(Smash Comics 004, 1939)
It's a classic set-up: squat in some out-of the-way location - an isolated island, a desert, or as in this case the mountains of Alaska - bring down planes or draw in ships using a big magnet or fake monster or as here an engine-killing ray, and bingo bango bongo you have your own fleet. You can supply your own crew or save even more money like the Mad Professor by subjecting the existing crew to a little light mind control.
Exactly why the Mad Professor (unofficial name used in captions) is doing this is never elaborated on. As far as I can tell he's got about 11 or so bombers which is hardly enough for the usual "take over the US" goal. Maybe he's just after Alaska.
One thing's for sure: the Mad Professor has not been doing this for long. His organization is riddled with problems, including very lax prisoner handling guidelines that allow escapee Wings Wendall to roam free for a while before he's even missed.
Even more problematic is his mind control process. Uh, beyond it being a mind control process to begin with, that is. But logistically he has more than a hundred captured US Army bomber crew, all of whom are drugged into servitude. Judging by the timeline of the comic, the drug lasts a maximum of about two days and the drugees come back to themselves almost instantly upon it wearing off. And yet the Mad Professor and his men are seemingly administering doses on an ad hoc basis to the entire group, just before it wears off. The capacity for catastrophic failure is enormous, even without a G-2 agent roaming the facility!
(also note Wings Wendall displaying the weird anti-beard bias that I mention in the Memes of Yore entry)
Like I said, all of the captured pilots are close to recovering from their drugged state and they easily overpower the salaried staff. The Mad Professor gets away but then Wings Wendall takes him out with his own ray, all without anyone getting a coherent list of goals out of the guy.
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