The Challengers of the Unknown had many of the accoutrements of superheroes — fantastic foes, a secret headquarters, high-tech gadgetry and vehicles, colorful uniforms and an array of special skills. But they possessed no super powers, making them ever so slightly more “realistic” than DC’s various caped champions.
“The Challengers were Ace Morgan (crackerjack test pilot), Red Ryan (mountain climber and all-'round daredevil), Rocky Davis (heavyweight boxing champ) and Prof Haley (scientist specializing in underwater exploration),” noted comics historian Don Markstein.
“In Showcase 6 (Jan-Feb 1957), where the series was first tried out before receiving its own comic, the four barely survived the crash of a small aircraft, and thereafter considered themselves to be living on borrowed time. They decided to devote their lives to adventurous do-gooding, heedless of danger because after all, they should have been dead already.”
Conveniently, the four adventurers each had a distinctive hair color — blond, brown, black and red — making them easy to identify at a glance.
In the 8th issue of their title, the members of this this uncanny team were introduced to two of their recurring foes — the scientific despot Drabny in The Man Who Stole the Future and the giant robot Kra in The Prisoners of Robot Planet. Both would become founding members of the League of Challenger Haters, a distinguished group that also included Multi-Man, Multi-Woman and Volcano Man.
“During their first dozen appearances, The Challengers faced a wide variety of dangerous menaces — humongous robots, prehistoric eggs about to hatch into monsters, powerful aliens that wanted to keep them as pets, time-traveling criminals," Markstein noted. “It was kind of like a dry run for Kirby's later Fantastic Four. And then, suddenly, it all — well, it all continued, actually, but without Kirby to drive the stories, it was as if the characters were just going through a set of routines. Kirby had left for Marvel Comics and new projects of his own, and wouldn't return to DC until 1970.”
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