MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 075

Every hero comes with a free sidekick! 

the Deacon:

An otherwise unnamed man headquartered in the disused Marshlands Church that is located in a kind of liminal space just outside of several urban areas (including but not limited to: Coast Town, Midland City and Central City), the Deacon was himself once a young criminal mastermind.

Two years after his original gang is rounded up by the police, the future Deacon is still on the wrong side of the law as part of another crook's gang, but he's starting to have some doubts about the path his life is on, particularly the part where his boss Marty is going to murder a night watchman during their next job. He tips off the police and in return they shoot him in the arm as he runs away

Making his way to the aforementioned abandoned Marshlands Church, the wounded ex-criminal puts on a suit of priest's clothes that he finds there, and when Marty and his old gang track him down to extract some revenge for his betrayal he is able to muster up enough righteous vigour to beat them up and deliver them into the hands of the law.

One thing about the  Deacon that might not be evident from my retelling is that despite the sort of gentle world-weariness that the character is portrayed with, based on the timeline presented in the story of his origin, he is at most about twenty-eight years old, and that is a pretty funny age to have already seen it all. (Cat-Man Comics 001, 1941)

Mickey Matthews: 

In common with his mentor, the Deacon's sidekick Mickey Matthews is a former juvenile crook who decided that a life of crime was not for him and paid the price for it, in his case in the form of being beaten up and tossed out of a speeding car for dead. After the Deacon finds him and patches him up he decides to turn his life around and join his benefactor's war on crime. (Cat-Man Comics 001, 1941)

the Ragman:

Millionaire newspaper columnist Jay Garson Jr has really been stirring up trouble with his column "Crime Does Not Pay," so much so that he is lured into Central Park and murdered one night. Or so the criminal element think! What actually happens is that a nearby homeless man who looks exactly like Garson is accidentally killed instead of him, and so Garson swaps clothes with the corpse in order to fake his own death.

Taking inspiration from his new wardrobe, Garson dubs himself the Ragman (also Rag Man and Rag-Man) and sets out to solve his own murder, and then decides to continue fighting crime rather than resuming his old life.

Though Garson declines to inform his fiance Joan that he is in fact alive, he does continue to send his newspaper column to the Daily Star to get printed, much to the consternation of his editor. (Cat-Man Comics 001, 1941)

Tiny: 

Jay "Ragman" Garson might not have thought it necessary to loop in his fiance re: him being alive, but one person who he does make sure to inform is his chauffeur, Tiny, who immediately joins him as a sidekick. 

Tiny is an annoying character to write about: he is a very good sidekick, especially by the standards of African American characters in 1940s comics, who tend to get assigned all kinds of stereotypes (laziness, superstition, cowardliness, stupidity) in the name of comic relief. Tiny doesn't have any of those qualities - aside from a bit of understandable nervousness at meeting what he believes to be a dead man - but he certainly talks like a character who does. Various sources assure me that the accent is toned down eventually, but the 1941 version of the character makes it rough for someone (me) trying to find good pictures of him. (Cat-Man Comics 001, 1941)

Categorized under: Minor Super-Heroes, Origin by Choice (Face Turn, Faking Your Own Death), Profession (Religious)

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 032

Just a few more minor super-heroes.

Paul Bunyan: 

What's better than a regular two-fisted lumberjack protagonist? Paul Bunyan himself, that's who. This version of Bunyan works in a modern-day lumber camp and has been toned down a bit with the suggestion that he's just some guy who was born in Maine and grew to a mere ten feet tall. His adventures aren't that much different than those of other lumberjack heroes, but there is something about an enormous man with a giant blue ox that add a bit of spice to the proceedings. (National Comics 001, 1940)

(Bunyan gets an ape-man sidekick named King for a couple of issues and this is the best place I could think of to note that (National Comics 006, 1940))

Wonder Boy:

Wonder Boy is an alien from the planet Viro who is a take on the Superman origin (last survivor of a destroyed planet rocketed to Earth where he is superhuman in comparison to the locals) while simultaneously being a prototype of Superboy (special super-powered boy who can only do good and is loved by all the world). DC Comics bought the rights to him along with all of the other Quality characters but has never seen fit to use him for anything, which I suppose is reasonable. (National Comics 001, 1940)

Quicksilver:

He's got a lot of personality, that Quicksilver. Like other Golden Age super speedsters he handily outclasses most of his opponents and so the main draw is watching just how stylishly he beats them up. Much much later, Quicksilver will be brought back under the name Max Mercury and incorporated into the Flash family but that's more than a few years out yet. (National Comics 005, 1940)

the Phantom Knight:

The Phantom Knight, aka Prince Philip of Kyle, is a very fun concept! As presented in his initial appearance, Philip is a real jerk, a man who cares about nobody and nothing but his horse Lightning.

