MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 060

Some of those reeeeal obscure guys today. 

Craig Carter:

Archaeologist Craig Carter wants to give up all the stuffy academia and become a crime fighter, and since he lives in a comic book universe, the very day he tells his girlfriend about this objectively bad decision he receives a magical ring in the mail from an old colleague whose life he had saved. This ring grants its wearer the ability to summon the gods of antiquity to aid them - in Carter's two adventures he summons Zeus, Mercury, Thor and Pluto, plus he gets Zeus to summon Pegasus for him, so presumably a whole world of magical beasts was also at his fingertips. Carter's second adventure ends with Pluto deciding not to return to the ring, which presumably would have set him up as a long-term antagonist. Alas this was not to be, as his second appearance was also his final appearance.

The ring is also hilariously sensitive with regards to its touch-activation, as seen here when a simple hand-pat causes Zeus to blow up the club. (Wham Comics 001, 1940)

Detecto:

Jack Strand is a radio scientist who has invented Detecto, a "wonder beam" that has "four unlimited powers": the ability to send and receive short wave radio, an engine killing effect, a force field and the ability to paralyze living things. As in a few other cases that we have encountered, the line between Detecto as a beam and Detecto as a kind of ambient energy field is a bit blurry, but whatever it is, Strand installs a transmitter in his car, making it into what is essentially a magical object. Would he be better off with a more portable version of Detecto, particularly as at least one of the powers, the radio, is commonly possessed by many cars already? Maybe. Am I sad that this was the only story about Detecto? Certainly, particularly as this was very much a tale of highway-based crime and I would love to see Detecto go up against someone in an airplane or maybe a building. (Wham Comics 001, 1940)

Blue Fire:

Blue Fire is actually scientist Jack Knapp, who acquired his powers through the ever-popular method of an unexpected explosion in his chemistry laboratory. Please note also that he was about to drink an unspecified formula just before this explosion occurred - is it the same as the explosive chemical that gave him his powers or was he about to unlock an entirely different suite of abilities?

Blue Fire takes his name from the halo of blue flames that surrounds him when his powers are active, Contrary to this external signifier, however, he does not have any kind of heat or flame based abilities but rather is an intangibility guy. This is by far the best thing about Blue Fire, by the way, and not just because of the name/power fakeout but because Blue Fire creator Louis Glanzman has effortlessly answered all of the nitpicky questions about intangibility (why can they still breathe? why don't they fall through the floor? why can they pick things up?) by establishing that Jack Knapp is effectively the opposite of ooblek: he functions as if tangible until enough force is exerted by or on his body, so that he can pick up a book but that same book will pass right through him if thrown. It's very neat and tidy!* 

Blue Fire has to drink some of the chemical created in the initial explosion to activate his powers, after which he has them for two whole hours. This is an interesting twist to the whole question of a secret identity, lying somewhere between the Hulk's "uncontrollable change for an indeterminate amount of time and the usual Archie Andrews-style running around in different hats that Superman and co. get up to. I'm surprised that I can't think of another character with this kind of life-complicating power setup. (Wham Comics 002, 1940)

*I am of course immediately imagining horror scenarios in which Blue Fire cannot breathe in a high wind or a high pressure atmosphere, where he jumps down from a small platform and then falls to the centre of the Earth, etc 

Solarman: 

Solarman and his mentor, the bat-eared Quino, are aliens from the enlightened planet Saturn who have been observing Earth for some time. Quino is so depressed over the crime and evil that is rampant on our planet that he almost heat-rays the entire thing before his Saturnian enlightenment kicks in and he reconsiders. Instead, the two hit upon a plan wherein Solarman will be blasted to Earth to fight crimes that the two have spotted via their viscopes and x-rayscopes.

