SUPER HERO FILE 003: CAPTAIN AMERICA

(Captain America Comics 001, 1940)

Captain America! Hitler-Puncher Number One! Quite possibly in the top five of super-heroics' most well-known origins - a young man, physically unfit for the military but wishing to serve his country, is transformed into a super soldier with a combination of chemicals and radiation. The scientist responsible for this is murdered by an enemy spy rendering the young man a unique hero rather than the first of many. His first act as a hero is to bring the assassin to justice. A classic origin story, and one so well-trodden that my dad probably knows it. The really interesting thing about this origin is all the elements of it that were not there at first but rather accreted over time.

Perhaps the biggest difference between the initial presentation of Captain America's origin and the ones that would come later is the fact that Steve Rogers is simply not a character in the original. Okay, perhaps that is too far, but there is absolutely none of the stuff with Steve heading in to volunteer and getting turned away, and certainly none of the later addition of him as the downtrodden but good-hearted patriot. He's merely an emaciated canvas for the doctors to work on - he doesn't even get a word out until after Erskine is shot.

Not quite as thematically potent, perhaps, but the absence of the Vita-Ray treatment after Steve gets his Super Soldier Formula is very notable when you're expecting it. Turns out that that isn't added until the 60s! 

The assassination of Dr Erskine and its aftermath play out essentially the same as they always will, though the assassin is eventually specifically said to be electrocuted after crashing into the Vita-Ray machine, which obviously can't be the case here. Please also note Dr Erskine being called Professor Reinstein here, something that has been given a few different explanations over the years.

Steve Rogers is installed in the US Army as the lowest-ranked Private in history, which might be limiting to an on-the-go young super-hero except for the fact of the vexing conundrum of Camp Lehigh's location, which places him in close proximity to both East and West Coast locations depending on the needs of the story. Rogers' immediate superior, the belligerent Sergeant Duffy, has sadly all but disappeared from modern retellings. 

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 091

Have a few mid-tier minor super-heroes, for a change.

the Black Terror:

Pharmacist Bob Benton is the kind of guy who will step in when a little kid is being roughed up by thugs, but despite this he is pretty relentlessly bullied by city Comptroller Rodney Clark* and (in a less overt but still insidious way) their mutual love interest Jean Starr.

* Clark is such a bully, in fact, that I assumed that he was going to eventually turn out to be crooked but instead he gets murdered** after a couple of issues.

** In fact I was wrong when I wrote this: he is merely almost  murdered and seemingly never recovers sufficiently to return to the comic. I guess I was just hoping that he would get murdered because he is, again, such a bully.

Perhaps because of this, Benton spends his spare time working on a "tonic for run-down people," or so he says. I assume that he's going for something closer to anabolic steroids, and thanks to his new assistant Tim Roland (the kid who was getting beaten up earlier), he stumbles upon the formula for something even better: formic ether! 

Thanks to those sweet sweet formic ether fumes, Benton becomes a super-human and in a real break for society decides to keep on being a decent guy rather than setting out for revenge on all those people who pushed him around when he was weak (though he does take the opportunity to give Rodney Clark a black eye every issue until he's murdered he retires). He gets his super suit in the most efficient way possible: by sending Tim down to the costume shop to see what they have in stock.

The formic ethers give Benton tremendous strength and a sort of mid-tier invulnerability: he can shrug off a sock on the jaw no problem, and eventually proves to be bulletproof, but he gets knocked around and knocked out an awful lot. (Exciting Comics 009, 1941)

Tim Roland:

Though Bob tells Tim that he can't join him on his quest for vigilante glory, he also just kind of leaves a smoking bottle of super power serum sitting out where anyone can get it - frankly he's lucky not to have to team up with Rodney Clark. Instead, Tim - who has had the foresight to pick up a second costume for himself, but not to pick a super-hero name - huffs a little formic ether and gets straight to busting heads.

Tim is the rare Golden Age sidekick who appears to be legitimately around eight to ten years old, instead of a stocky thirteen to fifteen like so many of his peers. Even more remarkably, he stays roughly in this age bracket for a couple of years, as far as can be ascertained (multiple artists mean that his height fluctuates quite a lot, but he pretty consistently wears short pants in his civilian identity). He's also one of those orphan boys who just kind of falls into a super-guy's orbit and becomes adopted by default. (Exciting Comics 009, 1941)

The Black Terror dabbles in the common practice of leaving a calling card in his first appearance, and makes the baffling decision to go with his domino mask as a design, rather than the cool skull-and-crossbones on his chest.

