The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: minor super-hero

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 048

    The triumphant return of Ace Magazines to the round-up!

    Flash Lightning:

    Educated and possibly also raised by Ancient Egyptian mystic the Old Man of the Pyramids, young Robert Morgan is eventually deemed worthy of the Amulet of Annihilation, a mystic artifact that grants him the powers of flight, super strength, bulletproof skin, the ability to hurl lightning bolts and sundry others (the amulet is also immediately forgotten about, as far as I can tell – the armband design remains a part of Lightning’s costume design for the rest of his appearances but his powers are treated as integral).

    Flash Lightning is eventually renamed Lash Lightning, and the word on the street is that this was done so as to avoid confusion with prominent lightning-themed DC Comics character the Flash. (Sure-Fire Comics 001, 1940)

    UPDATE 1 

    the Raven:

    The Raven, like his fellow Ace Magazines hero the Black Spider, is your classic pulp style vigilante wanted by both the police and the underworld, with the added twist that he is primarily focused on Robin Hood-style monetary redistribution/ stealing from the crooked rich to return their ill-gotten gains to the bilked poor. At first, at least – over time the Raven starts dealing with more conventional super-threats and gangsters.

    In addition to his loyal assistant Mike, the Raven’s supporting cast includes Police Captain Lash – his boss, because the Raven is really Detective Sergeant Danny Dartin – and Lash’s daughter/Danny’s fiance Lola. Like the Black Spider before him, the Raven’s love interest Lola eventually discovers the secret of his dual identity, which must have been a particular relief for the Raven because she, like her father and (supposedly) her fiance had up to that point been dedicated to the task of capturing the Raven and had come close to doing so once or twice.

    Though the Raven’s costume starts out as a huge hooded cloak of the type more commonly worn by villains, he eventually switches to a more conventional cape and cowl number, which is a shame, as the original look was much more distinctive. (Sure-Fire Comics 001, 1940)

    Whiz Wilson:

    Whiz Wilson is a time-travelling man, but one who very specifically only travels into the future. It’s like my voice, complaining about how comic book time travellers just can’t stop interfering in historical events, itself echoed back in time and helped to create a character mostly immune to temporal paradox, as long as he doesn’t run into any older Whiz Wilsons in his travels.

    Wilson’s time harness also incorporates a space-travel functionality (as any time machine necessarily must lest one be rocketed off into the void instead of ancient Mesopotamia) and he very satisfyingly employs this as a teleportation device whenever he is in the future, though the mechanics of whether he is instantaneously transporting from one place to another or zooming very quickly between them vary according to the needs of the plot. (Sure-Fire Comics 001, 1940)

    Marvo the Magician:

    Marvo is another tuxedo-wearing magician from the same tradition that previously brought us such luminaries as Zatara. Like many of his peers he fills the time between stage performances by driving around aimlessly and meting out justice to the random criminals he encounters, with the two distinctions that a. he has a little monkey companion  named Tito and b. unlike many of his peers his powers do mainly seem to be illusions and not reality-warping chaos majicks. (Sure-Fire Comics 001, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 047

    Astonishing super-heroes of the past! And future!

    the Invisible Avenger: 

    Teen radio enthusiast Buzz Allen discovers the secret of personal invisibility shortly after the death of his father at the hands of criminals and so is perfectly primed to become part of a super-vigilante duo alongside his friend Will Lawrence (if the issue of whether they should be the Invisible Avengers ever comes up then it is in the initial adventure which I alas cannot read). 

    Their adventures are structured such that they cause maximum consternation so as to really get the most out of the invisibility gimmick: they become invisible before driving their car to the scene of a robbery, for example, and when they put on their anti-invisibility gloves so that they can flash their guns at the crooks they make sure to do so in a public place so as to freak out the subway-riding squares. If I were to devise some sort of ratings scale to score invisible characters on how well they use their powers (which I will not – I am already tracking far too many arbitrary metrics), then the Invisible Avenger and Will would score low. (Superworld Comics 001, 1940*)

    Hip Knox:

    Hip Knox! An orphaned child raised by Professor Knox to have the mightiest mind in the world and named by Professor Knox to have a silly name that kind of winks at his powerset!

    If Hip Knox is known for anything then it’s for being one of the worst-dressed men in comics. Every element of his uniform is just a little bit wrong, except for the parts that are a lot wrong. Breaking things down from top to bottom, we have:

    1. The Helmet. If there’s one piece of this costume that is 100% bad then it’s this scaly golden swim cap. I sincerely wish that Superworld Comics 001 was available for less than 2000 dollars US, because I really want to know if this is some sort of mind amplification helmet or just a bizarre affectation. Hate it. Hate that it covers his ears.

