| Synopsis
| - All the electric power within a mile radius of Hillcrest has failed so Mike Harvey and his assistant Tom Dalton drive there, in an “Eastern Electric” company truck, and as they get close to the town, Mike is quietly but suddenly paralyzed, and blacks out. Tom isn’t affected, because of his electromagnetic super powers, so he changes clothes and then sprints into Hillcrest to see what’s going on. He zooms along at rooftop level until he spots strangely-equipped truck parked outside the bank, watches it, and soon a robber with a big sack of money comes running out. Magno levitates this guy up to the roof and punches him out, then magnetically prevents the special truck, with two robbers inside it, from driving away. Then he changes tactics and lets it flee the scene, with himself riding the roof. They all arrive at an old secluded stone house, and he now beats up the two robbers, and confronts their boss, who turns out to be Professor Abbot, the ousted physics professor of Stamton College. Abbot talks his way up close to Magno, then doses him with a beaker of gas, which knocks him out. Magno is thrown into a well, with an iron grating across the top, so he magnetically flies himself out of there, then ignores Abbot’s shouted warning and grabs the electric system paralyzer, which causes it to very destructively explode. The professor, definitely, and his two henchmen, probably, are killed.
- Kent Thurston is asked by a friend to investigate why his workers are terrified in his lead mines, on a tropical isle in the south Pacific. The road to the mine passes through a gorge that's been filled with a toxic volcanic gas, and the corrupt mine manager is using this to cover the discovery and harvesting of some valuable helium deposits. Kent gets invisible and disrupts this skulduggery.
- In Washington, the Black X resigns his commission and returns to NYC, and mopes, because he is in love with the sinister Madame Doom. What a sap. Meanwhile somewhere in The Orient, Madame Doom is conspiring with Count Mirov to kill all the delegates to next week's Pan-American Conference, in NYC. She has some sappy things to say about Black X too.
Soon one of Mirov's bomb-strapped assassins turns up at Black X's own skyscraper home and blows up Ambassador Lordez in an elevator. Acting on some seemingly random advice from his telepathic manservant Batu, Black X goes nightclubbing at Club 13 and just happens to randomly run into Madame Doom. She has an exciting new scheme to tell him about; she is building an army of fanatics who are willing to wear jodphurs and hooded raincoats, and to drink explosives and turn themselves into suicide bombers. "The future of the South American Empire" is taking shape, according to her, in a deep underground dungeon under a ramshackle country shack, so they go there. The Black X eventually wises up and escapes to Washington, arriving too late to save Ambassador De Condero of Peru from getting blown up; he tries to get his spy job back, no dice, but then Batu shows up, with his illegally-intercepted resignation letter, so Black X is rehired just like that.
Black X deduces, based on nothing, that milk is the antidote to the ingested explosive, and compels all the conferees to drink some, and when one refuses he of course is the assassin, and flees, but blows up, taking nobody with him. Black X leaves on foot, via devious shortcuts out of the city, to the old house, then acts on another ex-nihilo hunch, and dives into a well outside the house; it leads to a tunnel, which leads to the underground HQ, with its big fiery fountain of the explosive liquid. In the ensuing fistfight Black X punches at least two badguys into the fire and throws at least one off a stairway. Now henchmanless, Madame Doom drinks a goblet of the explodo juice, and walks out of the room; next panel we see a big explosion that takes out the country shack.
- Newspaper reporter Happy Terrill joins Professor Styne on an experimental Strato-Balloon flight into the upper stratosphere. While in the stratosphere, Happy is forced to go outside to close an airlock. Turbulence causes him to be thrown into a cosmic storm. The storm has transformed Happy into the Ray. He has been given the power to become light energy and to project the energy from his body.
The balloon returns to Earth, but Happy is presumed dead. Spies led by Anton Rox steal the professor's secret formulas, including a new powerful gas. The Ray tracks down the crooks and returns the formulas to the professor. Styne recognizes him as Happy, but the Ray tells him to forget he ever knew Happy Terrill.
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| Notes
| - * Espionage:
** At this story's end, we see Madame Doom drink the explosive liquid and walk offstage. What we do not see is Madame Doom get blown up on-panel. We do not know if she had a quart of milk in that next room, and a set of special-effects bombs upstairs. And we don't see the body. And she will be back.
** Based on internal evidence and previous Espionage episodes, this story may have taken place circa 1940-June.
* Bozo: Hugh Hazzard gets knocked unconscious with a wooden club, but quickly recovers.
* Also appearing in this issue of Smash Comics were:
** Abdul the Arab: , by Bob Powell
** Clip Chance at Cliffside: , by George Brenner
** Wings Wendall: , by Vernon Henkel
** Chic Carter: , by Vernon Henkel
** Purple Trio: , by Alex Blum
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