MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 016

A pretty motley collection this time.

the Ermine:

A frontier vigilante who wears a reversible ermine skin outfit (white for winter wear, brown for regular), leaves an ermine tail as his calling card and can communicate/ is friends with with all the creatures of the forest (except for the ermine, presumably). The Ermine would be an interesting character if he wasn't explicitly and murderously racist against Native peoples. He's classed as a minor hero here because all of his recorded adventures involve him acting as the protector of two youths but I assume that he has a lot of hate crimes under his belt. (Star Ranger Funnies v1 015, 1938)

the Lone Marshal:

I have a strong suspicion that the Lone Marshal is a Lone Ranger knockoff. Obviously there's no way to peer into the past and be sure, and admittedly the name was a really big influence on my opinion, but I'm sticking with it. He's got a Sioux companion named Vajo and a horse named Lobo, so he's just as not-technically-Lone as the Ranger is. (The Comics 001, 1937)

Doctor Doom:

Doctor Doom, "the Robin Hood of International Spies," is some sort of freelance spy chief who we join as he works for the small Balkan nation of Returia as they fend off invasion plans by their rival, the similarly-small, not-as-Balkan Kingdom of Merovia. Doctor Doom and his double handful of associates are on the back foot for the entirety of their time battling the Falcon and never really manage to get the upper hand before the feature is cancelled but I assume that they would have come out on top eventually. (The Comics 001, 1937)

Jungleman:

Jungleman is your typical white-kid-raised-by-beasts jungle hero, in this case based out of Cambodia. He lives in a temple and collects treasure and repeatedly kidnaps a young woman named Louise until she falls in love with him - like I said, typical stuff. 

The real thing that sets Jungleman apart from his peers is both the sheer number and variety of his animal companions and their tremendous attrition rate - he goes through two tigers in his first three appearances when most jungle heroes have to make one big cat last their entire career! 

Eventually, Louise and her dad convince Jungleman to relocate to the US under the more civilized alias of "Mister Jay" and I was all set for a lot of the same kind of fish-out-of-water stuff that Ty-Gor spent a lot of his time on but no! Their ship gets wrecked and they just end up in a different jungle! It's the old jungle switcherooo and I never saw it coming! (Champion Comics 002, 1939)

**UPDATE** Bob Phantom **UPDATE**

Star Comics 001, 1938 features a different guy named Bob Phantom, which only reinforces my paranoia vis-a-vis there being a joke or a reference that I'm missing about the last name Phantom. Also, given the slapdash nature of early comics and their record keeping, nobody actually knows who created this guy and so it's entirely possible that he's the same Bob Phantom and Harry Shorten and/or Irv Novick just took him from Centaur to MLJ and upgraded him from stage magician to super-hero.