    2. The Mustache. I can get behind a super-hero with a fussy little mustache, but you aren’t Hercule Poirot, my dude. Grow it out a bit more or have fewer weird and uncanny elements to your outfit so that a little mustache is a fun little affectation and not the punchline to someone’s description of you to their friends.

    3. The Jumpsuit. This isn’t all that far off of what would come to be the standard super-hero outfit, so I should be fine with it, right? Wrong. Between the fact that Hip is drawn with a bit of a barrel chest and the noodle arms of someone who fights crime with their mind, and the suit being buttoned all the way up to a collar at the neck, this suit is bad.

    4. The Insignia. A minor nitpick but it contributes to the whole: that eye looks too realistic to just be sitting on the chest by itself. Throw it in a circle or something. Plus you gotta choose: either the eye or …

    5. The Belt Buckle. I have nothing against a good yonic symbol, but why does Hip Knox have one as his belt buckle? And why is it so big? It looks like an attempt to pick up a pencil off the ground would result in him simultaneously stabbing himself in the groin and the upper abdomen.

    What is the solution for this fashion debacle? Change one or two key elements: swap the jumpsuit out for a red tuxedo to lean into the (stage) hypnotist angle and things feel a lot more harmonious. The eye would have to become an amulet or maybe an ornament on one of those weird sashes that goes under the jacket, but everything would hold together much better. Or keep the jumpsuit and lose the helmet! Or make it a headband, that would be much less heinous!

    As befits a super-hypnotist, Hip Knox has a pretty relaxed approach to the mental autonomy of those around him, but tragically also seems to have a terrible imagination, as in the above panels in which he attempts to signal that he is being kidnapped by turning bystanders into a trail of living statues instead of, say, having them shout “Hip Knox is in that car being kidnapped!” in unison. (Superworld Comics 001, 1940*)

    Marvo 1￮2 Go+:

    The Boy Genius style of comics/fiction in general has produced a lot of very fun adventure heroes over the years and also a lot of annoying little smug turds, and I’m sure that personal bias plays in to whether a particular boy reads as one or the other to you. As you might be able to tell from all of this preamble, Marvo 1￮2 Go+ is very much a smug little turd in my eyes.

    Thanks to the wonders of sleep education, Marvo has all the knowledge of a forty-year-old scientist packed into his fifteen year-old head, but he’s even more intelligent than that, so much so that he gets to put a little plus sign on the end of his name (Marvo is from one of those science fiction futures where inefficient surnames have been replaced with government-assigned alphanumerical designations, like Superworld publisher Hugo Gernsback’s own novel Ralph 124C 41+ or DC Comics’ later Chris KL-99), which he makes sure to have embroidered on the front of all of his clothing in case people forget how special he is.

    Knowledge of a forty year-old or not, Marvo still has all the foresight of a fifteen year-old, as seen for instance in the above panels wherein he takes advantage of a geothermal hotspot beneath Pennsylvania to permanently alter its climate without stopping to consider the potential long term environmental effects of a permanent Summer. (Superworld Comics 001, 1940*)

    X, the Phantom Fed: 


    There are a whole lot of comic book protagonists with names like Secret Agent Q49 or Agent X-7, etc, code-named operatives two-fistedly saving the world for democracy the US Government, and X, the Phantom Fed exists at the border between that concept and that of the super-hero. Described as the “Man of a Million Faces,” X’s real face is a mystery even to his friends because he is always in some disguise or another. X is armed with an embryonic version of the James Bond-era spy’s arsenal and the best super-spy name of the bunch but sadly that doesn’t save him from having a bare handful of appearances. (Sure-Fire Comics 001, 1940)

    *I have not actually read Superworld Comics
    001 because it is not readily available to the average person. My
    information on the origins of these characters therefore might be
    slightly inaccurate.     

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 046

    Enjoy these ancient delights!

    the Black Spider:

    Mild-mannered district attorney Ralph Nelson, like many comic book lawmen, sallies forth at night in order to deal with criminals that the law can’t touch. Nelson is despised by his colleague Police Inspector Stern for being too soft on crime/ dedicated to the letter of the law to allow the cops to torture confessions out of people, while the Black Spider is hated by Stern for showing up the police by being so good at torturing confessions out of people. It’s a real dichotomy!

