MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 090

We're simply up to our eyeballs in minor super-heroes!

K-9:

K-9, an injured German Shepherd (they call him a police dog but I think that that's as an alternate breed name due to the war, like how the British call them Alsatians) nursed back to health and given a terrible name by scrappy teen Tip Starr, is given ample opportunity to fight crime thanks to his association with Tip's brother, Police Detective Dick Starr. (Dynamic Comics 001, 1941)

Categorized in: Alphanumeric (K, 9), Animals (Dogs), Origin (Animals)

Dynamic Boy:

When orphan Kent Banning is severely injured while rescuing Doctor Brown's unnamed daughter from a burning schoolhouse, Brown returns the favour by injecting him with a mysterious fluid that he got from a dying Tibetan Lama. This fluid not only saves Kent's life but endows him with the standard array of super-powers: enhanced speed and agility, super strength and the power of flight. He also adopts the lad, which makes the chaste romance between Kent and "She Seriously Never Gets A Name" Brown just a little bit weird. She does make him a costume, which is nice. And it clearly has room for him to grow into!

Probably the best thing about Dynamic Boy is just how lanky and awkward he is. Contextually, he's about the same age as Robin and most of the other sidekicks in Golden Age comics, i.e., somewhere between 12 and 15 years old, but Dynamic Boy really feels like it, particularly in the sequence above, where he learns that he can fly by tripping over his own feet. (Dynamic Comics 002, 1941)

Categorized in: Generica (Boys), Language (Superlatives - Dynamic), Origin (Mystic Mutates)

Lady Satan:

Lady Satan's career begins after an ocean liner is sank by Nazi bombers and an unnamed woman (there is some impression that she uses Satan as her surname while adventuring, but whether it is her real name is hard to say) is the only survivor. Swearing vengeance, she heads back to Europe to vex the Axis.

I really like Lady Satan! For one thing, she just kind of relies on the mystery inherent in being a hot lady in a mask and doesn't even switch to a secret identity to seduce horny Nazis into revealing their secrets. For another, she's supremely adaptive. Got captured and about to be shot as a spy? No problem, Lady Satan will merely steal the executioner's pistol, take him hostage, steal a plane, crash into the pursuing planes, parachute into a handy river, steal a car and be in Berlin at the same time as the fellow she was caught trying to rob in the first place. Just a very competent character.

She also packs a chlorine gas gun, which is horrifying to contemplate firing at another person, let alone firing it in an enclosed space. I suppose that war crimes don't apply to you if you are a stateless vigilante, but everybody has to breathe. (Dynamic Comics 002, 1941)

Categorized in: Famous Figures (Satan), Origin (Vengeance Quest), Royalty (Ladies)

the Green Knight:

Contrary to his name, the Green Knight is more of an archer-type hero than some sort of armoured bruiser or dashing cavalier. He is also our first Florida-based super-hero, as far as I can figure (many before him have visited, certainly, but none before have deigned to live there).

As the Green Knight explains to Lance Cooper, an orphan boy who he rescues from a vampire in the Everglades, he is in actuality Denis Knight, a rich guy who collects Medieval weapons and has a rose-tinted view of knighthood that informs his forays into vigilante justice.

Speaking of Lance, he abbreviates the usual perfunctory super-hero boy-adoption process even further by just coming out and asking to join up with Knight. He gets a mini version of the Green Knight's costume (and sadly loses his cheeky little orphan cap in the process) and follows him into battle for the remainder of his two-adventure career as Lance, which is a very annoying name indeed. Is it just using his regular name like so many kid sidekicks do, or are they doing a bit of a winking acknowledgement that his name already fits the knightly theme? Would it kill them to give him a spear? (Dynamic Comics 002, 1941)

Green Knight Categorized in: Colours (Green), Famous Figures (Arthurian)*, Royalty (Knights)

Lance Categorized in: Locations (Florida), Objects (Lances), Origins (Sidekicks)

* the character does not have anything to do with Arthuriana thematically, but the name "the Green Knight" is nonetheless enough of a reference for me

