The Midnight feature in Smash Comics #31 was, again, untitled. It opens in the secret lair of Dave Clark (alias Midnight) and his companions, Doc Wackey and Gabby the talking monkey.
An explosion rocks the lair and Doc comes flying out of the lab, his momentum stopped only by Dave.
Wackey reports he's developed a machine capable of changing the atomic structure of material objects, essentially allowing him to transform one element into another!
Despite a couple of in-house demonstrations, the remaining two-thirds of Team Midnight express skepticism. Wackey proposes they come along and witness some additional outdoor testing.
Unfortunately, it turns out that the people of the countryside are not uniformly salt of the earth. A couple of no-luck miners spy Wackey transforming an oak tree into pure aluminum, when one of them hits upon an alternative plan for the machine.
He begins yelling for help, and when the heroic trio rush into the ramshackle cabin he bludgeons Dave over the head, trusses him up, and suspends our bound hero over a mineshaft.
Meanwhile, the miners-turned-thugs crunch Wackey with a full-nelson until he agrees to use the machine to turn rocks into gold.
The would-be financial titans load the gold rocks into their pick-up and head into Big City to sell them. The short-sighted criminals soon learn, however, that Wackey is not the obeisant coward they took him for--as they've hauled and transported not a pick-up load of gold, but near-worthless brass! I must point out, here, that these cats must be the most-incompetent miners in history if--after having spent "all their lives" scraping out a living in the field--they still can't tell the difference between brass and gold. It's probably time to consider another career path, boys...but not crime. You aren't particularly skilled at that either.
Meanwhile, back at the cabin Gabby has freed Midnight and the Doc and the trio are waiting with baited breath for the return of their erstwhile captors.
Having switched his reversible suit to the "Midnight side" (in order to preserve his secret identity?), Dave burst out of the cabin door onto the unsuspecting Spade and Weasel, and proceeds with his signature ethical pedagogy.
While, Midnight is busy pummeling Spade, Weasel retreats to the pick-up and turns the element-transformation ray on his pursuers. Midnight and Spade are caught in the blast and immediately transformed into brass statues.
Weasel means to subject Doc Wackey to a similar fate (I guess at this point, Weasel: (A) has given up all hope of using the ray to make gold, (B) is under the wildly-unjustified assumption that he'll be able to figure out how to use the machine on his own, or (C) more-than-likely has become so enraged he's thinking only about short-term revenge.) Yet again, however, the hero is rescued from certain doom by the timely interposition of that paladin primate, Gabby.
While Gabby has Weasel preoccupied, Wackey leaps to the machine and restores Midnight and Spade. Midnight's pummeling of Spade picks right back up without missing a beat. This, alone, was fairly impressive to me. Yet the superlatives of our "non-powered" hero don't stop merely with being able to quickly recover from the 1940s equivalent of being frozen in carbonite; he's apparently punching Spade so fast that the force of gravity doesn't have enough time to pull his near-unconscious body to the ground!
I don't know, man...that's pretty dang fast.
The story comes to an abrupt ending with another example of the supposedly justice-conscious crusader handing out mulligans for kidnapping, theft, and attempted murder.
Ummmm...okay, kids. I'm not entirely sure what the moral lesson is for today--If you steal stuff and then try to kill the hero who pursues you, be sure you at least sound sincere when you apologize?
An explosion rocks the lair and Doc comes flying out of the lab, his momentum stopped only by Dave.
Wackey reports he's developed a machine capable of changing the atomic structure of material objects, essentially allowing him to transform one element into another!
Despite a couple of in-house demonstrations, the remaining two-thirds of Team Midnight express skepticism. Wackey proposes they come along and witness some additional outdoor testing.
Unfortunately, it turns out that the people of the countryside are not uniformly salt of the earth. A couple of no-luck miners spy Wackey transforming an oak tree into pure aluminum, when one of them hits upon an alternative plan for the machine.
He begins yelling for help, and when the heroic trio rush into the ramshackle cabin he bludgeons Dave over the head, trusses him up, and suspends our bound hero over a mineshaft.
Meanwhile, the miners-turned-thugs crunch Wackey with a full-nelson until he agrees to use the machine to turn rocks into gold.
The would-be financial titans load the gold rocks into their pick-up and head into Big City to sell them. The short-sighted criminals soon learn, however, that Wackey is not the obeisant coward they took him for--as they've hauled and transported not a pick-up load of gold, but near-worthless brass! I must point out, here, that these cats must be the most-incompetent miners in history if--after having spent "all their lives" scraping out a living in the field--they still can't tell the difference between brass and gold. It's probably time to consider another career path, boys...but not crime. You aren't particularly skilled at that either.
Meanwhile, back at the cabin Gabby has freed Midnight and the Doc and the trio are waiting with baited breath for the return of their erstwhile captors.
While, Midnight is busy pummeling Spade, Weasel retreats to the pick-up and turns the element-transformation ray on his pursuers. Midnight and Spade are caught in the blast and immediately transformed into brass statues.
Weasel means to subject Doc Wackey to a similar fate (I guess at this point, Weasel: (A) has given up all hope of using the ray to make gold, (B) is under the wildly-unjustified assumption that he'll be able to figure out how to use the machine on his own, or (C) more-than-likely has become so enraged he's thinking only about short-term revenge.) Yet again, however, the hero is rescued from certain doom by the timely interposition of that paladin primate, Gabby.
While Gabby has Weasel preoccupied, Wackey leaps to the machine and restores Midnight and Spade. Midnight's pummeling of Spade picks right back up without missing a beat. This, alone, was fairly impressive to me. Yet the superlatives of our "non-powered" hero don't stop merely with being able to quickly recover from the 1940s equivalent of being frozen in carbonite; he's apparently punching Spade so fast that the force of gravity doesn't have enough time to pull his near-unconscious body to the ground!
I don't know, man...that's pretty dang fast.
The story comes to an abrupt ending with another example of the supposedly justice-conscious crusader handing out mulligans for kidnapping, theft, and attempted murder.
Ummmm...okay, kids. I'm not entirely sure what the moral lesson is for today--If you steal stuff and then try to kill the hero who pursues you, be sure you at least sound sincere when you apologize?
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