Philip is mean, vengeful, faithless and murderous. He kills two men in what were supposed to be bloodless contests because he felt that they insulted them. He joins and then deserts what is presumably the First Crusade, which could be a good act except that he deserts because there isn't enough slaughtering and he gets bored.

Philip eventually meets his end at the tusks of a wild boar and finds himself denied access to the afterlife until he makes up for his life of extreme dickishness, so he returns to Earth to do good as the Phantom Knight!.

Now, here's the problem: the Phantom Knight appeared twice, in OK Comics 001 and 002, and OK Comics 002 is not available to read anywhere that I know to look (well, there is a copy on ebay right now but I'm not prepared to pay $500 Canadian for the privilege). Thus, all that we really know about the Phantom Knight is that he was a colossal ass in life and now roams the mortal realm as a tormented spirit doomed to do good deeds. Is he still an ass? Is he operating in his home time period or has he been brought to the present - the location of Kyle is never established beyond being in Central Europe, so if he is operating in the modern day there's a decent chance he fought some Nazis. (OK Comics 001, 1940)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 655: CAMILLA, QUEEN OF THE LOST EMPIRE

(Jungle Comics 001, 1940)

Camilla, Queen of the Lost Empire! I love a lost ancient kingdom, especially in a jungle comic as it cuts down on the constant flow of racism. This particular ancient lost kingdom was founded by Norsemen, probably some time between 900 and 1100 CE going by the random dates thrown out at various points in the series.

We encounter the Lost Empire through the eyes of explorer Jon Dale, who I will tell you now I do not like. Having made his way to an isolated society with different ways and customs, Dale immediately begins judging and decrying them like a jerk. (aside: I just noticed that the Temple of Thor in the above image has a Thor face on its onion dome and that's just great)

I suppose I must give Dale some credit for mostly objecting to the human sacrifice aspect of Lost Empire culture (and like me he must have been pretty stuck on working out just how long the rainy season might be in the Lost Empire. A human sacrifice per day for two, maybe three months per year? That's gotta be a strain on the population, although given that they have access to a fountain of youth perhaps the major purpose is to prevent overpopulation).

Queen Camilla of course cannot resist the sheer sex appeal of this pasty man in his short and knee-high socks, and when her advances are rebuffed she attempts to make Dale's love interest (his female equivalent Ruth Birch) the next sacrifice to Thor he springs into action and:

a) sabotages the sacrifice chamber so that Ruth is spared

b) I want to say that he causes Camilla's extended lifespan to catch up with her but really he just stands by and watches her die of old age

c) blows up the entire damn city in order to effect his and his companions' escapes

And after wreaking this untold destruction on the Lost Empire and its people he decides to destroy their secret of eternal life because his pedestrian understanding of the world tell him that God would want him to.

I know that I just said that Camilla died of old age, but Jungle Comics 003 features her triumphant and inexplicable return, and with the help of an old seer she successfully enlists the aid of the god Bal to restore her city and people to existence and life, respectively.

When Jon and Ruth have the unmitigated gall to come back to the ruins of the Lost Empire to pick over its shattered remains they are understandably surprised to find it and Camilla alive and un-blown-up, and while the first time Camilla attempted to kill them both was a bit out of order I can completely understand wanting to do so this second time.

Things go poorly for Camilla once again, though it's just the Spring of Eternal Youth and not the entire city that gets it this time. Jon Dale, shitty as ever, determines to come back and pillage the place after the march of time kills her off for him.

Despite the fact that this second lack of access to the waters of eternal life seemed to be causing her to age at regular rather than super-advanced speed, Camilla takes things very poorly and becomes a tyrant (a proper tyrant too! Flayed alive in the torture pit!) and then gets banished. Luckily for her, among the things that Jon thinks that God has an opinion on is the Divine Right of Kings, and he and Ruth help Camilla restore the Spring of Eternal Life and see her welcomed back to her kingdom with open arms once she promises not to have anyone else flayed.

From this point on, Camilla is a heroic figure who deals with a series of threats to the Lost Empire and her rule thereof from both internal sources and an increasingly unlikely series of other lost kingdoms.

In one of these adventures, Camilla befriends hunchbacked assassin Caredodo and he becomes her champion/companion, and then about an issue later the comic book "no uggoes on the protagonist's side" clause comes into effect and the benevolent Angel of Faith transforms him into the handsome Sir Champion. Camilla has a long tenure in Jungle Comics and eventually virtually every aspect of her will change but for now this is the status quo.

Update 1941

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 011

Lotsa lil guys.