    Nelson’s secretary Peggy Dodge has a classic “love one identity and hate the other” relationship with the Black Spider and her boss that gets resolved when she learns his secret during the first Black Spider adventure. It’s a nice change of pace from your standard Lois/Clark arrangement, plus Peggy has the distinction of being one of the few noncostumed super-heroic aides to remember to wear a mask while on crime-fighting duty! (Super-Mystery Comics 003, 1940)

    Davey: 

    One day while fighting crime, Magno rescues Carole Landis and her kid brother Davey from a bombed-out building and learns about the crime that they were investigating and also that Davey is such a big Magno fan that he has his own Magno costume and also would Magno like to see it? Magno of course gives the kid the old brush-off.

    Seeing as he first met this kid after he had tagged along with his sister on a dangerous assignment, it should not have surprised Magno to find Davey chasing him down the street in full Magno cosplay. The two get mixed up in various life-or-death situations before Magno can get rid of Davey and by the time things calm down they have formed a battle-bond or something. Magno figures out how to temporarily give Davey a portion of his powers for about an hour (the time limit gets dropped eventually, presumably because bookkeeping isn’t very fun) and becomes the latest in a long line of super-heroes to have a sidekick with no code name. (Super-Mystery Comics v1 004, 1940)

    the Sparkler: 

    Red Morgan’s father has invented an invisibility suit, but what he should have been working on was a don’t-blab-your-secrets-all-over-town suit, because the local gang boss Baldy Spade has heard that there’s some big scientific discovery in the works and has sent a guy to kill Morgan Senior and steal it. A vengeance-minded Red dons the suit and exacts justice on Baldy before going on to have a handful of adventures as the Sparkler, so named because the suit flashes and sparks as it returns to its user to visibility. (Super Spy 001, 1940)

    the Night Hawk: 

    Horse Rancher John Rogers was murdered some time ago, and his unnamed son has seemingly wandered the West ever since, doing vigilante justice while looking for murderer Baldy Crane. In his one recorded adventure he finally locates and guns him down before riding into the sunset. (Super Spy 002, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 046

    Enjoy these ancient delights!

    the Black Spider:

    Mild-mannered district attorney Ralph Nelson, like many comic book lawmen, sallies forth at night in order to deal with criminals that the law can’t touch. Nelson is despised by his colleague Police Inspector Stern for being too soft on crime/ dedicated to the letter of the law to allow the cops to torture confessions out of people, while the Black Spider is hated by Stern for showing up the police by being so good at torturing confessions out of people. It’s a real dichotomy!

    Nelson’s secretary Peggy Dodge has a classic “love one identity and hate the other” relationship with the Black Spider and her boss that gets resolved when she learns his secret during the first Black Spider adventure. It’s a nice change of pace from your standard Lois/Clark arrangement, plus Peggy has the distinction of being one of the few noncostumed super-heroic aides to remember to wear a mask while on crime-fighting duty! (Super-Mystery Comics 003, 1940)

    Davey: 

    One day while fighting crime, Magno rescues Carole Landis and her kid brother Davey from a bombed-out building and learns about the crime that they were investigating and also that Davey is such a big Magno fan that he has his own Magno costume and also would Magno like to see it? Magno of course gives the kid the old brush-off.

    Seeing as he first met this kid after he had tagged along with his sister on a dangerous assignment, it should not have surprised Magno to find Davey chasing him down the street in full Magno cosplay. The two get mixed up in various life-or-death situations before Magno can get rid of Davey and by the time things calm down they have formed a battle-bond or something. Magno figures out how to temporarily give Davey a portion of his powers for about an hour (the time limit gets dropped eventually, presumably because bookkeeping isn’t very fun) and becomes the latest in a long line of super-heroes to have a sidekick with no code name. (Super-Mystery Comics v1 004, 1940)

    the Sparkler: 

    Red Morgan’s father has invented an invisibility suit, but what he should have been working on was a don’t-blab-your-secrets-all-over-town suit, because the local gang boss Baldy Spade has heard that there’s some big scientific discovery in the works and has sent a guy to kill Morgan Senior and steal it. A vengeance-minded Red dons the suit and exacts justice on Baldy before going on to have a handful of adventures as the Sparkler, so named because the suit flashes and sparks as it returns to its user to visibility. (Super Spy 001, 1940)

    the Night Hawk: 

    Horse Rancher John Rogers was murdered some time ago, and his unnamed son has seemingly wandered the West ever since, doing vigilante justice while looking for murderer Baldy Crane. In his one recorded adventure he finally locates and guns him down before riding into the sunset. (Super Spy 002, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 045

    Ah the super-hero.

