(Whiz Comics 015, 1941)
As seen in his recent update, Spy Smasher's arch-foe the Mask eventually gets a bit too good at villainy for his own sake. While he succeeds at warping Spy Smasher's mind and turning him against the US government that he once sought only to defend, the Mask's enthusiasm means that he is a bit too loose with his commands to "Kill! Kill! Kill!" meaning that the first that Spy Smasher does is to kill the Mask.
Spy Smasher's fervour for his new mission is intense, driven as it is by the Mask's mind control. He starts blowing up arsenals and machine gunning defense meetings across the country, much to the despair of his erstwhile allies Eve and Admiral Corby.
Though he is mostly still called Spy Smasher throughout the four issues in which he is evilized, there are a couple of instances of "Smasher Spy" instead and so we shall be using that name for clarity's sake.
There's a lot of cool and interesting stuff happening with regard to Smasher Spy: having a hero become a villain, having such a huge change to the status quo persist over several issues, plus the fact that Smasher Spy is technically a Captain Marvel villain due to the fact that Whiz Comics 016-018 are in fact a crossover event! How very exciting!
So: from Whiz Comics 016 to 018, both the "Captain Marvel" and "Spy Smasher" features are concerned with the ongoing efforts of the former to capture the latter and restore him to his heroic ways. A lot of it plays out like the above, with Captain Marvel showing up in time to foil but not capture Smasher Spy. Rather than detail each individual plot, here's a list of Smasher Spy's nefarious undertakings:
- Organizing a mass breakout of Federal Penetentiary
- Stealing plans from a defense committee meeting and leaving a bomb to kill the committee members
- Delivering those plans to a fascist submarine (and then sinking that submarine when Captain Marvel turns out to be on board)
- Stealing a super poison gas and attempting to wipe out the US Army with it
- Kidnapping and hypnotizing a busload of factory workers into helping him develop super-weapons
- Building a fleet in order to conquer and destroy all national governments
- Attempted murders: Admiral Corby x2, Captain Marvel x5, Eve Corby x4, Sterling Morris x1
- Misc destruction: one aircraft factory, two arsenals, two bridges, one dam, one train derailment, one warship sunk
Captain Marvel eventually allows himself to be captured by Smasher Spy as an intelligence-gathering exercise and so finds out about the Mask's hypno-chair/brain-o-graph when it is unsuccessfully used in an attempt to turn him evil too. (Whiz Comics 016, 1941)
Smasher Spy is also the inventor of the nefarious Banana Bomb, which he uses in one of his attempts to murder Eve Corby. (Whiz Comics 016, 1941)
Perhaps the Smasher Spy's greatest creation, this giant motorized lawnmower vehicle was intended to shred whole armies. Truly a magnificent entry into the ranks of the giant superweapon. (Whiz Comics 017, 1941)
There's only so long that even a crafty fellow like Smasher Spy can escape the World's Mightiest Mortal, however, and after a quick Billy Batson trip up the Gyro-Sub's torpedo tube he is in super-custody.
In a last-ditch effort to stay true to his programming, Smasher Spy destroys the hypno-chair, but Captain Marvel's determination to restore him is such that he unlocks a hitherto-unknown power of super-hypnosis and restores his mind by pure will alone.
Smasher Spy is no more! A symbolic sunrise occurs as our heroes share a manly handshake! Huzzah!
No comments:
Post a Comment