MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 102

You won't believe what I just found: more super-heroes!

the Liberty Scouts:

When fascist forces armed with high-tech weaponry begin attacking targets calculated to cripple US war capacity, they are repeatedly driven away by a trio of anonymous heroes who leave behind Liberty Bell calling cards. Both the fascists and US officials are eager to learn just who these so-called Liberty Patriots are, but President Roosevelt is the one who actually gets to find out, thanks to his association with patriotic millionaire Patrick Henry.

Henry drives FDR out to his country estate, Liberty House, where he introduces him to three mysterious youths beginning with Smokey, the inventive genius of the group, and whose amphibious tank is counted as a land vehicle for the air/sea/land theme that the three have going on.

Skipper, "the best sailor on the Seven Seas," is also clearly the group member who is most invested in the paramilitary aspect of the whole operation. He has a super-powerful miniature submarine.

Finally, we have Strut, the youngest of the group. He's got a souped up fighter plane called the Comet (initially the only named super vehicle in the bunch, though the tank is later named Ironsides), plus a cool-ass wingsuit. He's also the only one of the three with any discernible personality, even if it's "won't shut up about cherry pie."

So just how does Mr Henry know these three youngsters and why are they living in his house? Because they are his own sons! He loves his country so much that he has moulded his children into weapons designed to defend it, and the President loves it. (Liberty Scouts Comics 002, 1941)

The Liberty Scouts eventually change their name to the Liberty Guards after the Boy Scouts of America complain about their monopoly on the word "scout" being infringed.

Categorized in: Accessories (Calling Card Leavers), Groups, Origin (Patriotic Heroes)

Man of War:

Impatient with the slow progress of World War II, the god Mars decides to create a divine being imbued with the powers of the Greco-Roman pantheon and send them down to help the Axis conquer Europe faster and with more bloodshed. He gifts his champion with "the Strength of Hercules, the Speed of Mercury, the Wisdom of Zeus" (making him about 0.5 of a Captain Marvel) and arms him with the infinitely sharp Sword of Mars before sending him on his way.

In a legitimately funny twist, Mars forgets to account for the rotation of the Earth during the presumably-lengthy demigod-crafting process and shoots his new creation at Dayton, Ohio (okay, at one of the more than thirty Daytons in the United States. Or in another city that has an unrelated Dayton Munitions Factory. Probably Dayton, Ohio, though) instead of Berlin or wherever he intended for it to go. Thus, Man of War (as he calls himself) is instantiated in the "peace-loving nation" of the USA and is dedicated to virtuous, defensive warfare instead of awful slaughter in the name of power-hungry politicians (insert joke about the US war machine here. Man of War must have had a rough go of things as the 20th Century progressed).

So what are the powers of the gods? Mostly generic super strength and invulnerability, though Man of War is able to breathe and move freely underwater thanks to the gifts of Neptune. He also has one bespoke power gifted upon him by Mars: to disappear or appear in any explosion, up to and including those created when bullets are fired (which would be a bit more useful if he weren't already bulletproof). (Liberty Scouts Comics 002, 1941)

In Man of War Comics 001, Mars reveals Man of War's weakness to the dictator Luko: that he is powered by rays emitted by the planets of the Solar System, and that confining him in a lead-lined chamber will block those rays and render him merely human. This nearly works, but as the Sword of Mars is not planet-powered he is soon able to carve his way free.

Categorized in: Accessories (Swords), Activities (War), Origins (Demigods)

Vapo-Man:

Bradford "Brad" Cole is a chemist assisting at the laboratory of Dr Kreiner, who in turn is performing unspecified research that is evidently valuable enough to the US government that some fascist saboteurs blow it up. Cole, unlike Kreiner, is lucky enough not to be exploded but instead is showered with a randomized mix of chemicals that change him into a man of vapour.

The dying Kreiner explains that he is now a chemical man, which is apparently something that chemists have been trying to create for centuries. He extracts a promise from Cole that he will use this power to fight evil, and saddles him with the terrible name of Vapo-Man just before dying, thus ensuring that Crawford can never change it without feeling very guilty.

As Vapo-Man, Crawford can change all or part of his size, can fly, has at least some super strength, can disintegrate matter with a touch, and can become intangible at will. All of this adds up to make him feel a lot like a more mystical character like Phantasmo, though he lacks the charm to support it. (Liberty Scouts Comics 002, 1941)

Categorized in: Elements (Steam and Mist), Origins (Chemical Mutates), Powers (Intangibility)

Fire-Man:

Jim, a man working for the Civilian Conservation Corps in Utah sets out to battle the latest in a series of mysterious fires and finds himself being kidnapped by a mysterious silver-clad giant.

This turns out to be Gaston, henchman to a fellow known only as the Mad Scientist. The Mad Scientist has a dream: to incinerate a human in such a way that they remain alive and coherent but composed of gaseous rather than solid matter, and Jim is his latest unwilling experimental subject. Luckily for Jim, this time it works, and the only real change appears to be a significantly lower density, such that he is obliged to wear a weighted uniform (that doubles nicely for a super suit, natch) in order to keep from floating away. Even with it on, he light enough to leap around as if he were flying.

Jim is otherwise an ordinary human, but a miscalculation on the part of the Mad Scientist (dunking him in a vat of chemicals while trying to destroy him) also endows him with super strength.

Finally, Jim's new metabolism causes him to give off fire-retardant gasses as a part of his respiration, which is handy, as he chooses to go by Fire-Man, meaning that he, alongside the Mad Scientist's niece Nancy, ends up fighting a lot of arsonists (Liberty Scouts Comics 002, 1941)

Categorized in: Elements (Fire), Origins (Electrical Mutates), Powers (Decreased Density)

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.