Lev Gleason's finest!
Lance Hale:
Lance Hale is a soldier of fortune and jungle adventurer who is notable mainly for the fact that in his first appearance he is given super strength by a fellow with the pleasing name of Dr Grantland Grey so that he can help out on an expedition to the stars, and then after returning to Earth he just... stops using the armband that gives him his enhanced strength. He keeps on adventuring, don't get me wrong, but as a regular jungle guy, ie, a colonialist race science fantasy figure.
Hale is slightly more interesting than his contemporaries in the jungle guy community by virtue of the variety of situations that he gets in: there's the initial space trip that ends up turning into an interdimensional one and then a battle with invading animal men from a parallel world, a delve into a lost underground kingdom in which he incidentally becomes immortal, cursed demon-summoning gemstone action... I assume that the thrills are eventually going to stop coming but 1940 was almost all hits. (Silver Streak Comics 002, 1940)
Mister Midnite **HERO UPDATE**:
As you may or may not recall, Mister Midnite is a hero in the classic formal wear style who has one very specific power, to stop clocks by yelling "time stop!" Well! So we thought! It turns out that in his second appearance, Midnite demonstrates a second power, that of being teleported to a vaguely defined location, and also when he has shouts "time stop!" I really wish that there were more than two Mister Midnite stories so that we would have some more data to use in piecing all this together, but as of now I must assume that he has some sort of vaguely defined wishing power and that "time stop!" is its trigger phrase, like Johnny Thunder and "say you." (Silver Streak Comics 002, 1940)
the Silver Streak:
The Silver Streak! Is notable for two (2) reasons, the first of which is that he is a the-title-of-the-comic-book character who doesn't show up until issue 3, which is the opposite to how it often works, where the title character goes from proudly front and centre to gone in as many issues.
The second and more interesting thing about the Silver Streak is his origin, which I have tried and failed to summarize in paragraph form, so here goes as bullet points:
- the Silver Streak is a race car, or rather a series of race cars because every Silver Streak crashes, killing the driver. Nobody wants to drive for the Silver Streak team. The cars are crashing because they are being attacked by a giant fly.
- the Silver Streak's owner is Hindu mystic known only as the Swami. When an unnamed cab driver volunteers to drive the Silver Streak, the Swami hypnotizes him to be a great race car driver.
- the unnamed driver is immediately killed by a giant fly.
- BUT! The Swami has a hunch that the man is not in fact dead! He and a pal go to the cemetery and dig up the driver's unmarked grave, and they are proved right! And what's more, the prior hypnotic conditioning combined with the near-death experience has made the man (henceforth the Silver Streak) superhuman!
The first adventure of the Silver Streak concludes with him stealing the latest prototype of his namesake car and using it to destroy the giant fly that "killed" him, and as presented he seems to have been on track to be a car-based super-hero. However, between Silver Streak Comics 003 and 004, the character was handed off from Jack Binder to Jack Cole and the Silver Streak became a guy with super speed, no car required. I don't know if his origin is ever revised, but I do know that the Silver Streak has several sidekicks over the years and that they all get their powers via a blood transfusion from the man himself, so something's going on there. Unless his blood was hypnotized too, of course - the Swami never returns, so his deal is never fully explored.
Like a lot of super speed characters, the Silver Streak ends up being more about cool speed tricks than having a distinct personality, but he's a fun read nonetheless. (Silver Streak Comics 003, 1940)
Dickie Dean, Boy Inventor:
We love to see a boy inventor, if only because our brains have been warped enough by the Venture Brothers that we can't help but imagine their dysfunctional adulthood, and by "we" I mean "I". Dickie Dean here is particularly good fodder for that little thought experiment, as he is compelled to sign over his inventions to the US government by his misplaced sense of patriotism, so he's either in for a rude awakening or an increasingly delusional relationship to reality as he gets older.
Some inventions that Dickie fails to patent in 1940 include:
- a device that can replay sound waves and visualize shadows up to 2-3 weeks old
- a device designed to stop all war by making air as thick as molasses and thus preventing bullets etc from moving fast enough to do harm (importantly, this air is still breathable)
- an enclosed, submersible speedboat equipped with a device that abates flood waters via rapid electrolysis
He does sell a magnetic antigravity device for use as a mid-air brake for airplanes, but only because his father is in dire financial straits.
Dickie Dean is also interesting for the fact that he is from New Castle, Pennsylvania, a real place with a regular amount of history but not otherwise a big name in city circles. Also I just reread the bit where I roasted Dickie for giving away his patents and I want to make it cleat that the part I think is foolish is giving them to, like, the FBI, not donating them to humanity. (Silver Streak Comics 003, 1940)
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