Johnny Peril (Earth-2)
Johnny Peril is a master adventurer, writer, lecturer, and world traveler who has worked as a reporter and a soldier. Peril had an uncanny knack for finding adventure, even when he was trying to avoid it. He was a handsome athletic man with hair that was usually blonde but occasionally red. [“Nobody At All,” Comic Cavalcade #19].
Little is known about Johnny Peril's past, but he worked as a reporter for a newspaper in New York City before enlisting in the United States Army Air Force sometime before the United States joined World War II. Since he was already an accomplished pilot, he went through officer training and had accomplished the rank of lieutenant by the end of 1941. He fought in the Pacific Theater of War during World War II.
In December, 1941, Lt. Peril and his co-pilot, Lt. Philip Camp, were flying on a mission over Burma when they were shot down by the Japanese and forced to bail out. They landed near a base called Jump Out, which was commanded by the reviled Capt. Guy Follette and whose mission was to raid the Japanese lines and reopen the Burma Road. The stranded Peril and Camp joined the men at the base, and on December 30, 1941, they volunteered along with 18 other men for a mission to destroy the Japanese installations and munitions plants at Taran Bu. Returning to Jump Out by New Year's Day, 1942, they learned that Capt. Follette had stayed behind and sacrificed his life to save those of his men. [“A Very Honorable Guy,” Comic Cavalcade #23]
Later in the war, Peril's tour of duty in the U.S. Army Air Force ended, and he enlisted in the U.S. Navy. Peril became the captain of an LST called the 1102 that was nicknamed the Lovely Lady, with a first officer named Lawford. While en route from Truk Island to Leyte in the Philippines, the Lucky Lady was surprised to encounter a U-7 German submarine there in the Pacific. The U-boat managed to land a hit on the Lucky Lady as it was escaping, and Peril was able to navigate the crippled LST through a typhoon long enough to evade the U-boat and land at Leyte a week later. [“The Lovely Lady,” Comic Cavalcade #29]
In 1945, after the end of World War II, Johnny Peril returned to his job as a newspaper reporter in New York City. He soon made a reputation for himself as a reporter who specialized in weird stories.
In 1946, under unknown circumstances Johnny Peril became wanted for a murder he didn't commit. While wandering the countryside, he came across a little girl named Joan Fleming who had run away from her mean uncle and aunt, who as her guardians made her a virtual slave. Calling himself Mister Nobody, Peril fed her and gave her a place to sleep until he could figure out how to help her. After Joan helped an old woman cross the street, the old woman granted Joan three wishes and claimed Peril's trouble would soon pass. Peril worked hard to ensure that Joan's first two wishes were granted but was then arrested by the police. After the real murderer confessed to the crime he was held for, the now-free Johnny Peril tracked down Joan's uncle and learned that Joan was being held illegally because she stood to inherit a fortune. Peril granted Joan's third wish when he brought her back to her real parents. Johnny Peril then returned to his life of a reporter. [“Nobody At All,” Comic Cavalcade #19]
In 1947, Johnny Peril interviewed Prof. Kendle, a scientist working on an atomically powered rocket ship who claimed that he was visited in the night by an alien presence who forced him to fly with him to the Moon. There he crash-landed and was forced to leave radar messages in Morse code in a futile effort to get help from Earth, but he finally opted to cause his ship to explode rather than wait for death. He then awoke, realizing it was a dream. The next day, Kendle went missing along with his rocket ship, and radar signals began reaching the Earth, apparently from Kendle. Johnny Peril broke the story, and the public began sending money to the United Science Foundation to mount an effort to save the stranded Kendle. After some months, the radar messages from Kendle ceased, and a mysterious explosion on the Moon was observed. Kendle began to be forgotten. Wondering what became of all the funds raised, Peril investigated the United Science Foundation and soon discovered that Kendle was alive and on Earth. Furthermore, Kendle had hoaxed the entire world into believing he had actually gone to the Moon and had kept all the money raised to save him. Fleeing from Johnny Peril, Kendle took off in his atomically powered rocket ship but soon died when it exploded in the upper atmosphere. [“Clear Into Eternity,” Comic Cavalcade #24]
