MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 103

Soon there will be more minor super-heroes than there are humans for them to protect.

the Sentinel:

In 1783, on the Boston Common, the newly-minted Spirit of America charges a cannon with the "powders of patriotism" in anticipation that someday a champion will be needed to defend the new nation from destruction. Finally, in 1941 (the Civil War not, apparently, being enough of a reason), the cannon fires on its own and releases the Sentinel, mystic champion of the American people.

As one might expect, the Sentinel is broadly superhuman: he can fly, is super strong and is immune to most harm. He also has a halo of fire that he can disappear into and shrink to a tiny flame, effectively rendering him invisible and allowing him to vex friend and foe alike with his comings and goings. Oddly, he has no other control over fire. (Liberty Scouts Comics 003, 1941)

Doctor Nemesis:

Doctor Nemesis is really Dr Jim Bradley, intern at Mercy Hospital in an unnamed city (that is probably meant to be NYC but later retconned as San Francisco) who has developed a foolproof truth serum and decided to keep it to himself rather than risk criminals getting their hands on it - presumably the concern is that they would use it to learn bank vault combinations and other secret information. Since he himself continually runs into situations in which a foolproof truth serum is a handy way to solve a crime, Bradley adopts a costumed identity and sets out to achieve a better tomorrow via a series of injections. 

 

Doctor Nemesis might just be the most calling card-using super-person who we have yet encountered. He hands out at least four of them in his first adventure alone.

Doctor Nemesis has a pretty simple crimefighting routine: identify a potential injustice and then drug everyone involved until he has a clear idea of who is responsible, then beat them up and have them give a drugged confession in front of a police witness. The police in turn are perfectly happy to receive these confessions that they technically haven't coerced from people, though there has to be a clever defense attorney somewhere in Unnamed City who is just waiting to get a Doctor Nemesis client so that they can really dig into the admissibility of admissions given under the influence of mysterious vigilante juice.

It's been a while since we have encountered a character who was later revived and incorporated into the Battle-Axis, Marvel's team of disaffected public domain Golden Age super-heroes who went over to the Nazis, but Doctor Nemesis here is one of them under the technically-but-not-really more badass name of Dr Death. As always, it's hard to say just who got done dirtiest by Roy Thomas when he was assembling the Battle-Axis roster but Doctor Nemesis is certainly a candidate, if only because he doesn't even have the Human's Meteor's flimsy "I'm Irish American and fuck the British" or the Spider Widow's "the Commies killed my husband" excuses. Instead, he simply implies that the Nazis are paying him well.

Subsequent writers (specifically Matt Fraction, if I have things right) clearly thought that Doctor Nemesis was worth revisiting. He was given a long career as a Nazi hunter to counteract his short career as a Nazi and briefly became a core X-Man, though nowadays every time I look up what he's up to it seems that he has become weirder and more peripheral to the action than the last. (Lightning Comics v1 006, 1941)

Lash Lightning **UPDATE**:

I haven't been very careful to delineate whether the character has been going by "Flash" or "Lash" Lightning due to the fact that it profoundly does not matter (they just call him "Lightning" in the stories themselves, for instance) but I might as well make note of this, the issue in which the actual change was made. (Lightning Comics v2 002, 1941)

Marvo the Magician **UPDATE**:

Up until the exact point pictured above, Marvo the Magician was unique among magical comic book super-heroes, for though many of them (including Zatara, the big cheese himself) are said to be using their magic to create illusions and fool the minds of others, it is all demonstrably lies (or more charitably a different definition of "illusion" than I am using), as they all produce material effects in the world. Only pure, beautiful Marvo can claim that he uses illusions and nothing more to frighten and confound his foes, and I have been checking.

That is, up to this issue, when Marvo creates the "illusion" of an ocean liner (complete with a crooked sailor who kidnaps her and hands her over to pirates!) that the woman he is helping proceeds to board and sail away on. Unless the implication is that she has been so convinced that the liner exists that she has swum or perhaps hovered her way to her destination (well, part way to her destination), the inescapable fact is that this ship is more than a mere illusion. Nothing is certain in this wicked world, folks. (Lightning Comics v2 003, 1941)

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)

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 100

You like minor super-heroes? We got more than four hundred of them!

the Night Bird:

The Night Bird might just have the simplest origin in the history of super-heroes: when newspaper Dell (just Dell) is captured by gangsters, her photographer Lens Crockett sets out to rescue her. Deciding that he needs a disguise, Crockett looks in the office storeroom and finds a full super-hero outfit stuffed in a bin - if it were about ten years later this might be a joke about Superman changing in the Daily Planet storeroom but he didn't really get up to that so much yet so it's just weird and random. Crokett's costumed outing goes well, so he decides to keep going out there and fighting crime. And that's the origin.

The Night Bird (aka the Nightbird) only has a bare handful of appearances, so he doesn't get a lot of room for character development. There are a couple of interesting things to note about him, however: firstly there isn't even a hint of romantic feeling between Crockett and Dell which is always nice if only for the change of pace from the typical setup. Secondly, and in common with his fellow newspaper photographer the Fox, Lens Crockett seems to be a legitimate clumsy doofus in his civilian identity rather than a suave coolguy putting on an act. (Green Mask v1 006, 1941)

The Night Bird also continues the grand Fox Features tradition of changing costume designs between issues with a palette swap between his first and second appearances. His costume continues to change in minor ways as time goes on, but this is the only major one.

