REAL PERSON ROUND-UP 023

It's an Axis-heavy Round-Up this time, for reasons which will soon become clear.

Adolf Hitler:

Daredevil Comics 001 might not have been the first comic book to feature its title character physically attacking Adolf Hitler on the front cover, but it makes up for this in sheer volume of different characters who are getting in on the act. And the comic itself is also 100% concerned with super-heroes beating up and otherwise inconveniencing Hitler.

Hitler's first appearance in the comic proper also includes a rogue's gallery of Third Reich figures, including Josef Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Goering, Admiral von Roeder* and General Walther von Brauchitsch. Also present: the fortune teller who supposedly advised Hitler on a day-to-day basis.

*more on him later 

Though Daredevil is present to merely spy on the well-attended meeting above, he is found out and has to punch out not just Hitler but Goering and Goebbels as well in order to make his escape.

Hitler's second major humiliation in the issue comes at the hands claws of the Claw. He makes a deal with the giant villain on behalf of his Japanese allies, but the Daredevil gets involved in and ruins the whole operation.

Hitler has to pay a hefty bribe just to get out with his skin intact. This is a fine illustration of why most villains don't negotiate this sort of thing in person.

 

Finally, the suprisingly hands-on Hitler is coordinating a Nazi invasion of Africa when the Daredevil and jungle hero Lance Hale get involved, giving the Daredevil the opportunity to land two more punches and a boomerang-assisted trip on the dictator.

Lance Hale, meanwhile, pranks Hitler by giving him a shave with an incredibly accurate arrow, then almost body slams him to death before he is interrupted by Nazis. (Daredevil Comics 001, 1941) 

Benito Mussolini: 

A sad cameo from Il Duce after a portion of his fleet is sunk by the British. (Daredevil Comics 001, 1941) 

Heinrich Himmler:

Is Blackout's Nazi foe Heinrich Himmel meant to be a version of Himmler or is it just a very Nazi collection of syllables? Hard to say. (Captain Battle Comics 001, 1941) 

Hermann Goering: 

Like Hitler, Goering is surprisingly willing to lead from the front in this issue. He loses a dogfight with Cloud Curtis and almost kills himself over it. (Daredevil Comics 001, 1941)

Josef Goebbels:

Goebbels, meanwhile, steals a codebreaking machine devised by by boy inventor Dickie Dean.

He doesn't manage to hang onto it for long before he gets beaten up and mummified by Dean and the Daredevil (and Zip Todd, of course). (Daredevil Comics 001, 1941)

the Koh-i-noor Diamond: 

Once more a big ol' gem is given a name that sounds like "Koh-i-noor," in this case the (baseball-sized!) Kohnoor Diamond. (Captain Battle Comics 002, 1941)

Lord Haw-Haw: 

Lord Garnett here is a bit of a rarity as he starts out as a masked spy who will be appearing in the next Generic Costumed Villain Round-Up and then, after shooting Whiz, King of Falcons (see the next Catalogue of Wounds) flees to Germany and takes up a career in propaganda broadcasting, where his distinctive and annoying laugh earns him the epithet "Lord Hee-Haw."

His new career doesn't last very long, as he is shot down by the Silver Streak while doing some aerial broadcasting. (Daredevil Comics 001, 1941)

Admiral von Roeder:

Who is von Roeder is a very good question, because I can find no evidence that he actually existed. There are four plausible explanations for this:

1. He's a fictional Nazi who somehow got conflated with real ones. 

2. There was an Admiral von Roeder but he was only noteworthy for exactly the length of time it took for this comic to be written and he thereafter sank into such obscurity that he is no longer remembered.

3. The state of internet search is so wretched that a moderately obscure Nazi is currently unsearchable.

4. They couldn't come up with a real Nazi Admiral and so just made one up. 

Regardless of his actual historicity, this von Roeder is beaten up by both Daredevil and a time-travelling Pirate Prince. (Daredevil Comics 001, 1941) 

Winston Churchill: 

Churchill invites both Daredevil and Silver Streak (and the most obnoxious version of Whiz, King of Falcons) to No. 10 Downing St to solicit their help with the war effort. (Daredevil Comics 001, 1941)

More of this kind of thing

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 081

Lev Gleason characters filling every available ecological niche over here. 

Thun-Dohr:

We've seen it before and we'll see it again: Thun-Dohr (Thun-dohr?) is a white guy brought up in the traditions of a Tibetan monastery and he's just the best dang mystic anyone's ever seen, much better than all those Tibetan monks could ever be. 

