December 1941: Too Popular to Stay

Popularity gets you admitted to some clubs. In the Justice Society of America, it got you expelled.

Talk about your reverse snobbery!

Actually, editorial policy decreed that when a character became successful enough to earn a comic book title devoted solely to his adventures, he must step aside so the JSA spotlight could shine on some other superhero.

So it was that in All Star Comics 8 (Dec. 1941), Green Lantern became an “honorary member” like Superman, Batman and the Flash, and Dr. Mid-Nite stepped in. Hourman took a “leave of absence,” giving up his place to the superhero who’d supplanted him on the cover of Adventure Comics — Starman.

“By 1941, the takeover of the American comic book by superheroes was well advanced,” noted comics historian Don Markstein. “In fact, Starman, a creation of writer Gardner Fox (The Flash, Doctor Fate) and artist Jack Burnley (a DC regular who had already drawn Superman, Batman and other high-profile features), was no less than the third of that genre to head up DC’s Adventure Comics.”

Millionaire amateur astronomer Ted Knight fought crime with his Gravity Rod, which proved to be a pretty fair stand-in for a “power ring.”

Created by writer Chuck Reizenstein and Stan Asch, Dr. Mid-Nite first appeared in All-American Comics 25 (April 1941), a comic book headlined by a champion of light, the Green Lantern. The green-caped and red-vested Dr. Mid-Nite became its champion of darkness, wielding blackout bombs and assisted by his helpful owl.

With infrared goggles of his own design, the hero was able to see in daylight as well. Like the Shadow, he made the very darkness an ally.

Though technologically savvy, McNider wasn’t very creative with names — he called his owl “Hooty” and sported a nom de guerre that sounded almost exactly like his own name.

But the real origin of his name was a wink at a radio melodrama then being broadcast that boasted an audience in the millions: Captain Midnight.

May 1941: When Justice Is Blind

Dr. Mid-Nite was, in a way, the child of the Black Bat and the father of Daredevil.

Blinded by a mobster’s grenade, Dr. Charles McNider lost the bandages over his eyes when a fortuitous owl crashed through his window and the surgeon discovered he could see in the dark.

Created by writer Chuck Reizenstein and Stan Asch, Dr. Mid-Nite first appeared in All-American Comics 25 (April 1941), a comic book headlined by a champion of light, the Green Lantern. The green-caped and red-vested Dr. Mid-Nite became its champion of darkness, wielding blackout bombs and assisted by that helpful owl. 

With infrared goggles of his own design, he was able to see in daylight as well. Like the Shadow, he made the very darkness an ally.

Though technologically savvy, McNider wasn’t very creative with names — he called his owl “Hooty” and sported a nom de guerre that sounded almost exactly like his own name.

But the real origin of his name was a wink at a radio melodrama that boasted an audience in the millions. Captain Midnight featured a World War I flier fighting superhero battles against the villainous Ivan Shark as the head of the Secret Squadron, an aviation-oriented paramilitary organization. I suspect copyright infringement concerns were behind the idiosyncratic spelling of “Mid-Nite.”

Dr. Mid-Nite wasn’t the first superhero who could see in the dark. The Nyctalope, a French cyborg champion created by author Jean de La Hire in 1911, also had that power, among others. And Dr. Mid-Nite’s origin was virtually lifted from that of the Black Bat, the pulp superhero created in 1939 who had also been blinded by criminals, and who could also secretly see in the dark.

This disability-as-super-ability theme would be amplified and explored by Stan Lee and Bill Everett with Daredevil in 1964. Like both the Black Bat and Dr. Mid-Nite, attorney Matt Murdock would use his “blindness” as a convenient means of keeping people from suspecting his dual identity.