PD: Golden Age Origin: Blue Fire

[dans]

This is a 3 part origin, the first 2 parts are rewrites of a story in Wham Comics #2, which was clearly intended to continue in Wham Comics #3, but #3 was never published... so I am going to add part 3 and complete the origin story, and then add a part 4, which will also be cribbed from the single adventure of a similar PD character (you will have to guess which one). Part 1 - how Jack Knapp, Blue Fire, got his powers.

The Origin of Blue Fire

With the care of the chemist (the degree he was currently pursuing), Jack Knapp, a square jawed young man with black hair that somehow glinted steel gray as his head moved, athletically trim and slightly above average in height, mixed himself a drink - equal parts of whiskey, rum, and soda water. Many of his friends sneered at the combination, but it was an acquired taste. His father had picked it up during prohibition, when even for the rich, it was difficult to acquire alcohol, and introduced each of his kids to it, on their 18th birthdays, a sort of rite of passage tradition in the family. He took a sip - he needed to calm down a little but he had some important experiments he wanted to perform this afternoon.

It was a Saturday in October of 1942. The University of Toledo Rockets football team, his college, had been shut out by the Western Michigan Broncos. And some of Jack's frat brothers had felt that Jack's girlfriend, Hazel Hudson, who had grown up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, had been less than appropriately supportive of the Rockets, and Hazel had felt inadequately supported by Jack. She had cancelled today's planned follow-up activities, an afternoon outing to nearby Cedar Point and then dining and dancing that evening. She had agreed to meet him tomorrow morning for university Chapel services after they had both had time to cool off.

Meanwhile, he'd retired to the small house he'd rented and turned into an advanced chemistry lab. He was working on two important projects simultaneously - some research his advisor had asked him to complete, and a project of his own. He knew his advisor was going to publish his results - but he'd get a by-line. He mixed two chemicals carefully in a beaker and set it above a Bunsen burner to heat to a gentle boil, and turned to his own experiment. He stirred a carefully measured amount of a powder into a beaker of clear fluid, and then took a careful sip. "Not bad - hope it works!" The solution was supposed to be a preemptive hangover cure - if it worked, he'd be even richer than Daddy!

He frowned as he noticed a blue vapor coming from the warming beaker. That wasn't what his calculations showed should happen. He put down the beaker and reached to shut off the gas - and the lab was shaken by a tremendous explosion!

A brilliant flash of red and yellow flame, and Jack threw up his arm to shield his eyes, and a tremendous boom that left his ears ringing - and then, silence. No crashes of the walls and roof collapsing, no roaring of flames, nothing. Jack peeked, and the room was filled with thin blue mist. He stumbled closer to a table and slapped his hand on one of the emergency switches to activate the lab's powerful chemical fumes exhaust vents. In a few seconds, the mist was gone, and he peered around in wonder.

"What a STRANGE explosion! Nothing in the lab is damaged - and I'm unhurt!" And then he noticed... "Everything is lit by some kind of blue and... and... it's coming from ME!” He stared in horror at his arm, which was engulfed in… blue fire!

"I'm on FIRE!" SO why wasn't he screaming? "I'M ON FIRE! But... it doesn't burn! And my clothes aren't burning! Strange!" A part of his mind wondered why he wasn't gibbering; He later theorized that perhaps the whiskey and rum, along with his sip of the potion he had just created, had combined to produce some kind of sedation effect that kept him calm. As it was, his curiosity quickly overcame his nascent panic. "I wonder what caused all this?" Then he brightened. "I know! It's that formula I mixed up! I'll have to figure out some way to control it!"

In the back of his mind, he was thinking that a method for producing powerful explosions that didn't actually produce any damage might be very useful for Hollywood movie special effects - maybe his doorway to entry for a career in movies!

He turned to his desk, where he kept his 'lab diary' which included notes on his most recent formulation, and noticed a beaker of mercury precariously near the edge of one of the tables. He quickly picked it up to put back in the shelf with the other chemicals. "HUH? ! can't hold it! My hand is going RIGHT THROUGH IT!"

This was finally too much, even through the strange sedative effect - Jack collapsed into his desk chair, noting that he felt incredibly light, and stared at the wall for an indeterminate time (which he later figured was about 2 hours) until he dimly noted that the blue glow had faded. He stood and once again tried to move the mercury beaker, noting with relief "Huh! I can pick up the mercury again without any trouble!"

"Maybe it was all just a dream, caused by inhaling that strange blue mist," he thought. "I wonder if any of it really happened?" His mind was kind of numb; he headed back to the frat house, where he drank beer and played euchre with his other dateless frat brothers until late into the night.

He tentatively decided that his hangover preventative potion was a success when he met Hazel for chapel. They had both had time to cool off; she proposed that they spend the afternoon completing their postponed outing to Cedar Point. It seemed almost surreal - they knew there was a war going on, and yet they were spending a normal, romantic day together. So far Jack hadn't been drafted, though he planned to enlist after graduation next spring. If he weren't drafted before then, and the war hadn't ended. Like everyone else, the end of the war was in his prayers! With Hazel to distract him, Jack spent almost no time thinking about yesterday's experiences.

Chemistry was his first class on Monday, and that reminded him of Saturday's experiments, and he replayed the events over and over again, totally inattentive throughout the rest of his classes. He rushed back to his lab after classes, determined to learn more about what had happened to him.

"If it was real, I need to make it happen again. I've got to mix up some small 'bombs' with that formula, and see if I can repeat the Blue Fire effect! I'll try it out and see what I can do! If it gives me any advantage over normal people, I'll use it to a good cause!" Like any normal American kid of the time, his immediate thought was to become a costumed funny-book mystery man, and battle crime and injustice!

