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Smash Comics (1939) #19

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"The Ray: "Slash Scraponi's Escape"": Slash Scraponi is sentenced to 20 years on Bedlam Island, thanks to testimony from ex-henchman Corny Hogan, who gets murdered several days later. Happy Terrill dba The Ray investigates; he carries a magni-ray and a minute camera, with these he detects some f

Quote1 Hello Mr. Scraponi .. our society editor wants to know if you'll be entertaining this season? Quote2
— Happy Terrill

Smash Comics #19 is an issue of the series Smash Comics (Volume 1) with a cover date of February, 1941.

Synopsis for The Ray: "Slash Scraponi's Escape"

Slash Scraponi is sentenced to 20 years on Bedlam Island, thanks to testimony from ex-henchman Corny Hogan, who gets murdered several days later. Happy Terrill dba The Ray investigates; he carries a magni-ray and a minute camera, with these he detects some fingerprints. On Bedlam Island, Scraponi rules the prison from his luxury penthouse cell; Happy Terrill arrives for an interview, engages in witty banter, covertly photographs Slash's fingerprints, leaves. With photographic proof of Scraponi's guilt, Terrill's editor runs a front page story exposing it. On Bedlam Island Scraponi reads this story and assembles his staff to evacuate the island but police boats are already closing in. There's a shoot-out, followed by a siege that lasts into the night. Happy Terrill uses a flashlight beam to get himself, as The Ray, from the city dock to Bedlam Island. "In the glaring light of the huge search beams, The Ray attacks the crooks with a fury born of the bolt of lightning that transformed him in the stratosphere." He also dives like a comet. A partial prison break also happens, what with the staff being on the run, so there's a whole second fistfight there. Meanwhile Scraponi and his staff bring along the imprisoned warden and HIS staff, for hostages, and escape in a speedboat. A police airplane drops a flare, illuminating the surface of the river, and enabling The Ray to zip on over to the speedboat and wallop all the bad guys, then "The Ray answers by sending the entire crew back on a curved beam of light."

Appearing in The Ray: "Slash Scraponi's Escape"

Featured Characters:

Supporting Characters:

  • Steve

Antagonists:

  • Slash Scraponi (Single appearance)

Other Characters:

  • Corny Hogan (Dies)
  • The warden of Bedlam Island
  • Prisoners of Bedlam Island

Locations:

  • Bedlam Island

Items:

Vehicles:

  • Harbor Patrol boats


Synopsis for Wings Wendall: "Bullet Plane"

Wings and sidekick Spinner Benson are in the Caribbean foiling an enemy bombing raid, which uses replicas of US warplanes. After shooting down four of these and chasing the rest away, he follows them back to their base. Wendall hands Benson the controls and parachutes onto a shack, breaks thru the roof, and gets snagged in his own chute inside. So the lady spy sets the building on fire and leaves. Wings escapes onto the roof and runs thru the woods, then uses a portable transmitter to contact Spinner, who lands and picks him up. They pursue the lady spy, who has escaped in a bomb-laden suicide submarine, and is piloting it towards an attack on the Panama Canal. They bomb the sub and destroy it.

Appearing in Wings Wendall: "Bullet Plane"

Featured Characters:

Supporting Characters:

  • Spinner Benson

Antagonists:

  • lady spy
    • her minions

Locations:

Vehicles:

  • Bullet Plane
  • fake U.S. dive bombers (four are destroyed)
  • Suicide Submarine (Destroyed)

Synopsis for Scarlet Seal: "Impersonated and Framed"

The Scarlet Seal apparently robs a man in Chinatown and steals the money he was guarding. Barry and Pat are assigned to look into it, and Barry confirms that someone's impersonating his alter ego--poorly--with an imperfect version of the seal, with which he stamps his victims. The Commissioner orders the entire force to hunt down the Scarlet Seal, and bring him in dead or alive, but with no violence. As soon as he's able, Barry slips away to his secret lair, to don his yellow makeup and Mandarin outfit, then as the Scarlet Seal goes to meet with his tong allies at the On Sing house, to lay a trap for the imposter.

