Wednesday, January 4, 2023

MINOR SUPER-HERO 030: THE RED TRIANGLE

(Feature Comics 046, 1941)


An exciting development! Up until now our minor super-heroes have been of two flavours: the stars of minor super-hero strips or a new identity adopted by the stars of crime or adventure strips - the key word in either case is star - they are the focus and driving force of the strip.

The Red Triangle is our first example of another type of super-hero: the single issue guest star. These are far more common in the Silver Age, when they pop up every so often to complicate the main hero's life for an adventure before retiring in shame or glory. I don't have a full classification scheme for them yet, but I suspect that there will be a distinction between at least two types: the one who is making an attempt at being a big-time super-hero and the one who temporarily adopts an alternate persona to achieve a goal, with the Red Triangle being the latter.


So: the Red Triangle is a masked vigilante who gets involved with a Reynolds of the Mounted case, which actually and weirdly makes him one of the earliest Canadian super-heroes.

The Red Triangle, real name Baxter, is a man who got mixed up in a counterfeiting gang and when they wouldn't let him back out, disappeared and adopted a new vigilante identity. It's unclear whether he spent the year that he was the Triangle getting into any other crimefighting adventures - the crooks all know his name, but that might just be because he's been hassling them specifically. 

Once the gang's been rounded up, Baxter takes the usual path that this style of minor super-hero does and hangs up the Red Triangle identity to return to the simple life of a hotelier.

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