THE unstoppable Donald E. Keyhoe had a story in a majority of the issue of Flying Aces from his first in January 1930 until he returned to the Navy in 1942. Starting in August 1931, they were stories featuring the weird World War I stories of Philip Strange. But in November 1936, he began alternating these with sometime equally weird present day tales of espionage Ace Richard Knight—code name Agent Q. After an accident in the Great War, Knight developed the uncanny ability to see in the dark. Aided by his skirt-chasing partner Larry Doyle, Knights adventures ranged from your basic between the wars espionage to lost valley civilizations and dinosaurs. Knight is sent to Spain to get the American military men out of the Spanish Cival War, only to find the mysterious Four Faces—a criminal cabal that seek to control all crime on the earth—trying to turn La Guerra Civil into another World War with America taking all the blame!

Above those barrage – battered buildings of Madrid, vengeful Heinkels had hemmed in a lone flyer, were pouncing in for the kill. Fascinated, Richard Knight stared up at that grim drama, saw the doomed airman cast from his lead-flailed cockpit an oddly-fashioned chest bound to the chute that would have saved him. But when Richard Knight pried the lid from that strange box, he halted, transfixed. Inside was naught but a yellowed human skull! Why had a man given his life for this?

• Download “Falcons from Nowhere” (July 1937, Flying Aces)