Art and story
by Howard Chaykin
Hoo boy, Chaykin
is back baby! Inject this right in my
veins. It opens during the Paraguay-
Boliva War and Fortune mentions that he has done three tours, two for Paraguay
who he is flying for at the end of the war in 1935 (presumably he was in for
the entire three years of the war) and with the war ending he is looking for
new work. Dom points out that he is not
a patriot and politics, religion or nationality don’t drive him. He is after the money.
He met Delatriz
Betancourt, also flying for Paraguay and she might have an offer for him.
Delatriz, the descendant of Confederate soldiers who moved to South America, is
flirty and distracts Dom enough that he gets shot down and parachutes in the
hotel pool, which is surrounded by several ladies in various states of
undress. Chaykin is using the adult Max
line to his advantage (just as he did in the magazine lines for many of Dom’s
original appearances.)
However, that opportunity
dries up when Delatriz and her business colleague Malcolm Upshaw discover that
Dominic Fortune is Jewish.
However, one of
the naked ladies was Heather Fontaine and when Dom gets back to LA, they begin
an affair. Fontaine’s husband, Irwin
Oppenheim, a studio executive, hires Dom to baby sit three of his big stars -Jock
Madison, Vaughn Lorillard and P.T. Oakley.
(disguised versions of John Carridine, Errol Flynn and, W.C. Fields)
when they go to Berlin for the 1936 Olympics.
Fortune
discovers that Upshaw and Delatriz are both working with the Germans and a
rogue American army unit to kill the President.
Fortune steals a plane and lands in time to rather forcefully stop the
army unit with the plane’s propellor and fight hand to hand with Upshaw saving
the President.
This was a
great romp with several fun fights and some rather adult scenes and scenarios. There is a lot of anti-Semitism thrown around
but that was not uncommon for the time and it fit with villains who were happy
allying themselves with Nazis.