Since the only criminal who's ever seen the Scarlet Seal and lived is Shiv Nagol, Barry is sure Shiv or someone working for him must be behind the imposture, and he captures Snow Epod, one of Nagol's henchmen. He tortures information out of him about Nagol's next job, and gets Nagol's phone number. Then Scarlet Seal calls Nagol about some supposed loot being kept at the Hip Leong tong hideout, and he can just waltz in and take it. When Nagol shows up, disguised as the Scarlet Seal, the real Scarlet Seal confronts him, and tortures the location of his earlier loot out of him. The Seal recovers that and returns to the tong house, to collect Nagol, but the imposter Scarlet Seal gets the jump on him, and shoots but misses. In the same split second, the real Seal shoots and does not miss. Moore then arranges the stolen loot and the smoking gun to make the scene look like a suicide. When Captain Pat Moore sees the scene, he isn't convinced that they've finally brought down the Scarlet Seal. He bases this observation on how the situation had "no Robin Hood angle," which gets Barry to re-estimate his father's acuteness to his alter ego's methods.

Appearing in Scarlet Seal: "Impersonated and Framed"

Featured Characters:

Supporting Characters:

  • Captain Pat Moore
  • Police Commissioner

Antagonists:

  • Shiv Nagol (Dies)
    • Snow Epod, stoolie

Other Characters:

  • Manchu Sing, On Sing Tong leader
    • Yet Sing

Locations:

  • Center City
    • Police Headquarters
    • Moore's secret lab, w/ store front "WEN AU CHUNG, Importer, Chinese Goods"
    • Chinatown
      • On Sing Tong House
      • Hip Leong Tong House
      • Warehouse on Dock Street

Synopsis for Midnight: "Graft"

On a slow news day, Dave Clark is covering the national soap box derby championships, in which one boy loses control and crashes his racer. A doctor examines him and declares the boy fainted from malnutrition. Mr. Dobbs, the head of the orphanage where the boy lives, denies this as diplomatically as possible. Smelling a rat, Dave puts on his mask and crashes the City Council meeting, to demand to know why they're letting orphanage boys suffer from malnutrition, only to be told they appropriate over a quarter million per year for the orphanage. So Midnight goes to check on the source instead. He breaks in to the orphanage that night, at midnight, and finds Dobbs lashing Bobby, with a bullwhip. Midnight turns the tables on him and demands he hand over all the funds the orphanage is hoarding. Dobbs blubbers and snivels and points fingers at the City Council being in on it too, so Midnight has the orphan boys construct a ducking stool, while he rounds up the city councilmen, and hauls them all to a lake, where they're repeatedly dunked in the water until they repent their corrupt ways.

Meanwhile Dobbs tries to burn down the orphanage to collect on the insurance on it, only to find himself trapped amidst the flames. Some of the boys want to extinguish the blaze but Midnight stops them since they're moving out of the old deathtrap already anyway. None of them know that their former tormentor is still inside.

Appearing in Midnight: "Graft"

Featured Characters:

Antagonists:

  • J. Dobbs, corrupt administrator
  • Millville City Council, corrupt authorities

Other Characters:

  • Bobby Brant, orphan
  • other orphan boys
  • Millville Police

Locations:

  • Millville
    • National Soap Box Derby Stadium
    • City Hall
    • Friendship Orphanage (burns down)

Synopsis for Purple Trio: "Tiny Falls In Love"


Appearing in Purple Trio: "Tiny Falls In Love"

Featured Characters:

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

Antagonists:

  • four 5th column thugs: Joe, others

Other Characters:

  • secret agent (Mrs. Allen impersonator)
  • John Allen

Locations:

Vehicles:

  • Allen's open-top roadster
  • thugs' sedan
  • Allen's airplane

Synopsis for Espionage Starring Black X: "The Training Camp Murders"

Black X, famous espionage agent, is summoned to Washington by the Chief of Staff. Army draftees are mysteriously dying at a training camp. The plan is for X to enlist as a raw recruit "but be extremely cautious about the food and drinking water."

