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Okay, so I whetted your interest in Captain Desmo. Time for the full infodump...
Desmo is a soldier of fortune in the sky. When the comic starts, he's in Mongolia fighting bandits on behalf of the Chinese Army. Other stories take place in India, the Middle East and North Africa. (In the scant material I've seen, it isn't clear whether Desmo is his real name, or merely an alias. But consider this: "desmo" means "bat" and this is a DC title! Read into that what you will.)
Soon into his travels, he meets up with the Brooklyn-born street fighter Gabby McGuire, who becomes Desmo's partner. The two wind up being each other's trouble magnet and often one has to rescue or fight for the other. Desmo's reputation in the underworld is likely very high as once in a while a gang (air pirates, mobsters, assassins, bandits) would come gunning for them. Gabby, for his crude "street" social manners, is a relatively dapper dresser--habitually in a blazer with matching slacks and wearing a neat bowler hat. Whereas Desmo usually wears a blue dungaree shirt, brown riding jodhpurs and suspenders, chukka boots and a white aviator's helm with a black star sigil (whose significance I've yet to see explained as well). He even wears the helmet (goggles over his eyes) when he's nowhere near any plane. It took some difficult searching to find a story where he doesn't have his headgear on and I could see his hair (it's medium brown and curly).
To put Captain Desmo's qualities into perspective for the gamer crowd:
* He must know a wide variety of foreign languages (Chinese, French and Arabic as givens, and probably Hindi and several other Asian tongues).
* He's very tough physically, and well-conditioned from the combination of military training and experience. He can handle the high-G maneuvers of dogfighting as well as rough-and-tumble fisticuffs in the dark alleys.
* He has situational awareness approaching the supernatural (many comics aviator heroes do).
* He's a crack shot, not only with the guns on an aircraft, but with a healthy variety of small arms. It's very probable that he has exceptional natural eyesight.
* He has the instincts of a detective, especially when it comes to understanding the criminal mind and the methods of underworld organizations.
* Being an ace pilot, he can operate several types of aircraft. His most frequent type was a Seversky amphibious airplane (The Ship of Adventure), but this machine was being replaced at about the time the series concluded.
* Desmo has a better-than-average pool of resources than usual for a freelance adventurer. Not only does he seem to have ample fuel and maintenance support for his planes, he doesn't have much trouble getting relatively new equipment either when he needs to. But since his clients have included governments as well as heiresses and movie studios, it really isn't that much of a mystery.
* * *
My parents' church had their annual thrift sale overday. Mum donated a bunch of quilting instructional books, mostly redundant ones she had inherited from a neighbor. They got me two long-sleeved shirts and a rain jacket. My sister and my niece will receive a bounty of clothes.
FP
Desmo is a soldier of fortune in the sky. When the comic starts, he's in Mongolia fighting bandits on behalf of the Chinese Army. Other stories take place in India, the Middle East and North Africa. (In the scant material I've seen, it isn't clear whether Desmo is his real name, or merely an alias. But consider this: "desmo" means "bat" and this is a DC title! Read into that what you will.)
Soon into his travels, he meets up with the Brooklyn-born street fighter Gabby McGuire, who becomes Desmo's partner. The two wind up being each other's trouble magnet and often one has to rescue or fight for the other. Desmo's reputation in the underworld is likely very high as once in a while a gang (air pirates, mobsters, assassins, bandits) would come gunning for them. Gabby, for his crude "street" social manners, is a relatively dapper dresser--habitually in a blazer with matching slacks and wearing a neat bowler hat. Whereas Desmo usually wears a blue dungaree shirt, brown riding jodhpurs and suspenders, chukka boots and a white aviator's helm with a black star sigil (whose significance I've yet to see explained as well). He even wears the helmet (goggles over his eyes) when he's nowhere near any plane. It took some difficult searching to find a story where he doesn't have his headgear on and I could see his hair (it's medium brown and curly).
To put Captain Desmo's qualities into perspective for the gamer crowd:
* He must know a wide variety of foreign languages (Chinese, French and Arabic as givens, and probably Hindi and several other Asian tongues).
* He's very tough physically, and well-conditioned from the combination of military training and experience. He can handle the high-G maneuvers of dogfighting as well as rough-and-tumble fisticuffs in the dark alleys.
* He has situational awareness approaching the supernatural (many comics aviator heroes do).
* He's a crack shot, not only with the guns on an aircraft, but with a healthy variety of small arms. It's very probable that he has exceptional natural eyesight.
* He has the instincts of a detective, especially when it comes to understanding the criminal mind and the methods of underworld organizations.
* Being an ace pilot, he can operate several types of aircraft. His most frequent type was a Seversky amphibious airplane (The Ship of Adventure), but this machine was being replaced at about the time the series concluded.
* Desmo has a better-than-average pool of resources than usual for a freelance adventurer. Not only does he seem to have ample fuel and maintenance support for his planes, he doesn't have much trouble getting relatively new equipment either when he needs to. But since his clients have included governments as well as heiresses and movie studios, it really isn't that much of a mystery.
* * *
My parents' church had their annual thrift sale overday. Mum donated a bunch of quilting instructional books, mostly redundant ones she had inherited from a neighbor. They got me two long-sleeved shirts and a rain jacket. My sister and my niece will receive a bounty of clothes.
FP
