The Clock flatlines himself in order to solve a murder by speaking to the victim in the afterlife. (Crack Comics 010, 1941)
Decoration:
Jaspar Crow’s got a monogrammed wastecan! (Crack Comics 016, 1941)
Dr Foster’s got a monogrammed lampshade! (Crack Comics 017, 1941)
Names: Tor the Magic Master encounters a counterfeiter with the unlikely name Phrogg Zaarn.
One of the victims of Clock foe the Werewolf is named A.B. Ceedee.
The Clock flatlines himself in order to solve a murder by speaking to the victim in the afterlife. (Crack Comics 010, 1941)
Decoration:
Jaspar Crow’s got a monogrammed wastecan! (Crack Comics 016, 1941)
Dr Foster’s got a monogrammed lampshade! (Crack Comics 017, 1941)
Names: Tor the Magic Master encounters a counterfeiter with the unlikely name Phrogg Zaarn.
One of the victims of Clock foe the Werewolf is named A.B. Ceedee.
(Funny Picture Stories/ Funny Pages/ Feature Comics/ Crack Comics, 1936-1944)
The Clock has the distinction of probably being the earliest masked crimefighter and definitely that of being the earliest one to stick around, which would make him the earliest super-hero if Dr Occult hadn’t made his debut in 1935. A lot of the details about him are fairly cliché, both because they were cribbed from existing pulp clichés and because the Clock helped define the clichés of the genre.
So: Brian O’Brien is a wealthy playboy who puts on a tuxedo and mask and fights crime at night. He leaves calling cards for his foes, is often thought to be a criminal himself and is friends with police Captain Kane in his civilian identity while enjoying a somewhat fraught relationship with him while masked.
Over the years the Clock has a few different associates – above find Pug Brady, a down-on-his-luck guy who happens to look just like Brian O’Brien. They team up for a couple of years until Pug is unceremoniously chucked for a tough orphan girl named Butch about whom I know almost nothing, so it’s a bit of a qualified statement when I say that by far my favourite member of the Clock family is the Orchid:
The Orchid appears a handful of times and her gimmick is that she is also a crimefighter, and one who is slightly more on-the ball than the Clock: she may know his secret identity, she can always get a message to him and most of the time she disappears at the end of a case, with the exception of the time she was distracted by her own kidnap-victim father. The Orchid only makes a handful of appearances but she’s a winner in my books: bring her back, I say – fold her into the backstory of the Black Orchid!
So: the Clock is a solid Golden Age strip. Sadly, he will likely never see the light of day again. DC owns roughly seven dozen masked adventurers in suits and included in that number is Midnight, who would be a straight palette-swap of the Spirit if they had bothered to give him a different-coloured suit. Thusfar, he’s the one they pull out in the rare cases that a suited crimefighter who isn’t early Sandman is required, while the Clock and the Mouthpiece and Destiny and Just n’ Right and Devil’s Dagger and Diamond Jack and Cosmo, Phantom of Disguise all twiddle their thumbs in purgatory.
(Crack Comics 001, 1940)
A series of facts about Golden Age super-hero comics:
-most of them take place in cities
-they are either set in a specific location (e.g. Wonder Woman being in Washington DC or the Red Bee in Superior City) or an unidentified large city
-in the latter case, over time the city acquires characteristics that either lead to it becoming its own thing (e.g. Batman’s unidentified large city becomes Gotham) or being identified as New York City
Now there are plenty of exceptions to this (Superman starts out in Cleveland which quickly becomes Metropolis; plenty of Golden Age heroes didn’t stick around for their location to gel, etc etc) but it does happen a fair amount and it leads to situations like the above, wherein the Clock, who lives in an unidentified large city clearly based on NYC, arrests crimelord the Big Shot and learns that he is in fact Mayor Kozer! And then over the years it becomes more and more clear that Clock stories are set in New York and you end up with an alternate history of the office of Mayor of New York City in which Fiorello la Guardia is presumably repeatedly ousted from office only to be reelected following the various Evil Mayor Arrested by Vigilante scandals. This is the sort of thing that really gets my heartrate up!
Anyway: the Big Shot, folks.
EDIT TO ADD:
This isn’t even the first Mayor of NYC that the Clock is responsible for the arrest of: one year earlier he helped send Mayor Tull up the river! (Feature Comics 022, 1939)
Places:
The Chandler Building, seen here, is “half a mile high”. In other words, about the same height as the Burj Khalifa! What a win for not-yet-Fawcett-City-but-not-quite-New-York-City! Even if the top does get blown off in this story! (Captain Marvel Adventures 003, 1941)
Decoration:
Really really excellent custom motivational poster hanging in Dr Sivana’s hideout. (Captain Marvel Adventures 005, 1941)
WWI vets: Richard “Madam Fatal” Stanton (Crack Comics 002, 1940)
Places:
The Chandler Building, seen here, is “half a mile high”. In other words, about the same height as the Burj Khalifa! What a win for not-yet-Fawcett-City-but-not-quite-New-York-City! Even if the top does get blown off in this story! (Captain Marvel Adventures 003, 1941)
Decoration:
Really really excellent custom motivational poster hanging in Dr Sivana’s hideout. (Captain Marvel Adventures 005, 1941)
WWI vets: Richard “Madam Fatal” Stanton (Crack Comics 002, 1940)
(Feature Comics 032-037, 1940)
Of the dozen or so heroes and villains named the Voice, this is the best of them all, hands down. Let’s review:
-shipwrecked on an island in 1790, lives off of special herbs that extend the human lifespan and empower the body
-finally picked up in 1940, moves to NYC at 150-something years old
-successfully synthesizes the herb’s properties, ensuring that his life will continue indefinitely. Decides to fight crime
-learns ventriloquism and close-up magic
The last is my favourite part: he’s an old man who can pick up a car, for example, but most of his cases are solved with the application of a thrown voice or two. Plus that blonde guy in the second set of panels is his neighbour who just happens to be nearby when Mr Elixer – did I mention that his non-super-hero name is Mr Elixer? – decides to fight crime and is basically conscripted into being his butler.
Really really good dumb fun comic stuff. BRING BACK the Voice!
(Feature Comics 034, 1940)
(Feature Comics 034, 1940)
(Feature Comics 029, 1940)
What makes them a super-villain? The Reaper is another just-scraping-into-the-ranks gang boss. Between his cool name and a setup where he gives his gang orders through a closed-circuit TV and microphone, he makes that final leap, presumably into a slightly higher security prison cell.