Issue(s):

Marvel Mystery Comics #23 - Sep 41
     "The Vision" - Jack Kirby & Joe Simon
     "The Case of the Vanishing Convicts" - Bill Everett
Marvel Mystery Comics#26 - Dec 41
     "The Parrot Strikes Back" - Carl Burgos
     "The Angel and the Case of the Armless Tiger Man" - Paul Gustavson & Allen Bellman
Captain America Comics #2 - Apr 41
     "Hurricane, Master of Speed" - (Unknown)
Captain America Comics #9 - Dec 41
     "Captain America and the White Death" - Joe Simon & Jack Kirby
Comedy Comics #9 - Apr 42
     "The Silver Scorpion" - Harry Sahle

Review/plot:
The Human Torch has captured The Parrot, whose power is that he has a Parrot's face. The Torch laments that The Parrot isn't getting the chair (we've seen in the past that he's got no problem frying people on the spot, so this isn't really surprising).

It's pretty violent by today's standards: the Parrot and his men gun down cops without a second thought. The Parrot escapes from custody at least twice during this 6 page story, so i guess the chair isn't a bad idea after all. There's also something going on with a volcano full of sulfur that the government needs to create munitions for the war and so they send the FLAMING MAN into the sulfur pit to check it out. But the best part is, one panel after the Human Torch agrees to go check out the volcano, the Parrot, trapped in a prison cell in the back of the same train the Human Torch is on, reads about it in the newspaper.

Does the Human Torch need to breath or what? Chloroform sure knocks him out.

Meanwhile, the original Vision is checking out the disappearance of a ship near the Antarctic. He runs into Khor, the Black Sorcerer, who was banished from France in 1245 from practicing black magic. He left France and found what looks to me like the Savage Land. Khor even looks a little like Belasco. That's about the only interesting thing going on here.

Hee hee! Far more interesting is the Sub-Mariner, driving from Utah to Oregon in a little go-cart that he built himself.

He's on a "quest for adventure" and stops at a gas station for 5 gallons of alcohol and 5 gallons of water. But while he's there, a local crazy sees Namor and freaks out.

Namor follows him to a mansion surrounded by an electrified fence, which Namor leaps over in his little go-cart. Inside, he's seduced by Ann Coulter pretending to be a female nurse.

The crazy guy and his assistant have such thick german accents they are almost unreadable, but it seems what's going on here is they were creating a race of amphibious men to invade America. Mind you they are somewhere between Utah and Oregon, where even the Sub-Mariner, WHO CAN FLY, needs a go-cart to get around, but invading with amphibious men it is. Anyway, Namor puts a stop to the whole thing and in the process Ann Coulter claims that she was hit by some "queer chemical ray" and "cleared her senses". And she hasn't stopped lying to this day.

The next story is about a speedster named Hurricane. He is introduced as the son of Thor, and exhibits a wide range of powers in addition to speed.

He shoots zap rays, the clouds thunder when he gets pissed, and he even gives someone a pair of temporary wings.

He was later retconned to be the Eternal Makkari, so that's kind of neat (Eternals have even shown to have the ability to transfer the power of flight to others). But in this story he kills a bunch of natives for messing with white doctors, including one female doctor who it turns out is very beautiful once she lets her hair down and takes off her glasses, but "My work demanded a scientist, not a woman. I became a scientist."

Meanwhile the Angel fights a German man whose super-power is that he has no arms so he learned to do everything with his mouth and legs. Seriously.

He hates machines and can't stop himself from destroying them, so Germany set him loose in America as a saboteur.

  < / 

But the the manly Angel ("Try some fist") puts a stop to that.

    

After he's captured, the Angel contemplates letting him loose on the Nazis. "That is if the R.A.F. has left any factories standing in Germany!" (Thumbs up!)

Next up is the Silver Scorpion, who is neither silver nor has any scorpion-like powers or theme.

But she's got a cool costume, and she foils the plot of a doctor who makes woman old and then charges them to restore their beauty. And she's as likely as not to deliver a pair of leather boots to your crotch if you give her any sass.

Lastly, Captain America and Bucky solve a generic murder mystery. You know the one where there's a will to be read and everyone's trapped in the mansion? I think it's the plot of the movie Clue? It's that story.

    

I'm glad someone else liked these stories, because eventually comics become good, but i don't know how they survived long enough for it to happen.

Quality Rating: D

Historical Significance Rating: 2 - Despite appearances by some classic characters, there's really nothing going on here. I don't know why these stories were chosen to be reprinted.

Chronological Placement Considerations: These stories are so self-contained it doesn't really matter exactly where they are placed. Some take place during WWII.

References: N/A

Cross-over: N/A

Continuity Implant? N

Reprinted In: Marvel Mystery Comics #1 (Dec 1999)