Superheroes are supposed to arrive in the nick of time, but Stuntman left it too late, debuting in the inauspicious year of 1946.
“For Harvey’s Family Comics Inc., (Joe) Simon and (Jack) Kirby created a costumed hero title and a kid-gang title, two of their specialties,” noted the American Comic Book Chronicles. “Their most famous costumed hero, Captain America, fought Nazis, but in the aftermath of the Axis defeat, their new hero had to fight villainy of a more mundane sort. Hence, Stuntman is Fred Drake, a circus acrobat who has to solve the murder of his two partners.”
Caped and colorful, displaying the distinctive Kirby dynamism, the red-and-yellow-clad Stuntman nevertheless lasted only three issues in his own title — the third issue being a mere black-and-white Photostat mailed to subscribers. The postwar 1940s were unkind to costumed crusaders.
“Even before the first issue of Stuntman reached the printer, we had a feeling that no matter how brilliant it was, we were doomed to failure,” Simon recalled. “Stuntman fell victim to the glut that followed the war. The instinct [of newsstand distributors] was to stick with established hits like Superman or Captain Marvel. So many of the newer titles were returned in unopened bundles, never having seen the light of day.”
In the mid-1950s, Stuntman was republished in Harvey’s Thrills of Tomorrow, somewhat censored in line with the new Comics Code.
Too bad Stuntman folded so soon. He’d have made a logical ally for Harvey’s durable superhero star, the Black Cat, who was a movie star and former stuntwoman in her secret identity of Linda Turner.
Daniel Gallant:
ReplyDeleteI have the two B&W reprints from the late 80s. I always thought they were very cool.
Johnny Williams:
ReplyDeleteDan, as I have said before, one of the greatest pleasures for me by participating in comic book groups (including my own) is finding new (to me) characters and content that I was previously unaware of. The subject of your essay today is just such a case in point.
I love Jack Kirby’s (and in many cases Joe Simon’s) ‘transitional’ body of work that skirts the end of the Golden Age through the beginnings of the Silver Age. I’m talking about stuff like his:their early Challengers of The Unknown, The Adventures of The Fly, Green Arrow, and two of My personal favorites, Fighting American and The Double Life of Private Strong, work. This guy fits right in there but somehow he slipped past me and this is the first I’ve ever heard of him.
The funny part is that had I found him I would have probably been immediately captivated; reason being that right out of the chute he had two things going for him that Together were Sure to get my attention and hold my interest.
1.) He was an acrobat.
2.) He was an acrobat whose exploits ‘were drawn by Jack ‘The King’ Kirby!’ That second point is a very big deal to and for me. Jack’s mastery of sequential action scenes, Especially ‘gymnastic-acrobatic-tumbling’ types of action were on a scale by themselves. Very few other artists were even Nearly as good (Gil Kane was one who did, as did Jim Steranko) at it.
So I thank you for providing me with a new character to investigate, one who was part of the body of work from one of the industry’s greatest masters from a specific block of time, and his (their when and where Joe collaborated with him) short publication career.