The Solution To NYC's Subway Crisis?

So, the Hate-Monger [SPOILER ALERT: He's Hitler!!] has to haul ass from New York City to the totally-not-made-up South American republic of San Gusto.

You or I, we might book a flight, hire a plane. But Hate-Monger doesn't do anything small scale!

Now, I've gotta be honest--even as a wee tyke reading a reprint of this story, that bit didn't make a lick sense to me.

Sure, you can call it "reverse rocket thrust" all you want, but that doesn't make it so. And if your rocket is blasting south to dig the tunnel, it must be simultaneously be pushing the rocket itself backwards, or north, at the same time. And even if you somehow held the rocket in place while you were boring, you'd have to bore-stop-move-bore-stop-move ad infinitum for what would have to take weeks, if not months. (And I did paste all of the panels here--there is no indication of any mechanism for forward propulsion.)

Plus, if you had "suspected as much," Hate-Monger, maybe you should have the tunnel pre-dug?

Throw in the one-hour disembarkation time, and you and your thugs would have been better off hijacking a plane, or even walking down there.

Still this does mean that, under part of Manhattan at least, there's a sizable tunnel just waiting to be used--no need to wait for Elon Musk to do it for you!

From Fantastic Four #21 (1963)