Smash Comics # 35 (September 1942)
Midnight feature (Who is He?)
art & story by Jack Cole
Midnight passed a milestone in September 1942, when he displaced the Ray as lead feature in Smash Comics. The meandering, plot-hole ridden story for that issue gives several indications it was intended to introduce Midnight to new readers. Why Quality Publishing felt the need to do this is not clear. Midnight was not appearing in a new book, but simply moving places within the same title in which he'd always appeared. I would've thought most of readers of Smash Comics would've already been familiar with Midnight.
The story begins with a fire engulfing the home of retired circus entertainer, Waldo Whiz. As firemen rush to the scene, the homeowner leaps from a six story window. Aghast when Whiz seems to plunge through the rescue net, ambulance personnel rush upon him with a stretcher.
Incredibly, Whiz appears to survive the fall without injury! What happens next takes the reader by surprise, as the "emergency responders" encircle Waldo and proceed to violently assault him!
True to his sense of justice and fair play, our hero Midnight plunges into the fray. Despite his best efforts--and even an assist by Gabby--Midnight gets overwhelmed by his foes' sheer numbers. Curiously, however, the fight ends not with a clear victory on the part of the "faux firemen," but with everyone in the immediate vicinity suddenly (and inexplicably) bouncing about like rubber balls until they're knocked unconscious.
After the ricocheting ruckus ends, a green car approaches and extends a mechanical arm. It retrieves the combatants one by one. Though the operator is unseen at this time, he is evidently the mastermind behind this bizarre turn of events.
Though not really a "plot hole," I think Cole is at least guilty of an "art hole" here. The story is introduced as taking place in the "evening," and the subsequent appearance of the mysterious green car clearly takes place at night. The above print of the bouncing spectators, however, looks like it's conveying that these events are taking place in the middle of the day.
Hours laters, Midnight awakens--sans mask--in police custody! Immediately he panics because they've seen his face and now know that Midnight is radio announcer Dave Clark. But would they--really--have known who Midnight was just because they saw his face? Dave was a radio personality...not a television personality. If anything, shouldn't Dave's bigger concern have been that someone would recognize his voice? And if that's the risk, he's been running that one since he first donned the mask.
As it turns out, though, Dave has nothing to worry about, for in yet another case of lazy deus ex machina maneuvering, the cops explain that Midnight is so beaten up they can't recognize who he is!
Where to start here? First, these professional investigators are unusually dense if they can't piece together what Dave would normally look like from this "severe" beating. I've seen guys with black eyes before--even had a few myself. Yeah...they don't look pretty, but I could still tell who I was. It's not that hard. Third, this is just some lazy writing by Cole. Basically all he's done here is recycle a trope he used back in Smash Comics #22:
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| untitled Midnight feature, Smash Comics #22 |
The cops seem to assume that Midnight is responsible for the attack on Whiz. Fortunately, when the profoundly inept law officers turn their backs, a rope dangles next to Dave's bed (complete with instructions to "Grab") and our hero is whisked to safety by Doc Wackey and Gabby.
Later, back at Doc's secret lab, the trio discuss who the mysterious criminal might be that is capable of producing such strange effects. Wackey speculates it is his old partner in crime, Professor Porgy.
Wackey's aside is yet another mechanism for introducing Midnight and his entourage to new readers.
We next cut away to a scene with the infamous Prof. Porgy who--as it turns out--is behind the attack and abduction. Judging from the dialogue between Whiz and Porgy, it seems that the only reason the retired acrobat was targeted in the first place was because Porgy wanted his millions to fund another (as yet unrevealed) enterprise.
Left utterly unexplained is how Porgy was supposed to have known Whiz would leap from his blazing mansion with millions strapped to his chest. One wonders why--if, in fact, illicit financing is the goal--Porgy didn't send his forces to rob the house, rather than burn it down. I would expect a supposed scientific "genius" to consider that he was likely immolating as much money as he finally got after all that trouble.
On another note, is it just me or does Prof. Porgy really come across as a Penguin knock-off?
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| Prof. Porgy in Smash Comics #35 (September 1942) |
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| Penguin in Detective Comics # 58 (December 1941) Source: https://ifanboy.com/articles/oswald-cobblepot-the-penguin/ |
Meanwhile, nostalgia is in the air as both Wackey and Porgy drop by the old Science and Inventor's Club in search of each another. Porgy reveals to Doc the specifics of his latest plan (a plan to which, the reader is still not privy) and asks Wackey to join him in the endeavor.
Having been morally transformed into a fine upstanding citizen through his affiliation with Team Midnight, Wackey refuses and pronounces Porgy's scheme, "idiotic, impossible, and insane!"
