Captain Zero's Swan Song

Read/Watch 'em in Order #46    

                                                

The March 1950 issue of Captain Zero was its third and last, but the good captain goes out on a high note.

After preventing an overthrow of the government during the last issue, Lee Allyn returns to what I feel is firmer ground for the character--investigating the sort of crimes that the average hard-boiled detective or tough-guy cop might be looking into.

Because its that dichotomy--a man with a superpower dropped into a hard-boiled adventure--that gave Captain Zero its unique feel.

This time around, someone is knocking off the elderly members of a Bachelor's Club. One of the surviving members might have a motive--the club enacted a tontine (an insurance policy to be collected by the last survivor) that provides a motive. But seems to obvious a motive and, besides, the dead men are being robbed as well. In fact, after the third murder, a gang of thugs raid a bank just when the police are checking the dead man's safe deposit box, killing a cop and getting away with the box.

But that's not all that's going on. A man named Ned Brandon is being framed for murder by a sleazy crook named Fat Paul Schoenling. Brandon works at an investment firm and Schoenling holds the potential murder charge over his head, forcing him to arrange the sale of stolen securities.

The two cases soon turn out to be interconnected, so both Lee Allyn and detective Ed Cavanough are kept busy. In fact, Lee is particularly busy--he wants to clear Brandon of the murder charge without giving the poor guy away to Cavanough, but at the same time he has to work closely with Cavanough on the Bachelor's Club murders.

Pulp veteran G.T. Fleming-Roberts continues to be at the top of his game. This time, he constructs what is the best straight mystery plot of the series, planting small clues near the beginning of the story that pay off big time at the end. This mystery has several threads--what is being stolen from the murder victims; why do they need to be killed as well; who is the master mind behind all this?  The answers all come in a logical fashion leading up to a fantastic plot twist at the end.

There's several great action scenes interspersed among all this. Lee Allyn takes cleaver advantage of his invisibility, but is still hampered by the fact that he can't control when he turns invisible (always exactly midnight) and when he becomes visible again (always at dawn). The bad guys also discover that they can use a geiger counter to detect Captain Zero, so he is nearly trapped a few times. But he thinks or fights his way out of several dangerous situations and even manages to whittle down the ranks of the bad guys.

There are several other strong points. Allyn and Cavanough are still rivals for the affections of girl reporter Doro Kelly, but Fleming-Roberts underplays this nicely so that it doesn't interfere with the main plot. Had the magazine continued, this would have been a continuing plot point--probably never to be completely resolved--so Fleming-Roberts wisely realized he didn't have to continually emphasize it.

So Allyn and Cavanough are able to work together nicely--another strength of the tale is that both men are presented as intelligent and able to make reasonable deductions.

And Fleming-Roberts wrote in clear, easy prose, telling the story well while still dropping in appropriately hard-boiled observations. My favorite: A description of a villainous woman has having "a pair of eyes that any mackerel would inevitably have been caught dead with."

There are a few places where the story seems a little rushed--such as a second-tier but still important bad guy getting killed "off-screen," so the first Captain Zero story still edges ahead in my mind as the best of the three. But its a close call--that twist ending really is fantastic.

Sadly, this is Captain Zero's last case. We never learn who Doro marries; or whether Lee Allyn's odd power ever faded; or if he one day turned invisible and never reappeared. Sadly, the pulps were fading away, being replaced by paperback novels and comic books. By the time Captain Zero hit the newsstands, the Spider, the Shadow, G-8 and Doc Savage were already gone.  Popular Publications took a long chance in trying to revive the concept of the pulp hero.

They failed commercially, but they succeeded in every other way. The three Captain Zero tales are superb pulp adventures that very cleverly adds a science fiction element to a hard-boiled universe.

So that's it for Captain Zero. Next in line for the "Read 'em" section of our In Order series, I think we'll jump into the future and visit with another captain. We'll take a look at the first five Captain Future novels written by Edmond Hamilton.

Captain Zero Returns!

