| Synopsis
| - --03-27
- Previously: In a skyscraper in NYC a desperado named Moran gains possession of half of the secret to a new gun, he calls it "the 'X' gun," then shoots his way out of a police trap and flees the country, to Paris, where he sells it to the very oily M'sieu Rolande and his henchwoman Madame Camille. The deal goes bad and Moran guns down Rolande. So he's sent to Devil's Island in the Caribbean; that's a quick trial plus a whole second transAtlantic steamship voyage, all of which happens BEFORE Black X enters the action.
- "His amazing powers were the result of having been electrocuted by 10,000 D.C. volts, then being shocked back to life by an equal current of A.C. volts!" Tom Dalton was a lineman in a coastal town, both before and after gaining his incredible powers, and he would often need to find excuses to duck out and fight injustice. Magno channeled electricity, using the currents inside him, he could create a variety of effects. He had a sort of "super eyes" that would see great distances. He wore metal wristbands that created a powerful electromagnet when he applied his powers. The resulting force could propel him at super-speed. He could also create a field of force, that could repel metallic objects, and he could manipulate metallic objects as well. In his first adventure, Magno foiled a crew of foreign-sponsored steamship hijackers, and sank a foreign submarine using the enemy's own torpedo.
* gets konked on the head with a belaying pin, but he only pretends to get knocked out.
* has already killed an entire submarine crew, at the end of his first adventure.
- In China, two years earlier, a warlord named Ah Sin, calling himself the Golden Dragon, kidnapped an American girl, Joyce Harper, and placed her under a hypnotic spell. She continued to be his servant and believed her name was Luan.
- --- Two years later, they came to America, and the Golden Dragon kidnapped the nephew of a munitions factory owner, for ransom. Later, he negotiated with the factory owner, threatening to torture the nephew, if he did not cancel all of his orders and produce weapons only for him. Kent Thurston happened to be sitting in a Chinese restaurant, and discovered a hidden panel that led him through a tunnel and into the Golden Dragon's lair. There, dba the Invisible Hood, he helped the factory owner rescue his nephew, knocked Golden Dragon out, and was able to make the girl come out of her trance by hitting a gong.
- Dr. E. Salor has developed a cure for pneumonia; here's his problem: "In this present European fighting, some nations' soldiers are from the milder climates and thus subject to pneumonia, while other soldiers are from the north, but like the Russians, poorly clothed and fed -- therefore, in both cases the death rate from pneumonia is high." So Salor is trying to keep his cure hushed up, at least for the duration of WWII, and his house has been getting broken into by burglars who steal nothing, but are searching for this. Hugh Hazzard's conference with the doctor is interrupted by two of Boss Patone's thugs who barge in to Salor's home and demand his formula; Hugh uses his under-the-lapel control board to call Bozo; the robot smashes into the room, through a wall, but just then Hugh is headkonked with a pistol-butt, and when he falls out, Bozo stops moving. So the bad guys put two and two together, but they still decide it's a good idea to stick Hazzard inside the Robot before they get rid of it. Soon, Bozo the Robot is encased in a cement block and pushed off a pier; on the river bottom the block eventually cracks and breaks; Bozo emerges and flies away. A Russian named Horg buys the formula from Patone, for two million dollars in cash, then flees the country. Patone gets braced in his own apartment by the Iron Man; he squeals on Horg, who is scheduled to be picked up at sea by an ocean liner. Soon aboard a small boat on the open sea, Bozo confronts Horg, and recovers the stolen formula; Horg hits a hidden switch and blows up the boat with himself aboard. Bozo gets the formula back to Medico Hospital in time for it to be used to save Dr. Salor's life.
* Hugh Hazzard gets konked on the head with a pistol-butt, this is at minimum his third concussion.
- . So circa 1939-April-early now, "With leaden steps, time passes, as prison life goes grimly on." One thing leads to another and Moran is about to blurt out his secret when "John Smith" punches him out; then the obnoxious camp commandant, with no known name, puts them both into solitary. The next day on a woodchopping detail, Black X and Moran escape, and in the jungle they meet up with a gang of earlier escapees, and they all make their way north to the ocean, then down the coast to a river mouth, where good old Batu is waiting with a sailboat; the six of them pile in and set sail into choppy waters. There's a four-against-two fight when it comes out that Black X is a fed, but he and Batu toss two to the sharks, and a third is devoured later in their long harrowing sea voyage. They wash up at Panama City, Batu turns in Moran, Black X re-credentializes himself, and finds some clothes, then regains custody of Moran, they return to WDC, and "their favorite restaurant." By this time, Black X has been gone for three months.
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