Categorized in: Accessories (Calling Cards), Body (Emotions - Terror), Origins (Chemical Mutates), Origins (Sidekicks)

the Sphinx **UPDATE**:

The Sphinx adopts the identity of the Domino Kid in order to have a very brief boxing career. (Exciting Comics 012, 1941)

Categorized in: Origins (Secondary Identities)

the Liberator:

Like many super-heroes, the Liberator starts out as a weedy nerd. Specifically, he is Dr Nelson Drew, lecturer in Chemistry at Claflin College. He is, troublingly, in love with Annabel, one of his students, who also serves as one of his major bullies - she is not only bored by chemistry (but you chose to take the course, Annabel!) but also scornful of Drew for caring about it when so much is afoot in the world, but... I don't actually know what her problem is? Like, chemistry was wildly consequential to the US war effort? Perhaps if he taught a social science I could see her point of view, if not agree with it. 

While doing a little light research into Ancient Egyptian poisons (okay, this is arguably inconsequential), Drew discovers the lost formula for a drug called Lamesis which will supposedly make one into their physical ideal. Though skeptical, he brews up a batch and since his lab safety appears to be nonexistent (troubling indeed for a guy who is researching poisons) he immediately gets a snootful of the stuff, and  turns into a big ol' hunk. I really enjoy how viscerally unpleasant the transformation process looks here - sadly this transformation conceit doesn't last more than a couple of issues.

This unexpected transformation isn't a dream come true for Drew, and he spends his first outing in his new body - the Lamesis turns out to be a temporary thing, you see - trying to figure out how to turn back, and engages in his first bout of super-heroism after discovering that the scientist he was trying to consult with had been murdered by fascists. 

I also enjoy the origin of the Liberator's costume: there are plenty of super-heroes going around in their old Halloween costumes, but he might be the only one who gets his outfit by stealing someone else's. Would he have become such an explicitly patriotic hero if he hadn't ended up in a star-spangled shirt? (Exciting Comics 015, 1941)

Categorized in: Accessories (Drugs), Day Jobs (College Professors), Origins (Patriotic Heroes)

VERY MINOR UPDATES:

John Thesson, aka the Son of the Gods, after being a character of no fixed address for his first several appearances, finally settles down: he was in Washington DC in Exciting Comics 006, but it wasn't until 007 that it became clear that that is where he chose to hang his hat and offer his services to the US Government.

The Mask sheds two of his assistants, Silk and Butch, as of Exciting Comics 007, and becomes of interest to the law somewhere between 009 and 010. 

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 959: THE INVISIBLE MENACE

(Dynamic Comics 002, 1941)

It's a story as old as comics and then some: an inventor has come up with a cool superscientific gizmo - in this case an invisibility serum - and no sooner are they done than some gangsters come stiffing around looking to exploit it. This particular gang is headed by an unnamed and trigger-happy fellow who guns down the scientist and then his own men in order to get his mitts on the single available dose of the stuff.

The gangster dubs himself "the Invisible Menace" and this is the only reason I am calling him that instead of "the Invisible Killer" as everyone else in the story including the caption boxes does. 

There's a kind of critical and/or cultural debate over the madness of the main character in HG Wells' the Invisible Man, over whether the titular character goes mad with the power inherent in being invisible or the process itself has some flaw that warps the human mind. Whichever way you slice it, the Invisible Menace has Invisibility Madness: no sooner does he fade from sight than he is slaughtering people left and right. Not that he wasn't killing people while he was still visible but at least that was to some purpose. This is just wanton murder.

The big question is: is this guy invisible forever? Neither he nor we ever find out, and frankly it matters quite a lot because it's going to be pretty difficult to enjoy your riches as an invisible guy if the only other invisible guy anyone has ever heard of is famous for attacking a garden party with a tommy gun.

The question never really gets resolved thanks to one of the great flaws in any invisibility-related plan: that you are still detectable via other senses. Accordingly, the Invisible Menace is stopped at the fangs of the dog hero K-9.

Categorized in: Abstract Concepts (Menace), Body (Physical Qualities - Invisibility), Powers (Invisibility)

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)