Monastery of the Blue God

This serial was written by Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, the founder and owner of DC Comics.  It ends mid-storyline, I suspect due to the fact that he had little faith in the company, stole much it’s money and ran off (just months before the debut of Superman).  It`s not bad, about on par with many of the other serials of the day.

Set just as World War I ends, Captain Stewart attends a party in Paris where he falls for the Baroness Elsa Von Saxenberg, a lady-in-waiting for the Queen of Sweden.  She owns a huge sapphire, which she received from her archeologist father, who disappeared in Mongolia.  Stewart does not want to marry her, then head back to certain unemployment in the US, or force her to live the life of an army wife, but after she shows him a note from her father, revealing the location of a huge amount of these sapphires, Stewart gets himself re-assigned to military intelligence and posted to China, to find the gems.

Elsa comes with him, as does his best friend and army buddy, Miller.  They also recruit Corporal Drednoff, an American of Russian descent, to act as their translator.  Shady Count Kraft Von Bolander has had his eye on Elsa`s sapphire for a while, and steals the note, though Stewart forces him to give it back.  He teams with Russian spy Piotr Slotny to attempt to find the sapphires first, kill Stewart and his men, and steal Elsa away.

In China, Stewart and his men evade chinese spies and hire cars to drive the thousand miles to Barston Well, deep in the Gobi Desert, the location of the jewels.  Von Bolander and Slotny are one step ahead of them, and get the corrupt Governor of Kalgan on their side.  The Governor sends out men to kill Stewart, but he turns the tables and captures them instead.

Setting out from Kalgan, they send Drednoff ahead by train, but Von Bolander has men set a bomb on the tracks, and others who go to attack Stewart`s camp.  The attack on the camp fails, but the train does explode, though Drednoff survives.

And that`s where the story gets cut off.  If Wheeler-Nicholson had not run out on his company we would know what happened next.  And he would have become the wealthy and famous publisher of Superman.

 

Monastery of the Blue God:  New Adventure Comics  14 – 25  (Mar 37 – Apr 38)