Action 56 – Superman protects monuments, Vigilante fights for ownership, and Americommando is wanted by Hitler

The cover of Action 56 (Jan. 43) loosely ties in to the story, although I have a suspicion that the cover was meant to be a World War 2 one, and only linked to the story afterwards.  The Sphinx and Great Pyramid appear on the splash page, but not in the story itself.

Siegel, Sikela and Roussos begin this piece with Lois and Clark on a trip to Washington, DC.  A storm of lightning and massive hail threatens to destroy Washington Monument, and Superman springs into action to save it.

Other notable structures in the US are also imperiled, but none outside of the US are shown.  Superman spends a lot of time doing damage control, literally, before he can get around to finding the bad guy.  There is also a plot line about people going missing.  Lois gets onto that story, which allows her to be captured and meet the villain.

Emil Loring has been building a modern Tower of Babel, using the kidnapped people as slave labour.  He has also been causing the destructive storms, determined to wipe out anything that might challenge the greatness of his edifice.

I think Emil has a severe case of small dick-itis.

Meskin and Roussos touch on the exploitation of song writers in this Vigilante story.

It features a character almost identical to Billy Gunn.  A singer and wanna-be cowboy, the grizzled old man looks very much like Gunn, and even has similar dialogue when he explains that he has never been to the west.  Greg Sanders plans to hire him to write songs for him, but some sharks get the man to sign a contract for far less money.

Vigilante gets into the action, scaring and threatening the men who signed up his writer.  It’s a little bit shady, as Vigilante is doing this simply to ensure that the man will write his songs for Greg, so he is directly profiting from this.  But it’s clear the old man is being used by the other men.

Greene and Baily continue with the Americommando’s undercover mission in this story.

Now that Americommando has revealed his presence in Germany, Hitler calls in Dr. Ito from Japan.  Also called the Little One, due to his height, he is given very high status to pursue the Americommando.

And Hitler probably made a wise decision, as Dr. Ito takes only a couple of pages to determine that Otto Riker is a fake.  With his cover blown, Tex gets into Americommando garb and fights his way free.  He remains in Germany, and Dr. Ito remains his chief enemy.  But all the effort that was put in for his big impersonation of Otto Riker proved to be a waste of time.