The Shield Brings it Home!

When last we left the Shield, he had tracked down the baseball racketeers to their well appointed suburban home and was killing them one by one by picking up bullets that bounced off him, then throwing them back at them at about, oh, 800 miles an hour.  And yes, I checked the math.

So, despite the racketeers protestations that they were "ready for the Shield" they are dying pretty steadily by his hand in a hail of hand-tossed bullets.  Maybe by 'ready' they meant "I've already signed my Last Will & Testatment": "...and to Lefty I leave my brass knuckles, the regular ones I mean, not the really nice ones, which I want my mom to have."

Oh, ho, I spoke too soon!  Having sacrificed the requisite number of goons to the Shield's ballistic sadism, the Racketeer Boss employs the Shield's personal kryptonite: a secret button.

There's always a secret button in a Shield story.  He falls for it every time. 

Usually, the secret button lets the bad guys escape. This time, however, it's for capturing the Shield.  There's just one tiny flaw in the plan...

BWAAHAHAHAA! Your big plan for capturing the Shield is... a vertical version of the Table of Pain and Pleasure?! LOL, that's like throwing Br'er Rabbit in the Briar Patch!  The Table of Pain and Pleasure is how Joe Higgins became the Shield in the first place.  "You disappoint me, Adrian.  The Table of Pain and Pleasure didn't stop Joe Higgins.  Did you think it would stop ME?"

Got give Joe credit for going along with the gag, with his Munchian "Oh, no, not the Briar Patch!" look.

Wow.  Vertical Table of Pain and Pleasure attached to a rotating wall, spinning into a steel room that fills up with solidifying liquid lantholum?  These racketeers are not merely prepared, they are extremely oddly and specifically prepared.  Perhaps they were expecting Dynamic Man.

"If you know any prayers, say them!"  What are the Shield's prepares when he assays the Table of Pain and Pleasure?  I'm guessing it's something like:

Now I lay me down to play
I pray the dom my soul to flay.
If I should cry beneath my top,
I pray my safe-word makes him stop.

In any case, it is a pretty smart trap for the Shield, since it takes into account that he's invulnerable.  However, it doesn't take into account just how oomphy he is and he oomps his way out of the trap with one might pelvic thrust:

Oomp, there it is!

Then it's just a quick pointy-toe jaunt along the local power lines to catch up with the bad guys' car.

One reason to run along power lines: it certainly gives you a sense of perspective.

Naturally, the Shield then does what seems like the perfectly logical thing (to him):

Leaps into an open manhole. No, no; in the street, I mean!  Get your mind out of the sewer!

You just know he's pointing his toes, even though you can't see it.

This is just an excuse for the ridiculous Shield-y stunt of hoisting the bad guys' car as it drives over him.

Oh, and threatening to kill them.  A true Golden Age hero should never pass up an opportunity to threaten to kill.  Followed by a bit of torture to elicit a confession:

In the 1940s the courts weren't too fussy about how you got a confession as long as you got one.

And with very little fuss, other than the immolation and explosion of several major league baseball players and the poorly dressed corpses of a handful of racketeers that the Shield manually shot to death, all's well that ends well.