(Whiz Comics 022, 1941)
In what turns out to be Dan Dare's final recorded case, he is asked to protect a man named Dr Phoebus Weber from being murdered by a mysterious figure known only as the Spider.
Upon entering Weber's home, Dan and Carol are almost immediately attacked by the Spider, who I have to give partial credit to for the costume. Sure it appears to have a more beetle-like body plan and the head of a mosquito, but what's more important is that it has the full eight limbs, including four useless ones hanging off the torso that surely must constantly be in the way. Accuracy be damned, I love a commitment to the bit.
The Spider also has a third central eye that is supposedly able to emit a hypnotic light, but if it does there is no actual evidence of it in the text. Perhaps Dan Dare is merely a paragon of mental fortitude.
The Spider's attempt to kill Dan fails thanks to an over-reliance on a hypnotic eye/ stabbing proboscis combo that he never really manages to pull off and I can only imagine was further hindered by the extra arms. He is unmasked to reveal the in-retrospect-supiciously-named Dr Weber, but that's not all, because...
Weber is in turn unmasked to reveal that he is in fact Dan's old enemy Hypno Harry! This has all been an attempt to kill Dan in revenge for his foiling Harry's old racket of hypnotizing bank clerks with his gimmicked glass eye, and just imagine the impact that this story might have had if we had ever heard about any of this before the Spider reared his improbable head!
Still, a costumed crook is a pretty good note for Dan and Carol to go out on after 20-odd issues of solving one mystery after another. Let's hope that they were finally able to get that vacation.
No comments:
Post a Comment