By my halidome, 'tis King Arthur with Merlin and his valiant knights! Methinks I dream! Perhaps if I pinch myself ...
Leading Comics #10 is an issue of the series Leading Comics (Volume 1) with a cover date of March, 1944.
Appearing in Seven Soldiers of Victory: "King of the Hundred Isles"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
Antagonists:
- Baby-Face Johnson, the King of the Hundred Isles (Single appearance)
- many gangsters, "Chiseler," "the Mope," "Legs," "Sir Knuckles," "Baron Trigger, Sir Bopper," others
Other Characters:
- Professor Moran, head of the Icthyological Institute
- his expedition
- Quaker Serfs:
- William, Jonathan, Robert, others
Locations:
- Pacific Ocean
- The Hundred Isles
Items:
- Crimson Avenger's Red Smoke Capsules
- Crimson Avenger's Red Searchlight
- Green Arrow's Trick Arrows
- Moran's Fish-Catching Device, (induces hallucinations)
Vehicles:
- S.S. Izaak Walton, museum-outfitted steamship (stranded)
- museum-outfitted rescue steamship (Destroyed)
Synopsis for Seven Soldiers of Victory: "King of the Hundred Isles"
When the famous icthyologist Professor Moran's expedition to the Pacific Ocean disappears, his friend Professor Moresby recruits the Shining Knight to embark on a search, and Sir Justin bring along his friends, the Seven Soldiers of Victory. As the museum's steamship begins to encounter a storm, Wing spots a ghostly-looking, glowing, orange sailing ship, and as their own ship comes about to approach it, the steamer runs aground on some unseen rocks. A powerful storm strikes, as the engines are reversed, but it is too late to get the ship free of the reef, the hull breaks apart, and the heroes are hard put to survive the night, clinging to broken spars, flotsam, and one lifeboat.
The Crimson Avenger and Speedy: "Crusoe and Crusoe, Inc."
The Crimson Avenger and Speedy wash up on one small, remote, Pacific island, and explore it. Nothing is there but palm trees and goats. Some crates from their ship have drifted to this island, from which they salvage a radio receiver and a chest of tools. They settle in, Robinson Crusoe style, to building shelters and fences, and herding goats.
Four gangsters show up in a motorboat, and knock out the young bowman and the crimson crime crusher, tie them up, then leave them on a big rock, at low tide, and speed away. These hoods work for "the King." As the waters rise and a big school of small fish sweep in, the Crimson Avenger uses the red searchlight in his belt buckle to trick the fish into nibbling at their hemp ropes. Soon the crime fighters are able to free themselves, and they swim back to their island, and find that the gangsters have taken over their dwelling. Night has fallen. They quietly observe while the hoods run their mouths. The King sent them to this place to do a particular job, and if Crimson and Speedy have already showed up, they don't know who else could be around, so they had better hurry it up. They file outside, in the dark, and go to work on the beach, painting a sailboat with phosphorescent paint. The heroes figure out that these thugs were rigging up a replacement for the sailboat that had lured their ship onto the rocks in the first place!
Before attacking the gang, Crimson and Speedy paint themselves, and some of their goats, with the phosphorescent paint, then put on an impromptu spook show while pummeling the hoods into submission. But they can't get any info out of these punks, because they're far more afraid of "the King" than they are of these two vigilantes. So Crimson and Speedy steal their motorboat, and abandon them on the island, and go to search for their ruler.
The Green Arrow and The Vigilante: "His Majesty, King Baby-Face"
Vigilante and Green Arrow wash up on a small island and explore it; they find a very modern house, containing a museum-sized aquarium, with glass walls fronting big tanks of exotic fish. An elderly and very deaf caretaker is on duty but but can't hear them well enough to tell them anything. Exploring further, they spot long-missing racketeer Baby-Face Johnson, without getting spotted themselves. They listen in as Johnson instructs his gangsters, and learn that he's using this place as a hatchery for a rare species of fish. Then Baby-Face spots the two mystery men, and sics four thugs on them. G.A. and Vig use their weapons to disarm the gunmen, but then a stray shot shatters one glass panel, and amid the sudden flooding the gangsters get the advantage. They get ready to toss Arrow and Vigilante into a tank with a very large octopus, but Vigilante busts this glass tank with a good kick, and the massive cephalopod pours into the room, among the hoods. Green Arrow takes down two thugs, while Vigilante lassos and hogties the octopus, and the three other villains run away.
