Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen: By Air or By Sea, Chapter 2: The Flying Pirate Ship

by Libbylawrence

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Meanwhile, back in Slick Eddie’s cabin, Roxy confronted an ape in a flowered dress. “You must be from Gorilla City!” she sputtered. “Jimmy mentioned it to me once.”

“Shhh!” said the ape. “I’m Sam Simeon, and I’m helping a detective friend. This is serious business, Miss Lane.”

“How’d you know I’m Lois Lane in this lame fringed number?” she asked.

“I never forget a scent,” explained Sam. “Are you after the mobsters here for some summit? My partner Angel and I are tracking down mob activity, and we learned a bunch of top gang leaders are aboard this ship.”

“We’re looking into the kidnapping of a former captain,” said Lois. “Must be tied in to the little gangland cruise.”

They heard footsteps in the hall. “Someone is coming!” said Sam. “I tried to be less noticeable in this getup while my glamorous buddy went out of her way to keep everyone’s eye as a spoiled brat heiress. She’s really very sweet, you know!”

“Hide!” cried Lois. “I’ll keep him out.” She opened the door and said, “Come in, big boy!” in her best Marilyn Monroe voice. “Oh, it’s you,” she said as Jimmy Olsen in his Magi the Magnificent guise entered with Angel O’Day in tow.

“Miss Lane, remember me — Angel O’Day?” asked the blonde private investigator. (*)

[(*) Editor’s note: See “There Shall Come a Gathering,” Showcase #100 (May, 1978).]

“How could I forget?” she said, smiling as she gave the other woman a hug. “If I’d actually seen ‘Kris Munroe’ earlier, I’d have known who you were immediately.”

“We know the gangsters are here for a meeting,” said Jimmy. “We even spotted Eric Windsor with them. Angel, here, searched his office while I distracted him on deck with some tricks.”

Angel nodded. “I hacked into his computer. He owes big money to the mob and is using this cruise to pay them back by providing them with a safe meeting spot on neutral ground outside of any of their territories back in Metropolis.”

“He must be behind the disappearance of Mark Compass,” said Lois.

“Let’s get out of here and plan our attack,” said Jimmy.

“You ain’t goin’ no place but a watery grave, punk!” sneered a bald thug as he and several gangsters pushed their way inside.

Angel kicked the thug full in the face and whirled around to slug a second crook. “Don’t mess with a Munroe!” she said.

“Angel, you aren’t really a Munroe!” said Sam as he grabbed two more thugs and knocked their heads together.

“Oh, right!” she laughed and kneed a thug below the belt.

Lois Lane rubbed her blonde wig in a thug’s face before flipping him over her shoulder with her martial arts skills. “Blondes do have more fun,” she said.

Angel ducked a grabbing crook and rolled between his legs to rise up and kick him flat. “Jimmy, can you call in Superman?” she asked.

Jimmy hit his watch, and a zee zee zee sound beyond the range of human hearing began. He punched a thug and said, “Watch Magi make your eyes disappear behind black swelled places!”

Sam bounded over their heads to drop down on two others. “I hope this is the last of them.”

Lois whipped off her spiked heel and slugged a gun out of the hand of a brown-bearded man. “I always knew high heels were bad for you,” she said, bringing her palm up into his neck and leaving him stunned on the floor.

Angel pulled a thug to her and shoved him to Sam. “This is a real, honest-to-goodness jungle ape. He could rip you apart. He could bite through your throat! Tell me what’s going on!” she demanded. Sam growled low and deep in his throat.

The thug gasped, “Okay, okay, just keep him away! We grabbed Captain Compass and stowed him in the storage area. We figured no one would look for him on his own ship. Eric is in debt. He owed some of us dough and promised us safety for a meeting.”

“I’ll go free the poor guy,” said Jimmy, hurrying away. “Superman must be in space or something, or he’d be here already. He always comes through otherwise.”

“‘Bite through his throat,’ Angel?” said Sam Simeon. “I’m a vegetarian!”

Angel O’Day shrugged her bare shoulders. “It was a bluff.”

Lois and Angel suddenly fell into each other’s arms as the boat rocked wildly. “We’re having bad weather. Rough sea, I guess,” said Lois.

Angel looked out the porthole and shrieked. “Really rough! We’re miles above the ocean!”

As the others looked out the porthole, they could see that the ship was indeed floating through the air high above the ocean. Lois and Angel and Sam gasped in disbelief as the Metropolis Queen was rising higher and higher in the sky.

“We’re being towed by a flying pirate ship!” said Angel as she leaned out the hole.

“It says something about the kind of life I lead that my response to that statement is — we’d better get to that ship fast!” said Lois.

“We could climb up with a grappling hook — like the one I just made from a bent iron rod and some rope,” said Sam.

“See?” Angel said teasingly to Lois. “Superman isn’t the only one with muscles.”

They raced onto the deck, where they saw several of the gangsters looking panicked. “The hoods are scared stiff!” said Angel. “They couldn’t have known this would happen.”

Sam Simeon spun his makeshift grappling hook around and around, then hurled it on the rail of the ship that loomed high above them and somehow towed the Metropolis Queen in the air. It finally caught on the third try, and Sam began climbing up the rope.

“Sam, come back!” Angel cried. “Take us with you!” Sam turned back and scooped the two women up under each arm and held them tightly while he scampered up the rope and over the rail.

“This is like something out of Captain Blood,” said Lois, and indeed the ship was a mixture of science fiction flying craft and seventeenth-century pirate ship.

