MINOR SUPER-HERO 036: THE TOUGH KID SQUAD

(Tough Kid Squad 001, 1942)

I occasionally opine about the relative obscurity of one super-hero or another and it's tricky to judge such a thing objectively, especially when it's about a suite of characters who are all 100% unknown to the world at large. Despite this I am confident in my assertion that the Tough Kid Squad are the most obscure Marvel characters ever to receive their own title, even if it did only last one issue.

The Tough Kid Squad is an obvious attempt by Marvel to replicate the formula of the Young Allies, but the technology to boil down a concept and recast it misfired somehow. The real key to a 40s kid gang is the mix of personalities - as seen in the Young Allies' Smart Kid, Fat Kid, Tough Kid, Racial Stereotype and two Super-Hero Kids. The Tough Kid Squad on the other hand, is as follows:

Wally Danger: Together with his brother Wally forms the Danger Twins, the Super-Hero kid Element of the team. Orphaned at a young age, the twins were raised separately after Tom was stolen by a crook to be his protege. They both benefit from a serum that their father gave them as infants which enhances their trained abilities. Wally mostly acts as the Smart Kid.

Tom Danger: Raised to be a crook but his better nature shone through when he met his long-lost twin, Tom is a Tough Kid to his core.

Derrick Dawes: A former school bully who was befriended after a beating from Tom. Tough Kid.

Butch: A guy on the school football team who is befriended off-panel. Supposedly a Fat Kid based on the action but is drawn as and acts like a Tough Kid.

Eagle: The football team also had a Racial Stereotype to befriend, albeit one who mostly acts like a Tough Kid. Eagle also presents the conundrum common to comic book racial stereotype characters: that because part of the joke of them is that they are acting against stereotype by being the hero of the piece they are often driving the action in the most interesting ways. 

The main point of this breakdown is that true to its name the Tough Kid Squad is a real one-note kid gang. It is in fact weirdly tough to figure out if there is a true knockoff kirby in the bunch, in fact - they're kind of all part of one gestalt knockoff kirby, with Eagle looking most the part and Tom acting it.

Obviously I think the name should be brung back, and I'm kind of disappointed in Marvel for not dredging it up during the 50-State Initiative time - it might have been the only thing to make the fact that Hellcat was the entire Alaska Initiative team all by herself more fun. As for the members themselves... they are a bit generic, but the fact that the Danger Twins are all hopped up on serum offers the easy possibility for a couple of unaging characters to have been secretly operating for the last 80+ years, which is always fun.