A mystery-man combat pilot who originally flew out of Chicago’s WGN radio in 1938, Captain Midnight’s serial adventures went national in 1940 on Mutual Broadcasting as Ovaltine’s replacement for Little Orphan Annie.
“By the time Captain Midnight came to Mutual, the adventure serial was firmly established as an early-evening must for millions of Midwestern kids,” wrote John Dunning in Tune in Yesterday. “The show developed the themes they liked best: action, mystery, a master villain and plenty of peer identification. Like the ever-popular Jack Armstrong, Captain Midnight even had a girl along for the ride.”
Developed by Robert Burtt and Wilfred Moore, the show was purportedly inspired by Burtt’s exploits as a World War I combat pilot in the Lafayette Escadrille.
“Burtt conceived Midnight as a man of mystery whose job in the war was so important that not even his superiors knew his identity,” Dunning noted.
Returning from a dangerous solo mission at the witching hour, a young airman earned himself the nom de guerre “Captain Midnight.”
“For 20 years, strange stories were whispered about ‘a shadowy plane and a mysterious pilot who, whenever trouble started in any part of the world, was certain to come diving furiously from the night sky.’” Dunning wrote.
Immensely popular, the good captain expanded to comic books in Dell’s The Funnies and Popular Comics, but really came into his own when Fawcett gave him his own title in 1942.
In the Fawcett version, Captain Midnight was a scientific genius who wore a red glider suit emblazoned with his clock insignia, and wielded such crime-stopping inventions as a “drill tank,” a flying aircraft carrier, a “swing spring” grappling hook and his “doom beam torch,” used to mark enemies and penetrate walls.
In both the Fawcett comic and a 1942 Columbia movie serial, Captain Midnight was a full-fledged superhero whose secret identity was Jim Albright.
A newspaper comic strip based on the radio program ran from 1942 until the late 1940s.
A 1944 sequence from the Captain Midnight newspaper strip |
Fred Marra wrote:
ReplyDeleteThe mere mention of the name "Captain Midnight" screams 1940s' and Golden Age Comics and Radio!
I'm literally watching Captain Midnight on Tubi right now. Watched some of that Batman last week. It hasn't aged particularly well. The line about how Little Tokyo was mostly abandoned because of a wise government rounding up the the 'shifty Eyed japs' was particularly cringe inducing.
ReplyDeleteIra Henkin wrote:
ReplyDeleteDark Horse made a good effort at a revival but it seemed to stall. I liked it, but the company, evidently, lacked confidence.
Michael Uslan wrote:
ReplyDeleteFunny, I originally knew him as “Jet Jackson,” its name in later syndication. They dubbed in his new name.