March 1965: Reflections of a Golden Age

 They might have gone in another direction.

DC’s popular revivals of its 1940s superheroes had previously been revamps, stylistically refitting World War II characters like the Flash, Green Lantern, the Atom and Hawkman for the jet age. The trend had been so successful it had kicked off a whole new superhero craze in comics publishing.

But in Showcase 55 (March-April 1965), editor Julius Schwartz, writer Gardner Fox and artist Murphy Anderson decided not to create new “Earth One” iterations of Hourman and Dr. Fate, but instead simply revive the original “Earth Two” superheroes.

After all, Flash 123 had introduced the parallel worlds concept. And in Flash 137, Earth Two’s Justice Society of America — having been rescued from Vandal Savage’s stasis cubes by the Flashes — decided to come out of retirement.

So in Showcase 55, the older but presumably wiser Dr. Fate and Hourman teamed up to corral the original Green Lantern’s formidable archenemy Solomon Grundy.

And in Showcase 56, the Tick-Tock Thunderbolt and the Wonder Wizard battled a new Psycho Pirate who’d learned his skills as a cellmate of the original JSA super villain (something similar happened with Spider-Man’s foe the Vulture).

I loved Hourman and Dr. Fate’s pair of adventures, as well as the subsequent two-issue team-up of Starman and the Black Canary in Brave and the Bold and the revival of the Spectre in Showcase (all of them graced by Anderson’s sumptuous art).

But only the Ghostly Guardian won his own title, and even that was fairly short-lived.

Marvel Comics, which had been born in response to the earlier DC revivals, was by then setting the pace.

One wonders, though. What if Schwartz and company had decided to revamp and update Hourman, Dr. Fate, Black Canary and the Spectre? What might they have come up with?

April 1941: The Man of the Hour Back in the Day

Like Bulldog Drummond in the 1920s and the Equalizer in the 1980s, Hourman advertised for people to help in the newspaper, offering his services free to the oppressed.

Created by writer Ken Fitch and artist Bernard Baily in Adventure Comics 48 (April 1940), DC superhero Hourman had the potential to be an interesting variation on the superman theme then flooding the new market for comic books.

Biochemist Rex Tyler was a real Clark Kent — that is to say, he was a timid, nervous fellow, literally afraid of the dark. But the Miraclo drug he discovered not only gave him superhuman strength, speed, stamina and senses, it altered his personality, making him bold and aggressive for an hour at a time.

Imagine the dramatic possibilities inherent in such a mind-alerting super-drug in a cowardly hero. Unfortunately, in the simplistic storytelling of the day, they were never developed.

Like other early superhero features, this one played fast and loose with the secret identity concept. The hero gave himself the long-winded title of Tick-Tock Tyler the Hour-Man.

Encountering Rex Tyler at a crime scene in Adventure Comics 49, a police detective asks, “Tyler? I say, you don’t happen to be Tick-Tock Tyler, the Hour-Man?” “Me?” stammers Tyler.

People who intend to keep their identities secret might be well-advised not to tell everybody their actual last name.

A founding member of the Justice Society of America, Hourman was pushed aside early on in favor of Starman. He inspired two namesakes, his own son Rick and an android from the 853rd century.

He has the dubious distinction of having appeared on TV’s Robot Chicken in 2007, voiced by actor Seth Green. Promoting an erectile dysfunction pill guaranteed to “make you an hour-man, just like me,” Tyler warned, “If you become four-hourman, see a doctor.”

As the Bible says, how are the mighty fallen.