He had destroyed his lab notes as he started work. "I won't write the formula down, ever, because it might fall into the wrong hands. I'll have to memorize it. Let's see... two tubes of this... a tube of that... some of this..."

It didn't take long before he had the final mixture - but he needed one more element. "I had to warm it last time to get the right reaction. Let's see..." he thought for a while. "OK, if I add this catalyst, it'll act like a heating element.” He added a small pinch of an additional chemical - and smiled in satisfaction as the solution started producing blue mist. As he had expected, the solution quickly evaporated; a very small sample produced enough vapor for him to take 2 deep breaths - and he was once again covered with Blue Fire!

“Hmm... I can put the potion and the catalyst into separate small capsules, and put them into tiny cloth sacks, like small teabags. And then if I crush the bag, the chemicals will combine and release the blue fire mist," he thought excitedly. "Now to see what the powers of this Blue Fire are - if any!"

He reached for a pair of handcuffs that were sitting on his desktop. He grasped them carefully - instead of feeling like stiff metal, they felt as if they were wrapped in something soft. He lifted gradually - if he moved cautiously, the handcuffs were obedient, - and clicked them into place (first making sure the key was on the desktop, just in case!)

"First, I'll put on these handcuffs. If I pull my hands apart, there's a slight resistance. I'll pull harder - HOLY SMOKES!! They're... coming off!" His wrists passed right through the cuffs and they fell to the floor.

"SAY! With this, bullets and knives will pass right through me, without me feeling it! Mmm, BOY!!! this is GREAT!"

He was standing next to his desk; he dropped his hand to the desktop and leaned forward - and his hand passed into the desk, and he fell forward, and fell THROUGH the desktop and the desk beneath it and ended up lying on the floor. "Gee - I'm going to have to get used to this blue fire!" he said, chagrined. Moving cautiously he was able to extract himself and then experimented. He wasn't totally insubstantial - he could still grasp and move lightweight objects if he moved slowly, but anything that was anchored or heavy enough, or if he moved fast enough, his body passed through it with only a bit of resistance, perhaps like walking into a heavy wind. He needed another test!

"I think I'll take a walk!" he decided, and strode toward the wall - and then RIGHT THROUGH the wall! It felt like he was walking into a stiff wind... then turned around and went back inside. "I DID IT! Walked through that solid wall." He smiled in delight at the way his plans were staring to work out, and made the same vow anyone would make, who suddenly acquired great powers:

"Mmm... NOW, we'll put an END to criminals, racketeers, and foreign spies!" He was already planning his funny book mystery heroic career!

After 2 hours, Jack again returned to normal. Mentally exhausted by his almost-overwhelming discoveries, he turned to the papers he’d bought on his way here from school – this morning’s Toledo Union Journal and an Extra from the same paper that the newsboy had been excitedly hawking as he walked by. As expected, the morning paper was filled with stories of the war, news that was hardly fit to print: Headlines proclaiming how many enemy planes had been shot down on the many battlefronts last week, where the fronts had advanced and where they had fallen back, submarines sunk, stories of enemy propaganda, sabotage and assassination, war, war war! He hoped there was something different in the Extra…

In big letters across the top, it screamed "EXTRA! EXTRA!" Below this, in even bigger, bolder font: GREAT LAKES PASSENGER SHIP'S MOTORS FREEZE!" Smaller headlines in the columns below shouted different related stories: "Motors Wrecked!" "Police to Investigate!" “Passengers Temporarily Impounded During Investigation!” “Interview with Chief Engineer”. He eagerly started reading the interview with the engineer.

[dans]

The Union Journal printed excerpts from a reporter's interview with Donald Kuhn, the Chief Engineer of the Great Lakes Passenger Steamship City of Clevaland III, a 402 foot paddle wheeler that regularly plied the Buffalo - Cleveland - Detroit lanes. Chief Engineer Kuhn was on duty at the time of the bizarre incident; he had been a patient at Toledo Hospital at the time of the interview.

Excerpts from Kuhn's story:

"I was down in the engine room. We'd had some loading delays in Cleveland and were a bit behind schedule, so we were running hard and the place was extra hot... it was about one bell into the afternoon watch when suddenly I felt an icy breeze. In less than a minute, all the machinery was covered with frost, and then coated with ice, and it wasn't long before things started breaking inside the engines. There was a great lurch and then we were without engine power, wallowing in the heavy seas left over from that big storm up near Detroit. Luckily the radio can be run on emergency battery power for a short while, so Sparks could radio the Coast Guard to tow us to port - we were in danger of being driven onto the rocks near the Toledo harbor!

"The most eerie part of the whole thing was when I looked up at the catwalk above the furnace - there was a figure standing at the guard rail, like a human statue carved from a giant icicle, calmly watching the whole thing. He saw me looking at him... and the next thing I know, the ship's doctor is treating me for hypothermia and frostbite. They said I'd somehow been coated in ice too!"

*****

How much of this story is the imagination, this reporter can only guess, but the ship's entire engine room crew has been under treatment at Toledo Hospital for severe cases of frostbite.

Another story mentioned that once the City of Cleveland had been made fast at anchor, neither the passengers or the crew would be allowed to debark until the investigation was finished. The FBI and Naval Intelligence agencies were both sending investigators. The DAC Navigation City of Detroit III was scheduled to arrive the next evening, to load the unfortunate City of Cleveland's passengers and cargo to continue the interrupted voyage to Detroit. A spokesman for the Coast Guard had initially noted that some kind of enemy weapon was suspected, but the spokesman was immediately replaced by a higher ranking officer who dismissed the claims of possible enemy action and spoke instead that the event was of 'unknown origin' - and no amount of additional questioning got anything other than evasive answers, none of which referenced a potential enemy weapon.