Like Iron Fist, the 1970s version of this character archetype, Thun-Dohr was orphaned when his parents succumbed to the elements while attempting to reach the fabled monastery. Baby Thun-Dohr (and I can no longer think of new ways to ask why these people brought their baby along on this super dangerous expedition) was found and brought to safety by the monks, who acclaimed him as some sort of prophesied kid. 

Thanks to his training in "the arts of the Gom-Pa," Thun-Dohr has a wide variety of mystic powers, including invisibility, teleportation, invulnerability to a variety of environmental conditions, the ability to see the last moments of a person's life in their corpse's eyes, astral projection and so on and so forth. He also has a mystical bracelet that allows him to remain in mental contact with the 300+ year-old Dalai Lama (not the one you're thinking of) who raised him as he goes out into the world to battle evil (i.e., the other guy from the same monastery who is attempting to end the world - could've used a prophecy telling them not to let him in, amirite?). (Silver Streak Comics 013, 1941)

Categorized in: Day Jobs (Lamas), Elements (Thunder), Origin (Mystic Traditions)

Undercover Man:

Police Detective Phil Barrows is unpopular at the Centre Street Homicide Department due to his habit of working alone (I think? Nobody seems to like him and this is the only stated reason why) so what does he do? Create a secondary identity called the Undercover Man so that he can work even more alone while adopting a variety of disguises. During his one published adventure he takes down corrupt politician Eduardo Donati and while I'm not normally one to critique someone's decision to adopt a costumed identity I think he probably could have done it as a regular cop if he'd tried to. (Captain Battle Comics 001, 1941)

Categorized in: Day Jobs (Police Detective), Powers (Master of Disguise), Professions (Law Enforcement)

Blackout: 

Blackout is the new name adopted by Dr Basil Brusiloff after he is mutated by chemicals randomly mixed together during a Nazi air raid on the hospital in which he is working. Unlike many other super-heroes who undergo physical transformations, Brusiloff's new, jet-black form appears to be a permanent change and not something that he can switch on and off.

Blackout is able to fly at speed comparable to a fighter plane, but his main power is the ability to emit a thick black smoke from his pores, the specificity of which somehow makes it seem more gross than a smoke power usually does.

In addition to being opaque, this smoke is thick enough to suffocate someone in an unventilated environment (this is also gross. Huff my gas, miscreants!). Blackout is able to direct this smoke and even shape it to some degree (such as when he forms a long tunnel out of it to shield fleeing civilians from Nazi eyes), but most remarkably is able to emit it in large enough quantities that at one point he escapes a sealed room by bursting the walls through sheer air pressure.

Aside from his powers, there are two remarkable things about Blackout: firstly, his origin takes place in Belgrade, which makes him the first in what is sure to be a pretty short list of Yugoslavian superhumans. Secondly, Blackout is the subject of some very minor debate vis-a-vis just how hairy/furry he is, with the two sides boiling down to "the text never says he's hairy so it must just be something else" versus "he looks very hairy." I am inclined to side with the latter side. He looks very hairy!

Related to the hairiness question is a third interesting thing about Blackout: it is quite possible that he is completely nude, aside from that stylish green mask. (Captain Battle Comics 001, 1941)

Categorized in: Activities (Blackouts), Colours (Black), Origin (Chemical Mutates)

Nightro: 

Nightro is Hugh Goddard, a scientist who was betrayed and left to die by his associates after they found a rich radium deposit in Alaska and Goddard expressed his desire to donate it to medical research, and though I do have some sympathy for his partners' position that as the expedition's financial backers they should see some profit from the mine they resort to murder a bit too quickly for my tatse. Surely this is a case for the courts!

If you look Nightro up online, odds are that you will be told that he is blinded by the ambient radiation from the deposit. This is not true! What actually happens is that he wanders around in the snow until he is found by some helpful Inuit fellows and ends up with an extreme case of snow-blindness. Radiation doesn't even come up.

Goddard eventually makes his way back to the US, where a Dr Frank Miller (!) discovers that polarized lenses will allow him to see. Unlike his blind super-hero contemporaries the Mask and Dr Mid-Nite, Nightro does not appear to have any kind of enhanced dark vision. Instead, his stated reason for adopting a costumed alias is that his goggles are too ugly for him to be accepted in polite society.

Goddard continues to live as a blind man as part of maintaining his secret identity as Nightro, meaning that from his second appearance onward he has a seeing eye dog companion named Blackie. He is called the "Streamlined Robinhood," supposedly because he takes money from crooks and redistributed it to the needy - I reckon that it's just a way to attach a buzzword to the character - if he had debuted tenyears later he might've been "the Jet Age Robinhood."  (Daredevil Comics 002, 1941)

Categorized in: Accessories (Dogs), Locations (Temporal), Origins (Blind Characters)