Though Solarman is said to have "many powers" by Quino, the only one he displays while on his sole recorded mission to Earth is some moderate super strength. Still, this is more than enough to beat up gangster Al Ravoni's entire suite of henchmen and bring the fugitive himself to justice. Hopefully this kind of thing is enough to satisfy Quino's righteous bloodlust. (Wham Comics 002, 1940)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 579: COLOSSUS

(Colossus Comics 001, 1940)

I included this cover here in order to indulge in a little personal nostalgia but instead I feel like I am going a bit mad. See, I know this cover very well, from somewhere. I thought it was from Jeff Rovin's Encyclopedia of Supervillains, which I read through about one million times as a youth, but when I decided to check out the entry on Colossus in that book I could not find one. Ditto for the Encyclopedia of Monsters and even the Encyclopedia of Superheroes. As far as I can tell the oldest book I own with this image in it is Jon Morris' the Legion of Regrettable Supervillains, and that came out when I was 36 years old - will I ever learn where I encountered it as a young skeleton?

But enough of my memory crisis. The real important thing to note about this cover is that That's Not What Colossus Looks Like, or at least Dresses Like. Perhaps if this issue weren't his sole appearance he might have adopted something closer to the... well, I can only really describe it as a metal bondage outfit. The metal bondage outfit that he's wearing on the cover, then

Colossus is originally Richard Zenith, a humble lab assistant of the year 2640. He works for scientist Doctor Blitzmann, who is a good enough boss to know that Zenith's secret wish is to be a burly six-foot tall man like their colleague Bryn Hale (rather than *squints* his current burly five-foot-ten or so) but also a terrible enough boss that he says this in a shitty and humiliating way while injecting Zenith with growth serum.

Blitzmann's daughter Eve also works at her father's lab and it seems like she might not have gotten the job on merit because when she prepared the syringe of Hyper Catalyst VII growth serum for Zenith so that he would stop referring to himself as a "short king" she mixed it roughly 20 000 times stronger than needed. 

The serum seems to be more than merely biochemical in nature, as Zenith grows to thousands of times his original size without collapsing into a pile of viscera and broken bones. Plus, his clothes grow with him!

The power inherent in being a big big man immediately goes to Zenith's head and he declares himself "Colossus, Ruler of All the Earth!" and sets out to extract a surrender from Gregory Graves, head of the Tri-Planetary Federation's Solar Patrol, by threatening to destroy the Federation capital of Urbania. It's your classic case of a nerd being given power and immediately turning into a fascist.

In a fortuitous coincidence Earth's old enemies, the very cool Plantaliens, are also attempting to conquer the planet at the same time as Colossus and so there is a bit of a turf war that is handily won by the unstoppable 2000 foot tall man. Too bad, Plantaliens! Try again in another 60 years!

Colossus Comics was reportedly a test by Sun Publications to see if it was worth getting into this crazy new industry, and if that was indeed the case then the answer was "no" because this is the only appearance of Colossus (next month, i.e., never, "Colossus over Europe"!)

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 018

More of these guys and their antics.

Johnny Fox:

Johnny Fox is a guy* from the Florida Everglades who visits his grandfather one day to find him the victim of a treacherous murder. And what's worse, the murderer, one Peter Pokane, did so in order to steal a supply of "sun-shots", i.e., invisibility pills.

*and by "guy" I mean "Native American guy of the Seminole Tribe of Florida" but it's a tricky thing to work into a concise sentence. Also tricky: the racial politics of the Johnny Fox comic! Johnny is a college-educated Seminole and thus free of a lot of the overt stereotypical behaviour of the day but also is a near-superhuman even without the invisibility pills, explicitly due to his Noble Savagery. Plus Peter Pokane's major villainous trait is that he's a "half-breed" which... must I explain why that sucks? What I'm saying is that it's complicated.

Johnny gets the sun-shots back by yeeting Peter Pokane out a penthouse window and begins fighting crime, invisible-style. Keeping in mind, of course, that he has to take a pill to turn invisible and another to turn back. Unless he gets hurt, which will turn him back immediately. Which happens a lot, because Johnny may be invisible, but his shadow never is. As far as invisibility goes, this version might have the most caveats I have ever seen. At least he doesn't have to be nude.