Jack created a half dozen small 'Blue Fire bombs', then rushed back to the Phi Tau Pi house and placed a collect call to his father in their Gates Hills home just outside Cleveland. Johan Knapp was Commodore of the Fleet for Detroit and Cleveland Navigation. Jack emerged from the phone booth a half hour later, looking smug - he'd finally talked the old man into something! Then he spoke to various brothers with whom he shared classes the next day, so his professors would be notified of his impending absence. He didn't have a funny-book costume yet, but tomorrow, Blue Fire was making his introductions to the world!

[dans]

The next day, Jack piloted a small runabout (named 'Lake Shark') to the quarantined boat, still anchored away from the Toledo docks in Maumee Bay. He had to show the commanding officer of the watchful nearby Coast Guard vessel a pass his father had obtained, and then the crew of the City of Cleveland reluctantly let him board. The Captain greeted him on deck - he didn't seem to be too happy to have his boss's son wandering around on his boat.

"We can let you look around if you want, son," he agreed reluctantly. "But you won't find anything we couldn't. The passengers are still aboard; most of them are down in the casino. But they're not too happy at being penned up here, either. Try to stay out of trouble!"

It was a cold. blustery day, and the rough waters combined to make remaining on deck or in a cabin with a port uncomfortable for travelers who might get seasick - so even though the ship wasn't in Canadian waters, the ship's casino and bar were open. It wasn't difficult for Jack to find someplace unobserved. "Well, here's the first real test." He pulled out of a pouch on his belt a teabag, held it close to his face, and squeezed until he felt the capsules pop - then inhaled deeply of the blue mist that was released. He felt a queer, shivering sensation, almost like a sudden chill and the whole world seemed to explode into thousands of tiny bright blue stars, and he went into the 'Blue Fire'! He suddenly felt much lighter, and little blue flames leaped out from his body like a protective mantle of fire that did not burn!

Passenger cruises these days were pretty much a luxury only the well-to-do could afford, and almost all of the current passengers on the City of Cleveland were occupying the staterooms on the top deck. Jack began a systematic search of the luxury staterooms, first checking to see if a room was occupied via the portals and then entering the rooms simply by stepping through the walls! In half an hour, he'd searched 19 rooms. "I'm starting to believe the Captain that there's nothing to be found!" he sighed, but doggedly stepped into outer wall of the next stateroom, A-4. There was a slight noise, like the sigh of wind through a window screen, and he was into the room - and was almost instantly rewarded!

He carefully opened a desk drawer (if he moved too fast, his hands would slip right through the handles!) and noted that _someone_ had carefully installed a false bottom in the drawer. None of the other desks in the other staterooms had such a secret compartment. "Very, very clever! Papers concealed under a false bottom in a drawer! It must have been rigged up after the guest in this stateroom came aboard - there must be something he doesn't want to keep in the ship's safe!"

It took him a frustrating few minutes to figure out how to open the secret compartment - he couldn't just smash it because when he tried that, his hands just pushed _through_ the panel, so he had to work out how to open the catch, with only the very gentle force he could exert. He was beginning to worry that his time as Blue Fire was going to run out when the panel slid back and he was able to gently pick up a sheath of papers.

"Lucky my mom is Hungarian!" he thought as he puzzled his way through the first page. "I guess I shoulda paid more attention, though... these are orders to wreck the ship, but they keep referring to someone... maybe a crewman. Why don't they give his name?" Before he could figure out more, there was a voice behind him. "I hope I'm not disturbing you!" It was a man, and his accent was definitely very similar to that of his mother. "Did you find what you're looking for?"

The door slammed shut as Jack spun around; he was facing a man, taller than he, probably mid-thirties, with short reddish-brown hair, wearing a dark gray well tailored suit. He shook a pill from a small bottle and swallowed it. In less than a minute... the temperature in the room dropped tremendously. A sheath of ice grew around the man but it didn't prevent him from moving, while every surface in the room was soon coated in ice at least half an inch thick.

"So... you're the fellow who caused this boat to freeze!" Jack accused the ice-coated figure. "You're a saboteur, working with a spy group for the Axis!"

"Yes! I'm... the FROST!" the man boasted, but he was clearly puzzled. "But why aren't you frozen to death already? Is that... flame that encircles you?"

Jack had wondered that himself. He seemed to be sheathed in blue flame, but it didn't seem to produce any heat. But he wasn't here to discuss either his or the Frost's powers!

"Yes! You see, you can't hurt me with ice! So you might as well just come with me - we're going to the police!"

The Frost snorted in amusement. "That's what YOU think! OK, kid, better say a quick prayer!" He brandished a pistol - somehow it remained clear of the ice that coated everything else in the room - except Blue Fire.

But, Blue Fire just laughed! This seemed to enrage the spy, who snapped off a shot! And he was an excellent shot - the bullet slammed into Jack in the chest, right above the heart! Except it sped right through him. Jack barely noticed the impact. "That gun won't do you much good, Mister Frost!" he crowed smugly, secretly a little relieved - this was his first test of his intangibility. "As you can see, the bullets go right through me!"

The Frost fired again, another bulls-eye over Jack's heart, with the same results. "Come on, now, you're only wasting good bullets!" Jack mocked his foe. "Why don't you give up and come along to the police?"

