Please enjoy about half of the Great Comics stable of characters.
Kangaroo Man:
The Kangaroo Man is Jack Brian, who gets his name thanks to his animal companion: Bingo, an astonishingly well-trained kangaroo.
Jack might be a pretty standard comic book adventurer, but Bingo, though his vocabulary is limited to a "rsp, rsp" sound, is of seemingly near-human intelligence and able to act essentially as another human character in the strip. Here's Bingo parachuting out of an airplane, for example.
Bingo also has a respectable body count for an animal hero - he does a lot of whacking explosives at people and people at explosives. (Choice Comics 001, 1941)
Categorized in: Animals (Marsupials), Generica (Mans), Origins (Nonhuman)
Atlas the Mighty:
Atlas the Mighty has exactly one recorded adventure, in which he foils a band of fifth columnists who are stealing war materials in Oregon and then smuggling them to Canada. Or possibly the other way around. Though his name and his powers (super strength, invulnerability) evoke the Titan Atlas, Atlas the Mighty gets not one whiff of an origin and so any connection between the two is speculative at best. (Choice Comics 001, 1941)
Categorized in: Famous Figures (Mythological), Language (Superlatives), Origins (Unknown)
the Secret Circle:
The Secret Circle are actually brothers Jim (heavyweight boxing champion), Larry (pole vault record holder) and Mac (track star) Storm. Does it bother me that there are three of them and they went with a circle rather than a triangle? Heck yes it does.
Though there's some indication that the Secret Circle are already established vigilantes, they really get going when gang boss Lou Pacone murders their father, Police Commissioner Storm (incidentally, this happens while all three brothers are out setting records in their chosen fields, and while I won't go so far as to say that Commissioner Storm deserved to be murdered for being a bad father I will note that he would still be alive if he had taken the day off to support his sons instead of doing work that could have been delegated).
Though Larry and Mac's specialties do occasionally come in handy, all three Storm brothers spend most of their adventures punching out crooks, which kind of devalues Jim's contributions. (Choice Comics 001, 1941)
Categorized in: Generica (Circles), Origins (Crime Orphans)
Fire-Eater:
Fire-Eater, aka Mike O'Malley, is a stage performer whose act consists of the same fire-eating and -exhaling that he employs in his crimefighting. This is very important for those of us who are interested in the in-universe origins of super-hero (and super-villain) costumes, because it means that Fire-Eater's is in fact his stage outfit, and that he looks like that for professional reasons rather than as an expression of his secret inner self.
Despite his name, Fire-Eater does not actually eat any fire in his two recorded adventures. Instead, he eats "sodium capsules" (yikes) that allow him to breath streams of flame hot enough to melt lead and iron, and with enough force to travel at least a few dozen feet. He also seems to be at least somewhat invulnerable to heat and flame, which is handy not just because he deals in the stuff but because like a lot of fire guys he mostly fights arsonists, together with his girlfriend, nurse Louise Peters (Choice Comics 001, 1941)
Categorized in: Activities (Eating), Elements (Fire)
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