(Silver Streak Comics 001, 1939)
As we open, simply everyone's worried about the Will-o-Wisp, a mysterious crook who shows up at crime scenes and steals what other crooks were about to make off with. The police chief looks bad because he can't catch the Will-o-Wisp! The gangs are mad because they keep getting robbed by the Will-o-Wisp!
The Will-o-Wisp's big mistake comes when he butts in on the mugging of Neal Carruthers III, aka Mister Midnite, which of course arouses his interest. I guess you could argue that that wasn't precisely a mistake because the Will-o-Wisp didn't know that he was making it, but what about the fact that his next move was to extort the police chief for $50 000? Even without knowing that the chief and Neal Carruthers were friends that's just plain playing with fire.
Mister Midnite of course crashes the cash handoff and manages to figure out the Will-o-Wisp's secret: that he is not in fact a small ball of light capable of speech but a very gutsy ventriloquist who just saunters up and takes the loot while his victims are distracted by a light on a fishing line or some other apparatus. It's a bold, bold plan, with one huge point of failure: the first time someone looks away from the light and says "who's that guy?" you're screwed.
Speaking of "who's that guy?", one thing that never gets resolved is who exactly that guy is. I assume that he's meant to be an unknown outsider but thanks to the ambiguity of the simple art combined with the spot colouring everyone looks very similar to one another. I honestly can't say if one of the cops or crooks introduced in other scenes are supposed to also be the Will-o-Wisp.
All we can do is wait for someone to do a gritty reboot of Mister Midnite and give us a satisfying Will-o-Wisp origin (dark sorcerer who gained the ability to gorily eject a glowing orb from his nasal cavity in exchange for the souls of the innocent, I assume).
No comments:
Post a Comment