Black X enlists in the Army. At the training camp, the post's doctor acts suspiciously in a bunch of ways, and X notices it. Weeks of arduous drilling go by. One day at bayonet practice half the squad falls down and dies; the doctor diagnoses this as "an epidemic of throesis strepigitis" and he inoculates the whole platoon including Black X, with who-knows-what.

Further investigation leads to X busting the doctor, shooting him up with his own medicine, and surreptitiously bringing him to the camp gate where a sentry doesn't let him pass until he takes off his hat and the sentry recognizes that monocle, it's Black X. Nobody up until now had noticed this. Anyway Black X forces the doctor to direct him, driving the doctor's car, to the spy gang's hide-out, no back-up, no nothing, and they get there and the doc squeals a warning, so there's a fistfight, and it becomes a gunfight. The other bad guys all go down, one way or the other, then the doctor gets to work on an antidote for his delayed-action poison. Weeks pass in desperate experimenting; three months are almost up, when he figures it out and the troops are cured.

Appearing in Espionage Starring Black X: "The Training Camp Murders"

Featured Characters:

Supporting Characters:

  • Chief of Staff

Antagonists:

  • Army Doctor, enemy agent

Locations:

  • Army boot camp

Synopsis for Invisible Justice: "Arctic Tropical Forest"

Flying over the Arctic part of Alaska, on a National Geographic photo-shoot, Kent Thurston and Chuck Somebody are shot down and bail out and land in a tropical forest. A prehistoric elephant and a prehistoric tiger, both of which look like the regular modern versions of themselves, are nearby and get into a fight. Kent and Chuck meet the English-speaking cromagnon tribal chief Belthor, owner of the elephant, who has met other, evil white men and learned their language. The valley is heated by volcanic activity. The evil white men are Gordon Stack, fugitive, and his crew of ex-whalers, and they've set up an oil-drilling camp, enslaving the cromagnons in the process. Stack stupidly imprisons Thurston in an empty oil tank, where he changes to the Invisible Hood and sneaks out, and frees Belthor, who goes off and brings back a squad of elephants. The camp is trampled and Chuck and Kent expect to quickly repair their plane and take Stack back to the states for trial.

Appearing in Invisible Justice: "Arctic Tropical Forest"

Featured Characters:

Antagonists:

  • Gordon Stack

Other Characters:

  • Chuck, Kent's friend
  • Belthor, cromagnon chieftan

Locations:

Vehicles:

  • photography plane

Synopsis for Abdul the Arab: "Shauri"


Appearing in Abdul the Arab: "Shauri"

Featured Characters:

Supporting Characters:

  • Hassan, the Turk

Animals:

  • Bethsheba, Abdul's horse
  • other horses
  • Abdul's hunting falcon
  • Shauri's tiger cat (Dies)
  • train of camels

Antagonists:

  • Shauri, Princess of Shomar (Dies)
    • her slave ring

Other Characters:

  • French Patrol
  • eleven other slaves

Locations:

Synopsis for Magno: "Airliners into Bombers"

Tom Dalton is a passenger on a Stratoliner 4-engine commercial airliner which gets hijacked by foreign agents to the North Tip of Alaska. There an outlaw airport is managed by an evil geezer in a commodore's hat, who declares that all the passengers are now prisoners of war. The modern airliners are being converted into bombers, and four days from now will be sent directly back to their origin-points. "By that time, the fleet will be off the Pacific Coast with half a million troops! Haw!" That night Dalton changes into his Magno outfit and sneak-fights his way across the airport to the badguy small-arms locker and steals a bunch of automatic rifles, which he brings back to the other prisoners, then proceeds to the evil geezer's office and beats him up. Getting flung out a window, the big bearded still-not-named blue-uniformed evildoer runs across the airfield and fights his way into the cockpit of one of the converted bombers and takes off. He plans to take out his own airfield, and Magno, with some 500-lb bombs, but Magno's super powers get him aboard the flying bomber, disarm it, and get him inside, where he forces the still-not-named bad guy to fly to Washington and turn himself in.