In the attempt to persuade Wackey, Porgy reveals the cause of the mysterious bouncing phenomena--the "electron director."
The eagle-eyed reader may note a suspicious similarity between the "random" dog Porgy demonstrates his device upon, and the dog into which Midnight was transformed by his old nemesis Chango back in Smash Comics #29
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| Smash Comics #35 |
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| Smash Comics #29 |
"What's going on here?" you ask. Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe Jack Cole just really enjoyed drawing blue dogs. (Maybe he was a Democrat?)
Anyhoo, upon this definitive revelation that Porgy was behind the evening's events, Doc displays a rare bit of machismo by socking Porgy cold and heading off to call the cops.
Unfortunately, Doc's fists don't pack quite the same wallop as Midnight's. Porgy regains consciousness, realizes what's happened, and releases his "mechanical bloodhound" (which, honestly, looks like a vacuum cleaner with a funnel on the front of it) to track Doc down.
Despite Wackey's head start, wouldn't you know it--the robotic rover locates him just as he's about to reveal Porgy's location to the police and spears our lovable inventor in the calf injecting him with a strange personality-altering serum. This (somewhat inexplicably) causes Doc to revert to his criminal anti-cop self.
I don't know about you, dear reader, but I like the spiraling faces effect Cole used to illustrate Wackey's transformation. Though, I've not read a whole lot of Golden Age comics, this is one more little detail that (I think) demonstrates how Cole's work was above and beyond the average.
His affections now altered, Wackey tracks Porgy down at the latter's mountain retreat (and, apparently, private observatory?) where the reader is finally let in on Porgy's ultimate plan. He has discovered a planet composed entirely of gold, and plans to use the money stolen from Whiz to construct a rocket, travel to the planet, mine it, and return to earth a billionaire! Remember, dear reader, it was 1942 and the government hadn't yet dreamed of the levels of monetary inflation we see today. Though the status was (and sometimes continues) to be claimed for John D. Rockefeller, otherwise there had never been a "billionaire" before! In that light, you see how "over-the-top" Porgy's potential wealth would've been.
When it's finally completed, the ship looks like virtually every illustration I've ever seen of Jules Verne's (largely forgotten tale), From the Earth to the Moon.
Much like in Verne's tale, the final landing of Porgy's space shuttle seems destined to leave he and his entourage in quite the cosmic pickle
Even allowing for the fact that no one had ever traveled outside of Earth's atmosphere at this time, I'm still dumbfounded that neither Verne, nor Cole seemed to have thought about how their literary space-farers would actually return to Earth. Let's be honest, Porgy's "ship" is essentially a giant bullet with people inside it. How exactly did he think he was going to excavate the ship, make necessary repairs ('cause I ain't believin' it came out of that crater without some serious dents) and propel the thing back to Earth. (Remember, he's supposedly landed on a planet made of "solid gold" so there's not going to be any rocket fuel or anything on hand. Perhaps it was just these sorts of concerns (or a looming deadline) that prompted Cole to go in full deus ex machina mode again in an effort to tie everything up on the final page.
Virtually simultaneous to landing, the effects of the drug given Wackey wear off, and Doc is outraged by what he's been manipulated into doing.
As it turns out, Porgy's ire soon rises as well. Upon exiting the craft he spies not a glittering landscape of gold, but merely sand! Porgy immediately announces they've landed on the wrong planet due to Wackey's calculations. Ummm...excuse me, Your Portliness, but aren't you supposed to be a scientific genius yourself? Wasn't this supposedly a "team effort"? I guess maybe Porgy is scared that his henchmen are going to get real non-compliant when they realize there's no riches and no return home, so he's basically trying to turn Wackey into the Jerry Gergich of this story.
The Porgster orders his thugs to kill (the scapegoat) Wackey, and they dutifully proceed to answer the call. Wackey melodramatically cries out, "If only Midnight were here!"
And lo! and behold!
Midnight proceeds to save Wackey via his signature boxing lessons. When Doc asks how Midnight was able to find him, our hero explains, "You left your wrist radio on, so we came in on the beam!" (Admittedly, I really don't know what that last clause means. Is Midnight just saying that they followed Wackey's signal, or is he saying that he and Gabby traveled on an actual beam of some sort--like the Star Trek teleporters?!)
Aside from the question of what "coming in on the beam" means, the keen reader will (reasonably) wonder, "How, exactly, did a talking monkey and a masked radio show host manage interstellar pursuit without the aid of their world-class scientist?"
When Wackey protests the reality of his deliverance by insisting, "You couldn't have followed us to this foreign planet!," Midnight nonchalantly explains:
Pick up here
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