"I'll NEVER give myself up!" the Frost roared back. "If bullets won't hurt you, let's see what a Gold Glove winning punch wrapped in a solid ice boxing glove does to your chin!" He lunged forward and delivered a perfect right to the side of Jack's head and yelled in dismay: "YA!!! Right through!" Then he stepped back, through his head back, and laughed.

"HAH! It occurs to me that if I can't hurt you, then you can't hurt me either!" Jack threw his own punch, with similar results. "Look, your hand goes right through me as well! BWHA HA HA HA!"

Jack was stunned and stood motionless, dismayed. "Say, that's right!" He hadn't thought this Blue Fire stuff all the way through, apparently.

"Well, Blue Fire, it looks like a deadlock!" the Frost said in amusement. But Jack wasn't giving up.

"Maybe - but you're not getting away! In fact, you can't even leave this room - the doors are frozen solid!"

"Guess you're right - I'm stuck... you win..." the Frost was dejected. "I give up." He sat down on the frozen sofa, broke open the pistol, and pulled out the bullets, then coated the pistol in ice. "Go get the Captain and the Coast Guard, I'll go quietly."

Jack was thinking fast. "He wants me to leave, but it will take a good half hour for all this ice to melt before he can open the doors. That should give me plenty of time!" And he was worried. "It's almost time for the Blue Fire to leave me. I'll freeze in here as Jack and then he'll get away for sure!" He turned and stepped through the wall - and noticed that the Blue Fire that surrounded him in his ethereal state had just faded away.

"That was CLOSE! I got out just in time! The Blue Fire has left me!" he wiped his forehead in relief. He pulled something out of the pouch on his belt - a stick of chalk, one of the few solid items he could handle easily while transformed to Blue Fire, and began writing on the door of the Frost's stateroom. "Soon as I finish this, I'll go get the Captain!"

The Captain was in the radio room, talking to the Commander of the Toledo Coast Guard station, hoping for some good news to pass along to his passengers regarding their quarantine. "Captain! Come quickly! Look what I've found!"

Jack led the Captain to the stateroom A-4. The floor outside the stateroom door was wet - it had been dry when Jack had finished writing his message. And the air wasn't chilled as he would have expected from the ice box inside the room.

"This wasn't here earlier when we searched!" the Captain exclaimed when he saw the writing on the door:

The maker of frost is a prisoner inside. Get him quickly and you'll find the evidence.

Using his master key, the Captain unlocked the door and with his gun drawn, carefully pushed inside. The door opened easily. There was no ice in the suite, but everything was soaked and there were puddles on the floor. "Where'd all the water come from?" the Captain asked angrily. The other door to the suite stood open, into a hallway that the crew used when servicing the stateroom.

Jack was disappointed. "My first case and... I've failed," he thought sadly. "But, NO! I'm not through yet! I'll haunt him, I'll never give up till I get him!" he made an emphatic mental vow!

*****

Readers, let us know what you think of our exciting new hero, Blue Fire! Will Jack pick up the trail of the Frost and capture him? Don't miss the next story of 'BLUE FIRE'!!!

[dans]

But, there wasn't one... Wham Comics #2 was the end of the line, #3 was never published. We can't leave Jack like this, can we? Coming soon, an exciting NEW chapter in the life of Jack Knapp, the Blue Fire! Write in and let us know what you think; the best letters will be included in next month's Letter Column!

[dans]

"I think you wrote that yourself!" the Captain accused. "You're trying to make yourself look like some kind of funny-book mystery man!"

"But where did the ice and water come from? Do you think I created those?" Jack objected sarcastically. He often got accused of being a 'rich kid seeking attention' and it annoyed him. "And why is this room so chilly?" Even though most of the ice had melted, there were still some furniture items with a thin coating, and the temperature in the room felt like it was in the mid-thirties.

Before the Captain could respond, the two heard gunshots coming from outside. "You stay here and stay out of trouble!" the Captain ordered as he rushed out of the room. "I don't want the Commodore's son getting hurt on MY ship!" he tossed back over his shoulder before he slammed the door closed.

That was exactly the wrong thing to say if he really wanted Jack to stay put. Before the sound of the words had faded from the air, Jack pulled another of his miniature 'tea bags' from his pouch and squeezed, perhaps a little harder than was absolutely necessary. He breathed in the blue mist, and went into the Blue Fire! But this time it was different.

The first two times he'd changed, in the lab, he'd been distracted and hadn't really noticed his physical bodily sensations, but those had been distinct both times he'd used the tea bags - and this time was different than the first. Instead of a mild quivering sensation, this time the blue mist produced a violent chill. For an instant his body shook uncontrollably, and he got goose bumps, and once again blue stars went nova around him - but not the flashing of pin-sized points of light from last time, but softball-sized balls of blue light that exploded instantly and silently, and then his senses returned... and he screamed! "Oh NO! STOP!" Everything he could see that was flammable was engulfed in flames!

And when he furiously screamed "STOP!" at the top of his lungs, miraculously, all the flames vanished, instantly! But he could still hear the crackling of other flames behind him, and he spun around, and screamed again. "Not more fire? STOP!" and these flames vanished as well... but he could hear flames behind him, and when he turned, all the fires that had vanished were flaring again. He spun through a full turn - the entire cabin was in flames again! "Something must have been wrong with the chemicals in that packet! STOP STOP STOP!"

This time, all the fires in the room vanished, leaving not even smoke behind, though what had been afire was charred. Totally confounded by what he'd just witnessed, Jack collapsed to the floor in stunned confusion - and then was hit with a rush of adrenaline as he realized that in his original Blue Fire state, he would be falling through the floor now, and he'd be in danger of falling through the hull and drowning. But the Blue Fire had seemingly released him - his body was normal. The blue flames outlining his body had vanished at his anguished mental shout!