    Ace Buckley: 

    Ace Buckley is a time traveller, a subgenre of comic book hero mostly notable for the fact that they have no one to blame for their troubles but themselves. Like most of his peers, Buckley (along with his intriguingly-named companion Toni Stark, whose role in the stories is to get captured and then swan around in minimal clothing while waiting for Buckley to rescue her) flings himself willy-nilly into the hotspots of human history and then murders his way free with barely a though to such things as “causality” or “the grandfather paradox” or “the integrity of the timestream”. (Startling Comics 003, 1940)

    Magic Morro: 

    Some time around 1922, young Jack Morrow and his father are shipwrecked on an uncharted Atlantic island. Proclaimed to be the next prophesied leader of local inhabitants the Utangos, Jack is raised to be a superhuman white jungle guy in the classic Tarzan style, only with all kinds of magical knowledge imparted to him by the former ruler, Tanta Talu. As Magic Morro, he is super strong, immune to fire, possibly bulletproof, can turn himself invisible and move objects with his mind, and those are just the abilities that he demonstrated in his first year worth of adventures!

    (Bonus Parenthetical: despite having a fully magical ruler who can do prophecy and summon lightning and stuff, the Utangos also have a standard issue treacherous witch doctor, who is named Mango! What’s with all the evil Mangos?) (Super Comics 021, 1940)

    Vulcan: 

    Vulcan, the Volcanic Man is the descendant of the Roman god of the same name and shares with him a broad dominion over fire, if not an inclination toward metalworking. He generates heat, can pick up and manipulate flame, is immune to heat and flame and also the forces involved in being blasted out of a volcano in the South Pacific and landing in the United States, is bulletproof in the sense that bullets melt before they can injure him, etc. He also has a radical fire-themed haircut.

    Like a lot of fire-based super-heroes, Vulcan ends up fighting a lot of hapless arsonists who waste all of their best fire-based deathtraps of a guy who can’t shut up about how he used to live in a volcano. (Super Mystery Comics v1 001)

    UPDATE 1 

    Magno:

    Control over magnetism is one of the classic comic book powers and Magno here (not our first Magno and certainly not our last) has the bargain basement version of it: he can pull things toward himself or pull himself toward things, a version of flight that requires enough admin work on the part of the artist that it is eventually rounded up to his just being able to fly outright. He also eventually gets a magnetic anti-bullet force field for a similar reason, I reckon: it’s no fun having to do the admin of Magno disarming every crook in every room he enters individually.

    Also unfortunately falling by the wayside over time is Magno’s power to project his face onto solid objects to vex and annoy crooks and cops alike. Was this meant to be an aspect of his magnetic abilities somehow or just a cool thing he could do? It is never specified.

    Finally, I must note that the somewhat abstract design on Magno’s chest is a representation of a bar magnet, in one of its few victories over the horseshoe magnet on the battlefields of graphic design. (Super-Mystery Comics v1 001, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 045

    Ah the super-hero.

    Ace Buckley: 

    Ace Buckley is a time traveller, a subgenre of comic book hero mostly notable for the fact that they have no one to blame for their troubles but themselves. Like most of his peers, Buckley (along with his intriguingly-named companion Toni Stark, whose role in the stories is to get captured and then swan around in minimal clothing while waiting for Buckley to rescue her) flings himself willy-nilly into the hotspots of human history and then murders his way free with barely a though to such things as “causality” or “the grandfather paradox” or “the integrity of the timestream”. (Startling Comics 003, 1940)

    Magic Morro: 

    Some time around 1922, young Jack Morrow and his father are shipwrecked on an uncharted Atlantic island. Proclaimed to be the next prophesied leader of local inhabitants the Utangos, Jack is raised to be a superhuman white jungle guy in the classic Tarzan style, only with all kinds of magical knowledge imparted to him by the former ruler, Tanta Talu. As Magic Morro, he is super strong, immune to fire, possibly bulletproof, can turn himself invisible and move objects with his mind, and those are just the abilities that he demonstrated in his first year worth of adventures!

    (Bonus Parenthetical: despite having a fully magical ruler who can do prophecy and summon lightning and stuff, the Utangos also have a standard issue treacherous witch doctor, who is named Mango! What’s with all the evil Mangos?) (Super Comics 021, 1940)

    Vulcan: 

    Vulcan, the Volcanic Man is the descendant of the Roman god of the same name and shares with him a broad dominion over fire, if not an inclination toward metalworking. He generates heat, can pick up and manipulate flame, is immune to heat and flame and also the forces involved in being blasted out of a volcano in the South Pacific and landing in the United States, is bulletproof in the sense that bullets melt before they can injure him, etc. He also has a radical fire-themed haircut.

