Dakor seems to have limited spells; he can't use magic to get onto Tom Denver's trans-Atlantic steamer, so he has to take the next one and arrives in Paris after Tom has already joined the Foreign Legion. Dakor, with no ability to magically persuade the Legion to give Tom up, joins the Legion to look for evidence against Tom. Tom makes it easy for him, openly admitting to have the dead man's cursed gem. To protect Tom, Dakor casts a Phantasmal Image of two lions, this being his first spell. Later, he uses this spell to make someone think their gun has turned into a snake so he drops it.
Dakor hypnotizes Tom later, but in Hideouts & Hoodlums hypnotism can be a skill and not just a spell. Hypnotism is not the same as mind control; Dakor can't make Tom stay and fight later when he turns chicken and deserts.
Dakor supposedly has "super-sensitive hearing," but you know how suspicious I am of those caption narrators, and indeed the panel showing a guard easily sneaking up on him from the side doesn't back up that claim.
The Tuareg people of the Sahara sure get shot at a lot in old comics; here, the Foreign Legion spends hours shooting at them. We're told the Tuareg are ferocious raiders, but we see no evidence of this. Maybe they were riding up to the fort to say hi? Anyway, the Tuareg capture Tom. Dakor follows invisibly. He polymorphs a sword into a dagger (an Alter Weapon spell?) to keep Tom from getting killed, then uses Poof! to move across the room when swordsmen rush him. It looks like he plans to use Rope Trick to escape, but the spell fails when a swordsman gets in the rope's way. Or, he cast Rope Trick just so the rope would lift the man into the air, which seems like a waste of a 2nd-level spell. Surprisingly, Dakor fails to rescue Tom -- a guard kills him! Something happens to the guard in the next panel, but it is so confusing I can't even tell what it is.
Later, Dakor reveals that he had earlier used telepathy (ESP/Detect Thoughts) to discover where Tom buried in the cursed gem, back in his cell. In a pretty insulting/bigoted second-to-last panel, the Tuareg allegedly tell Dakor that Allah would fear him. And to top it off, in the final panel Dakor casts a high-level Control Weather spell and creates a snowstorm. Surprise! He was actually powerful enough to stop this adventure way back before it ever left New York. Double surprise, there's actually one more page! In a sort of epilogue to this story, Dakor travels to China to return the cursed gem to a statue of "Kung," a deity worshiped by millions of Orientals, which is of course nonsense. In a final insult, Dakor fools the Chinese with ventriloquism from the statue, as if they were stupid natives.
In all, Dakor reveals enough magical firepower to need 11 brevet ranks to pull all this off.
The final feature is Dynamic Man, a feature with another android superhero, and one who's introduction is very Frankenstein-like (substitute Prof. Goettler for Dr. Frankenstein, and Dynamic Man is made from synthetic materials instead of human parts). In a twist, Goettler dies of a heart attack immediately, denying our hero a parent/supporting cast member/potential future enemy. Dynamic Man, we are told, has X-Ray Vision (a 3rd-level power), can Change Self (a 1st-level power, but he really uses it just to alter his clothes), and can fly because of his magnetic field (we aren't told how fast, but later he outpaces a train, putting him at Fly III, a 4th-level power!).
Dynamic Man soon takes the identity of Curt Cowan and applies for the FBI. The FBI, apparently not suspicious of his lack of a birth certificate or naturalization papers, takes him in, but he intends to work as Dynamic Man in secret while performing his field work.
The mobsters DM goes after are causing a drought by generating lightning -- which isn't how you would cause a drought -- and they do it to buy up some farmland cheap. Though, after building a mountain retreat and a giant electrical generator, you would think their profits would be a wash. DM has to lift a boulder blocking the entrance to their hideout with the Raise Car power. Then Nigh-Invulnerable Skin protects him from bullets. Then he uses magnetism to disarm two gunmen at once, and that's a little trickier; he may be using Gust of Wind to disarm them with a lot of flavor text covering up the wind part. He throws lightning bolts, but not to wreck the generators, not harm people, so this is actually Wreck at Range.
King Bascom, the millionaire financier for this scheme, has super-science at his disposal like -- a two-way television! And a hose that sprays liquid "lantholum," a fictional element that is both insulating (blocks electricity-based powers) and corrosive (does damage to DM while also paralyzing him). He also has a deathtrap room that can be flooded with liquid nitrogen and the ceiling lowers to crush occupants because -- hey, he's rich, so why not? Turns out, Bascom is working for the "Richonians," which sounds like Russians a little when you say it out loud. Bascom sics a dozen hoodlums on DM, but he beats them all up. When Bascom tries to escape by plane, DM uses Wreck at Range to destroy it.
(Read at readcomiconline.to)
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