Outside, Johnson deploys his gunmen, with riflemen covering both exits and a raiding team ready to charge in the front door. Amid this activity there is an interruption, one thug sprints into the clearing, with a report from "the other island," about how some whacky scientists have set up shop there, much earlier, and are collecting rare fish. Baby-Face vows to deal with these chiselers next, but first it's time to take out Green Arrow and Vigilante. But they've already left the building, on an arrowline from a second-story window, and now attack the eight assembled crooks from an unexpected angle. Before the fight can resolve itself, a massive earthquake plus volcanic activity plus a tidal wave all smash the island at the same time!
The big aquarium is destroyed and whatever fish survive escape into the ocean. The gangsters all or mostly escape, in two rowboats, while Green Arrow and Vigilante grab a floating tree trunk, and everybody is swept out to sea.
Stripesy and Wing: "Taskmasters and Toilers"
Stripesy and Wing, unconscious and half-drowned, wash up on an inhabited island, and are rescued by a crew of enslaved Quaker farm workers, all speaking in antique English. These guys revive the heroes by rolling them to and fro across barrels, an artificial respiration technique from the 1700s. William, Robert, and Jonathan, and the rest, are descended from a stranded crew of mutineers who washed up in these isles two hundred years earlier, and were invaded and put to work by "King" Baby-Face Johnson and his gang of "courtiers" two years earlier. Now their occupation is to grow fruits and vegetables, and pay them as tribute to their tyrannical "King." Stripesy is appalled to learn that they have never even considered fighting back, but that would be against their religion.
Later Wing and Stripesy observe as the King's tax collectors arrive to claim a shipment of harvested food. The shipment is smaller than usual, and the hoods take offense at this, and harshly discipline the farmers, until Stripesy and Wing decide they've seen enough. There's a fight, and most of the thugs are quickly subdued, but one escapes to warn the King and another opens a corral full of sea turtles, which lurch their way towards the beach, cutting off Wing and Stripesy. As the hood tells it, these reptiles are plenty dangerous, and the heroes are momentarily stumped on how to deal with them, but Wing uses sticks to distract the beasts, then Stripesy hits on the solution of jumping onto the turtles' backs, and with a great deal of leaping, the comrades in combat are able to hopscotch their way to an escape. The fight resumes, but two sneaky thugs climb up some coconut trees and hurl the fruit at the heroes' heads, scoring two knock-outs. They get ready to painfully execute the unconscious Soldiers of Victory.
The Star-Spangled Kid and the Shining Knight: "The Fortunate Fish"
Elsewhere in the Hundred Isles, Professor Moran's party, stranded by a much earlier shipwreck, have succeeded in finding what they had come there for in the first place. Moran himself, in a diving suit, has captured a live specimen of Arthopodophagus Moranensis, from a completely new genus of Pisces. This specimen and others are stored in a series of shallow ponds, on the strand near the beached, but upright, wreckage of the expedition's ship. Before Moran can write up his discovery in his notes, he catches his first sight of the local gangsters, approaching in a speedboat. Being gangsters, they're there to take over, at gunpoint, and their boss wants all of the specimen fish. That's when the Shining Knight and Star-Spangled Kid, riding Winged Victory, arrive overhead.
Victory lands, words are bandied, and four hoodlums open fire on the rescue party. Sir Justin easily deflects all of this gunfire with the flat of his blade, handling it at blinding speed, then slices a submachinegun in two. The Kid, meanwhile, punches two hoods and grapples a third, tossing him in a trademark Kid-Stripesy hand-off technique, but his partner in this brawl is an old-school swordsman, and doesn't know this move. The tide turns in the bad guys' favor, and both of these crime-fighters get head-konked unconscious with pistol handles. Victory, with Justin still atop him, flaps off into the open air, but the Star-Spangled Kid gets captured, tied up, and tossed in the hold of the beached ship, along with Professor Moran and his crew. They are guarded, but the guards are on the beach, thus seeing the ship from only one side. Working against an exposed nail, the Kid is able to wear thru his ropes, and soon unties the rest of the party.
