'s secret identity, but before that conversation gets any further, Bagert tackles Withington from behind, but she recovers quickly and shoots him, just before The Raven leaps in through an open window and pretends to press the muzzle of a gun into her back. She spins and shoots and misses, then gets taken down by the Widow and the Raven. Miss Withington turns out to be Pendergast's step-daughter; Tony "the Raven" Grey turns out to have been hired by Pendergast to safeguard the others; and by this time everybody has figured out who the Spider Widow is.
Appearing in Spider Widow: "The Will of Jacob Pendergast"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
Antagonists:
- Miss Withington
Other Characters:
- John B. Keller, Dianne's uncle, an attorney
- Mr. Sivalus
- Mr. Bagert
Locations:
- Keller's hunting lodge in the Catskills
Synopsis for "Mickey Finn"
(newspaper strip reprints)
Appearing in "Mickey Finn"
Featured Characters:
- Mickey Finn
Synopsis for Swing Sisson: "The Extortionists and the Ape"
Appearing in Swing Sisson: "The Extortionists and the Ape"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
Antagonists:
Other Characters:
Animals
- a gorilla
Locations:
Items:
Vehicles:
Synopsis for Inferior Man: "War Against a Fan"
Inferior Man leaps out of the page and fights a fanboy!
Appearing in Inferior Man: "War Against a Fan"
Featured Characters:
Synopsis for "Lala Plaooza"
(newspaper strip reprints)
Appearing in "Lala Plaooza"
Featured Characters:
- Lala Palooza
Supporting Characters:
- Vincent Palooza
Synopsis for Spin Shaw: "Plans for General Dwight"
Spin is shot down in Burma, his shoulder is hurt, and he has to sneak past a whole lot of Japanese soldiers to get an important message to General Arthur Dwight. In the end he wins the Navy Medal of Honor.
Appearing in Spin Shaw: "Plans for General Dwight"
Featured Characters:
Antagonists:
- Imperial Japanese Military personnel, hundreds of them
Other Characters:
- General Arthur Dwight
Locations:
Vehicles:
- Shaw's Vought F4U Corsair
Synopsis for Zero, Ghost Detective: "Spirit of the Elemental"
Late on a gloomy night Dr. Frank Klov turns up on Zero's doorstep, pursued by an unseen menace, and scared out of his wits. Klov's old college friend Richard Minton had been investigating spiritualism and had invoked an elemental ghost snake which had killed him. Zero and Klov walk to Minton's house, find the door open and the house dark. Inside they're attacked by python-sized monster; Zero whips out his disintegrator and shoots the thing until it vanishes; Klov has some panicky questions about the thing and Zero makes only cryptic remarks in reply.
Appearing in Zero, Ghost Detective: "Spirit of the Elemental"
Featured Characters:
Antagonists:
- Richard Minton (Behind the scenes)
Other Characters:
- Dr. Frank Klov
Locations:
- Zero's house
- Minton's house
Items:
- Zero's Disintegrator
Synopsis for Blimpy: "Hobo's Paradise"
Appearing in Blimpy: "Hobo's Paradise"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
Antagonists:
Other Characters:
- Hand-Out, hobo
Synopsis for "Big Top"
(newspaper strip reprints)
Appearing in "Big Top"
- Appearances not yet listed
Synopsis for Rusty Ryan: "Learn Commando Tactics"
In the alleys of a city in northern Africa, Rusty and the Boyville Brigade encounter Pierpont Lee, a fellow young American man, and the Baron, a large and dangerous German officer, with a darkened monocle. The Baron immediately gets into a fistfight with Rusty, and is winning it until Rusty exerts some jiu-jitsu-looking "commando tactics" on him. But the Baron calls in a squad of Nazi soldiers, who capture all of the Brigadiers; Pierpont escapes. Just then the Baron's orderly runs onto the scene with disturbing news: in the city square a group of Arab men are singing Spike Jones's "Der Fuhrer's Face." It takes the Baron a few seconds to catch on but then he flips out and orders his troops to shoot into the crowd with submachine guns. The Boyville boys capitalize on their momentary lapse in attention and resume their hand-to-hand fighting, deploying more commando tactics on the well-armed Germans. Then the local Arabs pull some big knives from under their robes and also join the fight. It soon turns out that the locals learned this song from Pierpont Lee, who now joins up with the Boyville Brigadiers.
Appearing in Rusty Ryan: "Learn Commando Tactics"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
- the Boyville Brigade:
- Alababa
- Smiley Scott
- Ed
- Whitey
- Scotty
- Moi Yutong
- Pierpont Lee
Antagonists:
- The Baron (wears a monocle)
- his troops
Other Characters:
- knife-wielding local Arabs
Locations:
- North Africa
Notes
- Doll Man
- Oddly, Martha and Darrel are acting as if Martha doesn't know Darrel's double identity, but she's definitely known about this from the very beginning, from Feature Comics #27, page 2.
- His super strength is also absent.
- Rusty Ryan
- Rusty and the Boyville Brigadiers' uniforms, from the neck down, are almost stitch-for-stitch copies of Captain America's, only with jodphurs instead of tights.
- Pierpont Lee is an early-1940s comic-book young black man, with an extremely unfortunate speech pattern, a two-foot-long harmonica, and a truly amazing zoot suit.
- Zero, Ghost Detective
- The story abruptly ends after five pages, without reaching a conclusion or setting up a cliffhanger. It seems like the first 5 pages of a 10-page story, more than anything else.
- Also featured in this issue of Feature Comics were:
- Poison Ivy by Gill Fox
- Homer Doodle and Son by Arthur Beeman
- Perry Scott: "Demon Doctor Erasmus" (text story) by Robert M. Hyatt
See Also