(Fantastic Comics 023, 1941)
The comic opens in media res, as a (the) Monster bursts into the hotel room of art critic Iona Hall and carries her off into the night. Cut to the Gorman Art Gallery the next day, where we see... Iona Hall!?
As you might have guessed, this isn't the real Iona Hall, and "famous art connoisseur" Dan Kenneth spots this when he is introduced to the false Hall by gallery owner Gorman. When Kenneth attempts to discover the reason for this imposture, however, he and the repentant fake are attacked by gun-toting goons and have to engage in a thrilling chase, and then, when he is able to ask the question a second time, the Monster shows up and carries away the double in the same manner as the original.
It's such a weird situation that Kenneth can't even convince the police to look into it lest he be thrown in the drunk tank for challenging their view of reality. He simply has to adopt a new identity as the vigilante Gladiator in order to knock the beast out and discover just what the heck is going on.
So what the heck is going on? It's perfectly simple: art collector Craven has a painting by the great artist Velasquez and wants to have both it and some more money. To that end here is his plan:
- Bring in art critic Iona Hall
- Kidnap Hall as the Monster
- Replace Hall with lookalike June Starr
- Have his crony Gorman sell the painting at auction
- Buy his own painting for less than it's worth
- Ask Dan Kenneth to give the painting the once-over for him
- As the Monster again, steal the painting from Kenneth
- Hold Kenneth responsible for the loss of the painting
- Collect the money from Kenneth and enjoy it while the painting hangs in his home.
Some flaws in this plan include:
- Iona Hall seems to be completely superfluous to the plan, unless she is there to authenticate the painting
- Even if this is the case, kidnapping and replacing Hall is only necessary if the painting is fake, which it isn't
- June Starr is an unwilling accomplice who acts against the plan at least three times - an unkidnapped Iona Hall is far preferable
- The auction is completely unnecessary if Craven openly owns the painting - just ask Kenneth to clean it for you
- Plus you've driven down the price by buying it cheap. Perhaps they sold it for the amount that they thought that they could get out of Kenneth, in which case they chose the wrong scam and they should have been doing:
- Insurance fraud. The scam they should have been pulling was insurance fraud
All in all I must assume that Craven was just too excited about his cool monster suit and came up with a plan that allowed him to use it a couple of times, because that is the only lens through which this scheme makes a lick of sense.
Categorized in: Accessories (Personal Transport - Robotic Exoskeletons), Animals (Monsters), Narrative Footballs (Misc Origin Story Guys)
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