(Silver Streak Comics 017, 1941)
With Dr Dracula, Captain Battle has now faced four Nazi or Nazi-adjacent villains in a row whose plans involve gathering up a bunch of guys and pretending to be monsters, in this case vampires. Was there a meeting about this at the regional Nazi spy headquarters or is this one of those things like when Hollywood makes two volcano movies at the same time? Maybe one guy had a good idea and the other three stole it.
I’d have to say that Dr Dracula has the best name and possibly the best look out of the four, but the Mummy Master’s Mummy Gang might take the gold in terms of best henchmen.
As a supplement to the power of fake vampirism, Dr Dracula steals a new death ray from the hapless Professor Fosdick, who then serves as the first (human) target of its instant skeletonization effect. Horrifying! And visually striking!
(please note the fourth panel above, when Fosdick exclaims “Vampires! Vampires as large as men!” I believe him to be referring to vampire bats, which doesn’t make a huge amount of sense given what he is looking at at the time but which is the only interpretation to make much sense. It is the kind of thing that comic book people shout when vampire bats are about, after all)
This is about the time that Captain Battle shows up to put a stop to Dr Dracula’s plans, which gives he and his men the opportunity to demonstrate that they can all fly as they engage in thrilling aerial combat vs Captain Battle and his luceflyer (Hale Battle is lagging behind and can’t be there for this fight).
These wing suits are very cool and more importantly… way more strategically valuable than the death ray that they just stole? Like, yes: the death ray can instantly kill any target, but so can a good sniper, and you certainly could deploy more good snipers easily if you had flying infantry, right?
Having made his getaway, Dr Dracula gets down to the serious business of sabotaging American war production by turning people into goofy skeletons. Prof Fosdick must have had a sense of humour, because while the ray dissolves clothing it selectively leaves props such as cigarettes or blankets behind so that every tragic ray-gun death looks just a little bit funny.
Dr Dracula meets his end when Captain Battle throws a steel net over him and the death ray explodes. This is what happens when you steal an experimental piece of technology and kill the inventor, folks.
Hale Battle must of course have his souvenir, and what better or more striking object is there than one of the false vampires’ wing suits?
