We’re awash in minor super-heroes!
Golden Arrow:
Golden Arrow has a more convoluted origin than an Western hero has any right to, but I’ll do my best to summarize it without one million images. He is Roger Parsons, whose father, Professor Paul Parsons, develops advanced ballooning technology just before WWI breaks out and determines to test it out before donating it to the US government. To that end, he bundles his wife and infant son into a balloon and sets out on a cross-country voyage that turns out to have been a bit too well-publicized, because he is shot down by the villainous Brand Braddock while passing over the Western deserts. While Brand squirrels away Parsons’ technology until the day he can safely sell it on, the infant Roger is found by a prospector named Nugget Ned, who raises him as his own son.
Life in the West suits Roger, and he grows up to be a physical paragon, a crack shot with the bow and arrow (with which he uses impractical but iconic golden-headed arrows, and yes, I do believe there is a story in which a crook goes around committing minor crimes in order to profit from gathering them up afterward) and a superb horseman on his faithful steed White Wind. Nugget Ned eventually dies of being Old, but passes on the truth of Roger’s parentage before he goes. Roger then takes back the ballooning technology from Brand (plus his twin sons Bronk and Brute) and donates it to the US Government. Along the way, he kind of falls into being a Western vigilante.
Golden Arrow is also one of my classic examples of a character egregiously transitioning from the Modern to the Old West, since he is so firmly established as being in the present from the start. As usual, it’s not easy to pin down exactly when it happens, but it does. (Whiz Comics 002, 1940)
UPDATE 1941
Spy Smasher:
Spy Smasher is Alan Armstrong, a wealthy Virginia playboy who battles espionage threats to American democracy. He uses both his geographic proximity to Washington DC (via his Virginia estate) and his engagement to Eve Corby (daughter of Naval intelligence officer and eventual Chief of the US Secret Service Admiral Corby) to keep abreast of just what those threats might be and then sally forth to punch them in the face – smashing them, if you will.
Though this setup might at first seem to be a recipe for a comic about a hero battling an endless series of nondescript men in suits, it is in fact the complete opposite, as Spy Smasher only smashes the most eccentric and flamboyant of spies, starting with the Mask, who does, yes, wear a suit most of the time, but trust me on this. He’s nutty.
Something that I had forgotten about Spy Smasher is that they were extremely coy about his identity for the first year or so. It’s not a particularly mysterious mystery, as Armstrong is literally the only suspect and there is some allusion to the reader being able to figure it out.. They do make an attempt to imply that Armstrong could be the Mask, but there’s a period where Eve Corby knows the secret while the reader theoretically does not at I gotta assume that she would put 2 and 2 together if Spy Smasher was not Armstrong but Armstrong was still mysteriously sneaking off just before Spy Smasher and the Mask had a scrap. Basically what I’m saying is that this comic needed more white guys.
Spy Smasher’s main bit of crime espionage-fighting technology is the Gyrosub (also Gyro-sub, Gyro Sub), a compact vehicle that combines the functions of a car, an airplane, a boat and a submarine and has a wide array of deployable weapons and technology as the story demands them. (Whiz Comics 002, 1940)
UPDATES:
Smasher Spy
Doctor Voodoo:
Jungle heroes are all kind of samey: they fall into a few broad archetypes and have variably racist adventures in an abstract Jungle that frequently feels simultaneously Asian, African and South American (and indeed one of Doctor Voodoo’s own adventures involves Arab slavers raiding the Amazon from a very Sahara-like desert*). What is remarkable about Hal “Doctor Voodoo” Carey here is how he is both a white child who grew up in the jungle and excelled at jungle skills beyond his native peers and also simultaneously a magic white man from far away who brings modern science and medicine to the wilderness. How is this? Why, it is because the comic treats being a white guy as a kind of magical property that Hal has, and so even though he has never left the Amazon and learned all of his medicine from observing his father and reading his old textbooks, Hal identifies as and acts as an American doctor throughout the series.
Hal practices his medicine among the Blanca, a tribe of “White Indians”, which is a term that I think originated in the pulps and is basically meaningless except to signal to the reader that the Blancas can be viewed as fully human. They are also the ones who give him the name “Doctor Voodoo” after deciding that his medical knowledge is magical in nature. Which I guess that it kind of is, given my earlier assertions. Annoying! (Whiz Comics 007, 1940)
*this happens in Whiz Comics 017 if you’re interested
Maxinya the Heaven-Woman:
Doctor Voodoo’s companion/ love interest is Maxinya, the Heaven Woman, who is yet another kind of jungle hero in that she was abandoned when her explorer parents were seemingly killed in the collapse of an ancient temple and subsequently raised by jaguars. She can talk the language of jaguars and has jungle life down but ends up not having a lot to due because the focus is on Hal and he is the kind of misogynistic 40s hero who inists that adventure is no place for a lady.
Not enough time is spent on the fact that Maxinya’s companion Jappa is a jaguar who is large enough to carry two adult humans on his back, who communicates with Maxinya and later Doctor Voodoo in an actual spoken language, with words. I feel like there’s a story there. (Whiz Comics 007, 1940)
(it only comes up once, so I wouldn’t necessarily call it an essential part of his character, but here’s Doctor Voodoo engaging in Blanca Death Combat against his arch-foe Okoro)
UPDATE 1941 – Dr Voodoo is flung back in time.
