Miss Fury #8
Seeing Gary Hale as a threat to his romance with Erica Von Kampt, Doctor Diman has used his doctor’s credentials to get access to the hotel room he is resting in so he can finish the job that his men started. When Marla Drake answers the door, Doctor Saraf recognizes her as the woman that General Bruno was holding captive. He isn’t worried that she will recognize him since she always saw him with a surgical mask on. Drake is suspicious of the doctor when he tells her to wait outside and she refuses. As he gets to examining Hale, Marla can’t help but think she’s seen the doctor somewhere before but can’t quite place where it was. He finishes patching up Gary and leaves without incident. When Diman returns to his men, he tells them that he couldn’t do anything with the Dark woman watching him like a hawk and instead injected him with a stimulant that will stave off the effects of the amnesia medication he was injected with earlier so it kicks in the following day when Gary is scheduled to fly his plane.
The following day, when the other pilots return from their mission, the ground crew note that Gary Hale’s plane has gone missing. By this time, Doctor Saraf is getting impatient when he gets a call from his man staking things out at the airport. He confirms that Hale’s plane has gone missing and assures his boss that he is probably gone for good. With Gary Hale now dead, Doctor Saraf now intends to pay a visit to Erica Von Kampf and propose to her.
At that moment, Erica sits in her hotel room scheming. She thinks about how, now that the war is over, it’ll be harder for Gary to convince the authorities that she married him under false pretense as a Nazi spy. This will allow her to take a claim of his considerable family fortune. She knows that he is going to fight her on it, but he doesn’t realize what sort of fight he’s in for now as she is decided now is a good time to tell Hale that she is pregnant with his child. Her only problem is keeping her child away from Doctor Saraf who thinks her marriage has been annulled and wants to marry her. He helped her give birth and has been raising the child like it was his own.
She is surprised when Damin knocks on her door. She instantly starts putting the charm on the moment he walks in. When he asks her why she didn’t call him immediately upon arriving in town, she explains that she wanted to unpack and do some shopping before calling. She quickly changes the subject to ask about her baby. However, the doctor is certain she’s not that interested in her baby since the last she saw him he was three months old, two years ago. He cuts to the chase and figured out all her schemes and that she will marry him now. She admits that she had been deceiving him about the state of her marriage, but that’s when Damin reveals that she no longer has to worry about Gary Hale as she is now a widow. Still, she points out that her son will be the sole heir to the Hale fortune. That’s when the doctor blackmails her, telling her that she will pay him for raising her child for the past two years once she gets control of the Hale fortune or he will reveal that the child exists, thereby cutting her off from the fortune completely. Erica agrees to comply with this scheme, however, she is already plotting to steal her child back in order to prevent the doctor from blackmailing her. He pulls back her hair and tells that she is lying because there is a swastika visible on her forehead. He tells her when he did the skin graft to cover up the branding that was done to her forehead he made sure that it still became visible when she was under emotional stress, an ideal lie detector. She insists that her stress is due to concern for her baby and pleads with the doctor to allow her to see he child. Saraf agrees to bring the boy to her but warns her in advance that due to experiments he conducted on the boy he now has above average intelligence for a child his age. It takes a week before Damin returns with her son, who she insists will be named after his father. However, despite the doctor’s claims, Gary Hale, Jr doesn’t seem all that intelligent and doesn’t talk. When she picks the boy up she is shocked when Gary, Jr'. slap her in the face. Furious, she strikes the baby back for daring to raise a hand against her.
While downstairs, Marla Drake is making the final preparations for her final return to the United States. She thinks about how when she first came to Brazil it was to marry Gary Hale and how much has changed since then. Her thoughts are interrupted when she hears a baby crying and thinks that if she were to see a child that upset she would break down in tears. Upstairs, however, Erica has no such concerns as she shakes her child in an vain attempt to make it stop crying. When she tells Damin to do something all he does is put the child in another room and tell it to stay put and keep quiet. Once left alone, the young Hale boy instead opens the door to the hotel hallway and begins to wander the halls as the doctor and Erica continue to argue. The boy comes across the room of Marla Drake just as she finds her Miss Fury costume and thinks about how her uncle gave it to her and how it is apparently cursed. The boy is interested in the costume and comes in and asks her — in Portuguese — if the garment is her cat. She tells him its only a robe and puts it in her suitcase. She then tells the boy that she will be leaving, but not before she finds the child’s parents. He surprises her when he says he doesn’t have a mommy or daddy but is cared for by someone who calls himself der herr doctor.
By this time, Erica has notices that her child has gone missing and goes out into the hall to look for him. Looking around the room, the doctor finds that Erica has packed a number of weapons and suspects that she was plotting on killing him when he has his guard down. He also finds her suitcase full of money and the framed photograph of General Bruno. Finding all this evidence convinces Damin that Erica never loved him and that she is plotting to betray him eventually. When she comes back without her son, the doctor tells him to wait in the room while he looks for the boy. He has decided that when he finds the boy he will take him away where Erica will never see him again. Eventually, he goes to check the Drake woman’s room even though he was trying to avoid it. Gary Jr. is immediately afraid of Damin when he arrives, but Marla doesn’t understand the German he is speaking. She remembers the man as the doctor who treated Gary and once again wonders where she saw him previously. As they leave, Gary Jr. wave goodbye with a handkerchief. When it briefly obscures the lower half of the doctors face she realizes where she saw him previously, back at General Bruno’s mansion. When she calls the front desk about the doctor, the man at the desk mistakes Doctor Saraf for a local doctor named Doctor Gomez. With her flight back homecoming Marla decides to forget how none of this makes any sense and leaves.
Meanwhile, Erica has deduced that Damin may try to flee with her son and has gotten taxi cab and has begun circling the block. Spotting Saraf leaving the hotel, she orders the cab driver to follow his car.
Recurring Characters
Miss Fury, Doctor Diman Saraf, Erica Von Kampf, Gary Hale
Continuity Notes
This is the final issue of Miss Fury that was published by Timely Comics. The character is not seen again until The Twelve #1. The opening splash page of this issue showcases nearly every superhero who appeared in the 1940s (both in publications or canonically). Of all those characters, Miss Fury is among them, so the character does exist in the Marvel Universe. Since the character is in the public domain there’s no reason for her to appear again. Anyway, I suppose you could consider the rest of the Miss Fury strips that were published in the newspaper until 1952 could be considered part of her history in the Marvel Universe.
