As I pointed out in my last post, this appears to have been
published after The Scorpion #2 and before #3.
It’s a black and white 12 page story so I imagine that Chaykin was able
to turn it out fairly quickly.
Marvel Preview was a Black & White magazine. This issue also features the first Punisher
solo story and an interview with Don Pendleton.
I originally bought my copy for the Pendleton interview and discovered
the other joys inside including a Chaykin pinup of The Punisher and Dominic
Fortune.
This story was reprinted in issue #20 along with the second Fortune
story and foreword and introductions by Chaykin talking about the creation of
Dominic Fortune and these stories. As Dom
appears on the cover of that issue, I’ve used it here.
Chaykin tells us that he was annoyed by [now defunct
company] pulling the switcheroo on him and that he visited the Marvel offices
in the hopes of getting work.
Apparently, there was a bit of that going around at the time. Chaykin basically ambushes Marv Wolfman and
Len Wein and pitches something similar to The Scorpion (which was more in
spirit of Doc Savage, The Shadow) but more in the lighter vein of The Spirit
and Plastic Man. Making for more a laid
back West Coast hero that the East Coast serious hero. See Dominic Fortune is nothing like The
Scorpion aside from them both being heroes in the 1930s. (Actually now I want a crossover between the
two.)
Fortune is a gambler, who lives on a gambling ship “The
Mississippi Queen” and is up to his eyeballs in debt to Sabbath Raven, his
girlfriend and owner of the casino in question.
Dom takes jobs only to pay off his debts, in many ways
Dominic Fortune feels like a 1930s version of Travis McGee who had debuted just
over a decade earlier.
The story opens with a potential client coming to see Dom. She is the ex-wife of Jacob Einhorn, a
multi-millionaire who owes his ex-wife $250000.
Einhorn is also the owner of publishing empire and extremely private,
with his estate Skycliff guarded with landmines.
Our man Fortune has a plan and Raven flies him in on an
autogyro. Dom then leaps off with
wing-kites and glides into the estate.
Of course, a wind gust nearly sends Dom to his doom but he survives only
to discover that Einhorn is collaborating with the Japanese aiding them with
intelligence and propaganda. Dom
realises that Einhorn wants to profit off a second World War a full three years
before Pearl Harbour.
There is a fight as the Japanese realise that there is an
intruder who knows about Einhorn’s activities.
And Fortune has to pull out every trick in the book to come out alive. While Einhorn is taken out by his allies,
Fortune is able to retrieve the money owed to his client.
I have to say Chaykin’s art really sings in Black and White with
the action flowing beautifully. There’s
a certain irony that Chaykin was kicked off of The Scorpion in an effort to
make the character more like Marvel and Chaykin not only turns around and sells
a version of the character to Marvel but also gets it into print before the
Marvelised version.
This is a great adventure and I am looking forward to more.
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