By 1948, Johnny Peril had a friend named Prof. Rome and was driving to visit him in southern Utah when he met a strangely dressed man named Lewis. The man claimed that, after crossing a bridge he had passed through a doorway into time that had transported him to the city of Shan in ancient Egypt. There he met Terah, the queen of Shan, and became her personal guard and captain of the host after proving himself in battle. He fell in love with Terah but also desired the priceless rubies that were the eyes of the sacred idol of the god Kloss. One night he fled with the rubies, taking Terah with him, and went back through the doorway into time. Unfortunately, once they were back in his own time, Lewis watched helplessly as Terah rapidly aged, died, and turned into dust as old as ancient Egypt. Johnny Peril and Prof. Rome used the rubies to pay for a sanitarium for the crazed Lewis and went to find the doorway themselves. All they found were two broken prongs that might have been the bridge and two stunted pillars that could have been the doorway into time. But Rome also found a portrait of a woman that could have been Queen Terah of Shan. [“Doorway into Time,” Comic Cavalcade #26]
Soon afterward, Johnny Peril began taking on more and more foreign assignments. He flew his own plane to Poliva in South America to cover the attempted revolution there but arrived after it was all over, instead having an adventure that may or may not have happened on an island of six-inch-tall people. [“The Island of Little People,” Comic Cavalcade #27] Peril then traveled to Western Africa to cover an uprising at Fort Louis in Senegal, where he helped the French Foreign Legion Maj. Benet find and rescue his daughter Susan, who was kidnapped by Hassin the Hassan and his brigands. [“Kismet,” All-Star Comics #42] Remaining in Africa, he investigated what happened to the Linfield Expedition led by Dr. Linfield and his daughter Kathy, defeating a man named Flack who posed as a Spanish Conquistador and helping Linfield retrieve the treasure of Sebastian Diaz that was lost in 1519. [“The Treasure of Diaz,” Comic Cavalcade #28] He also discovered what happened to his old LST, the Lucky Lady, when he was sent to Trinidad to investigate reports of a World War II-era German submarine attacking ships off the coast of Venezuela, and he was reunited with his old first officer, Lawford. Together, they found that a German war criminal named Von Luger, who captured them, was using the LST as a cargo ship while hiding his submarine in a cavern between raids. Escaping from Von Luger, Peril and Lawford took command of the Lucky Lady and fought the U-7 a second time, this time destroying both the U-7 and the Lucky Lady before the two fled in a life raft. [“The Lovely Lady,” Comic Cavalcade #29]
In 1949, Johnny Peril's weird adventures became even weirder, while Prof. Rome became his constant traveling companion. While covering a story on the crash of a huge meteor somewhere east of Borneo in the Java Sea, Peril and Rome met a giant human-like alien with red hair and a beard who claimed to be from the planet Nomed, whose people planned to strip-mine Earth for its minerals and enslave the human race. Peril and Rome worked together to defeat the giant alien, managing to destroy it and the island it used as its base by exploding the power tube for its rocket ship. [“Colossus,” All-Star Comics #46] Peril and Rome traveled to a remote place in the jungles of Africa to investigate rumors of a tiny planet revolving feet above the ground. There, they discovered that a small, basketball-sized planet existed with a strange shrinking field surrounding it that shrank any people or objects approaching it. Johnny Peril was thrown toward the planet, shrinking to the size of an inhabitant, and helped the Princess Shera on the little planet to escape by leaping off a mist-enshrouded cliff called the End of the World, which turned out to be the only exit from the planet to Earth. When they leaped over the cliff, they leaped off the planet and grew to normal size. After freeing both Peril and Rome from the tribe that worshipped her, Shera jumped back onto the tiny planet. [“The Littlest Planet,” All-Star Comics #48] In northwestern Tibet, Peril and Rome traveled to meet Dr. Verne Borglan, who had not granted an interview in ten years. Borglan had discovered frozen in the ice a tall, blonde, prehistoric woman with tremendous strength and soon found a way to bring her back to life, terrifying and enraging the Tibetans by her behavior. An angry mob led by the Dalai Lama went after Borglan and Gina his ice woman, and the two fled to the mountain of Korakorum, where Gina tried to crush the mob by throwing boulders at them, but Borglan and Gina were instead pulled into a deep crevasse through an avalanche. [“The Ice Queen,” All-Star Comics #51]
In 1950, Johnny Peril's newspaper was purchased by World-Wide News, published by Gallagher. Peril and Prof. Rome were invited by the fugitive Dr. Gordon Star to witness his voyage through time, watching a screen that showed Star traveling first to the year 2050 A.D., then the years 5000 A.D., 25,000 A.D., 50,000 A.D., and 100,000 A.D., and witnessing the rise and fall of civilization through the centuries. Star attempted to go back to the year 2050 to remain but found he could only keep going forward many millions of years in the future. Finally, as Star continued to travel forward in time, he went all the way to the end of time and reached the beginning of time once more, all the while starving for lack of food. His time machine kept traveling all the way forward through time until he reached the year 1950 once more, where it stopped and Peril and Rome discovered Star's lifeless body. [“The Last Man on