Action Comics #26

Issue Details

Synopsis

PROFESSOR COBALT'S QUACK CLINIC TRAPPED IN THE SNOW On a moose hunting trip to Saskatchewan, Pep and Pierre have a 500-mile hike and a struggle for survival when a howling blizzard makes the forest all but impassible. Pierre falls and breaks his leg; Pep carries him. Pep fights and kills a grizzly bear; he and Pierre cook and eat part of it. Leaving Pierre in the grizzly's winter cave, Pep struggles on alone until he reaches a remote trading post. Borrowing a dogsled and a team of huskies, Pep returns to Pierre's cave, just in time to fight off a pack of wolves, and convey Pierre to the safety of the trading post. RESCUED The Black Pirate, along with most of Ruff's pirate crew, has dived into the shark-infested ocean. Jon Valor gets aboard a floating barrel, and defends it against attacking sharks with a hefty length of chain. After over an hour of this, no other survivors are visible, and another ship sails onto the scene, and takes Jon aboard. It is commanded by Captain Courtney, and bound for Savannah to load up with cotton.   Three days later, when they dock at Savannah, Jon Valor slips ashore, borrows a sturdy horse, and gallops away, through the familiar forest of this region of Georgia. At a wayside inn, Jon meets up with a childhood friend, Jeanne. They spend the evening conversing. Meanwhile outside are two cloaked figures; one signals the other, who barges in to the inn and demands to see the Black Pirate. Jeanne screams. Upstairs, Valor grabs his cape and sword, and dashes down the stairs. He charges into the room blade first, and recognizes the attacker. INGRID SVENSON'S INHERITANCE Their search for adventure brings the Three Aces to California. In a diner, Gunner encounters a crying girl, with a strange story. She's Ingrid Svensen, and she's inherited a fortune, in pearls, that her late father left inside a forbidden temple, on top of Devil Mountain, in New Guinea. So she needs to charter a flight, and she charms the Aces into undertaking the trip.   Arriving in New Guinea, Ingrid is greeted by her old friend Noala, and they have a lot to discuss. There's an upcoming meeting, that night, of all the local tribes. Ingrid needs to do some negotiating because the Natives don't allow anybody but the priests inside the temple. Thwarted only momentarily, the Three Aces take off and scout out the mountain top. There's no place to land, so they decide to return the next day.   But the next morning a large delegation of Native leaders and priests arrive at Ingrid's cabin, and order her and her friends to leave, because they have brought "Mombala-Darana," or bad luck, down on the tribe. There are thousands of Natives, with hundreds already on the scene, and the house is surrounded. The Three Aces like this just fine, and they break out some rifles and bullets, hunkering down for a good fight. For a while they do splendidly, but their ammunition runs out all too soon. Whistler Will takes a revolver and goes out the window, sprints thru the Native skirmish line and reaches his airplane, and its machine guns. Once he's off the ground, it's a completely different fight, and the Natives scatter. According to Ingrid, the plane is the very Mombala-Darana that the Natives had feared.   The Natives sue for peace, and will gladly yield the pearls to the daughter of the late white witch-man. So now they all, minus Will, hike up the side of Devil Mountain, with Whistler Will flying cover, in case anybody changes their mind. The pearls are in a chest in the temple, and there are a lot of them, requiring Native bearers to help them down the mountain with the box. But when the newly wealthy Miss Svenson offers to pay the Aces, they decline, claiming that they just do this for the fun of it. INTRODUCING "MISS X" Now that their remarkable friend Gargantua T. Potts has left them to join the French Army, Tex and Bob are finding life in Brooklyn a bit dull. But then they get a threatening phone call, instructing them to not involve themselves with the new prosecutor, Mr. Maloney. So of course that's exactly what they do. Maloney visits Thomson in the library of his apartment, and swears them in as deputies, to help take out the local rackets, starting with a gang of car thieves. As he does so, Thomson's new butler is listening in, and gloating about how pleased his "Chief" will be to hear about this.   The next morning Thomson and Daley drive Tex's expensive car downtown to leave it parked in a bad neighborhood and get it stolen. They watch the car from an upstairs doorway, and a man comes along, opens the hood, and tampers with the engine. Tex and Bob chase him but he gets away; they check the engine and can't find anything wrong, so they get set to drive away. A girl in a green raincoat and a red hat runs up and stops Tex before he can start the engine, then shows them a hidden dynamite bomb under the hood. They have questions but she disappears into the crowd.   The next day at Maloney's office, Tex and Bob still have questions but they are rudely barged-in upon by a loud obnoxious social crusader, who is there to complain loudly about the low quality police work in this town, J. Vander Wallace. Three more cars have been stolen and there's been a murder and he's apparently there to blame it on the new prosecutor. Tex dislikes him instantly and is just barely able to not punch him in the face. After that awkward conversation, as they leave the building, Tex spots the bomb-planter from yesterday. They chase him again and this time they catch him. They drag him down a deserted street and beat some information out of him: he doesn't know who the big boss is but he does know where the stolen cars are taken.   That evening outside a garage on the waterfront, Tex surprises Bob, and their prisoner, by not raiding the place, returning them instead to his own apartment. There he uses theatrical make-up to disguise himself as the bomb-planter, and leaves to return to the warehouse alone. But he's ambushed in the lobby of his own apartment building by the young lady from yesterday, and her handgun. She's got a car and a driver outside, and some questions for the hoodlum he's impersonating. Tex plays along, for a little while, then grabs her gun and orders them both out of the car, which he then borrows. He confirms her suspicion that he's really Tex Thomson, and promises to return her car to the front of his building, then drives back to the waterfront, and gets admitted to the car-thief gang's garage. It's a chop shop, and they paint this green car pink, to re-sell elsewhere. While he's there, Thomson spots the civic activist J. Vander Wallace, as part of the gang. But the boss of the gang spots "Weasel" as a phony, and has his hoodlums grab him. There's a fracas but superior numbers prevail, and Tex gets tied up and hauled away to be thrown into the river, onto which they embark in a rowboat. Out on the water they're ambushed by a police boat, manned by cops who have been led there by Bob, working with the mysterious "Miss X."   With the car thieves arrested, Tex and Bob drive quickly to the Civic Betterment League's meeting hall, where the activist J. Vander Wallace is lecturing. As Tex barges in to the back of the hall, Wallace recognizes him and draws a gun, but Thomson draws quicker and fells him. Afterward he explains to Maloney and Daley how he'd figured out who was who, but he still wondered about the identity of "Miss X." CLAIM JUMPERS THE JAGTOOTH GOLD MINE