Mr Justice: 

Like the Spectre or the Wraith (or Sergeant Spook or the Gay Ghost or the Ghost Patrol...), Mr Justice is your classic restless spirit who remains on Earth to mete out justice to the wicked. Specifically, Mr Justice is the 200 year old ghost of the fictional English Prince James, cruelly slain by followers of Prince Richard during the Rogers Rebellion of the 1740s. Astute readers and students of history might have noticed a few things about the preceding sentence that all boil down to the fact that the 1740s were actually recent enough that we know a whole lot about what was going on then, including that people weren't running around in Medieval armour even if they were sometimes still using swords and shields during the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. Also, this is what the crown prince of England looked like in 1741. (they change it to the 11th Century later on, because that makes a lot more sense).

Prince James' ghost is tethered to the place of his death per the usual ghost rules but he manages to get around that in a fairly unprecedented way: due the the war, the British government decides to move the castle to America and it is sunk by the Nazis on the way there. And since a pile of stone on the bottom of the Atlantic is not a castle, James is free to go become Mr Justice, the ghost super-hero frequently compared to the Spectre but who doesn't really get up to the sames sort of divine judgment stuff. He does fight the Devil/Satan a lot, though.

Possibly my favourite thing about Mr Justice is the fact that his secret identity is a fellow named Mr Justice and nobody really calls any attention to that fact. Mr Justice (secret identity of Mr Justice) is attached to the office of Mayor Clark (city unnamed but very NYC-esque) as a sort of troubleshooter. He kind of has a love interest in mayor's daughter Pat Clark and a rival in District Attorney Roy Winkler, above, but neither is explored very thoroughly. (Blue Ribbon Comics 009, 1941)

Inferno:

Above is an abridged account of Inferno's time as a super-villain, which we will treat separately because... well, because when you're reading a lot of old comics in a somewhat systematic manner you have to have some sort of organizational method and I chose alphabetical by year, and Inferno's time on the lists of crime happened in Zip Comics. I simply haven't gotten there yet. Suffice to say that he was a crook who changed his ways due to the influence of Steel Sterling and opted to do his time.

Despite his best efforts, Inferno is compelled to break jail to stop a group of prison escapees from murdering a judge and then is encouraged by that same judge to go on the lam because the authorities are going to try to murder Inferno. It's a real reciprocal life-saving situation! Although I am tempted to think that that judge could possibly have just called someone and arranged for a stay of summary execution for Inferno.

The rest of Inferno's career as a Golden Age super-hero is kind of a fun twist on the old trope of the super-hero that everyone thinks is a crook, in that he doesn't really have a secret identity per se so just travels around doing itinerant labour until he sees a crime go and changes outfits. The idea of this hobo existence kind of goes by the wayside after a couple of issues when Secret Service Agent Virginia Ames enters the picture, as Inferno's stories were on the shorter side and just didn't have the real estate for both a love interest and workplace drama.

Inferno only managed seven adventures before trotting off to limbo to wait for Archie's 1960s super-hero revival but don't worry! He got a full pardon in his last adventure so the other heroes won't be hassling him. (Blue Ribbon Comics 013, 1941)

Captain Flag:

On the one hand, Captain Flag is a regular-style patriotic hero but on a different, more entertaining hand he is a patriotic hero with a very fun origin. To whit: one day super-villain the Black Hand is attempting to wrest scientific secrets from inventor John Townsend when his playboy son Tom stumbles in half lit. The Black Hand is about to dispose of Tom using his horrible hand when a huge eagle just kind of... flaps into the room and ends up leaving with Tom Townsend in its talons.

Thus saved, Tom just kind of lives with the eagle for a while and transforms from a dissipated youth to a lean, athletic man full of fish protein. And then the eagle comes back one day with an American flag! It's a veritable sign from the heavens it what it is!

And so, Tom Townsend becomes Captain Flag, who mostly fights the Black Hand. Which makes sense. Something else that would make a lot of sense: adding a belt to that costume. (Blue Ribbon Comics 016, 1941)

The Red Mask:

The Red Mask is very minor indeed! He appeared in four issues of Best Comics from Better Publications, of which only issue 2 appears to be available, which in turn was reprinting newspaper strips, of which only a handful are available. 

What we have on the guy is this: he leads a tribe on the island of Kaukura, which is probably but not definitely in Oceania somewhere. Kaukura is chockablock with things like sacred grottoes, immortal monsters and hostile tribes and the Red Mask has assigned himself the task of protecting a bunch of clueless outsiders like Nina and Danny here who have blundered in looking for their friend and found themselves up to their neck in trouble.

The most interesting thing about the Red Mask is that he is by a fair margin the first nonwhite super-hero, though thanks to colouring limitations and some inexact geography it's a bit difficult to get more exact than that. (Best Comics 002, 1939)