Miss Fury #1 (1942)

Rich socialite Marla Drake is getting ready for a costume party when she gets a phone call telling her that one of her rivals is showing up at the party in the same costume. She rips it apart in anger, and resigns from going to the party. Marla's maid Francine then suggests that she wear the leopard skin suit that her uncle had brought back from Africa. Marla dreads the costume and decides to wear it anyway. While driving to the party she hears a radio report about escaped convict Killer Dawson. As coincidence would have it, she would come across a car stalled in the road. When the driver tries to get her out of the car by gun point Marla defends herself, knocking the man's gun out of his hands and knocking his head on the bumper of the car. She soon realizes that he is really Detective Carey, and he had just captured Killer Dawson. Dawson thanks Marla for helping him escape, when he tries to get away in her car she slams on the breaks knocking him out. She then handcuffs the crook to the officer and gets them medical help. While she manages to get away and swear her doorman Cappy and Francine quiet about her costume, the gossip column talks about the "Black Fury" who attacked both Detective Carey and Killer Dawson that the police are mum about. Soon Marla decides to aid her friend Grace Dana to get back blackmail papers from local con man Miguel Rico. Donning her leopard skin costume, Marla breaks into Rico's home and crosses paths with Rico and his other victim, the vengeful Nazi spy Baroness von Kampf who shoots Rico and leaves Marla to take the rap. Fleeing the scene, Marla coincidentally ends up on the penthouse balcony of Baroness von Kampf. She stashes her costume in the flower pot and steals some clothes but is caught on her way out by both the Baroness and her partner Bruno Beitz but manages to escape. When the papers put a bulletin out that "Black Fury" is wanted in connection to the wounding of Rico, Marla decides that she must get her costume back before the woman in the other apartment finds it. She sends Cappy to the house with her cat Peri Purr and he lets the cat loose as an excuse to be on von Kampf's balcony. Unfortunately, Bruno had brought guard dogs. Seeing an opportunity with the cat, Bruno snatches the feline and makes it look like the dogs had killed the cat, and sends Cappy away. For their next mission to assassinate South American ambassador Felipe Santos, Bruno plans to plant a bomb on the cat. When the cat is sent close to Santos when he gets off the plane, the pet is recognized by its owner Marla, who happens to be meeting up with her boyfriend Gary Hale. They call the cat back and Gary finds the bomb and not knowing what it is tosses it out into the street. It blows up between cars, apparently killing Bruno as he attempted to flee the scene. Shortly after the Baroness is visited by Detective Carey as she is leaving town and knocks the officer out before leaving. The following day Gary proposes to Marla and she accepts. That night, someone in the leopard skin costume pays a visit to elderly inventor John Novak. Novak (real name Jan Novakowski) had invented a new compound called Acrothorium that could make metal crumble to dust. The imposter had come to take it and after explaining all they knew to Novak they suffocate him with a pillow. Then they opens the secret panel in the floor to steal the plans and samples of the formula but find it empty. They suspect Novak's nurse and go after her. In doing so she steals Gary Hale's car and races off. As fate would have it, when the nurse noticed that someone was after her and heard the connection between Gary's car being stolen and the murder of her elderly client she paid a frantic visit to Marla's home. They go over the contents of the bag and cannot read the notes because they are in another language. They are soon visited by a man claiming to be Novak's nephew who demands the briefcase. A struggle ensues and the bag is tossed out a window. As the man rushes down to get it on the ground Marla shouts down to Cappy and has him hide it, although the bag rips and the vials leak out, one breaking open and obliterating all the metal of a taxi cab. Deciding that the best way to catch her impostor and figure out what's going on, Marla has Francine make a new costume out of satin and then poses as the nurse. This leads to a clash between Marla and her impostor with the police out trying to capture "Black Fury" for the crimes she has been accused of. This story is continued next issue...