A good puzzle, and maybe a kiss from Hazel, were the only two things that might have broken through his stupor just then - lucky he had a good puzzle! "I can still feel the Blue Fire inside me! Thank goodness! I must have mixed those two teabags up slightly differently, and the different chemical combination in the second one changed the effects." To some extent, this felt like deja vu - he remembered that his first reaction in the lab had been "How can I control this thing?" And that's what he needed to know right now!

He realized that he could still feel the Blue Fire bottled up inside him. Instead of making him feel incredibly light and ethereal, it was now making him feel incredibly hot! And yet it wasn't like a fever, where he felt weak or sick or nauseated - he had never felt so powerful! Like he should be able to do ANYTHING, if only he could control this incredible energy inside himself.

He tried to remember how he'd felt in the original Blue Fire state - his body always felt very light, but his body temperature had felt normal. He stared at his hands, and tried to remember how they looked as the original Blue Fire... and he thought he could see very tiny dim blue flames flickering over the surface of his skin. He pressed one down on the floor and was excited as it slipped into the floor. His hand felt different - more like it had the first couple of times he'd 'Fired up!' and he could feel that feeling spreading through his body, and he felt lighter - and with his relieved sigh that he wasn't about to burn the room up again, suddenly the original Blue Fire aura sprang up again around his entire body.

Jack was elated! He'd mentally forced his Blue Fire power back to the original state. "But..." and his excitement was abruptly tempered. "I wasn't able to stop Frost with THESE powers." If he could control the 'heat' aspect he'd just experienced, he might be able to combat Frost on a more equal footing! "I might be able to MELT his damn ice as fast as he can make it!" But he couldn't afford to set the ship on fire... and he needed to do something fast! "Can I just make my hands flame, while the rest of me is intangible?"

But he realized it would be better to experiment on deck than in the stateroom. Well, that was easy enough! He stood carefully and stepped through wall onto the deck... into a battle zone weird almost beyond imagining!

Cabin A-4 was near the stern; Frost had ascended to the promenade deck and been walking slowly forward - encasing the deck with a thick coating of ice that coated the ship from side to side and extended down the superstructure to the water line as he moved. His progress had not been unimpeded; there were a number of ice-coated human figures on the deck behind him, with a lot of others frantically trying to break them free.

He was currently opposed by two of the Coast Guard crew who were frantically spraying him with bursts of fire from two Tommy guns. The bullets blasted shards from his icy coating but he seemed to be able to create new ice as fast as they could shatter it. For now it was pretty much a standoff, but at full automatic, they would empty those two guns pretty soon - and pistol fire alone didn't seem to be effective at all. Jack sprinted towards the ice-coated spy, frantically trying to restore his heat power. He didn't try to limit it to just his hands - with so much ice around, he figured the risk of setting the ship on fire was minimal.

He was gratified when his steps started producing sizzles, pops and clouds of steam! The ice, water, and steam produced didn't seem to be enough to totally negate the flames on his feet or legs, but the intense cold did prevent the deck under his feat from bursting into flames. He zig zagged a bit as he ran, passing within a few inches of as many frozen people as he could, leaving behind a twisting wall of steam and melted holes in the ice that aided the rescue workers. Frost wasn't aware of his approach until he got much closer; the machine gun chatter hid the sizzling of steam and the excited shouting of rescue workers until first one, then the other, of the Coast Guard gunners ran out of ammunition.

"FROST! Turn and face me again! I'm about to put the kibosh on your days of preying on the innocent!" Blue Fire roared as he bounded across the desk, shattering pits in the icy coating with every stride.

"Blue Fire, again! You KNOW you can't stop me, pally!" Frost laughed. He stared northward, then nodded. "Still, I suppose you must try again. And FAIL again!" He laughed some more. "You got squat!"

"That's where you're wrong, spy!" Privately, Jack was thinking proudly that he already had the 'mystery man patter' down pat.

He dove at Frost, and there was a solid impact, and then the two were blown apart by an explosion caused by the tremendous heat of Jack's Blue Fire sublimating the tough icy shell surrounding Frost. Frost's armor coating shattered and fell away, leaving him momentarily appearing as human again - a tough looking man in a disheveled suit, incongruously carrying a briefcase, and then he was a statue of ice once again. Blue Fire's world dissolved into a thousand exploding tiny blue stars and he slid on his back a dozen feet across the ice-covered promenade deck. His blue flames dimmed, but didn't vanish.

In the sudden silence, Blue Fire heard an airplane engine. He lurched to his feet, just in time to see a airplane flying low and slow above the deck of the City of Cleveland, with a rope ladder hanging beneath it. From his avid watching of the war newsreels, he recognized it as a Messerschmidt fighter - with an Italian flag painted on the tail! Frost grabbed the ladder, and anchored himself to it with a thick sheet of ice, and was lifted into the air and swept away to the east - back towards Cleveland and the widest part of the Great Lake.

"You'll NEVER catch me, Blue Fire! This is the kiss off!" He gestured and Blue Fire vanished under a thick coat of ice, and the plane swept away.

Jack was never sure exactly why, but the shock of the explosion had reverted him to his original Blue Fire state - surrounded by thin, light blue flames that produced no heat, and virtually intangible. He discovered that he wasn't so much encased in ice, but embedded in ice! And he quickly realized he was having trouble breathing! He'd wondered about that before, but he'd never spent more than a few seconds pushing through something solid before. He frantically sat up, moving through the ice with almost no resistances, then began 'swimming' upwards, gasping in relief when his head popped into the air! He could see the retreating plane, with Frost dangling below it - he moved in that direction to escape the small mound of ice around him, using sweeping motions of his arms to hasten his forward motion. He finally broke free and continued to stare at the departing plane.

