(Military Comics 001, 1941)
This is stretching the idea of what a "minor super-hero" is quite a bit but I ultimately had to defer to my judgment rule about criminal groups: if one person were doing this would it make sense to categorize them such? And it would! The Q-Boat is just that, a warship disguised as a harmless four-masted schooner in order to prey on Nazi convoy raiders. Swap out the disguised ship for a submarine and you have the Red Torpedo, a personal fave!
There are two interesting things about the Q-Boat the first is the fact that although it was a one-off story, whoever wrote it (probably Henry Kiefer?) left a lot of details to be filled in later. Specifically: what the heck is going on with the Q-Boat?
As presented, the Q-Boat is not just a battle-capable schooner but a super-advanced miniature warship. It is crewed by Captain Foghorn (descended from John Paul Jones, speech balloons indicate that he's speaking at top volume at all times) and a bunch of teen boys, including Bob Wayne, Dick Martin and Marmaduke "Freckles" van Weyden. Questions such as "where did the Q-Boat come from?" "why all the teen boys?" and "why is Freckles so good at making guided missiles?" all go unanswered (Captain Foghorn's son-in-law is mentioned as having developed some of the tech on the Q-Boat but that just adds "who the heck is this son-in-law?" to the list).
The second interesting thing about the Q-Boat is the fun sibling dynamic between the child soldiers.
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