Ripples Through Time - 055

I'm reading every Aquaman solo adventure in publication order, one per day. After I read each story I'm going to post the cover/splash page and a few thoughts on the story.

Adventure #122 (November 1947) - Operation Justice!

Navy officials learn of a man on Bikini atoll just before the July 1946 test, but Aquaman explains who the man is and why he was there.

Nice splash page, with Aquaman drawn on the missile (no, he doesn't ride a missile again). There's also a nice little... um... current events lesson. No, I wouldn't call it history at the time it was written. The Bikini tests would be only a year old when the story was written.

Nice little set-up in this one. Aquaman runs into a mystery on a cruise liner when a strange man who always wears a life preserver is accused of stealing salt. At the same time some jewels are stolen. Aquaman puts the facts together and figures out the crime and the method, and captures the bad guy, Dune, and his hired thugs (comparing himself to Batman in the process).

Dune escapes, though, and that's where Bikini comes in. Because the thief escapes by murdering a guard, Aquaman declares the death of the man on Bikini to be an execution and urges the Navy officials to not spoil their safety record over his death. There are a couple of problems with this, not the least of which is that the Navy apparently let a raft with a living human on it drift into a severely restricted zone. That should spoil their safety record.

Finny Friends Report: No help in this one.

Captured/Knocked Out report: Not in this tale.

Quotefile: Dune, "That noise - a plane circling - it's dropping something! Oh... those ships... that plane! Now I know where I am!"

Have you read this story? What do you think?