USA Comics #7
Case of the Flying Submarine
In Berlin, Germany, a Nazi agent known as the Eraser seeks to go to the United State and steal the plans for a new submarine that is also capable of flight that has been invented by Mark Manners. The military knowing how valuable the invention is has arranged for an escort for Manners and his daughter Jane to transport them and a model of the flying sub (called the Corsair) to a military base to be constructed. The route they are taking is leaked to the Eraser by a Nazi spy and he and his men begin preparing to kidnap the scientist and the mock-up of his invention.
Hearing the news of Manner's invention, Steve Rogers and Bucky decide to keep an eye on things while they are on leave. They are held up from going thanks to Sgt. Duffy who assigns them to KP duty, however Steve uses his enhanced abilities to quickly peel potatoes and they leave a farewell message spelled out to Duffy with the potatoes they have peeled.
Suspecting the Eraser the two fly to a nearby airfield where as Captain America and Bucky they catch the Eraser warming up a plane to intercept the one carrying Manners. They jump the Nazi pilots and Captain America takes his place. When they are up in the air with the Eraser on board, Cap decides to land on the ship carrying Manners and his daughter to see how things play out.
When the Eraser goes out to meet Manners and his daughter aboard their ship, he convinces them to board his plane by showing them a Captain America costume under his clothing, convincing them that he is Captain America. However the truth is revealed when the Eraser suddenly pulls a gun and demands that Manners hand over the model of his invention. As the Eraser attacks the defiant Manners, Captain America goes into action, leaving Bucky to pilot the plane.
However, Captain America is taken from behind and knocked out, forcing Bucky to attempt to threaten crashing the plane in order to stop the Eraser and his men. The Eraser calls his bluff and sends his men to deal with them while he tries to get the model from Manners. After a brief struggle, Manners is knocked out of the plane and falls to his death, but the Eraser gets the model.
The plane soon crashes because Bucky was unable to control the plane while fighting. All aboard survive the crash and the Eraser and his men are rescued by more Nazis in speed boats. Captain America and Bucky give them chase, but they are knocked out of the boat and the Eraser makes his escape. The two heroes are rescued from the water by a soldier and Jane in another speed boat and they chase after the Eraser once more.
The Eraser charges at their boat, wrecking it, forcing Captain America to save Jane before continuing his search for the Eraser on land. Jane wanders off and is captured by the Eraser and his men, while the soldier catches the spy in their midst. Captain America and Bucky search for the Eraser in their civilian guise and discover that the Eraser has been hiding out on a nearby submarine that is on public display.
With the help of the military, Captain America and Bucky clash with the Eraser once more and manage to rescue Jane and regain the model. During the course of the battle an explosion knocks the Eraser off the sub and into the water. Claiming that rubber always floats, the Eraser then floats off vowing to get his revenge against Captain America.
Recurring Characters
Captain America, Bucky, Sgt. Duffy, Nazis
Captain Daring
Lee Bradford -- aka Captain Daring -- captain of the Sky-Sharks is on the trail of Lieutenant Raeger who he has learned is a Nazi spy. Trailing him to a Southhampton tea shop, he confronts Raeger, but his attempt to nab the spy is interrupted by a female soldier named Valerie Welling who is unaware that Raeger was a spy, allowing for him to escape. When everything is explained by Captain Daring and his fellow Sky-Shark Zeke Mallon, Valerie is deeply apologetic, and it is explained to Daring that she has been under tremendous strain since her father Colonel Welling was captured behind enemy lines. Daring explains that it was Raeger who was responsible for tipping off the Nazis, leading to the Colonel's capture and promises that he will do everything in his power to rescue Valerie's father.
To this end, Captain Daring arranges to make a prisoner exchange, trading the German prisoner of war Marshall von Hapz for Colonel Welling. Daring only takes along Zeke, telling the other Sky-Sharks to stay behind. When they land in Germany and make the exchange, suddenly the Nazis betray them and take the trio prisoner. They are not surprised to see Lieutenant Raeger among the Nazis when they are escourted to Berlin.
Locked in a room, Captain Daring manage break out with a screw driver that was not confiscated from him. On the opposite side of the door they find Lieutenant Raeger waiting for them and they are shocked to learn that he is really a double agent, pretending to be a traitor to the Allied Forces in order to learn Nazi secrets. Together they attempt to fool the guards into thinking his "prisoners" are being transported elsewhere, but Marshall von Hapz comes across them and shoots Raeger upon discovering that he is a traitor. Von Hapz and his men are easily overpowered by Daring, Zeke and Welling and Von Hapz is taken prisoner as they carry Raeger along to get out of the Nazi base.
Stealing a car they race through the Nazi blockades to the airfield where their plane has been impounded. There Raeger dies from his wounds, but not before getting Daring to promise to tell all he died fighting for his country. The heroes escape is stopped thanks to a gun battery of Nazi soldiers, however the rest of the Sky-Sharks arrive in fighter planes and blitz the airfield. As the Nazi forces are gunned down, the tree Allied soldier take von Hapz aboard their plane and fly back to England. There, Von Hapz is made a prisoner once again and Captain Daring is rewarded with a kiss from Valerie for bringing her father back home alive.