He was thinking frantically as he pushed and squirmed free. "I wonder... I appear to be almost weightless in this form, and heat rises..." (Jack does want to be a scientist, after all!) Once again he concentrated on fire, but not so fierce as before - and he started to rise off the deck, as the blue flames flickering around him again changed color and consistency, becoming somewhat darker and thicker. In his Jack Knapp identity, he was a model rocket enthusiast - this gave him yet another idea. "Rocket thrust comes from directed flames... I wonder?"

He concentrated on the blue flames around his feet - specifically the flames spouting from the bottoms of his feet - and those flames become darker blue, and stronger, and the ice on the deck below began melting much faster and Blue Fire was rising higher and faster into the sky! "EUREKA! It WORKS!" he shouted, and leaned forward until he was moving in the same direction as the plane, and then he concentrated on increasing the power of the fire in his feet, and he began moving even faster. Initially he had to struggle to control his flight, but he quickly learned how to control his body to control the direction of thrust, and he zoomed off to the east, following the retreating plane... an Italian Messerschmidt?

He was quickly catching up - apparently flying with a person dangling below kept the fighter well below top speed... but he was still a mile or so behind when the plane slowed even more, and then the ladder was released, and the icy statue that was Frost plummeted to the surface of Lake Erie and skipped across the water several times like a skimming stone, and came to a stop very close to... a midget submarine?

Two waiting crew members hauled Frost on-board by the time Blue Fire arrived, and the sub was already diving. He was too late to do anything to stop it, although he wasn't sure what he could have done anyway - but he was in time to notice a Rising Sun flag painted on the conning tower.

"A German airplane, Italian and Japanese flags - an Axis spy ring!" he concluded. "And they got away this time, damn!" He used some other, perhaps stronger words, then focused on a vow. "I'll find their trail and wrap them up, or my name isn't Blue Fire!"

Then he headed back to the City of Cleveland. He didn't know how long he'd remain in the Blue Fire this time, but he sure didn't want to change back to ordinary Jack Knapp out over the middle of a blustery Lake Erie!

[dans]

Postlude

In the months since his first public appearance, Jack (Blue Fire) Knapp had learned a lot about his new powers, but almost nothing about the Axis spy who called himself 'Frost', or how he had received the pills that apparently gave him the amazing power of creating intense cold. But he HAD learned why the Frost had attacked the Detroit and Cleveland Navigation Company passenger ship 'City of Cleveland III' from his father, who was the Commodore of the D&C fleet.

"One of the engineering crew on the CCIII, Dennis Shermit, had been making unauthorized modifications to the ship's furnace and engines for years – and in combination, they turned out to be spectacularly successful. The Cleveland was the fastest ship in our fleet – even faster than ships that were 30 years newer! And although our accountants never noticed it before, in recent years she used significantly less coal than our other ships of the same vintage, like the City of Detroit III and the City of Buffalo. Anyway, in early October last year, Shermit contacted the War Department and offered to give them his blueprints. He was in Buffalo at the time; the CCIII was about to disembark on the route through Detroit to Duluth. They set up a meeting in Detroit.

Presumably, an Axis spy ring heard about it and sent Frost to kidnap Shermit and steal his blueprints. The occupant of stateroom A-4 was someone named Alatt Hóvihar; he'd boarded in Cleveland and is presumably also Frost – but the FBI has been able to find no other traces of Hóvihar!

But Shermit wasn't aboard. He'd left the ship in Erie and never returned, and they'd set sail without him. The FBI DID locate Shermit, eventually, in an Erie hospital, recovering from a fight he'd got into with some sailors from another Great Lakes shipping company. So the FBI theorizes that Frost froze up the CCIII in the hopes that the passengers and crew would be evacuated and he'd be able to find Hóvihar's blueprints. The ship was searched after Frost escaped, and Shermit's quarters had been ransacked."

He paused and laughed. "Whatever he found, he's going to be unhappy. Naval shipbuilding experts tore apart the CCIII's furnace and engine and discovered all Shermit's modifications to make the engine more efficient – and though they were amazingly effective, it's only because the ship's engines were built in 1906. Most of Shermit's 'advances' are already included in modern engine design, and those few that are not, have already been improved on yet again. Still, the Navy has hired him – the fact that he came up with these improvements on his own is pretty intriguing to them – what might he be able to do to improve their more advanced engines?"

Frost had apparently resurfaced in Cleveland… too far away for a full time student and part time mystery man attending college in Toledo to search for him during the school year – but when Jack returned home to Gates Hills for summer break, Blue Fire planned to get into the spy-smashing business!

[dans]

Blue Fire Adventures! Volume 1, Issue 1

Who is.... Old Sam?

Jack Knapp, a University of Toledo student majoring in Biochemistry (and secretly the new heroic mystery man "Blue Fire") was downtown in Toledo to visit an off-campus exhibit set up in a storefront building by one of his professors (so he could charge admission), the nationally-known world traveling adventurer and Emeritus Professor of Archeology, "Holy Toledo" Johnson. A few years ago, Johnson had participated in the excavation of the Egyptian tomb of the famed 'Grandfather of Alchemy' Hermes Trismegistus, author of The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, the famous text on which was based all later study of Alchemy. Jack was about to head back to campus when there was a loud commotion just outside the exhibit's exit - loud, angry shouting and repeated blasts from a police whistle. He rushed outside where he saw two men in a tussle - a policeman he recognized as beat Officer Flaherty, and a tall, thin man with dark hair, a thin mustache and small pointed beard on his chin, in a very expensive evening suit, who had also been viewing the exhibit earlier.

