(More Fun Comics 055, 1940)

There are several major ways to introduce a super-hero: you can lay out their whole deal right away and make their first adventure an origin story, or have them relate their origin in a quick flashback, or leave their origin mysterious and only sprinkle in the odd clue now and again. Or, as in the case of Doctor Fate, you can just kind of handwave it. “Yeah, yeah, he’s a magic man. He knows a bunch of secrets, okay?” We will eventually see a more detailed origin for him, but for the moment we don’t know much more than the fact that he has a neato outfit. We don’t even know his real name!

Though Doctor Fate is a Golden Age magic character and thus can basically do anything he wants with a wave of his hand, I do appreciate that Gardner Fox makes an attempt to frame this power in a way that is not simply “it’s magic.” Instead, Doctor Fate knows how to control energy: he is invulnerable because of the control he has over the energy in his body, he can use that energy to disintegrate things, he travels by merging his energy with the ether, etc. It all amounts to the same thing but it’s nice to have a bit of new flavour every once in a while, you know?

This first appearance also introduces Doctor Fate’s aide/companion/not-quite-sidekick Inza Cramer, a quick-witted socialite who we never really get a lot of background on. She is hanging out with Fate when we first encounter him and just never really stops, that’s all.