Friday, October 14, 2022

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 182: THE BIG SHOT

(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)

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