    Like a lot of fire-based super-heroes, Vulcan ends up fighting a lot of hapless arsonists who waste all of their best fire-based deathtraps of a guy who can’t shut up about how he used to live in a volcano. (Super Mystery Comics v1 001)

    UPDATE 1 

    Magno:

    Control over magnetism is one of the classic comic book powers and Magno here (not our first Magno and certainly not our last) has the bargain basement version of it: he can pull things toward himself or pull himself toward things, a version of flight that requires enough admin work on the part of the artist that it is eventually rounded up to his just being able to fly outright. He also eventually gets a magnetic anti-bullet force field for a similar reason, I reckon: it’s no fun having to do the admin of Magno disarming every crook in every room he enters individually.

    Also unfortunately falling by the wayside over time is Magno’s power to project his face onto solid objects to vex and annoy crooks and cops alike. Was this meant to be an aspect of his magnetic abilities somehow or just a cool thing he could do? It is never specified.

    Finally, I must note that the somewhat abstract design on Magno’s chest is a representation of a bar magnet, in one of its few victories over the horseshoe magnet on the battlefields of graphic design. (Super-Mystery Comics v1 001, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 044

    A full hand of Better (Nedor/Standard/Pines) Comics characters for ye.

    Captain Future:

    When young Dr Andrew Bryant finds himself fired from his job as a… research physicist? electrical engineer?… at the Pacific Electrical Corporation he responds like any rational person would: by working day and night in in a desperate bid to finish his research in the time he has left, until his tired brain thinks its way into an industrial accident. Luckily for Bryant he lives in a super-hero universe, so when he crosses gamma and infra-red rays and blows up his laboratory he is not gruesomely killed but instead filled with super-energies.

    Dubbing himself Captain Future (because he represents the future state of humanity, natch) and donning a pretty minimal costume, Bryant sets out to mete out fist-based justice on the world using a suite of super powers including: mind reading, remote viewing, the ability to both hear and broadcast radio, flight, enhanced strength, energy blasts and a magnetic forcefield that repels bullets but is ineffective against cowardly blows to the head. Sometimes his powers run out or are used up and he has to scurry off and blast himself with radiation again, which makes him one of the earlier super-heroes to have that kind of narratively-interesting power limitation. Plus he is occasionally vulnerable to high levels of electricity or other energy disrupting his powers in a kryptonite kind of way – he’s just a “my powers don’t work on this specific material” away from the Limiting Your Super Powered Character trifecta! (Startling Comics 001, 1940)

    Mystico:

    When scientist Dr Slade needs to test his Vita-Ray device to see if it really can resurrect the dead like he thinks it can, does he start out on easy mode with a selection of freshly deceased lab mice like some sort of rule-following nerd? He does not! Instead, he gets ahold of a 2000-year-old mummy, perhaps the most dead guy available, and turns the power up as high as it can go. And it works! The mummy is restored to life! And also his flailing causes a power feedback that results in an explosion that kills everyone involved… maybe the lab mice would have been a good starting point after all.

    The one person to survive the lab explosion is the newly-resurrected mummy, who turns out to have a wide array of magical powers – lucky for the narrative that Slade grabbed the wizard mummy and not some minor aristocrat’s 3rd Dynasty failson or an unlucky desiccated tomb robber. Dubbing himself Mystico, the formerly-ancient Egyptian fast-tracks his assimilation to future society with some new clothes and a top-of-the-line car.

    In a fortuitous turn of events for the local authorities, Mystico also adopts a set of conventional American values and immediately sets his vast powers to the task of rooting out crime. I suppose that if you’re an ancient and powerful wizard suddenly thrust into a strange world your options boil down to overthrowing the status quo (super-villain), maintaining the status quo (super-hero) or keeping your head down and living a quiet life (boring comic book). (Startling Comics 001, 1940)

    Dr X:

    At first glance, Dr X slots neatly into the category of “scientist super-villains who headline their own comics serial” alongside such luminaries as Dr Doom and Landor, Maker of Monsters. After all, he’s a creepy looking rodent-man whose primary field of study is seeing just how many dangerous alien worlds he can send his niece Cynthia’s astral form to without really briefing her on what she’s getting into first, or indeed without a clear idea of exactly what happens to someone if their astral form is eaten by an alien dinosaur.