Read/Watch 'em In Order #44

The second issue of Captain Zero (January 1950) contains the novel "The Mark of Zero." The first story had set up the character and given Lee Allyn some valuable experience in the problems of invisibility and how to best use the power to battle crime. At the end of the novel, the city's new commissioner--Ed Cavanaugh--knows Allyn is Captain Zero and works with him. They both have a thing for spunky girl reporter Doro Kelly--but this aspect of their relationships is actually underplayed nicely, so unnecessary melodrama is avoided.


Speaking of Doro, she really gets to shine this time out. The first novel portrayed her as intelligent and capable, but she also spent a large part of the story "off-stage" after she had been kidnapped. Here, she takes risks, makes deductions, comes up with clever plans on her own initiative and plays a key role in bringing down the bad guys.

Not that she isn't terrified the whole time. Author G.T. Fleming-Roberts continues to do an excellent job of presenting us with fallible and often frightened protagonists who still stand up and do the right thing when faced with evil. This comes across in several different ways. For instance, both Alynn and Doro make understandable mistakes that would be expected of people who aren't actually trained in law enforcement,. Allyn's reaction to being forced to kill another man is another example.

Also, it's more dangerous for Captain Zero to be out-and-about. The existence of an invisible man is now known to the public, so clever crooks are using methods such as spray-paint guns to even the odds.

The main bad guy this time is known only as the Man in the Black Hat. Keeping his identity secret even from many of his henchmen, he is building up a vast organization. Several known criminals--each with specific skills--are sprung from prison. Escape routes are meticulously planned--in one case a bridge was rigged to blow up to cut off police pursuit. A man up for appointment as Secretary of the Treasury is kidnapped and ransom notes are sent by untraceable carrier pigeons. (The pigeons were stolen from their rooftop cages and would return there one by one with instructions about the ransom.) The bad guys wear "hearing aids" that are actually radio transmitters, keeping them in constant touch with one another.

What is Black Hat's master plan? Zero, Cavanaugh and Doro all try to find out, but they seem to be hitting dead ends. People who might know something have a habit of ending up dead. But Doro tries a dangerous plan on her own, taking the place of one of Black Hat's few known associates.

In the meantime, the FBI lucks into information about another jail break.  That leads to an undeniably contrived coincidence, but it's a twist that is otherwise well-written.  Lee Allyn just happens to resemble the con being sprung from prison and the FBI asks him to take his place. Lee does so--and he and Doro (posing as a henchwoman) end up in the same car being taken to Black Hat's current hide-out. Allyn can only hope they reach the hide-out by midnight and he has a chance to duck out of sight, when he'll start to turn invisible whether he wants to or not.

The whole thing really is handled well enough for us to forgive the coincidence, though I still have one problem with Allyn's escape from prison. The FBI knew it was coming, allowing the "prisoner" to escape in order to find the hide-out. That's fair enough. But the thugs who break Allyn out kill at least one guard and get a couple of others either hurt or killed as well. That means the Feds were too dumb to consider this might happen--despite gun play being a part of earlier escapes--or they were deliberately willing to sacrifice innocent lives. None of the characters ever make note of this.

It actually bugs me, because one of the strengths of the heroes of pulp magazines is a firm sense of right and wrong. It's possible that Fleming-Roberts simply failed to think the situation through when he wrote the scene. He's one of the best writers to work in the pulps, but he wrote over 300 stories, many of them novel-length, so he's allowed to have an off-day.

It's also possible he saw the situation, but was working against a deadline, so he might have had to sigh and run with it.

Whatever the case, it's one of two flaws in what is otherwise an excellent novel.

The other flaw--well, it really isn't a flaw, because it's not a criticism of the prose or the plot. It's simply my opinion of what sort of story best suited the character of Captain Zero.

In the first novel, the villains were gangsters and corrupt officials who controlled a town. It was a plot you would fully expect to find in a work of hard-boiled fiction. The fun of the story comes from the dichotomy of sticking a character with science-fiction level powers into such a plot. You'd normally expect the Continental Op or Philip Marlowe to be taking the lead in catching the crooks--not a guy who turns invisible every night.

