(Daredevil Comics 006, 1941)
New York's dating scene is in trouble, as courting couples are being murdered at a blazing clip: six couples in two weeks as the story begins and a seventh just one page in - that's fourteen people! That's a person a day! On average!
Nightro is on the case, but merely patrolling the parks and other canoodling spots is a bust as the killer knows to look out for costumed vigilantes and even leaves a taunting note with the bodies of the unfortunate Mert and Rita.
Nightro's next move is to set up a sting, featuring him in a dress alongside a dummy boyfriend that he can "make love to," and here I must pause to say that the physical transformation achieved by the Streamlined Robinhood by merely putting on a dress is phenomenal, no matter what kind of shaping undergarments he has on. He goes from a fairly beefy superdude to a slender woman who might be a few inches shorter than he is normally, despite wearing high heels. His face changes shape! This is a Bugs Bunny-level crossdress, is what I'm saying, which means that once the Couple Killer takes the bait he is immediately attracted to the disguised Nightro and so leaves himself open to a left hook.
There's a full page of Nightro beating up the Couple Killer, which is a lot for a five pages story but you just have to get as much mileage as you can out of having your hero in a dress when it's 1941 and that it the height of comedy.
So, after all that bloodshed and gender-bending, just what was the Couple Killer's motivation? Turns out that he is actually a fellow known as Lonesome Larry, a known arsonist and misogynist who just got dumped and went "a little loco" and killed fourteen people. It's not quite a "boys will be boys" situation but these cops sure do give him a lot more grace than he deserves.
Categorized in: Crime (Killers), Ideology (Misogynists), Murder (Serial Killers)
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