Smash Comics #29: The Return of Chango the Magician

Smash Comics #29 sees the return of a classic Midnight villain:  Chango the Magician!

In his prior appearance, Chango was depicted as a failed vaudeville entertainer who resorted to crime to exact vengeance against the "fickle" public.  This story shows how the villain has evolved (or, rather, devolved) into a more bloodthirsty personality.

The evidence smacks the reader in the face on the second page.  Chango throttles  Judge J. J. Farnsby, leaving his corpse in the bed, and pilfering the cash in the dead jurist's safe.  Since Chango passed through the wall in order to kill Farnsby, it begs the question why he couldn't simply have passed through the safe and seized the cash without the need for homicide.  I hypothesize it's because Chango has developed a taste for murder.  He likes the rush of exercising the power of life and death over others.

While reporting on Farnsby's murder for UXAM radio news, Dave Clark (alias Midnight) sends a coded signal to his companions, Gabby the talking monkey and Doc Wackey, to begin an investigation.  Gab heads out to case the Farnsby residence but as fortune (or is it Providence?) would have it, he collides with a pedestrian who turns out to be Chango's henchman.  When, in a moment of thoughtlessness, Gabby yells "Why don't you watch where yer--" it piques the interest of the enterprising criminal, who immediately "monkey-naps" Gab because his boss (who is now masquerading as "The Great Swami") "could use a freak like you!"

When the henchman presents Gab to his boss, the simian sentinel is--predictably--unwilling to serve as a performing monkey.  In the attempt to make him talk, the henchman hits Gab hard enough to surreptitiously turn on the latter's wrist radio. This is how Midnight is alerted that Gab has been captured--and that he's being held by Midnight's old enemy, Chango the Magician!

Using the wrist radio and visoscope, Wackey is able to zero in on Gabby's location and then surveil what's happening.  This leads to the revelation that Chango is running a fortune-telling scam (in the persona of the Great Swami) where he lures people in to tell them their fortune, then hypnotizes them and gets them to reveal where their valuables are kept.

Keeping with his action-oriented nature, our hero crashes through the door of Chango's hideout and the standard donnybrook ensues.  Alas! While Midnight is distracted dealing with the henchman, the Mad Magician seizes the initiative--transforming our hero into a dog!

Fortunately for Midnight and Gab, the exercise of Chango's power seems to require ongoing focused concentration.  In order to transform Midnight into the crime-fighting canine, Chango had to relax his hypnotic hold on Gabby.  The monkey, then, launches his own attack, which in turn distracts Chango allowing Midnight to revert to his true form and renew the fight. Sensing he's lost the momentum, Chango teleports away, henchman in tow.

Midnight, however, is not giving up.  He and Gabby head to the home of "the Swami's" last known customer, Omar Smythe.  Midnight intends to use his old strategy of impersonation.  He'll pose as Smythe in the latter's home, in the hopes of catching Chango in the act of robbery.

Sure enough, at the stroke of Midnight Chango enters the room through the wall and Wackey (who's been overwatching the entire operation through the visoscope) springs the trap.  Midnight and Gab take to pummeling Chango.  Their strategy is to ensure the villain can't focus and bring his magic to bear.  Once they assume he's been knocked groggy, they let up.  This turns out to be the critical error, as Chango regains enough sense to escape by passing through the floor.

  
Cole treats the reader to a classic ending wherein Midnight and Gab break the fourth wall--the former to pledge that, "someday we're going to nail [Chango] right!" and the latter to raise suspense and tension in the reader by retorting, "If he doesn't nail us first!"

Smash Comics #20: Midnight and the Magician

In his third appearance, (Smash Comics #20) Midnight advances from fighting street criminals and corrupt officials, to squaring-off against an opponent with actual superpowers.

Chango the Magician became embittered after the death of vaudeville resulted in the corollary mortification of his career.  He seeks payback from the 'ungrateful' public by using magic to vivify items of wealth, and call them to himself.  

When Dave Clark--along with many other denizens of Big City--spots valuables fleeing their owners, the fearless radio announcer decides to hitch a ride on a runaway trunk! It carries Clark to Chango's hideout, an abandoned mine.  When he attempts to subdue the villain, Clark is caught in midair and transmuted into tobacco smoke through the power of mystic Pig Latin. (Who knew that harnessing dark forces was so simple?)

One might be forgiven for assuming that the involuntary adoption of a gaseous state would pretty well spell the end of a person.  However, in keeping with the double-fortune that always seems to follow Golden Age heroes, not only does Chango's power apparently have an effective radius, Smoke-Clark just happens to cross that barrier when he's directly above a lake.  Transforming back into his true self, Clark takes an invigorating (if impromptu) swim. As he emerges from the lake, Clark cannot remember how he got here (another side effect of Chango's enchantment) and concludes he must've fallen asleep fishing.  Upon returning to Big City, however, Clark is questioned by a man who witnessed his earlier ride-off on the magic trunk.  This, coupled with smelling the cigar smoke from a passerby, is enough to jog his memory.  Clark changes into his Midnight garb and speeds back toward the mine. 

Meanwhile, Chango has made good on an earlier threat to steal the federal treasury vault from Knoxville (TN?).  Thanks to the mystic trance required to transport the vault, Midnight is able to approach Chango undetected.  Yet for some reason our intrepid hero botches this advantage.  Rather than sneak up to the sorcerer and knock him unconscious, Midnight hurls a hypodermic dart from across the room, simultaneously: breaking Chango's concentration, alerting him to Midnight's presence, and sending the reserve vault plummeting to earth.

Side note 1: This is another great example of the bizarre items produced seemingly out of nowhere by an otherwise normal dude who just happens to occasionally put on a domino mask to beat up bad guys.  Oh well, I guess no one ever accused Golden Age kids' comics of belonging in the Norton's Anthology of great Western literature.

 

Unsurprisingly, this enrages the magician, who promptly conjures up serpents and charges them with pulling Midnight apart.  And it's just about time for another deus ex machina. This time, we learn that Midnight's dart had been laced with a sedative that now takes effect, knocking the villain unconscious before the snakes can finish their grisly task.  (Presumably, after their creator loses consciousness, the snakes simply dissolve into nothingness.)

With the villain thus restrained, Clark returns to Big City and surreptitiously passes information to the police indicating both the thief and the stolen goods can be located at Mills' Mine. (No word on the fallout of a federal building collapsing in the hinterlands.)

Side note 2: This issue features two very rare panels.  Typically, Jack Cole's characters are either asking questions or shouting.  A quick perusal of these early Midnight stories will demonstrate that most dialogue ends in at least one (and often two) exclamation points!!  However, for reasons that are not readily obvious (at least not to me) there are two panels in this story where Midnights speaks in simple dispassionate declaratory sentences.