Appearing in Magno: "Airliners into Bombers"

Featured Characters:

Antagonists:

  • Airport Manager
    • his many minions

Locations:

  • outlaw airport at the North Tip of Alaska

Vehicles:

  • small fleet of Stratoliner commercial airliners

Synopsis for Chic Carter: "The Lamas of the Red Dragon"


Appearing in Chic Carter: "The Lamas of the Red Dragon"

Featured Characters:

Supporting Characters:

  • Pop, Chic's Editor (Mentioned only)

Antagonists:

  • Khirgi, High Priest (Dies)
    • his servants

Animals:

  • Red Dragon

Other Characters:

  • Gordon Bruce
    • his Aerial Expedition: mechanic, others
  • Tibetan Horsemen
  • Grand Lama
    • Lamas of the Red Dragon

Locations:

Vehicles:

  • Bruce's twin-motor airplane

Synopsis for Bozo the Robot: "Poison Gas Getaways"

Hugh Hazzard responds to a rash of bank robberies by setting up a 24-hour vigil in the financial district. The robbers have been escaping by car to an airfield then by biplane to their unknown base, and they've already knocked down one pursuing police plane in a mysterious way, killing two aircops. Whatever they used, it also works on police cars, and the next day they kill another two cops by causing their car to crash. (Trick was, badguys pumped poison gas out the exhaust of their getaway plane and car, so pursuers who got too close died.) It doesn't work on Bozo the Iron Man, who catches the getaway car and beats up the robbers. They won't tell how they did their murders, but Hazzard finds a big gas cylinder in their car, threatens them with it briefly, and busts it open, right there on a downtown sidewalk; poison gas bursts out and kills 3 robbers; a 4th has already escaped. Bozo aerially shadows the 4th to his hideout and his boss, Cardi, and after a short fight they've both been gassed to death.

Appearing in Bozo the Robot: "Poison Gas Getaways"

Featured Characters:

Antagonists:

  • Cardi (Dies)
    • Cardi's robbery gang (all die)

Locations:

Vehicles:

  • getaway airplane
  • getaway car

Notes

  • Abdul the Arab obtains a very smart hunting falcon in this episode.
  • Espionage
    • Based on internal and previous evidence, this story is estimated to take place circa 1940-Dec-thru-1941-Mar: ("Weeks of drilling" plus "three months") equals (this story takes four months to get thru six pages).
    • Black X must have adopted some fake name, under which to enlist, given that "Richard Spencer" has been officially dead for years; this is never mentioned. Also, Black X only has one eye, but he gets inducted anyway; this likewise is not even mentioned.
  • This is the second episode in a row in which Midnight goes to the extra trouble of waiting until the stroke of midnight to attack the villains.
    • This was also the trademark move of the much more famous radio hero, Captain Midnight. The radio show started in 1938, but Captain Midnight didn't actually appear in any comic books until the July 1941 issue of Funnies #57 from Dell Comics, that is, five months after this issue of Smash Comics.
    • The City Council meeting in this story apparently continues throughout the entire night, and receives two disruptive visits from Midnight, hours apart.
    • Midnight packs tear gas grenades.
  • The Ray: "Slash Scraponi's Escape" is reprinted in The Quality Companion (TwoMorrows Publishing, 2011).
  • Wings Wendall now has a very zoomy Bullet Plane, painted solid yellow, does 1000 mph.
  • Also featured in this issue of Smash Comics were:
    • Quality Comic Group: (1/2 page, all-text ad for the current issues of Smash, National, Crack, Feature, and Hit Comics)
    • Archie O'Toole: "Madame La Zinga", by "Bud Thomas"
    • Wun Cloo, by Gill Fox
    • Jimmy Christian: "The Mummy Speaks" (text story), by Robert M. Hyatt

Trivia


See Also


Links and References
Superboy Vol 4 69
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