Leading Comics Vol 1 10

Seven Soldiers of Victory: "King of the Hundred Isles"

Cover

Seven Soldiers of Victory: "King of the Hundred Isles"

Editors

Jack Schiff

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Leading Comics # 9	Leading Comics # 11

Leading Comics #10 is an issue of the series Leading Comics (Volume 1) with a cover date of March, 1944.

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 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 of this. Then 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 riding them like surfboards, enabling the comrades in combat to hopscotch their way to an escape. The fight resumes, but two sneaky thugs climb ujp 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.

Appearing in Seven Soldiers of Victory: "King of the Hundred Isles"

Featured Characters:

Seven Soldiers of Victory

Supporting Characters:

Villains:

Baby-Face Johnson, the King of the Hundred Isles (Single appearance)
- many gangsters, "Chiseler," "the Mope," "Legs," "Sir Knuckles," "Baron Trigger," others

Other Characters:

Professor Moran
- 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

Vehicles:

two museum-outfitted steamships (one destroyed)

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 gets head-konked unconscious one more time, with a pistol butt. Wing and Stripesy get knocked out by thrown coconuts.

Links and References

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