MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 088

To continue my recent trend, 3/4 of these characters are very unlikely to appear in a modern Marvel comic and the fourth is decently likely to.

Mr Million:

Mr Million is kind of what everyone yaps about wanting Bruce Wayne to be: a rich guy who uses his money to help people instead of beating people up, and while that might be better for society in this completely fictional version of New York City it's pretty boring to read about. But this one orphan kid is no longer being bullied and his child labour is netting him enough to support his sick mother, so that's something, I guess. (Daring Mystery Comics 007, 1941)

Categorized in: Alphanumeric (a Million), Generica (Misters)

Captain Daring:

Captain Daring is the square-jawed hero of America in the year 3051 CE, and while short-lived sci-fi adventurers are so plentiful in both the Golden and Silver Ages that I don't usually bother with them, this is another early Jack Kirby strip. As such, you get the fun of spotting the first-draft versions of things that he will come back to throughout his career, like the cast of differently-shaped background characters above, or the cool armour that everyone sports.

The technology isn't quite as ornate as it will get but you can see the base structures that Kirby will build upon.

And of course there is Kirby's love of a tough woman and (less common but still something that he will return to) his fondness for dog cavalry.

Captain Daring himself is notable for facing both a Hitler-inspired subterranean Fuehrer and Hitler himself, but sadly is dropped from Daring Mystery Comics while he is mind-controlled by the latter. I can't believe that they made Captain Daring a Nazi, etc. (Daring Mystery Comics 007, 1941)

Categorized in: Generica (Captains), Language (Superlatives - Daring), Origins (Heroes of the Future)

the Challenger:

Bill Waring is a physically-unimposing young law student who is almost killed when his father attempts to expose a city-wide corruption scandal and is gunned down in the street. Swearing vengeance, Bill sets out to learn everything he needs to become a crime fighter.

Waring travels the world, mastering among many other things the secrets of: jujutsu, chemistry, nerve control, fencing, the rifle, aerial combat, boxing, swimming, baseball, football and most useful of all, polo. He's the complete crimefighting package!

Finally prepared, Bill dons a costume that is simultaneously kind of cool- and quite goofy-looking (I thought for sure that that little white dot in the centre of his mask was meant to be his nose poking out but I checked the original art and even there it's just a weird white dot) and confronts Dram, the gang boss responsible for his father's death. His name, it turns out, is in reference to his habit of challenging crooks to single combat that is sometimes, as in Dram's case, to the death. The Challenger moves over to Mystic Comics after his first appearance, so we will be seeing him again in a few months to find out if he keeps this habit up. (Daring Mystery Comics 007, 1941)

Categorized in: Activities (Duelling), Origins (Crime Orphans), Powers (Martial Artists, Weapons Masters)

Citizen V:

Citizen V is in reality British Army Lieutenant John Watkins, who is seemingly killed during the evacuation at Dunkirk but is only mostly dead. After being nursed back to help by a kindly French fisherman, Watkins makes his way back to England and is recruited as an officially sanctioned costumed agent to head back into Axis-occupied territory and incite rebellion.

Watkins' Citizen V uniform is interesting for being one of the few super-hero costumes to incorporate Morse code (just above the "V" on his chest) and is also a fine example of how some design choices just don't work. If there is a super suit out there that looks good with both long sleeves and short shorts, it isn't this one. More modern depictions of the character lean into the "military uniform" aspect of the look more and give him pants. It's a bit less super-hero-y but much nicer looking.

Though Watkins does punch plenty of Nazis (and Hitler himself!) in the snoots, the main focus of his mission is in promoting the "V for Victory" campaign, a real-life thing that actually happened in occupied Europe, and which characters such as the Silver Streak and London were also involved in in their respective comics.

Citizen V is of course most well-known today for having been murdered by Baron Zemo, who stole the identity for use as the leader of the first Thunderbolts team. He also has a surprisingly extensive collection of successors, all of whom unfortunately seem to prefer the terrible Zemo version of the costume, which I had always assumed was purposefully designed to look like an exercise in patriotic bad taste but which is evidently preferable to wearing a little service cap. (Daring Mystery Comics 008, 1942)

Categorized in: Alphanumeric (V), Generica (Citizens), Origin (Faked Own Death)

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 040

Lev Gleason's finest!