Earth,” All-Star Comics #52] World-Wide News publisher Gallagher made Johnny Peril a foreign correspondent at this time, pulling him off all local assignments. Returning from an assignment in Japan on a sea vessel on the Pacific Ocean, Johnny Peril met a shipwrecked man named Phil Talbot who claimed that he had visited Aquaterra (a colony of Atlantis in the Pacific Ocean), after his ship was wrecked. There he met a girl named Althea and fell in love, and he was given the temporary ability to breathe water. An Aquaterran named Carmo, who was jealous of his love for Althea, sent Talbot back to the surface to die, where he was rescued. [“The Girl from Aquaterra,” All-Star Comics #56] While visiting his old friend Prof. Michaels in Arizona, Johnny Peril and Michaels met a woman named Ralee who transported herself from Mars to Earth via the Projectoviso beam to seek Michaels' help. Donning transparent fibroid suits enabling them to survive Mars' atmosphere, Peril and Michaels returned with Ralee to Mars. There they helped the few native Martians left to overcome the hostile warriors of the Seegan, an alien species that wanted to conquer Mars, before returning to Earth. [“The Lady of Mars,” All-Star Comics #57]
In 1951, while working in Rio de Janeiro, Johnny Peril quit his job as a foreign correspondent for World-Wide News, frustrated with his recent dangerous assignments in Berlin, Romania, and the Sahara Desert. Attempting to avoid excitement, mystery, and intrigue, Peril instead found himself in an adventure involving the mysterious Oro Ciudad, or City of Gold, when his old hunting buddy Gen. Hernandez was shot down, and Dr. Kurai was murdered. Investigating Oro Ciudad with a taxi driver named Carlota, Peril uncovered a spy ring attempting to kill the Allied military staff. He returned to the local World-Wide News office and hired Carlota as his a new secretary. [“Rendezvous in Rio,” Danger Trail #5] Later that year, Peril traveled to Asia to interview Lee Allen, whom he finally tracked down on Mt. Subara. Before dying, Allen claimed that he had met the spirit of the mountain in the form of a woman named Subara. Johnny Peril climbed the mountain to meet Subara and, despite the disbelief of his friends, said that he saw her and she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. [“Queen of the Snows,” Sensation Comics #107]
Having gained fame for his adventures, by 1952 Johnny Peril had again quit his job as a foreign correspondent and become a full-time adventurer, writing about and lecturing on his travels around the world. When Donna Rome, Prof. Rome's daughter, sought Johnny Peril's help to rescue her father, Peril and Donna traveled to the Lost Caverns of Kentucky where they discovered a species of giant-sized king moths and rescued Prof. Rome from them. [“I Was King of the Moths,” Sensation Comics #108] While visiting Twin Lake, Johnny Peril tried to rescue a fisherman wearing diving gear but failed when the fisherman was pulled down by what he thought was a sudden strong current, and he barely managed to escape himself. Recuperating at the Twin Lake ski lodge on Teton Mountain, Peril was visited in his room by a ten-foot-long, caterpillar-like purple creature with a humanoid face. Having barely managed to escape it with the help of a red-haired woman named Mary Owen, Peril learned that all the other residents had been killed by the creature and guessed it was the thing responsible for killing the fisherman. More of the creatures now pursued Peril and Mary, who fled from them and lured them into a trap, killing them with explosives. [“The Horror in the Lake,” Sensation Mystery #110] Befriending Mary and her father, Prof. James Owen, Peril later became a witness when Prof. Owen's assistant, sound engineer Bryan Anson, murdered Owen, and Peril's testimony helped convict Anson. After Anson escaped from prison, he attempted to exact revenge through an elaborate sound-based scheme against both Peril and Mary but was instead killed by his own folly. [“The Screaming Death,” Sensation Mystery #111]
In 1953, Johnny Peril had his last known adventure accompanied by actress Jill Florian. While searching for a toy for Jill's nephew in the Magnus Department Store, Peril and Jill became so engrossed by the toys that they accidentally stayed well past closing hours. They then found themselves attacked by what seemed to be large toys in the shape of a hangman and several toy soldiers, and they witnessed a jewelry guard murdered by one before they escaped. At the Adventurers' Club, Peril's story was disbelieved by a club member named Vanders, but the newspapers ran the story. Vanders returned to the store to grab the jewels where he had stashed them during the robbery, and Peril confessed that he had made up the story about the giant toys in order to lure Vanders back to the scene of the crime. During the battle, Vanders was ironically killed by the bayonet of a large model of a toy soldier. [“The Toy Assassins,” Sensation Mystery #116]
In 1968, on the parallel world known as Earth-1, the counterpart of the Johnny Peril of Earth-2 began having adventures. It is not known what became of the Earth-2 Johnny Peril after his last adventure in 1953.