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 077

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)

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 041

Another assortment of guys for your delectation.

the Sky Wolf:

Just another masked pilot in a souped-up named plane (originally the Silver Bullet, followed by the Golden Bullet), the Sky Wolf loses both his place in Silver Streak Comics and his plane's name to fellow pilot Cloud Curtis once 1941 rolls around, and to add insult to injury, in 1942 the far more successful character of Skywolf debuts over at Hillman, ensuring that he doesn't even have good SEO. (Silver Streak Comics 004, 1940)

Whiz, King of Falcons:

The Silver Streak is not immune to the sting of pride, so when aviator Sir Cedric Baldwin challenges him to a race around the world to prove who is the fastest man on Earth, he accepts, and is of course fast enough that he not only wins but is able to have a very culturally-sensitive adventure in Saudi Arabia along the way. Silver Streak is knocked out and captured at one point, and the falconry-obsessed villain takes advantage of this to inject his favourite bird with some super-fast blood. 

Astonishingly, this works, despite our only account of the Silver Streak's origin being as a result of hypnotic conditioning coupled with a near-death experience - perhaps the hypnosis was so deep that it mesmerized his very blood? That would explain the falcon's immediate shift in loyalty from its owner to its super-heroic blood doner, at least.

"Whiz, King of Falcons" is technically not this guy's name until Silver Streak Comics 007, which was published in 1941, but I reckon that calling him "Unnamed Falcon Companion" here and then correcting it in six months' time would be extremely wilfully obtuse of me. (Silver Streak Comics 006, 1940)

UPDATE 1941 

the Daredevil:

The Daredevil is Bart Hill, a vigilante in the Batman mould, having lost his parents to a gang of crooks and subsequently vowed to revenge himself on crime. Further, those same crooks tortured Bart himself, rendering him mute in the process, and due to a boomerang-shaped brand they left on his chest he devoted himself to the study of the weapon, adopting it as one of his heroic signatures. The Daredevil is one of the longer-running non-Marvel or DC/Fawcett/Quality characters of the Golden Age so he will be making a few appearances here going forward, but there are a few notable things about him:

- his origin will undergo some revision between his first and second appearances, most notably the fact that his muteness is discarded - presumably to enable for easier storytelling

- his costume is also somewhat revised, which is fun particularly because, like his Silver Age namesake, he switches from a yellow to a red colour scheme

- this Daredevil's Golden Age popularity, combined with his public domain status, means that he's a popular choice for modern revivals, but the fact that there is a currently-published character with the same name (and owned by Disney, to boot) means that nobody dares to actually call him Daredevil in their stories and so the more recent versions of him have a wide range of variably terrible alternate names including the Death Defying 'Devil, the Daring Devil and Doubledare. (Silver Streak Comics 006, 1940)

UPDATE 1941 

Iron Vic:

Iron Vic is a frustrating beast. He first appears as a mostly-dead body washing up near the island laboratory of Professor Carvel, who applies a "certain rare serum" to the task of saving his life before dropping dead from the strain. Vic, as the man comes to be known, is rendered both amnesiac and superhuman by the process. He has one proper super-heroic adventure against Carvel's old colleague Dr Spagna before the strip transitions into one primarily about baseball (and in case you're wondering there is no mention of the ethical quandary that a superhuman participating in regular human sports would cause). The really frustrating part is that Dr Spagna implies that he knows something about Iron Vic, but the Spagna story is never actually resolved anywhere. Vic is merely an amnesiac baseball player until I think he enters the Army at some point? WHERE OH WHERE IS MY RESOLUTION (Single Series 022, 1940)

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 009

All Archie/MLJ edition!

Rang-a-Tang the Wonder Dog:

The Wonder Dog is an uncommon but distinct type of comic book hero and Rang-a-Tang here is typical of the breed: essentially a dog with human intelligence. Rang-a-Tang escaped from a cruel but evidently very talented circus dog trainer and almost immediately teamed up with police Detective Hy Speed, who was perhaps lashing out at the world for his own moniker when he gave his new dog one of the all-time worst names. I mean, I get that it's a knockoff of Rin-Tin-Tin but he also had a very bad name. 