Recurring Characters
Captain Daring
Continuity Notes
This is the only Golden Age appearance of Captain Daring. He will appear again decades later in Ant-Man: Last Days #1.
Marvel Boy
Meek mannered Martin Burns accompanies his class on a school field trip to the local museum. As the guide shows them a sarcophagus that supposedly holds the body of Hercules and a vial of the legendary demi-god's blood. The sarcophagus is accidentally knocked over by one of Martin's classmates and it falls directly on Martin. His arm is cut while pinned under the casket, and the vial of Hercules's blood breaks open and spills on his wound. Pulled out from under the coffin, Martin shakes off the accident and soon finds that he has been endowed with super-human strength.
That night while he sleeps, Martin is visited by what appears to be the very form of Hercules himself. The demi-god hands Martin a costume and dubs him Marvel Boy, and tells him to go out and fight evil wherever he may find it. Martin puts on his costume and goes into action. He finds a nearby apartment building set ablaze and goes to the rescue of an elderly man trapped inside. Carrying the man to safety and the medical attention of the fire crew below, Marvel Boy is told a startling thing: The man is a conductor that controls the switching lights in the city's subway system and he was attacked by a group of Fifth Columnists who sought to use the switching station to cause a massive subway accident.
As Marvel Boy rushes off to stop the Fifth Columnists, the Nazi thugs arrive at the switching station with their leader Von Blubber and take the transit systems nerve center under their control. Marvel Boy arrives just as Von Blubber switches all the lights to go, and stops the Nazis and switches them to stop just in time to avoid a terrible accident. Marvel Boy then leaves the scene when the authorities arrive, leaving a calling card to mark his passing.
Continuity Notes
Per All-New Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Update #4 the individual calling himself Hercules here is not the Greek god, but another entity who used his name for unknown reasons.
The Up-To-the-Minute Man
Roddy Colt accompanies his friend Freddy Franklin up to Massachusetts to see the sights in the old Minute Men country. When observing a statue of one of the many historical revolutionaries they spot a bond rally. Roddy approaches the men running it and asks how the rally is going and he is rudely told to butt out of their business. When the men suddenly pull away, Franklin notes that they are driving in the opposite direction of the city bank.
The boys decide to pay no mind and continue their sight seeing until a local boy tells Freddy that the armored car carrying the money from the bond rally had mysteriously disappeared. Roddy suggests that they do something and grabbing a horse he rings a old Minute Man bell to attract the locals to help search for the missing truck.
While the others are all out searching, Roddy changes into the Secret Stamp and investigates the hotel that the bond salesmen were staying. Overhearing them in their room, the Stamp learns that they are really a mob of crooks lead by a man named Griffin. Who has his men toss pellets of sleeping gas into the vehicles to stop the drivers so that they can loot the trucks of the war bond money. Finding that one of the crooks accidentally dropped one of the knock out pellets on the floor, the Secret Stamp uses it on the crooks and knocks them out.
Realizing that the truck driver is in danger, the Secret Stamp comes to the drivers rescue after he passes out at the wheel and crashes. With the driver safe and the bond money unstolen, the Secret Stamp tells those gathered who was behind the plot and where to find them, still knocked out from the gas.
Recurring Characters
Secret Stamp
Jap Buster Johnson
Aboard an aircraft carrier Doug Johnson and a fellow soldier watch as a bunch of American fighter planes land after a patrol and notice that their formation is strange and that perhaps there might be something wrong. Their fears turn out to be true as the whole crew of fighter pilots have green skin and literally laugh themselves to death. Soon they are attacked by a bunch of strange Japanese Zero fighters that have a unique laughing skull emblem and Johnson hears the pilots laughing before they are sent fleeing from the anti-aircraft weapons.
After the attack, Johnson sees his superior officer and gets permission to try and track down the "Laughing Death Patrol" on his own. Spotting them flying over the Pacific, Johnson gives them chase until they enter strange green clouds. Remembering the color of the dying pilots faces, Johnson refrains from flying in and shoots down some of the planes. Spotting a Japanese battleship with the Laughing Death emblem on it, he lands on it's runway and is quickly ordered to surrender.
Put before an impromptu firing squad, the quick thinking Johnson fires his flare gun at some fuel drums on deck causing an explosion that covers his escape. Jumping a superior officer, Johnson steals his uniform and uses it to cover his search of the Japanese ship. He finds canisters of the lethal laughing gas and puts on a gas mask and then unleashes the deadly gas. As the crew below deck are exposed to the gas and begin laughing themselves to death, Johnson then goes up to the upper deck and takes control of the Japanese ship until American forces can arrive.
As the gas rises up and begins killing the crew above deck, Johnson jumps overboard and is rescued by his fellow soldiers, they then fire torpedoes at the ship destroying it. Back at base, Johnson is commended on a job well done. Later, by himself he tells his dead friend Dave that he completed the mission in his memory.
Recurring Characters
Jap Buster Johnson
Imperial Japan
