The Torch and his flaming partner Toro get to play a part akin to Eisner's "The Spirit," in that the two heroes play a rather minimal role in someone else's story. For some reason, the crusaders pay crime-writer Ted Sparks a visit, and find that he's left a weird note on his door about blood being all over the floors. Apparently the note was just the writer's way of getting the heroes in the door with a modicum of suspense, for Sparks is present in his apartment, using a fishing-pole to haul in his mail and rambling about "a beautiful woman's blood." Then this bookish, bespectacled fellow starts talking about how he thinks he's been thrown over by Peggy, "the woman who captured my gentle heart," because he committed the sin of asking her to darn his socks. Somehow, Sparks turns his rage against Peggy onto himself in a classic statement of negative compensation: "What she needs is a brute! A powerful, ruthless and clever brute is the only kind of man a woman should have!"
Though on page two Sparks said that he "can't write" because of his mental turmoil, his rant inspires him to try putting his "masterful brute of crime fiction on paper." The heroes leave, remarking on his "negative inspiration" and considering the possibility of seeking out Peggy, since they've nothing better to do but play Miss Lonelyhearts. An hour passes, and the irate writer falls asleep, apparently conjuring "civilization's most ruthless male," a handsome, semi-clad figure who takes the devilish name of "Mephisto." This Mephisto proceeds to act on Sparks' submerged desires by conquering the heart of a society beauty attending some sort of charity benefit. The Torch and Toro happen to be there, but Mephisto douses both of them with water. However, the handsome "brute" meets defeat anyway, for the society-woman, though initially thrilled by Mephisto's caveman approach, spurns him for not being in the social register.
Nothing daunted, the would-be seducer dashes off to the opera, where he comes on two separate hotties. One repulses him because he sings like a foghorn, and another one refuses him because he admits to being penniless. Then the Torch and Toro show up and encircle Mephisto with flames-- at which point it's revealed that Mephisto never existed except in Ted Sparks' dream-- which ends when he realizes that his sleeve has caught fire from a nearby candle.
To cap things off, the Torch and Toro return with Peggy in tow. Peggy reveals that the only reason she didn't have time for Sparks was because she realized that his old socks weren't worth darning, and that she proceeded to knit him some new ones. Sparks is deeply impressed with her feminine devotion and contrasts this with his own male aggression: "She knits while I kill and kidnap!" The tale ends on a comfy reconciliation, though it's rather different from dozens of other comic-book tales in which men who doubt their manhood get to prove themselves. Instead, "Design" shows a neurotic crime-story writer becomes tortured by his lack of masculinity, and by story's end he never really proves anything. Indeed, given that even in his imagination fantasy-women won't yield to him, it seems possible that Peggy's submissive nature may just be a matter of her "stooping to conquer." So, even if Sparks does keep his devilish imagination under control, he may find that she has her own "designs" about who'll wear the pants in the family.
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