After a while the writers seem to get tired of the invisibility gimmick and have Pokane return just long enough to take the sun-shots to a watery grave (and it's a rare villain who gets killed by the same hero twice). Johnny Fox is now just a regular bow-wielding New York City Private Detective... for about two issues, after which Johnny's grampa's ghost returns to teach him how to make them again. (Champion Comics 006, 1940)

the Human Meteor:

Duke O'Dowd was just a regular Texan serving as a French Foreign Legionnaire until a couple of issues in, when his writers presumably realized that comics about the French Foreign Legion are boring, repetitive and usually pretty racist (though they probably cared more about the first two reasons). So they made Duke homesick, had him earn an honourable discharge and sent him on his way in a plane piloted by fellow Texan Kerry Flynn - an unlucky break for Flynn as it turned out, because somewhere over the Himalayas the two were caught up in a mysterious tornado and blown to the hidden city of Bayakura, a journey that only Duke O'Dowd survived.

Hailed as the Great Deliverer, O'Dowd is introduced to Bayakuran scientist Dr Wah Le, who outfits him with the Wonder Belt, a superscientific device which provides him with super-strength, the power of flight and invulnerability to metal. Plus he gets a stun ray gun! And a very fun and goofy outfit!

Duke puts down a rebellion by the very low-achieving heir to the throne of Bayakura (his aim was to take the riches of Bayakura to the outside world and live like a king but he decided to do so via a huge heist rather than the traditional and much safer option of embezzling from the kingdom while in power) and installs Wah Le in his place before heading to the outside world himself.

Sadly, once O'Dowd rejoins the outside world he trades in the amazing Bayakuran national costume for a more traditional super-hero getup (though the Bayakurans seem to have varied up their outfits as well - perhaps their fashion industry was revitalized by O'Dowd's fresh new looks). He also switches names from the Great Deliverer to the Human Meteor, which is admittedly more snappy. 

The Human Meteor is also the first character we have encountered who will someday be done dirty by Roy Thomas in 1993's Invaders v2. Briefly, Thomas had the idea to field a team of super-heroes who had defected to the Nazis against the Invaders and since he wasn't allowed to use any actual Golden Age Marvel characters he instead opted for the public domain. 

While my initial instinct is to reject this idea... I must admit that it's not without merit. Plenty of otherwise rational people were also charmed by the fascists - it's unreasonable to think that no superfolk would ever compromise one aspect of their morality for another (it is however a badly-written comic, because it's a very 1990s comic). So what we're going to do is not assume that we'll get to it later (three years into this project and I still haven't gotten to 1942, after all) and instead we're going to evaluate just how much of a stretch it was for each character to end up as a Nazi.

While Duke O'Dowd is an adventurer and thrill-seeker who joined the French Foreign Legion for a larf and never really expresses complex morality as opposed to simple justice-seeking, his stated reason for joining the Battle-Axis is that his Boston Irish blood demanded it, which... is plausible as a motivation for attending a few meetings but a huge stretch when it comes to attempting to kill Captain America. (Champion Comics 008, 1940)

Robinhood Jones:

"Rich guy who gives it all up to become a do-gooder hobo" wasn't the most popular trend in early comics but I can conjure up at least half a dozen examples. Robinhood Jones has the added distinction of being a pretty direct pastiche of - you guessed it - Robin Hood and his Merry Men. Some highlights:

Robin Hood - Robert Harrison Jones III

Friar Tuck - Fry Tucker

Little John - Little Jack Lee

Will Scarlet - Bill Scarlet

Alan-a-Dale - some guy named Allen

There's also a fairly delightful swap of archery for horseshoes as an all-purpose solution. Funnily enough, though Robinhood Jones squared off against the same crooked Sheriff of Sherwood City on thereabouts on two separate occasions he never encountered a clear Prince John analog. Or a Maid Marion, for that matter. (Champion Comics 007, 1940)

the Black Ghost:

AKA the Black Rider, the Black Ghost was an alternate identity adopted by cowboy hero Bronc Peeler (himself the character prototype for the slightly less outlandishly-named Red Ryder) on one of the many occasions in which he was framed as a crook and had to prove his innocence. Of note mostly for his very cool outfit consisting of jet black cowboy gear with a white bandit mask. (Popular Comics 039, 1939*)

*Originally a comic strip that was reprinted in Popular Comics, if you're truly interested.