Cheeky Future Archeologist

Namor creator Bill Everett started his comics career when he dreamed up the strange space hero known as Skyrocket Steele for Centaur Publication's Amazing Mystery Funnies. He also came up with an even stranger space hero in Issue #3, Dirk the Demon. The young lad dresses more like a cheeky young lass instead of a boy with an unbuttoned tunic showing off his chest and a very short pair of short shorts that makes a certain Boy Wonder's wardrobe look less questionable. Billed as being an archeologist from the 24th Century, Dirk lives in a castle way in the future with his father Baron Cay, so he's already of noble blood, but why he's called The Demon is never brought up, other than it just sounded cooler than Hon Dirk. The story opens up in Dirk's castle with his trio of shirtless pals who act as his tight team planning an excavation by stealing his papa's hydroplane, which is probably just a trendy future term for an airplane. The team jacks the airship and heads out to a cave where they begin digging. They uncover a pistol dating back to 1937 while one of Dirk's team falls through a lower level in the cave. They locate another chamber filled with boxes of gold hoarded by a batty old man who shoots at Dirk and his boys, and the poor kook gets stabbed to death for his troubles. Dirk's dad shows up as they learn that the chamber with the gold in it had been preserved for over five centuries like a big box of Tupperware, so when Dirk and his crew broke through the seal it made the greedy Rip Van Winkle wake up and not want to share any of his treasure with some lousy grave robbing archeologists. The spoiled little brat didn't have things good enough, now he had broken into a crazy man's deep freeze, killed him, and taken his gold. Dirk was at least willing to share the treasure with his friends, even though he didn't know how long it would last, which makes you wonder what the value of gold is in the time of Buck Rogers. This presumptuous tomb raider is nothing but a rich boy who gets even richer from making a single exhumation. Scrooge McDuck practically made a career out of doing that, but he didn't intentionally kill anyone to obtain his vast fortune.

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