Moran has invented a fish-catching device, the greatest object of its kind ever developed, and he tells the Kid all about it, at great length. Meanwhile not far away, the Shining Knight regathers his senses, and undertakes to find the Kid. As he and Victory approach the shipwreck, they see a hallucination, of the court of their liege King Arthur. And on the ground, the homesick hoods hallucinate an old haunt of theirs, Joisy Joe's Pool Jernt. Then Sir Justin falls into the midst of them, the nostalgic illusion is shattered, and the fight resumes! The Star-Spangled Kid pitches in, and soon the hoods are all subdued. Moran explains that all the hallucinations were caused by his fish-catching device, which worked on fish by making them see whatever they most desired, which for fish, was always food.
Justin and the Kid must depart on Victory, to seek their comrades, but Professor Moran is confident he can keep the captured thugs under control by using his device.
Shining Knight, Star-Spangled Kid, Wing, and Stripesy: "Revelation of Roguery"
Stripesy and Wing have been tied to trees, and the gangsters are recreationally shooting at them, doing difficult rodeo trick shots, from too far away, and narrowly missing. Mildly frustrated, they move much closer, and get ready to kill off the two Soldiers of Victory. That's when William and Jonathan, two of the friends that Stripesy and Wing made earlier, show up. They intervene, verbally at first, but the gangsters just say all the wrong things, and the peaceable farmers show surprising skill and speed in thrashing them, at first. But these punks are packing guns, and in a few seconds they've got them out and aimed. That's when Justin and the Kid, and Justin's horse, drop on them, from out of the sky. That shortens the fight, considerably.
The four heroes and their new allies cross over to another island, where they find William and Jonathan's fellow serfs being forced at gunpoint to build a new aquarium for "the King." After a brisk brawl, these thugs have also been laid low. The farming folk have some questions, and after some quick explanations, they take up the gangsters' rifles, and put THEM to work, building a jail. Sir Justin flies off to seek out the other teammates.
On another island, the pistol-packing Professor Moran is also overseeing some slave labor. His five gangster shovelers are digging a channel, by which the next high tide might re-float the beached but mostly intact steamship. This actually works, but while Moran is gloating about it, one hoodlum gets behind him with a shovel and whaps him over the head.
Not far away, King Baby-Face has figured out that all Seven Soldiers are here, and he's got a plan for dealing with them, which he now divulges to his underbosses.
Seven Soldiers of Victory: "Kingdom's End"
In short order Sir Justin and Winged Victory have sought out the other four Soldiers, who have already helped themselves to a speedboat, and the five of them race back to Moran's now-floating steamship. They notice too late that the gangsters have taken it over, and with a sharp maneuver, the crooks manage to crash the speedboat. Before they can open fire on the four floating heroes, the Shining Knight swoops in and bombs them with rocks. The team reassembles itself on the main deck, and the hoodlums give up. Professor Moran is found and freed, then Wing notices an unmanned speedboat motoring directly at their ship. Green Arrow and Speedy thunk some arrows into the steering wheel, causing the boat to turn aside, then shoot it again to get it going in the opposite direction. This sends it directly back to the spot on the beach where the King and his motley court are gleefully waiting for an explosion. They get one, and it scatters them in all directions. Mostly on foot, the Seven Soldiers chase down the fleeing thugs and take them out of the fight, each using their distinctive techniques.
The bad guys are turned over to the newly-armed farm workers, and are put to work. The Seven Soldiers, and the Moran Expedition, get the steamship underway, and return to the U.S.
Notes
- Published by World's Best Comics Company.
- King of the Hundred Isles is reprinted in The Seven Soldiers of Victory Archives Vol. 3.
- The Crimson Avenger, Star-Spangled Kid, and Shining Knight each get head-konked unconscious one more time, with a pistol butt. Wing and Stripesy both get knocked out by thrown coconuts.
- Green Arrow and Speedy turn an approaching speedboat around with pure archery and plain arrows, no gimmicks.
Trivia
- No trivia.
See Also
Recommended Reading
Links and References
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