DCRO 3- More Fun Comics (1936) #8 [Y Story]

Story title: "The Vampire Master, Part 3" (I still don't think it's the official title).

DCRO entry

Cover Date: February 1936

By: Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster

Here we are again in More Fun Comics, and today´s entry is one more page of the story we've been reading (Now in color!!).

Let's get right to it, shall we? 

We find the Doctor right where we left him: patiently waiting at midnight.

However, who he finds is not the Vampire Master, but Mrs. Amster, who has escaped from "The most awful place!" This smells a lot like a trap: This woman escapes from the Vampire Master and she "accidentally" finds Doctor Occult, who was sent to wait in this exact spot? Very suspicious stuff, but apparently nothing about this seems weird to the Doc.

Occult escorts Mrs. Amster home and after a reunion, he notices the woman giving his husband a "glance of abysmal hate":

Uhm, sure.

Anyway, she grabs a knife and attacks his husband, but the Doctor stops her before she can do any damage. She faints, and according to Occult, she has been hypnotized. Vampires are known to be hypnotists in a lot of media (or at least really good at twisting the will of others into their own), but apparently, in this case, hypnotism is the Vampire Master's own thing.

When Mrs. Amster recovers consciousness, the Doctor asks her about the place where she was being held prisoner (I guess he just now thought about asking that), and then they head there with Mr. Amster in tow.

Just when they enter the building, a cage falls from the ceiling, trapping Doctor Occult and Sander Amster, but conveniently leaving Mrs. Amster free.

What's up with the Vampire Master? His skin is a sickly green hue and he doesn't look like a Vampire at all. I wonder if the plot twist is going to be that he's actually an alien.

I'm still really confused about the Vampire Master's master plan. Let's review the facts: He probably sees Doctor Occult as a threat, with him being a fighter of supernatural forces, so he probably wants to get rid of him. He had a great opportunity to do so when the Doctor's Magic Symbol suddenly stopped working, but he just chose to leave him alone instead. Later, the Doctor is waiting for the Vampire Master unarmed, but instead of going to face him or sending one of his vampire underlings, the Master, releases Mrs. Amster (I'm guessing that's what happened), who doesn't even attack the Doctor, but his husband instead. And now he has the trio in a cage and all I can guess is that he's going to let them go!

And after all this, we still don't know why the Magic Symbol worked only once.

Will the next installment in this series answer all of our questions? I don't think so, but still, next time, the (hopefully) thrilling conclusion to: "The Vampire Master"

Now, the ratings:

Quality/Enjoyment: 2/5 This is the weakest portion of the story so far. The panel layout is less complex than in the previous parts, and the pace is slower without that resulting in a more cohesive story. It's still not terrible, but mostly I didn't like that we're at the same point we started: Doctor Occult is at the mercy of the vampire master. The whole thing with the Amsters seems kind of unnecessary, but I guess we'll see if it really is next time. Also, last time it was mentioned that the Doctor had some kind of plan to face the Vampire Master unarmed, but we didn't hear about that again.

Historical/Cultural/Narrative significance: 1/5 Just one more Doctor Occult story (or at least part of it), moving on.

Remember you can read all of the Golden Age Doctor Occult here. It's public domain!

Alright, that's one more entry wrapped up, next time we'll finally finish this story and move on to something else. Thanks for reading and have a nice rest of your day!