By issue seven of Blue Ribbon Comics Rang and Hy had moved to Hollywood and acquired a third companion in Richy Waters, aka Richy the Amazing Boy, and apparently free-range child actor with no adult supervision to speak of. Richy gradually usurps Rang-a-Tang's place as the strip's protagonist over the next year or so, which is disappointing to those of us who enjoy dogs more than child actors. (Blue Ribbon Comics 001-022, 1939-1942)

Bob Phantom:

As far as his super-hero identity goes, Bob Phantom is fairly regular: he shares with many other Golden Age heroes the power to suddenly appear - in a cloud of smoke in his case (though crucially he is generating the smoke as opposed to appearing in a preexisting cloud like the Vision. Or preexisting fire like the Flame, preexisting water like the Shark, etc. You get it) - and also has some degree of intangibility - definitely enough that bullets don't affect him. Per his name, he's very into spooking crooks out via psychological torment.

Bob Phantom's civilian identity is that of Walt Whitney, writer of the newspaper gossip column "On Broadway" which he uses to taunt both criminals and the New York District Attorney for some reason. Possibly just to be a scamp. (Blue Ribbon Comics 002, 1939)

(between Bob Phantom, Top Ten character Jack Phantom and cartoon character Danny Phantom there are just enough characters with "Phantom" as a last name to make me think I'm missing some sort of very obvious pun)

UPDATE

UPDATE 1940 

Corporal Collins, Infantryman:

An American serving in the French Army (and later the British Army after the Nazis conquer France), Corporal Collins is for no apparent reason a super soldier with crack reflexes,  a danger sense that allows him to dodge enemy bullets and a "fabri-steel flexible repeller" that allows him to effectively deflect incoming bullets back to their source. The more overtly super-heroic aspects of  Collins get toned down after a couple of issues and he becomes just another comic book military paragon with a comic relief sidekick named Slapsie and a rivalry with fellow MLJ military hero Sergeant Boyle and his sidekick Twerp. (Blue Ribbon Comics 002, 1939)

Hercules:

It's time for another Hercules! This Hercules is the real deal Olympian, sent to Earth by Zeus to combat evil (and possibly also as a prank? He seems to be completely unprepared when he pops up in the middle of a New York City analog). Functionally, he's exactly the same as the other two Herculeses we've seen so far: a great big shirtless blonde guy with super strength. He even gets a job as a sideshow strongman like the both of them.

The real innovation in this version of Hercules is the assertion that his famous Twelve Labours were in fact "wiping out the evils of Ancient Greece" and then drawing parallels between them and his adventures in the modern day, including:

- the Slaying of the Nemean Lion -> killing gang boss Leo Nymia, the Lion of the Underworld (Hercules also steals Nymia's suit as a version of wearing the lion's hide)

- the Slaying of the Lernean Hydra ->  deposing political fixer Hy Dralerny and his "Nameless Nine" organization

- the Cleaning of the Augean Stables -> cleaning up crooked gambling at the local racetrack - very tortured and involves both a gambler named Augie King, and two jockeys named Tom and Dick Rivers who had to be "set in the right channels"

- the Capture of the Erymanthian Boar -> very disappointing. Hercules captures a fat pseudo-Nazi General (who isn't even named Hairy Man Ian) and because he shoots down a bunch of planes while doing it shoehorns in the Slaying of the Stymphalian Birds. Absolutely the worst of the bunch.

- Stealing the girdle of Hippolyta -> Contending with the villainess Natch, about whom we shall speak anon.

Sadly for the mythological completionists out there, Hercules stopped appearing after just six labours, so we'll never get to see him take on Mary Diomedes the Cannibal Equestrian or twin cattle rustlers Gary and Gerry Young. (Blue Ribbon Comics 004, 1940)