(Hit Comics 018-025, 1941-1942)
I know I talk about how wild the origins of various characters are a lot on here, and I don’t think that I can justify declaring one or another “the most wild” anymore, but the Ghost of Flanders would absolutely have to appear on any reasonably comprehensive Top Ten Characters Who Will Amaze and Befuddle You With Their Wild Origins list.
The Ghost of Flanders is in reality Rip Graves, who enlisted in the US Army during WWI and was basically immediately captured (as the Battle of the Marne took place in July 1918) and spent the rest of the war in a prison camp. This is not especially wild, although it does allow us to know that Graves is 37, a bit older than your typical super-hero (and of course if some enterprising comics writer decides to bring back the Ghost of Flanders for some reason he will automatically be the oldest living WWI veteran)
The first really wild thing about Rip Graves is this: he is the Unknow Soldier, as in Tomb of the. Now, I looked up the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier the first time I read this story, and checked again just now, and not only is there, you know, a human corpse buried in it but it’s one that they went to reasonable lengths to make sure was, you know, unknown (in short, they located six unidentified US casualties and then had someone choose one at random). “This guy who we know the identity of but don’t have a body for” is almost exactly the opposite of that, in fact.
Wanting to serve his country but not wanting to own up to being alive because for some reason he believes that the powerful symbolism of the Unknown Soldier will be ruined if it isn’t him specifically, Rip does a normal comics thing and decides to become a costumed vigilante. And what does every costumed vigilante need?
A secret HQ under a solemn national war monument! Yes, the first thing that Rip Graves does is dig himself out a little man cave underneath the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, because it’s his.
Other things about the Ghost of Flanders include:
-he is the only WWI-themed super-hero that I know of
-his calling card is a red poppy (natch)
-he uses WWI-era equipment including bayonets and a biplane, in a kind of natural extrapolation of something like the archer-hero and other users of archaic weaponry
-I can’t say why he chose the unwieldy Ghost of Flanders name over the excellent Unknown Soldier, but it would take nearly thirty years for someone to take advantage of the excelent name that was just laying there.
In conclusion: the Ghost of Flanders, a bog-standard 1940s super-hero boom character in most ways, but one that makes me feel crazy to think about too much.
