The Man in the Iron Mask--No, not THAT one!

As far as keeping a secret identity is concerned, Alan Armstrong is fortunate that his boss Admiral Corby & Corby's daughter Eve are more unobservant than any member of the Daily Planet staff ever was. The Nazi spy attacks; Alan disappears; Spy Smasher shows up and tussles with the Nazi; Spy Smasher disappears; Alan reappears.  Admiral Corby doesn't suspect a thing. I have no idea how the man got to be an admiral.

But, despite the fact that writer Otto Binder wasn't really even trying to handle the secret identity thing in a rational way, "The Man in the Iron Mask" (from Spy Smasher #4--April 1942) is a fun little story, packed with action and featuring an interesting villain.


The story is set in an old castle that's being converted into an army fort. Fatal accidents keep happening to the workers, usually followed by creepy organ music. This soon proves to be the work of The Man in the Iron Mask, a spy with an interesting origin. He had been a famous musician in Germany, but got into hot water when he refused to salute Hitler. Being threatened with execution changes his loyalties pretty quickly, though. He has the Iron Mask wielded on to him as punishment, but then he's sent out to do spy stuff to prove his new-found loyalty to the Reich. The logic of sending out someone with a visually distinctive mask stuck to his face to be a spy is not discussed.

Anyway, when Alan Armstrong arrives at the castle with Corby and Eve to look into the deaths, Alan finds that this is a job for Spy Smasher. The hero and villain tussle, but Iron Mask escapes and continues his sabotage.


Otto Binder was a writer made for superhero comics, able to follow the winding streams of Comic Book Logic no matter where they took him, embracing the absurdity of super powers and using that to invoke both humor and excitement.

Here, he's working with a non-powered hero and I think that actually works against his writing style to a small extent. This is a story in which its important for plot to hang together in terms of basic plot construction. So when the story has the Iron Mask committing murder after murder with apparent abandon, we can't help but wonder why Admiral Corby isn't bringing in troops to thoroughly search the entire castle--or at least stand guard over the workers. Without any overt fantasy elements to the tale, stuff like this stands out. An extra page or two laying out a system of secret doors and passages would have helped.

All the same, the story is fun. Emil Gershwin's art is strong and the action is nicely choreographed. And, as I mentioned above, the villain is a neat one--combining a little bit of Dumas with a dash of Gaston Leroux's Phantom of the Opera.



The Iron Mask ends up capturing the three protagonists, so Spy Smasher has to escape from a death trap, rescue Corby and Eve from another death trap, then fight the Iron Mask one more time. This time around, the Nazi falls into the water and drowns. For real, too. I can't find another reference to the character reappearing.

This story is in the public domain. You can read it HERE.

Next week, we take a trip back to 18th Century France to meet "The Man Who Died Twice."