    But no, Dr X is a good guy! He tries his hardest to keep Cynthia and her boyfriend Bob Stone from getting eaten by those dinosaurs (after metaphorically delivering them to them on a platter, sure, but the thought is there), and even staves off an invasion of Earth by the Moon! Truly we must all learn not to judge a book by its sinister cover.

    That said, is it reasonable that Alan Moore made him a weird creepy murderer in the pages of Terra Incognito? Completely! (Startling Comics 001, 1940)

    the Masked Rider: 

    The Masked Rider is really Bronc Randall, cowboy and ex-rodeo performer, who returns home after two years to find small-town Western injustice running rampant and decides to do something about it by donning a small cloth mask and otherwise changing nothing about his fairly distinctive look. And it works! The Masked Rider then goes on to dispense justice for another dozen issues or so. 

    (is the Masked Raider another Western comic that fooled me into thinking it was set in the Old West until several issues in when someone rocked up in a truck? Indeed it is)

    This is actually Better Publications’ second Masked Rider, appearing one month after the one we have already encountered if I have my dates right. Plus, there was a bit of text fiction featuring a third Masked Rider in Best Comics the previous year. Did someone at the company have a thing for the name or is the Masked Rider just one of the most generic Western hero monikers? (Startling Comics 001, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 043

    A grab bag of old characters I skipped over back in the early days when I thought that this blog wasn’t going to be completely self-indulgent. 

    Mr Clue: 

    He only had one adventure in which he solves the murder of a mayor by a police chief, but Mr Clue is too great a name not to take note of. (Master Comics 001, 1940)

    the Red Gaucho: 

    A swashbuckling hero in the Zorro mode, the Red Gaucho protects the South American nation of Santa Palos from threats both foreign and domestic before eventually just kind of wandering North to have adventures in a sort of generic Central America. He’s a fun character! He has one of the biggest hats in comics!

    The Red Gaucho is also a character I think about whenever the topic of white supremacy comes up. White supremacy is one of those topics that gets a lot of people very angry, but at its base it’s simply the belief that the world consists of white people and everyone else and more specifically that it’s white people versus everyone else in a competition to keep white people on top, where they belong. And the further back you go, the less people felt the need to hide the fact that that was their worldview, and possibly the place that that attitude is most on display is in early Golden Age comics – just read any set outside North America and you’ll catch on to it pretty quickly.

    Anyway, that is all to say that even though it’s more subtle than a lot of other examples of this worldview in comics, ever since I noticed that every single appearance of the Red Gaucho includes a disclaimer assuring readers that he was in fact the child of two Americans and not some horrible South American – heavens forfend! – his smiling face pops into my head whenever the subject comes up.(Nickel Comics 004, 1940)

    the Hawk:

    On a less heavy note, here’s the Hawk! Created by George Brenner, who also created the Clock, the Hawk has the distinction of being the first masked crimefighter to appear in a comic that would eventually be amalgamated into the DC Comics fold (the Clock had only appeared in Centaur comics up until this point and wouldn’t make his way into a Quality book for a few months yet). A heady and heavily qualified distinction!

    The Hawk is secretly T. James Harrington II, wealthy and useless playboy who hangs around looking bored until some crime happens and it’s time for the Hawk to hit the streets. It’s a bit Bruce Wayne/Batman only without the parental murder.

    Unlike Batman, the Hawk leans pretty minimal on the costume front, with his major identifying feature being a set of slip-on claws. 

    The Hawk also has a couple of assistants named Link and Rollo who are touted as the only people who know the Hawk’s identity but who don’t get much time to show their stuff in this, their one-panel appearance. Astute readers might note that the crook that the Hawk has just captured likely also knows his secret identity at this point but please note that Link and Rollo are identified as the only living people to know the secret. Sinister stuff!

    DC has already gone with the Crimson Avenger as the Official First Golden Age Super-Hero but I reckon that the Hawk would be a fun guy to be brung back for some future story involving early mystery men antics. (Feature Funnies 002, 1937)

    *Hero Update* Shock Gibson:

    It had to happen someday: Shock Gibson disguises himself as a cowboy and in the process abandons his iconic helmet forever. Fare the well, helmet. (Speed Comics 007, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 042

    Boys! Boys! Boys! Super powered boys!

    Magno: 

    Magno, aka the Miracle Man, aka the Magnetic Man, aka Tom Dalton, was a power line worker who died when he was shocked with 10 000 volts DC and then revived when he was shocked again with 10 000 volts AC. As a result, Dalton developed electromagnetic powers that he used to fly, simulate super strength when dealing with metal and create magnetic force fields. Not a bad deal.

