Just look at all these guys.
Power-Man:
Power-Man, aka Rip Regan, private detective or possibly just nosy guy, gets his powers in one of the classic ways: his friend Dr Austin gives him a special suit. It’s the simplest of origins and also one that puts a lot of weight on Austin’s assessment of Regan’s character.
The Power-Man suit is one of the more hand-wavy bits of comic book super-science I have encountered, when you get down to it. Billed as chemically-treated metal woven into cloth, the suit simultaneously makes the wearer light enough to perform superhuman feats of jumping, grants super strength, provides total protection against penetrating weapons like bullets and knives but also crushing damage from a collapsing building and also somehow protects the wearer’s head despite it not being covered. It truly is a miracle of science. (Fight Comics 003, 1940)
Mantoka, Maker of Indian Magic:
Mantoka is a comic book magic user, with all of the nigh-omnipotent power that that entails: manipulating the elements, transforming humans to animals, giving himself superhuman attributes like flight, intangibility, size control, etc. It is slightly unclear if he receives his powers from being bitten by a magic snake or if the snakebite is merely a part of a ritual to transfer his father’s powers to him. Either way, it’s an extremely radical and cool as hell way to become a magic man.
I keep wanting to give the Mantoka strip credit for being a not-racist comic starring a Native American character but then I look at it again and it is in fact built on racist tropes. After a few cycles of this I realized that I was thinking this way because it doesn’t go out of its way to be extra racist – the characters are being portrayed at about the racism level of a comical Cockney or a Chinese American c. 1943. Still not great but not as bad as it could be*. (Funny Pages v4 001, 1940)
*only one out of three Mantoka adventures is actually easily available, so all of this applies to that comic only.
the Owl:
The Owl is a man named Jack (no surname given) who is on a quest for revenge against the gangsters who cost his father his legs and by extension against crime in general. To that end, the never-named father has invented an owl-themed flying suit capable of speed of up to 200 mph. Also, he invented himself what I can only describe as the most unstable looking motorized wheelchair I have ever seen.
The Owl and his dad live in a swamp near an unnamed city in the Southern US, and Jack spends his days working at a library under an assumed name and sweeps up any dirt that falls off of anyone’s shoes so that he can take it home to be analyzed in their swamp shack/laboratory. Presumably this is part of some sort of organized plan relating to the leg-revenge quest but the Owl only ever had one adventure and so in effect it’s just the weirdest version of Clark Kent working at the Daily Planet or Bruce Wayne palling around with Commissioner Gordon to hear about crime. It does work in this issue though. (Funny Pages v4 001, 1940)
the Green Giant:
The Green Giant! Cover model and namesake for the one and only comic put out by Pelican Productions! Thanks to me spending my formative years with my nose buried in a copy of Jeff Rovin’s Encyclopedia of Superheroes that image of him bounding over those buildings was forever seared into my brain as the definitive non-Marvel/DC Golden Age comic book cover, despite the fact that the actual comic probably wasn’t really distributed.
I’ve never really found any information on the Green Giant beyond people
pointing out that he wears pants on the cover but not in the actual
story, so I kind of went in assuming that he was so bare bones as to be
unremarkable but no, the Green Giant is as fleshed out as any single
appearance character of the time.
The Green Giant’s real name is Brentwood (no first name given), the owner of both a Wall Street Hall Street brokerage firm and a presumably high-tech belt, the latter of which allows him to grow to various enormous heights. I had kind of assumed that the fact of his sheer size and the problems it might cause was not really explored in-comic but there is a mention of the belt having anti-gravity properties as well. That’s why he isn’t, for example, crushing that building on the cover! How great and more well thought-out than I had assumed! This anti-gravity also explains how the Green Giant hops around like an off-brand Hulk even when at regular size.
One thing that really stands out about the Green Giant’s sole appearance is that the problem he is dealing with is a targeted attack on his own brokerage firm. I reckon that an ongoing comic might have featured him acting in a more selfless light but as it stands all the evidence is of him being solely motivated by his own self interest. Do better, Green Giant, sheesh. (Green Giant Comics 001, 1940)
