Meet the Vulture!

As promised yesterday, let's meet the Criminal Mastermind of All Time who's behind the plane-boomings:

Eerie mountain lair? Okay, that checks out.  

Let's hope the interior drama matches the drapes.

Who LIGHTS those torches, I wonder? Or are they just those crepe paper + fans jobs?

We learn a lot from these panels. The Vulture uses vulture-themed decor, but in moderation. He's rich enough to employ the Phantom Stranger.  He's a chemist.  But the most important thing we learn is that he appreciates and understands the value of UPLIGHTING.

Just like Firefly. The real original one, not the Heat Wave ripoff.

Also, his outfit is entirely vespertilian and not at all vulturine. 

Totally the pic that would be on his DCUwiki page if he were a DC character.

Anyway, the Vulture. who we've seen blown up planes by remote control and messing around in a chemistry lab, clearly intends to use one of these clever scientific means of kill this William Oswald.

Or just, you know, show up and stab him.

In the same way that the Shield cannot resist damaging planes, the Vulture cannot resist the opportunity for dramatic uplighting, so he shows up in person to stab his confederate.  Golden Age villains were, as a general rule, polycidal.  They didn't JUST stab, shoot, poison, explode, drown, hang. They did ALL of them.  This is because back in the day all respectable villains went to colleges for the liberal villainous arts, rather than all the tech school doctors of evil nowadays, who just throw atomic bombs at whatever little problem arises.

Meanwhile, Joe -- well, adopts is not the right word -- subsumes Dusty:

Because you're explosion-proof unlike my stupid dead dad.

And gives him the essential thing he needs to fight crime:

Actually, Shield that is literally the LAST thing Dusty needs before he can fight crime.  Also, stop calling him a 'boy detective' when YOU are the FBI agent and he's just a scrappy kid in a Charlie Brown sweater with precociously developed thighs.

Fortunately, it's Bring Your Orphan to Work Day at the FBI, so Joe takes Dusty with him to find the dead body of William Oswald.

Joe REALLY likes affirming that people are dead.

Then Dusty, earning his rep as a boy detective, finds clues that allow him to deduce that the Freighter Mary Ann and The Limited Train are the next and imminent targets of the Vulture's sabotage.

Fine; I lied.

The Shield, who is nearly indestructible, goes to stop the train while sending Dusty, who is clearly destructible, to stop a freighter from exploding.  Because there's no safer place for a sturdy fun-sized ginger boy with solid thighs and a father fixation than the docks.

Meanwhile, the Shields stops the train because it gives him the chance to run on telephone wires, which as we know he does every chance he gets.  I used to think this was some sort of metaphor for FBI agents being able to use wiretapping under the anti-racketeering laws, but then I realized it's just an excuse for the Shield to run in that pointy-toed way he does.

It's the Shield, brimming with purpose and determination,
silently hurling himself full force into a tunnel.
Just like in my dream.

The Shield stops the train right before the Vulture blows up the tunnel.

You know, Joe, given how you run, throwing around the word "nellie" seems ill-advised.

But what about our Boy Detective at the docks?

Dem thighs, tho.

SOMEHOW, Dusty manages to get his thighs through the porthole and is, completely improbably, kicking ***.

Was Dusty's mother a circus aerialist?
Was he bitten off-camera by a radioactive Jiemba Sands?
This is some circus aerialist stuff right here.

Is this something tweener orphans can do? Beat up three adult men while wearing a cape? No wonder no one adopts them.

"If not, I'd have to admit I should have sent the police, who were standing right there, or other FBI agents, or even Betty Warren and her hat, rather than just a sturdily-thighed boy without any background in circus aerialism."

Once arrived, FBI Agent Joe Higgins pioneers waterboarding:

Thought I made that up, didn't you?

The thugs having talked, the Shield takes the freighter bomb to Vulture's castle on Rose Hill and

Joe Higgins may serve Justice, but the Shield's only master is Ironic Comeuppance.

On the plus side, this being Washington DC, the Rose Hill Redevelopment Project already has plans for some luxury condos above upscale retail space.