    Magno’s Golden Age career was short and fairly undistinguished, and his main claim to fame is being the only one of the old Quality heroes to be killed off by Roy Thomas in All-Star Squadron to never be brought back (Magno’s look also reminds me of Jericho of the Teen Titans for some reason, but that’s hardly another claim to fame). (Smash Comics 013, 1940)

    the Ray: 

    I had a couple of issues of The Ray comics from the early 90s when I was younger and so have a tendency to think of the Ray as being a far more prominent character than he actually is – he’s got to be fourth-tier at best, really (assuming that top-tier characters are the ones that everyone knows, your Batmans and Supermans, and second-tier are the ones that even a casual comics reader would consider essential. Third-tier and below is where you get into debating territory).

    Regardless of his level of prominence, the Ray is actually Happy Terrill, a devil-may-care young reporter who signs on as crew in a balloon trip to the upper atmosphere and is… empowered? When he ventures out into a cosmic storm to secure some essential safety equipment. Honestly, as presented on the page Terrill could be assumed to have been replaced with some sort of cosmic entity but maybe I’m the only one who thinks that because it certainly isn’t reflected in subsequent Ray lore.

    Cosmic entity posing as human or no, the Ray is endowed with a startling array of powers, including at least partial invulnerability, the ability to become and travel along light, giant growth, a healing touch, light projection and telekinetic rays. At first, anyway – after a couple of issues he adopts more of a two-fisted adventurer persona whose main power is the ability to change between Happy Terrill and Ray identities and who occasionally remembers that he can fly and shoot rays of light at people.

    A fairly consistent thing that I’ve noticed in depictions of the Ray post-Golden Age is a tendency to portray him as a very dour and serious guy, which seems a disservice to someone with the nickname “Happy.” I suppose I must give it to those later scribes in that the Ray himself almost discards his Happy Terrill identity in his first adventure before eventually coming to his senses. Neither the reason for resuming life as Happy nor the process by which he explained how he made his way back from the upper atmosphere is shown on-panel, but I have to assume that being a super-hero 24/7 just gets boring after a while and he wanted to have a bit of a break. (Smash Comics 014, 1940)

    Master Man: 

    Master Man starts out as a weedy little kid, too small to play, who is gifted a magic vitamin pill by a kindly doctor and becomes incredibly powerful adult man. It’s all there on his one-page introduction, but what’s missing is one important detail: is this a gradual process like the Champ’s origin, where he takes the vitamin every day and grows up big and strong, or did this little kid instantly transmogrify into a grown man, like a permanent Captain Marvel? I suppose that if Master Man really is a little kid in a man’s body it would explain why his first act is to build a cool clubhouse on top of a mountain, presumably containing lots of slides and fireman poles instead of stairs. 

    Being a Fawcett Comics character, Master Man is technically owned by DC Comics now, though they haven’t yet bothered to trot him out of retirement, possibly because of his name, which sounds fascist enough that Marvel Comics has several full-fledged Nazi characters that use it. He would be an interesting character to use as a foil for Superman, since his powers are magic-based, but Captain Marvel does usually fill that role so we’re unlikely to get a Master Man revival any time soon. (Master Comics 001, 1940)

    El Carim:

    One more crime-fighting-stage-magician-with-actual-magical-powers for the pile, El Carim (“miracle” backwards, as the caption box is at some pains to inform you at the start of every story) also subscribes to the same tuxedo and thin black mustache school of fashion as his contemporary Zatara, though the turban does make it easy to tell the two apart.

    What sets El Carim apart from his contemporaries early on is the fact that his crime fighting is done with a series of magical items rather than with magical spells. He has a magical monocle that can deflect bullets (in what must be a very alarming manner, visually) and project illusions and which can be combined with a device called the Spectograph to scry distant locations. In addition, he has a super powerful magnet capable of plucking bullets from the air (useful for when he already has a headache from bouncing a few off of his eye, perhaps) and the Arrestor, which is able to freeze others in place, even against the pull of gravity.

    Over time, El Carim starts slinging spells in a way more in line with the other magic men of comics, and I personally reckon that that’s why he has languished in relative obscurity since the 1940s (other than an appearance in a 2016 issue of Scooby-Doo Team-Up, that is), as without that hook he is not appreciably different from any of his peers. (Master Comics 001, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 042

    Boys! Boys! Boys! Super powered boys!

