Bill Everett certainly wasn’t afraid of the water.
Having pioneered an enduringly popular manic superman in the Sub-Mariner, the writer/artist worked every variation on his water shtik.
Namor (who first appeared in Motion Picture Funnies Weekly, April 1939) was an amphibious superhero from undersea. The Fin (Marvel Mystery Comics 7, April 1941) was an amphibious superhero from the surface. And Hydroman (Reg’lar Fellers Heroic Comics 1, Aug. 1940) was superheroic water.
“In the early years of Superman’s commercial success, publishers rushed to have competing characters on the stands — and they made characters who would seize on virtually any excuse to become superheroes,” noted comics historian Don Markstein.
Hydroman was a counterintuitive concept, not a man of steel but a man of water. Certainly there’s strength in steel, but there can also be strength in fluidity — as demonstrated not only by Hydroman but also by such later heroes as Plastic Man, Mr. Fantastic and the Elongated Man.
“Be like water making its way through cracks,” Bruce Lee once advised.
Bob Blake could switch back and forth from his liquid form, thanks to a formula injected into his bloodstream by his friend, chemist Harry Thurston (“Thirst-ton?”).
In Hydroman’s first adventure, a gunman learns that bullets don’t affect water, and gets drowned for his trouble.
The Eastern Color Printing feature continued until Heroic 29 (March 1945), when Hydroman fought his last battle against the stage magician Ruby Khan. The superhero prevailed, despite Khan’s attempts to turn him into steam and to startle him with bunnies from his top hat (?).
Hydroman was revived by AC Comics and Dynamite Comics, and even has a villainous counterpart in the Marvel universe, “Hydro-Man,” who was introduced in The Amazing Spider-Man 212 (Jan. 1981).
Put a Latin spin on the Greek-derived name “Hydroman” and you come up with “Aquaman,” a character introduced by DC a year later in More Fun Comics 73 (Nov. 1941).
Cheryl Spoehr wrote:
ReplyDeleteAlways liked the Heroic Comics heroes,but they were all the same. Rainbow Boy becomes Light when Light shines on him, Music Master becomes Music when he hears even a note, There was one who became molten metal when exposed to fire,can't recall his name. He was a working man who fell into a bucket of molten metal, and came out like that. Normal until even a match flame hits his skin. I would not want him to try and rescue me from a burning building... I think he was "Man O Metal"? There were others I can't recall, but they all had to be exposed to something to get their powers. Hydroman was one of the bunch, wasn't he? Did he have to touch water? I think I recall a desert story with him looking for water, but there were so many comic stories like that, I could be making it up unintentionally.