His body isn't found, of course. But the grease-covered body of JuJu -- Joe's moronic comic relief partner at the FBI -- is found in what is Dusty's ONLY example of boy-detectiving in the whole issue (and possible the entire series):

Ha ha! It's funny because FBI agents are imbeciles!

Making JuJu seem even MORE useless than he originally was in Shield's story is truly Dusty's most impressive accomplishment (followed closely by speed-grieving and speed-circus-aerialism).

I laugh, but remember: despite its foibles THIS is the story which, with the arrival of his sidekick and archenemy, made inevitable the Shield's rise as American's favorite superhero.

Dusty Contrails

The whole world knows that DUSTY, The Spectacular Boy Detective, is the side kick of America's favorite superhero, THE SHIELD.  But who is he and how did he come to be...?

"Mr. Jordan? Are you alright? Dusty, he seems to have hit his head...!"

The answer lies in Pep #11, whose cover reflects with uncharacteristic accuracy the Action Detective Adventure within, for....

Dusty's first story also introduces THE VULTURE, 
the Shield's only recurring villain.
Who is not, for the record, the Master Criminal of All Time.

Assigning FBI Agent Joe Higgins, a.k.a. The Shield, to any case involving airplanes is a questionable idea since the Shield hates airplanes and they ALWAYS malfunction when he's around. Sure enough...

This is what we in aviation call "a malfunction".

Tragically, this malfunction is witnessed by the son of one of the crewmembers (and a shockingly large number of bystanders on the tarmac in clear violation of federal regulation).

Stupid NTSB never gives you time to grieve properly.

Turns out this is Dusty, The Boy With No Last Name.

What indestructible material is Dusty's dad's suit made out of
and why isn't the whole plane made out of it?
Must be a fibro-metallic suit of his own invention.

We learn quite a lot from these panels: the importance of cervical support for corpses, the central role of cargo in normal plane explosions, Joe Higgins' extremely odd sense of humor.  The most important thing we learn that the Shield is big fat liar because his father died in the Black Tom ship explosion of July 30, 1916, off the Jersey shore. But I guess "exploding" is a broad enough category, parent-death-wise.

WAS he, Dusty?  Did you do research to deduce that? 
Do you have ANY supporting data?
Some boy detective YOU are.

Another Golden Age orphan boy. It's just like that quote from The VelociPastor (2018): "So your parents died, Doug. It's what parents do. They die on you."  

Gotta hand it to Joe Higgins: since his early days, Joe's gotten better at consoling little boys who've just seen their parents die in front of them at a public place.

I mean, A LOT better.

Soon enough -- immediately, in fact, Joe's buttinsky girlfriend Betty Warren (and her usual ridiculous hat) are in trouble on the other side of the airfield, where saboteurs are saboteurizing the REAL plane-object of their saboteurism (because blowing up the first plane was just a distraction, you see).

"WHEE! MY DAD JUST DIED AND I CAN SEE HIS CORPSE FROM HERE!
AND HE WAS THE BEST DAD A KID EVER HAD!"

Joe's sympathy must be quite the tonic because, Dusty, an orphan of 30 seconds, has already processed his grief and realized that, since there's no longer anyone concerned for his well-being, he can do any damned-fool thing he wants, like tackling armed adults.

CLEAR PROP!

Meanwhile, Joe's stood quietly aside to let Dusty work through his grief in the time-honored way: by fighting for his life.  But once Dusty starts using PLANES as a weapon, the Shield cannot resist the urge to do likewise.

The Shield cannot resist the urge to fight crime by damaging planes.
It's just who he is.

With less extreme violence than usual, the Shield coerces one of the thugs into revealing who is behind their acts of sabotage....

 Betty is SUCH a snitch. "Teacher, teacher! Timmy was the one who blew up the plane!"

But before he can tell us everything:

Just like poor Adelaide in "Velocipastor" (2018).

The sabotage-gadget BOOMS, killing the thug, and possibly mussing the Shield's hair.

Yep; Dusty's a detective, alright.

WHO is behind the sabotage? WHO killed Dusty's dad? WHO is the Master Criminal? Oh, wait, that's right: it's the Vulture.  More on him tomorrow...