    Magno: 

    Magno, aka the Miracle Man, aka the Magnetic Man, aka Tom Dalton, was a power line worker who died when he was shocked with 10 000 volts DC and then revived when he was shocked again with 10 000 volts AC. As a result, Dalton developed electromagnetic powers that he used to fly, simulate super strength when dealing with metal and create magnetic force fields. Not a bad deal.

    Magno’s Golden Age career was short and fairly undistinguished, and his main claim to fame is being the only one of the old Quality heroes to be killed off by Roy Thomas in All-Star Squadron to never be brought back (Magno’s look also reminds me of Jericho of the Teen Titans for some reason, but that’s hardly another claim to fame). (Smash Comics 013, 1940)

    the Ray: 

    I had a couple of issues of The Ray comics from the early 90s when I was younger and so have a tendency to think of the Ray as being a far more prominent character than he actually is – he’s got to be fourth-tier at best, really (assuming that top-tier characters are the ones that everyone knows, your Batmans and Supermans, and second-tier are the ones that even a casual comics reader would consider essential. Third-tier and below is where you get into debating territory).

    Regardless of his level of prominence, the Ray is actually Happy Terrill, a devil-may-care young reporter who signs on as crew in a balloon trip to the upper atmosphere and is… empowered? When he ventures out into a cosmic storm to secure some essential safety equipment. Honestly, as presented on the page Terrill could be assumed to have been replaced with some sort of cosmic entity but maybe I’m the only one who thinks that because it certainly isn’t reflected in subsequent Ray lore.

    Cosmic entity posing as human or no, the Ray is endowed with a startling array of powers, including at least partial invulnerability, the ability to become and travel along light, giant growth, a healing touch, light projection and telekinetic rays. At first, anyway – after a couple of issues he adopts more of a two-fisted adventurer persona whose main power is the ability to change between Happy Terrill and Ray identities and who occasionally remembers that he can fly and shoot rays of light at people.

    A fairly consistent thing that I’ve noticed in depictions of the Ray post-Golden Age is a tendency to portray him as a very dour and serious guy, which seems a disservice to someone with the nickname “Happy.” I suppose I must give it to those later scribes in that the Ray himself almost discards his Happy Terrill identity in his first adventure before eventually coming to his senses. Neither the reason for resuming life as Happy nor the process by which he explained how he made his way back from the upper atmosphere is shown on-panel, but I have to assume that being a super-hero 24/7 just gets boring after a while and he wanted to have a bit of a break. (Smash Comics 014, 1940)

    Master Man: 

    Master Man starts out as a weedy little kid, too small to play, who is gifted a magic vitamin pill by a kindly doctor and becomes incredibly powerful adult man. It’s all there on his one-page introduction, but what’s missing is one important detail: is this a gradual process like the Champ’s origin, where he takes the vitamin every day and grows up big and strong, or did this little kid instantly transmogrify into a grown man, like a permanent Captain Marvel? I suppose that if Master Man really is a little kid in a man’s body it would explain why his first act is to build a cool clubhouse on top of a mountain, presumably containing lots of slides and fireman poles instead of stairs. 

    Being a Fawcett Comics character, Master Man is technically owned by DC Comics now, though they haven’t yet bothered to trot him out of retirement, possibly because of his name, which sounds fascist enough that Marvel Comics has several full-fledged Nazi characters that use it. He would be an interesting character to use as a foil for Superman, since his powers are magic-based, but Captain Marvel does usually fill that role so we’re unlikely to get a Master Man revival any time soon. (Master Comics 001, 1940)

    El Carim:

    One more crime-fighting-stage-magician-with-actual-magical-powers for the pile, El Carim (“miracle” backwards, as the caption box is at some pains to inform you at the start of every story) also subscribes to the same tuxedo and thin black mustache school of fashion as his contemporary Zatara, though the turban does make it easy to tell the two apart.

    What sets El Carim apart from his contemporaries early on is the fact that his crime fighting is done with a series of magical items rather than with magical spells. He has a magical monocle that can deflect bullets (in what must be a very alarming manner, visually) and project illusions and which can be combined with a device called the Spectograph to scry distant locations. In addition, he has a super powerful magnet capable of plucking bullets from the air (useful for when he already has a headache from bouncing a few off of his eye, perhaps) and the Arrestor, which is able to freeze others in place, even against the pull of gravity.

    Over time, El Carim starts slinging spells in a way more in line with the other magic men of comics, and I personally reckon that that’s why he has languished in relative obscurity since the 1940s (other than an appearance in a 2016 issue of Scooby-Doo Team-Up, that is), as without that hook he is not appreciably different from any of his peers. (Master Comics 001, 1940)