“That device looks to be some type of localized anti-gravity field,” said a thoughtful Angel. “It must be what is causing the Metropolis Queen to fly.”

“How do you know that?” asked an impressed Lois.

“I read a lot,” replied the blonde in the bikini. Angel O’Day often downplayed her keen mind, letting people think she was just a dumb blonde.

“Arrr! Me fine beauties!” said a weird figure wearing a long purple coat and blue breeches. He wore an eyepatch and styled his long hair in curly ringlets.

“You’re Eric Windsor!” said Angel.

“Worse than that, I never connected the alias Eric Windsor with his true name or even his nom du crime,” replied Lois Lane.

The man laughed and fired a beam from his cutlass that slammed Sam Simeon across the deck with stunning force.

As Angel ran to her fallen friend’s side, Lois frowned and said, “He’s a super-villain called the Wind Pirate.”

The Wind Pirate bowed with a roguish grin. “At your service, me saucy wench!” He sneered at Lois and Angel and said, “I never intended to pay back those lubbers. I merely let them use me boat below for their summit and planned all along to sink the whole boatload of them with me flyin’ galleon! That way I owe no man a penny, and I get paid by the mob back in Metropolis called the 1000!”

Angel bent over Sam. “He’s still alive, but stunned.”

Lois thought desperately, If I switch off that machine, it will drop the boat. That could kill many people, in addition to the mob. If I do nothing, he’ll do it anyway. Superman must be busy, or he’d have arrived by now. Jimmy is still below on the Queen.

“I once fought Captain Comet, Aquman, and the Atom,” said the Wind Pirate, “and you ladies are much better looking!” (*)

[(*) Editor’s note: See “Ragnarok Night,” Super-Team Family #13 (October-November, 1977).]

“You rat!” Angel cried and rushed him in anger, dodging his cutlass and kicking it from his hand.

“Men, lock her in chains!” the Pirate ordered as the blonde struggled furiously.

Lois tried to help her, but the ship had a full crew, and she could made little headway against so many men.

***

Below, on the Metropolis Queen, Jimmy Olsen had located and freed Captain Mark Compass in the confusion of the floating ship.

“You saved me, son! Now let’s save the good Queen!” replied the gray-haired Captain Compass as they ran across the rolling deck.

“Superman must be in space,” said Jimmy as his watch echoed with no response in sight. Lois and the rest are missing, he thought. They might have boarded that weird flying ship that is towing us skyward.

Captain Compass and the loyal crew rounded up the remaining mobsters with ease, as their experience on a ship gave them a slight edge over the frightened mobsters.

Jimmy frowned. “How can I stop that pirate ship from killing us all?” He then smiled as an idea came to his active mind.

Running into the cabin, Jimmy pulled out a small but heavy mechanism. “Agent Double Five flies again!” he said as he shot into the air and soared high with a jet pack that he’d thought to bring along in case he and Lois needed to make a quick escape from the ship. Bless good old Professor Potter, he thought. He once made me the best James Bond wanna-be in Metropolis. (*)

[(*) Editor’s note: See “The Man From S.C.A.R.,” Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #92 (April, 1966).]

On his flying jetpack, Jimmy soared high above the pirate ship and spotted Lois and Angel fighting the crew while a man dressed as an old pirate cackled.

“That’s the Wind Pirate! Hey, he’s also Ed Windsor!” said Jimmy. Swooping down, he tackled the Pirate from behind and carried him off the ship. “Order them to safely lower the Queen, or else I’ll drop you from high above both ships!” he bluffed. “I’ll do it, since lives hang in the balance. I’m not Superman, and I don’t have to stick to any code of conduct!”

“You mad punk!” said a struggling Wind Pirate. “If you drop me from here, then I’ll die in Davy Jones’ Locker!”

“I don’t care if you die in Peter Tork’s Dinette, you’d better do as I say! Lower the Queen safely!” ordered Jimmy as he executed a wild circle in the air.

Lois and Angel cheered as the Wind Pirate’s men obeyed just long enough for them to break free. “Kill the ladies if Olsen fails to put me down!” shouted the sneering Pirate.

Angel kicked the nearest thug and said, “Don’t listen to him!”

Lois shoved her way toward the device that held the Metropolis Queen aloft. She hit a switch and gasped as the Queen dropped abruptly. “Oh, no! I thought it would just lower the ship!”

The Wind Pirate laughed. “Ah! You didn’t know this old salt booby-trapped the controls!”

Suddenly, Superman soared into sight and caught the Queen, easing it down safely. He then streaked upward to force down the flying pirate ship alongside it.

“Sorry I was so slow, Jim. I had things to do back home,” Superman said, smiling.

Jimmy released the Wind Pirate when they were a few feet above the captured ship. “Looks like you’re going back to the brig!” he said triumphantly.

***

After the Wind Pirate, his crew, and all the mobsters had been rounded up, and Superman had flown both ships back into waters where he could legally lock them up, the two Daily Planet reporters congratulated Angel and the ape on helping them solve the case of the missing Mark Compass.

“You two really came through. For a spoiled heiress, you’re swell!” said a smiling Jimmy Olsen.

“Thanks. For a bad magician and his trashy helper, you’re tops, too!” said Angel O’Day, grinning as Sam Simeon nodded in agreement

Lois Lane looked dismayed. “I hope she was joking!”

Jimmy elbowed her and said, “I’m sure she was. I’m not really a bad magician!”

The End

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