Lance Hale:

Lance Hale is a soldier of fortune and jungle adventurer who is notable mainly for the fact that in his first appearance he is given super strength by a fellow with the pleasing name of Dr Grantland Grey so that he can help out on an expedition to the stars, and then after returning to Earth he just... stops using the armband that gives him his enhanced strength. He keeps on adventuring, don't get me wrong, but as a regular jungle guy, ie, a colonialist race science fantasy figure. 

Hale is slightly more interesting than his contemporaries in the jungle guy community by virtue of the variety of situations that he gets in: there's the initial space trip that ends up turning into an interdimensional one and then a battle with invading animal men from a parallel world, a delve into a lost underground kingdom in which he incidentally becomes immortal, cursed demon-summoning gemstone action... I assume that the thrills are eventually going to stop coming but 1940 was almost all hits. (Silver Streak Comics 002, 1940)

Mister Midnite **HERO UPDATE**:

As you may or may not recall, Mister Midnite is a hero in the classic formal wear style who has one very specific power, to stop clocks by yelling "time stop!" Well! So we thought! It turns out that in his second appearance, Midnite demonstrates a second power, that of being teleported to a vaguely defined location, and also when he has shouts "time stop!" I really wish that there were more than two Mister Midnite stories so that we would have some more data to use in piecing all this together, but as of now I must assume that he has some sort of vaguely defined wishing power and that "time stop!" is its trigger phrase, like Johnny Thunder and "say you." (Silver Streak Comics 002, 1940)

the Silver Streak:

The Silver Streak! Is notable for two (2) reasons, the first of which is that he is a the-title-of-the-comic-book character who doesn't show up until issue 3, which is the opposite to how it often works, where the title character goes from proudly front and centre to gone in as many issues.

The second and more interesting thing about the Silver Streak is his origin, which I have tried and failed to summarize in paragraph form, so here goes as bullet points:

- the Silver Streak is a race car, or rather a series of race cars because every Silver Streak crashes, killing the driver. Nobody wants to drive for the Silver Streak team. The cars are crashing because they are being attacked by a giant fly.

- the Silver Streak's owner is Hindu mystic known only as the Swami. When an unnamed cab driver volunteers to drive the Silver Streak, the Swami hypnotizes him to be a great race car driver.

- the unnamed driver is immediately killed by a giant fly.

- BUT! The Swami has a hunch that the man is not in fact dead! He and a pal go to the cemetery and dig up the driver's unmarked grave, and they are proved right! And what's more, the prior hypnotic conditioning combined with the near-death experience has made the man (henceforth the Silver Streak) superhuman!

The first adventure of the Silver Streak concludes with him stealing the latest prototype of his namesake car and using it to destroy the giant fly that "killed" him, and as presented he seems to have been on track to be a car-based super-hero. However, between Silver Streak Comics 003 and 004, the character was handed off from Jack Binder to Jack Cole and the Silver Streak became a guy with super speed, no car required. I don't know if his origin is ever revised, but I do know that the Silver Streak has several sidekicks over the years and that they all get their powers via a blood transfusion from the man himself, so something's going on there. Unless his blood was hypnotized too, of course - the Swami never returns, so his deal is never fully explored.

Like a lot of super speed characters, the Silver Streak ends up being more about cool speed tricks than having a distinct personality, but he's a fun read nonetheless. (Silver Streak Comics 003, 1940)

UPDATE 1941 

Dickie Dean, Boy Inventor:

We love to see a boy inventor, if only because our brains have been warped enough by the Venture Brothers that we can't help but imagine their dysfunctional adulthood, and by "we" I mean "I". Dickie Dean here is particularly good fodder for that little thought experiment, as he is compelled to sign over his inventions to the US government by his misplaced sense of patriotism, so he's either in for a rude awakening or an increasingly delusional relationship to reality as he gets older. 

Some inventions that Dickie fails to patent in 1940 include: 

- a device that can replay sound waves and visualize shadows up to 2-3 weeks old

- a device designed to stop all war by making air as thick as molasses and thus preventing bullets etc from moving fast enough to do harm (importantly, this air is still breathable)

- an enclosed, submersible speedboat equipped with a device that abates flood waters via rapid electrolysis

He does sell a magnetic antigravity device for use as a mid-air brake for airplanes, but only because his father is in dire financial straits.

Dickie Dean is also interesting for the fact that he is from New Castle, Pennsylvania, a real place with a regular amount of history but not otherwise a big name in city circles. Also I just reread the bit where I roasted Dickie for giving away his patents and I want to make it cleat that the part I think is foolish is giving them to, like, the FBI, not donating them to humanity. (Silver Streak Comics 003, 1940)

UPDATE 1941