Categorized in: Animals (Birds), Day Jobs (Newspaper Photographers), Locations (Temporal Locations)

the Tumbler:

When famous circus acrobat Lee Brothers, known professionally as the Tumbler, goes to visit his old mentor Sockey, he finds him mixed up with a gang of payroll robbers who have decided to use his property as a hideout. Lee and Sockey manage to escape with the loot but Sockey dies in the process and Lee is reported dead.

As is only sensible, Lee does not immediately clear up this mistake and go on with his life but takes this as an opportunity to adopt a costumed identity and get up to a little vigilante justice. His decision to do so while calling himself the Tumbler and thus inviting connection with the supposedly deceased Brother is a bit suspect, however. (Green Mask v1 007, 1941)

This is even more in his second (and final) appearance, when he does the traditional costume change and just starts wearing his old acrobat costume again. Does the Tumbler want to have his identity revealed?

Categorized in: Activities (Acrobatics), Day Jobs (Circus Acrobats), Professions (Acrobats)

the Mechanized Skeleton:

This was a surprising one! I really and truly thought that the Mechanized Skeleton was going to be a bad guy. This is mostly because he almost certainly was going to be one when he was first introduced, as can be deduced from the fact that the Skeleton's creator Chico is ranting an raving about "having power" and "showing them all" as he assembles and tests his creation. As the Mechanized Skeleton had a very minor appearance in the 1940 run of Reg'lar Fellers Heroic Comics with the bulk appearing in the 1941 books I recently read I have been awaiting his return for more than a year, real-time, with the expectation that I would see some science skeleton-on-science zombie battling once it and the Purple Zombie finally met.

Chico doesn't do much to dispel my assumptions about him and his creation in his next couple of appearances, as he demonstrates a very loose attitude to law and order: in Reg'lar Fellers Heroic Comics 004 he attempts to steal Purple Zombie creator Kim Hale's car, only to lose his Skeleton (and inadvertently save Hale's life) when a car bomb goes off. Then in RFHC 005, Chico attempts to procure a set of clothing for the replacement Mechanized Skeleton he has just completed by driving a car off the road and killing all of the occupants. Was the car full of gangsters who had kidnapped the Purple Zombie in an attempt to recruit him into their gang? Yes it was. Did Chico know this? No he didn't - the car might have been filled with nuns and orphans as far as he was concerned.

(please note that issue 005 does feature my anticipated Purple Zombie/ Mechanized Skeleton battle and that the Skeleton is comically outmatched) 

Despite all of this evidence of Chico's villainous nature, once Kim Hale and the Purple Zombie get ahold of him he suddenly reveals that he, like Hale has created his scientific version of a Halloween monster not for evil but for the betterment of mankind. Specifically, he made them as a foil to a Nazi death ray that has been giving the Allies a lot of trouble - what better foil to a death ray than the already-dead, after all? Such is the power of Chico's newly-revealed convictions that the Purple Zombie goes with him when he sneaks off in the night to battle the Hun.

And it works! The Purple Zombie leads a squad of Mechanized Skeletons (all hilariously decked out in doughboy helmets) to victory in just a couple of pages!

Chico requests (and receives) a hero's burial for the Mechanized Skeletons, causing me to wonder for the first time just where he got the base materials for them from. Though they are gone for good, Chico himself stays on as a supporting cast member during the next phase of the Purple Skeleton's career as he and Kim Hale are basted back in time. (Reg'lar Fellers Heroic Comics 003, 1940)

Categorized in: Origins (Face Turns), Origins (Robots), Supranormal Beings (Undead (Skeletons))

Man O'Metal:

In addition to having on of the more strangely-constructed names in comics, Man O'Metal, aka Pat Dempsey, has a bafflingly straightforward origin on par with his fellow Eastern Color character Fearless Flint: while working in a foundry one day, Dempsey is caught in a flood of an unspecified molten metal, and instead of dying horribly he transforms into a superhuman metal man. It's a weirdly modern style of origin in that there is absolutely no attempt to introduce an external catalyst for this change - if he were a DC Comics character he would just turn out to have the metagene, for example.

Man O'Metal is like Fearless Flint in a couple of other ways: firstly, his power switches off after a few minutes, but can be restarted by the touch of metal (including incoming bullets, which proves to be handy). This requirement later changes from metal to heat or electricity, but the bullets are evidently hot enough to qualify. 

Dempsey's boss is underwhelmed by the prospect of having a white-hot metal guy running around his foundry and so he just kind of gives him to the FBI without really consulting him on whether this is something he might want to do. The FBI have a bit more vision re: the potential inherent in a superhuman employee and happily accept. He is immediately sent off to Badagero, South America to root out subversives. (Reg'lar Fellers Heroic Comics 007, 1941)

Categorized in: Elements (Metal), Origins (Material Mutates), Team Memberships (FBI)

Very Minor Hydroman Updates: Hydroman is confirmed as vulnerable to freezing (Reg'lar Fellers Heroic Comics 004, 1941), is now wanted by the police (Reg'lar Fellers Heroic Comics 007, 1941).