"I saw you put those gems into the bag!" the cop shouted between blasts on his whistle, pulling his pistol and cautiously approaching the man, who was carrying a small valise. "Put your hands or I'll ventilate you for air conditioning!"

The thief didn't seem worried. "Ho, hum, I didn't think I'd have to deal with the police!"

"It must be the gems that Hermes was reputed to have transformed from lead," Jack thought in a flash. "They are supposed to have mystical powers, if you know how to use them... one is a philosopher's stone, another grants immortality, another grants wishes... but 'Holy Toldeo' says the legends are hogwash!" He looked around to make sure no one was able to observe, pulled out a small object like a tiny teabag from a pouch on his belt, and crushed the bag in his hand. Blue mist leaked out around his fist - he yelled 'FIRE UP!", then bent his head to his closed fist and inhaled the mist with a deep breath, and went into the Blue Fire!

His body quivered, he felt a small chill and goose bumps popped up, and his senses were momentarily overwhelmed as the world around him was hidden by thousands of small spots of blue light that exploded silently... and when the momentary disorientation cleared, Jack had been transformed into Blue Fire, that flaming champion of justice. He floated up off the sidewalk, consciously and meticulously mentally suppressing any 'side effects' that might occur around him at the sudden appearance of a blazing human torch!

Meanwhile, the thief had sprung forward, ignoring the threat of the pistol and catching Flaherty off-guard. Although Jack knew from experience in some of his other adventures that Flaherty was an adept brawler, the villain easily caught him with a powerful blow to the face. "How DARE you interfere with ME?" he roared as the cop dropped his gun and fell to the sidewalk.

Blue Fire was now overhead, and he spoke to Flaherty as the stunned cop struggled to get up off the sidewalk. "Save yourself the trouble, Flaherty. I'll take some of the steam out of this character!" Perhaps Flaherty winced, or perhaps he was still dazed by the blow.

As the villain leaped into his car, he spared a quip for the approaching hero: "Don't you feel a bit silly, going around in a BLAZE of Glory all the time?" On the sidewalk, Flaherty appeared even more dazed than before. The villain leaned out the window as he zoomed away, and taunted the pursuing hero. "Come and get me... IF you CAN!"

This unusual behavior caught Jack's attention. Bad guys these days either knew who he was already and were anxious to get away, or they hadn't heard of him yet. This was the first villain since he'd first encountered Frost who seemed unworried to be confronting him. "He seems awfully sure of himself. I wonder what's up?"

He zoomed ahead, dropped down to the hood, and thought off the Blue Fire. "Pull over to the curb, or else!" he ordered. "Do what I say!"

The villain seemed amused. "Your dialog bores me. Sorry, I don't give rides to hitch hikers!" He slammed on the brakes and as the car squealed to a sudden stop, Jack tumbled forward over the hood - calling the Blue Fire back instantly, so instead of falling off the front of the motionless car, he was back in the air. He missed the next words of the villain, who mused reluctantly, "I suppose I'll be seeing you again... Don't think it hasn't been a pleasure, but... it HASN'T!"

By the time he zoomed back to the car, it was... empty. After a few minutes inspection, Jack noticed a button on the driver's side door handle. He pressed the button and the passenger seat flipped up and revealed a hole through the floorboards - and under the hole was an open manhole.

"Blast it! A trap door in the seat? No wonder he was so sure of himself - he had his whole escape mapped out in advance!" He dropped through the trap, and noticed that it snapped shut again as he climbed down the ladder in the manhole. He'd suppressed the Blue Fire again, in case there might be explosive gasses in the sewer pipes. "PHEW! This place stinks! But I guess, if he can stand running through the sewer, so can I!" He heard some splashing to his right that quickly stopped, and decided to go that way. A hundred yards along, there was a junction leading the the left - he guessed and continued straight ahead - and was startled when a voice spoke behind him!

"I bid you welcome to my cozy retreat. Won't you join me?"

Without thinking, he released the Blue Fire as he turned, and he saw the tall figure of the villain, standing in the side tunnel, where there had been no one an instant ago, holding a handful of glittering gems. "Glad to!" he replied, while wondering 'I wonder what he has up his sleeve THIS time?' Blue Fire rocketed at the man. "I'll take those jewels!" The villain didn't reply, or even move. "Oh, so now that you're caught, you're going to come quietly?" He suppressed the heat of his fist. "Well, stand frozen if you like, but I'll take the gems." He reached out a grabbed the gems - and they squished like a handful of gelatin! And still the villain didn't move... or speak.

"Fooled AGAIN!" Blue Fire exclaimed in disgust. "It's a... wax dummy, and the jewels are fakes! He's a clever operator, whoever he is. But I'll GET him!" In the back of his mind, Jack was recalling another clever operator who got away (Frost) and he was determined that this guy wouldn't also get away!

As he stepped back, he noted a business card at the feet of the dummy. "A business card? Don't tell me that this genius master mind was careless enough to leave me a clue?" He eagerly picked up the card, and then snarled in rage and frustration when he read it.

"Sorry to disappoint you. My silent double here is not very formidable, is he? But a warning... I AM! Old Sam"

"So you call yourself Old Sam, do you? OK, Old Sam, this is personal! Blue Fire is pretty damn formidable himself!" Jack could see daylight in the direction he'd been going. Now that'd he accidentally proved that the sewer was clear of explosive gas (accidentally), he zoomed off in that direction. "This is absurd, the way he keeps getting away. The sewer leads down to the Maumee River, which empties into Lake Erie." In a few seconds, he zoomed out of the open end of the sewer tunnel, over the minor falls where it emptied into the river. Far away, he saw a speeding boat.

