Still no appearance of Superman on the cover of Action 9 (Feb. 39), but he does get mentioned, in red yet! I would like to say that the cover depicts the Pep Morgan story in this issue, but it doesn’t. Pep is racing sleds on ice.
Siegel and Shuster continue the Superman story from last issue, although in a sort of weird way. Police Chief Burke returns, but now he is completely against Superman. He brings in a detective, Captain Reilly, to track him down and catch him. Reilly in turn offers a huge reward for information.
Clark Kent asks Lois Lane for a date, and she rejects him, professing her love for Superman. Clark has to leave the room before he laughs in her face.
A man sees Superman change out of his clothes, which he leaves in a heap in an alley. He tells Reilly, but gets no reward from him. He decides to stake out the clothes himself, and he and Reilly spend so much time fighting with each other than this miss Superman retrieving Clark’s garb. They almost track him again, through an invitation that was in Clark’s jacket, but again their rivalry gets him off the hook.
Captain Reilly is sent home in disgrace, and I expect Burke is forced out as well, as he never appears again.
Scoop Scalon begins a four part story in this issue, his longest tale. Scoop and Rusty come across the victim of a mob killing, after seeing two goons they recognized, Mace and Stoop, leaving an alley.
Scoop decides to go undercover and join the Larrowman gang to catch the killers, rather than just writing a story about them, and Rusty tags along.
The story continues in the next issue.
Zatara winds up in Tibet in this story, by Fred Guardineer, where he matches wits with a Lama with magical powers, who intends to take over the world.
His plane crashes, but Zatara demonstrates a sort of long rage vision power, finding the nearest habitation. He and Tong then fly there! Presumably Zatara is making both of them able to fly. Considering that he can do this, you have to wonder why he doesn’t do it more often.
The Lama is having a big dinner party that night, for his lieutenants, who will work to help him conquer the world, in exchange for his vast wealth. Among them is the Tigress. Zatara casts a spell on Tong and himself, so that she will not recognize them, although it does not affect their appearance, only her memory. So it’s kind of odd that the spell was not cast on her.
Once the Tigress realizes how dangerous the Lama is, she joins Zatara’s side, again. He destroys the Lama’s treasure, and restores the Tigress’ memory.
Zatara’s battle with the Lama results in the villain’s death. The Lama evens begs for mercy, but Zatara still kills him. Zatara has no problems with this. I guess not, considering he was fine with an entire town being wiped out a few issues ago. He really mellowed with age.
Babblings about DC Comics 2 
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