This time around, the villain has a master plan that includes eventual world domination, using a method that has an element to it that would also be more at home in a science fiction tale. It's a great story for what it is, but I would argue it was not the right direction in which to take the character. That hard-boiled vs. science fiction dichotomy was a major strength in the first novel. The series would have been better served if the villains remained more mundane (but still clever and dangerous) gangsters.

But that point is arguable. "The Mark of Zero" is exciting, with a good mystery element involving the identity of the Man in the Black Hat, a pair of wonderful protagonists, and several exciting action scenes. And the story is pretty hard-boiled even granting the grandiose schemes of Black Hat.

Well, we still have one more Captain Zero novel to go--we'll see what direction that one takes us in.

"The first time it happened, he nearly went insane."

Read/Watch 'em In Order #43

Captain Zero is the last of the pulp magazine heroes. In 1949,  Street & Smith was cancelling its entire pulp line (including The Shadow and Doc Savage). Other pulps were vanishing as well, or converting to digest-format magazines. The competition from comic books and paperbacks was just too much.

But Popular Publications decided to give a pulp hero one last try. Captain Zero was only around for three issues, but those issues gave us three entertaining and well-constructed stories with a fascinating protagonist.

Lee Allyn was blind for twelve years before he volunteered for an experiment involving radiation. The experiment worked, giving him back his eyesight (though his vision remained weak), but there was an interesting side-effect. Every night at midnight, Allyn turns invisible. He reappears at dawn. He soon discovers that tight-fitting clothing made from animals--such as wool or rawhide--will turn invisible along with him. So at least he doesn't have to go the traditional Invisible Man route and walk around in his all-together.

But having invisible clothes doesn't make the experience any less disturbing. Disappearing from view rather understandably freaked Allyn out the first time it happened. But he gradually got used to it, though he lives in perpetual fear that one morning he won't reappear.

Being invisible has its advantages and its disadvantages. Allyn works as a newspaper reporter in a town run by several mobsters, so using his power when he investigates the rackets is a definite advantage.

But there are annoying disadvantages. Remember his weak eyesight? He has to wear contact lenses, which occasionally reflect light and threaten to give him away.

And, by golly, exactly how do you get around town when you're invisible? You can't drive a car--an apparently empty vehicle making a left turn onto 2nd Avenue would raise an eyebrow or two. You can't hail a cab. How do you get from Point A to Point B? Especially when you are on a strict time limit. Allyn has no control over the transformation--when dawn comes he'll reappear no matter where he is.

Allyn is a great character. He's just a regular guy, subject to normal fears when facing danger; competent and intelligent, but prone to mistakes and bouts of pure terror.

That's what makes the first Captain Zero tale ("City of Deadly Sleep," November 1949) so much fun. The writer, pulp veteran G.T. Fleming-Roberts, creates a likable Average Joe character who happens to have a super-power, then plops him into a serious of dangerous situations that essentially obligate us to empathize with him.

This is counterpointed by the novel's hard-boiled story. There's a corrupt police chief protecting two gamblers and their respective organizations, with a third small-time gambler (controlled by an unknown boss) who is trying to move in on the other guys. There's also a serious of murders--three well-to-do men are killed right after wracking up significant gambling losses. Who's responsible for that? What was the motive? How does it tie into the pending gang war?

It's a straightforward crime story with a solid mystery, unfolding in a logical manner. It's realistic in every way other than a main character who turns invisible.

Allyn uses the name Captain Zero when invisible, but as the book progressing, Captain Zero is made to look guilty of one murder, while Allyn is soon wanted for another murder. With the only man who knew his double-identity dead at this point and a beautiful lady reporter kidnapped, Allyn is on his own as he desperately tries to figure out who really killed whom.

"City of Deadly Sleep" would be my pick for the best of the three Captain Zero novels, but the subsequent novels were also excellent. We'll be taking a look at each of them eventually.

So it's really too bad Captain Zero arrived on the scene when he did. It would have been nice to keep him around longer and hear a few more of his adventures. Darn you, paperback novels. You ruined everything.