The Primus Reports #3

The third issue of Charlton's Primus features a very dynamic photo cover of Robert Brown as Carter Primus. Again in this issue we have Sal Gentile as the editor, Joe Gill as the scripter, and Joe Staton as the artist. And this time the art does look more like pure unadulterated Staton, though I still detect the hand of some assistance, especially in the first story.

The first story is titled "The Deadly Pay-Off" and in it we encounter for the first time, the Orca -- the sophisticated floating laboratory of Carter Primus. The story begins as Primus and his assistant Toni are under attack by two masked men and one knocks Primus out. He and Toni take the Orca out at high speed in pursuit and encounter the giant yacht of Paul Kadopolis the richest Greek in the world. They immediately come under attack by a large gun and they leave. It's soon revealed that Kadopolis wants to take possession of a Primus invention, the Triple D Unit which will allow the oil magnate to find oil in the Lake Zeno and his time for finding that oil is dwindling so he's desperate. He's offered to buy it from Primus but was refused and now he wants no matter how. The next day a helicopter appears and while Primus is below the sea they kidnap Toni. Primus agrees to help Kadopolis and the Orca is airlifted to Lake Zeno and Primus is put in a cell while Toni pretends to make friends with Kadopolis. Primus takes his equipment down to find the oil but tricks Kadopolis and his henchmen with a radio trick and gets the drop on them, saving Toni and pitching Kadopolis overboard. The authorities agree to help Primus return the Orca to Florida. The text piece is another The Human Fish story.

This one is title "Mini-Sub Missing" and Professor John Wilmore, a man with both gills and lungs is called upon to find two missing men trapped beneath the sea in a mini-sub. He spends many hours looking but at last is able to locate them and they are saved with only hours of air remaining. His date is impressed.

The second and last Primus story is titled "In to the Darkness" and it finds Primus at the ballet enjoying the talent of defected Soviet ballerina Irina Lukhov. He stops an assassin from shooting her but is himself taken down by her tardy bodyguards. U.S agent Folson apologizes but then only minutes later in a car he and others reveal themselves as double agents and kidnap both Primus and Lukhov and take then across the Brandenburg Gate into Russian territory. He is put in a cell but escapes and after much gunplay he and Irina are able to escape by using a canal that takes them across the border again, as Primus cleverly uses his shirt as a decoy. Later Irina is very appreciative. And that's yet another issue of Primus. With this issue we get the Orca, another bit of Primus lore revealed. And there is a real trend developing with Primus standing up to both venile capitalists and communists.

More next time.

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