{"id":3123,"date":"2025-06-19T09:36:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-19T12:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/?p=3123"},"modified":"2026-09-27T17:40:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T20:40:13","slug":"minor-super-hero-round-up-054","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/?p=3123","title":{"rendered":"MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 054"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whoops there are two more super-heroes in the Spirit Section. Should have included them with the Spirit himself, tsk tsk. <\/p>\n

Lady Luck<\/b>: <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n

The Spirit’s home, the “Spirit Section” of newspaper comics also included two other Will Eisner-created but not -written or -drawn characters, the first of whom is Lady Luck. In actuality wealthy socialite Brenda Banks, Lady Luck is a costumed vigilante out of boredom with the day-to-day of high society. She is wanted by the law and specifically by her civilian life love interest Police Chief Hardy Moore, a cop so dumb that not only is he about to send a woman to the electric chair for the murder of her still-living husband in the above set of panels but he also is unable to recognize the object of his affections under the brim of a big hat (in fairness to him he does<\/i> mention that Brenda and Lady Luck are very similar looking but then turns out to be cartoonishly easy to fool). Lady Luck does a bit of globetrotting here and there, but her focus is mainly on high society crimes. Her adventures are a bit lighter than the Spirit’s, but not by too much. (The Spirit Section, 2 June, 1940) <\/p>\n

Mr Mystic<\/b>: <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n<\/p>\n

The thing about the Spirit Section is that people love the Spirit and so his two companions tend to be overshadowed, particularly when it comes to widely-available archival work: the Spirit was reprinted while Lady Luck and our new friend here Mr Mystic languished in obscurity, and while Lady Luck’s adventures were eventually reprinted in Smash Comics<\/i>, the archival record of Mr Mystic is much spottier.<\/p>\n

Mr Mystic is supposedly a retooling of Eisner’s prior effort Yarko the Great<\/a>, and I can see it – luckily for him he got the look of Yarko rather than the terrible naming sensibility. Mystic is (or was<\/i>, presumably) an American diplomat who, like so many characters before and after him, acquired great mystical powers from the mysterious and spiritual residents of Tibet, specifically a “council of seven Lamas,” and brought them back to the US to be put to use in beating up ne’er-do-wells. <\/p>\n

Mr Mystic is a magic-using super-hero, which means that he is a nigh-omnipotent force of nature only occasionally slowed down by a lucky bop on the bean from a crook. His major mark of distinction from his peers is a literal one: a mystic tattoo on his forehead, which would mean that he’s almost certainly the first person to have to field a lot of well-meaning concern over the effect that that sort of thing would have on his employability. (The Spirit Section, 2 June, 1940)<\/p>\n

ADDENDUM<\/b>:<\/p>\n

After all my talk about how a lot of the non-Spirit related parts of the Spirit Section were unavailable I thought to double check, and I had forgot that yes, they are. Granted, it’s as medium-quality photocopies, but that’s better than nothing, right?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n

Having rediscovered that fact, I went back and read the first Mr Mystic story, and was shocked and surprised to learn that rather than being a student of the occult who spent long years studying in Tibet, our unnamed hero is a cultural attache serving somewhere in presumably-Eastern Europe when he is blown very <\/i>off-course while fleeing an Axis invasion force. He crashes in Tibet and is given the forehead brand\/tattoo that I did not realize was the sole source of his power while still unconscious. The whole thing is a pretty far cry from what I had imagined his origin to be!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whoops there are two more super-heroes in the Spirit Section. Should have included them with the Spirit himself, tsk tsk.  Lady Luck:  The Spirit’s home, the “Spirit Section” of newspaper comics also included two other Will Eisner-created but not -written or -drawn characters, the first of whom is Lady Luck. In actuality wealthy socialite Brenda […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,351,772,131,4,687,690],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-5","category-calling-card","category-lady-luck","category-magic","category-minor-super-hero","category-mr-mystic","category-register-and-tribune-syndicate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3123"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3126,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3123\/revisions\/3126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}