Story title: "The Invisible Empire, Part 4"
Cover Date: August 1936
By: Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster
Alright, let's see how Steve Carson fares against an army.
Again, Steve is infiltrating the enemy forces by wearing one of their masks. Something tells me this is the whole reason those bad guys are wearing gas masks in the first place.
The pattern from the previous part continues, because now, Steve is the one in charge of shooting down his captured comrades (or brothers-in-arms, rather, I don't think the word "comrade" would be very well received in old American comics...). However, Steve is having none of that, because he is the one to shoot down the would-be shooters.
I counted at least six bodies in the next panel, but come on! One of them should've probably been able to shoot back, but I mean, we've seen worse. Also, Tommy guns are cool.
In the meantime, the chaos continues throughout the city: the terrorists are "breaking into banks and emerging laden with booty"
I don't know, that doesn't seem like a remarkable amount of booty to me...
They also break into the treasury, getting rid of its protectors with poison gas. I guess that explains the masks, but I still think it was mostly so Steve could infiltrate the group.
All in all, the criminals just keep coming in and out of their tank and pillaging the city. The situation seems pretty dire... But hey, Steve has a plan!
I just hope this plan doesn't involve every other federal man charging armed people... Not everyone is immune to bullets like you, Steve...
Okay, it kinda does, but it goes well because what follows is a pretty cool action panel.
We haven't seen a lot (if any at all) of these action panels with a lot of things happening yet, so I like this.
Then, they find the scientists that were hiding somewhere in the building (apparently, this is an "experimental science building", whatever that means) and Steve tells them his plan. Later he goes to a vault of another building and takes a box of radium. He probably manipulates it without the appropriate safety measures, but I mean, even toys were made of that stuff back then, so it's no big deal. He replaces the radium with a package of unknown stuff he got from the scientists and hides.
I guess Steve somehow knew not only that the terrorists needed radium, but also that they were going to steal that specific package in that specific building because that's exactly what they do.
Then they take "radium" to their tank, which begins flying.
Well, not really. It says "flight", which comes from "to flee" but it kind of looks like it is taking off, and that's so much cooler.
Then the tank explodes and floods with some kind of poison gas that penetrates the masks. Just what the hell were the scientists able to concoct in only 30 minutes?
Then, the police come along(apparently there are still some of them alive) and arrest the terrorists, who were apparently only paralyzed (along with their tank) and not killed, by the gas. And that's the end of this second "act" of The Invisible Empire.
Let me remind you that this is an actual event that actually took place in the DC Universe, and I'm 99% it will never be mentioned again (except maybe in the next parts of this story).
Anyway, the ratings:
Quality/Enjoyment: 3/5
I don't have much to say. It was alright. I think this whole thing would've been better as a six-pager, but whatever.
We still don't know much about this terrorist group: their goals are still unclear. In the previous part, it seemed like they just wanted overall chaos, trying to infect the city and then kill the president. But here, they just wanted money I believe. Anyway, there is still time to find out more about them.
Historical/Cultural/Narrative Significance: 1/5
Okay, that's it for now. We'll get the last parts of the story a little bit later, so, for now, thank you for reading, and have a nice rest of your day.
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