"I should have known he'd have a boat waiting! He seems to have planned for everything! Well, here's where he gets something he HASN'T planned on - BLUE FIRE!" He willed high speed from the Blue Fire, and zoomed toward the Lake.

Old Sam was standing at the wheel, every now and again glancing backward, so he saw Blue Fire coming as he arced over the tall plume of mist the speedboat was throwing up. As the mystery hero got closer, he spoke conversationally, "I guess you have a tiny bit more brains than I thought. Care to join me for a ride?"

Blue Fire was on the end of his patience with this arrogant thief! "Less talk and MORE action! We're going to shore, and you're going to jail!" He zoomed down to the boat and grabbed the wheel. Old Sam staggered to the side as the boat leaned into a turn.

"You're an impetuous young flash in the face, aren't you, you snot?" Old Sam sneered, as he reached into an open compartment in the boat's dashboard and wrapped his hand around a heavy steel railroad spike that coincidentally just happened to be there... or was it coincidence, and not the result of Old Sam's advance planning?

"Come to think of it, I think I'll take the REAL jewels this time - if you don't mind?" Blue Fire suppressed his blue fire again - he didn't want to destroy the wheel right now, or set the boat aflame, and temporarily turning off his power was easier than trying to concentrate on not setting everything around him ablaze.

"Oh, I don't mind at all!" Old Sam sneered triumphantly. "I don't need them... right now. I don't even need BRAINS for a fade-out like THIS!" He slammed his hand, heavily weighted by the large railroad spike, into the back of Jack's head, knocking him to the deck, stunned. "Thanks for reminding me of the gems - I want to put them in a safe place!" He reached to pick up the valise, confident that there was nothing Jack could do to stop him. "OOF!" He was wrong!

Jack swung his left arm around, and managed to catch Old Sam in the side of the head with a backhand blow. "Neatly done, Jack, if I do say so myself... as I shouldn't!" Jack congratulated himself. "I feel better now - that makes up for the crack on the head!" He rolled to his knees.

"You are beginning to annoy me!" Old Sam sounded quite petulant. "I think I shall take steps!" He stood on the side of the boat, but couldn't resist the last word. "It's a well-known fact that water and fire don't get along too well - let's TEST it!" He dove over the side. Or tried to...

Jack lunged and caught him by one ankle, and for an instant, Old Sam was dangling over the side of the boat, inches from the water - in fact, his face actually hit the surface of the river before Jack started pulling him back up. "Come now - Let's not be childish about this!" the villain scolded angrily. "Besides, I may get a rush of blood to the head!"

"Oh, that would simply move me to TEARS!" Jack laughed sarcastically. "You're coming back on board!" He hauled the thief back up and threw him to the deck.

"Oh, this is SO undignified!" Old Sam complained. "What would my subjects think if they saw me this way?"

"That jumping in the water would make you ALL WET?" Jack laughed. "Uh, uh, I can't let you do it!" He kept hold of Old Sam's collar with his left hand and reached for the valise with his right.

Old Sam was well past being amused by Jack (Blue Fire) Knapp by this point. "I suppose there's only one thing to do with you..." he grunted. He tensed the muscles in his gums - and bit Jack on the wrist, injecting venom!

"Aargh!" Jack screamed as he tore his wrist free. Old Sam twisted free and dove overboard, sans the valise. Jack wrapped his wrist in his left hand. "This is futile! I'll get you when you come up!" he promised.

"Will you? I wonder!" Even as he fell into the river, Old Sam managed a final sneering quip.

Jack's wrist felt as if it were on fire - not HIS kind of fire, either! And the feeling was spreading quickly. While he could still concentrate, he did... "Back into the BLUE FIRE!" he ordered mentally, with all the will power he could gather. He felt a tingling, and the world vanished in a spray of blue dots exploding, and then he was Blue Fire again - and the pain in his wrist was gone. He floated over the boat and the river for a good 10 minutes, flying a circular search pattern that extended from shore to shore and a couple of hundred yards each way up and down the river... and Old Sam never surfaced..

He turned back to Jack again and realized that apparently the Blue Fire had purged from his system whatever venom Old Sam had injected... but his wrist still sported jagged rips and tears from the villain's teeth. He was going to need medical attention... soon! He found a signal flag in one of the compartments on the boat and wrapped his wrist, then steered the boat to a dock and tied it up - and went back into the Blue Fire, and flew back to campus, where Jack staggered into the campus infirmary, apparently in shock, with a story about being attached by a vicious dog. They wrapped him up and gave him a bed in the clinic for a few hours rest.

Then he dropped into the police station and returned the jewels. He gave the story, and the valise, to Flaherty. "He never came up. I recovered the loot, but the thief drowned."

"Begorra!" the cop exclaimed at the conclusion of the story. "But what might this card be meanin?" He pulled a business card from the valise - a card that Jack had somehow missed. "It's for you, me boyo!" He handed Jack the card.

What he read was chilling. ""You amuse me mightily, Blue Fire. I thoroughly enjoyed our little encounter. Perhaps we'll meet again… Old Sam"

Continued in

Blue Fire Adventures! Volume 1, Issue 2

[dans]

OK, I stole that one too... Different source, but since they are both Public Domain, it seems like an appropriate mashup.

Done with Blue Fire for now. Anyone wants to build on the elements I've established, feel free - just another toy in the sandbox!