December 1960: Distaff Dangers

During the 1950s, DC heroes like Superman, Batman, Tomahawk and Blackhawk all had various cover-gimmick fake marriages, while remaining safely unattainable and aloof.

The antifascist aviator’s turn at the altar came in Blackhawk 155 (Dec. 1960), with Lady Blackhawk — Zinda Blake — as the bride. The other Blackhawks became jealous and broke up the team — and then Zinda awakened. Like Lois Lane, she’d only been having a dream about marrying her dream man.

“Blackhawk, much like Batman, succumbed to an invasion of weird and alien menaces as the issues progressed through the end of the decade,” recalled comics historian Bill Schelly. “A bright spot for teen male readers was the introduction of Lady Blackhawk, perhaps harkening back to a much earlier adventure. Military Comics 20 (July 1943) presented a story about an unnamed woman who attempted to become the first female Blackhawk.”

Two other proto-Lady Blackhawks — Eve Rice and Sheila Hawke, a/k/a “She-Hawke”— appeared during the 1940s and early 1950s.

“In The Lady Blackhawk (Blackhawk 133, Feb. 1959), Zinda Blake trained to qualify for induction to the team, but discovered that the Blackhawk code restricted membership to men,” Schelly said. “Lady Blackhawk returned occasionally as an honorary member, looking fetching in her short skirt and bare legs.”

Like the Blackhawks, the Challengers of the Unknown had their own female quasi-member, June Robbins. In Challengers of the Unknown 17 (Jan. 1961), June came in particularly handy because only she could fight off a genie commanded by the evil magician Malvolio.

Ace Morgan finally figures out that it’s June’s opal ring that the genie fears. He knew that opals were believed to have protective powers and to ward off evil in some ancient cultures.

December 1959: How the Blackhawks Evolved

Part of my fascination with comic book house ads is seeing what was inside the titles I did not get to buy, but only caught intriguing glimpses of in advertisements.

For example, what was the Blackhawk team doing fighting a huge theropod dinosaur on the cover of Blackhawk 143 (Dec. 1959), and how would they manage it? They didn’t have superpowers, after all (except every now and then).

The answer to the dilemma in The Time-Monsters involved a steam shovel and a giant spool of telephone cable, as it turned out.

In the issue’s other two stories, we learned that Lady Blackhawk had a rival in Queen Penelope of the island Kingdom of Xenovia, and how Olaf and Hendrickson found themselves in a feud.

“As I got older and I read those older monster and alien issues, I now realize how far Blackhawk had strayed from his original roots,” recalled Paul Zuckerman. “My friend’s brother had collected Blackhawk in the early ’50s and in the mid-’60s. My friend sold me an issue or two for a buck each. What a revelation! The team were true cold war warriors, but it felt so much more organic to the character as freedom fighters. Every issue seemed to have another Eastern European country with a strange name with a threatened Communist takeover, and every issue the Blackhawks would thwart the Reds. DC quickly ejected those storylines from the book when it acquired the strip from Quality.”

Bruce Kanin observed, “I always enjoy reviewing the evolution of DC’s comic books in the ’40s-’60s, especially in that many followed the same path, i.e., solid tales revolving around their time period and nature of the heroes; gradual introduction of fantastic elements like big gorillas, dinosaurs and, er, blobs; aliens arrive; new costumes; Neal Adams arrives (heh); back to gritty, realistic stories before cancellation.

“That applies more or less to Blackhawk, Sea Devils, Challengers Of The Unknown, Doom Patrol and Tomahawk — perhaps others.”

January 1943: Justice in Jodhpurs

Captain Triumph was one of those t-shirt-and-jodhpurs superheroes of the 1940s, like Doc Strange. 

I suspect their relatively low-key dress was a way of avoiding the attention of Superman’s lawyers, since they all had roughly his powers. 

The Quality Comics character’s origin in Crack Comics 27 combined some of the Spectre’s grimness with a sunnier veneer.

“Captain Triumph was a relative late-comer to the 1940s’ superhero scene,” noted comics historian Don Markstein. “By the time he made his debut in the January 1943 issue of Crack Comics (where previously established regulars included the Black Condor and the Clock), most of the long-underwear guys were already familiar to American comic book readers, and some companies (such as MLJ, where the rising star was Archie), were already starting to withdraw from the genre. But once he did come along, he took over the title and remained its cover feature as long as it continued to be published.”

When Nazis murdered flier Michael Gallant, he managed to reappear as a ghost to his journalist twin brother, Lance. Thereafter, by touching a T-shaped birthmark on his wrist, Lance could combine their forms into Captain Triumph. Together, they possessed the powers of flight, invulnerability and super strength. 

“Touching the birthmark again would separate the two, freeing Michael to flit around, ghost-like, and gather intelligence for Captain Triumph,” Markstein noted.

The good Captain’s enemies included the werewolf Raffrey, the mad biologist Khor and the electrical menace Porcupine.

“Captain Triumph was obviously inspired by Captain Marvel,” observed comics historians Mike Kooiman and Jim Amash. “Both heroes summoned power from beyond, and were transformed by lightning.”

“(A)s the series opened, the artist was Alfred Andriola, former assistant to Milton Caniff on Terry & the Pirates,” Markstein wrote. “Andriola had also drawn a newspaper comic based on author Earl Derr Biggers’s famous character, Charlie Chan. He stayed with Captain Triumph a mere five months, leaving to create the character he’s best remembered for, Kerry Drake.”

August 1942: The Case of the Living Dolls

The dashing, diminutive Doll Man’s derring-do sustained his feature for a remarkable 14 years.

Created by Will Eisner for Quality’s Feature Comics 27 (Dec. 1939), “…Doll Man was research chemist Darrel Dane, who invented a formula that enabled him to shrink to six-inch height, as well as one to bring himself back to normal,” noted comics historian Don Markstein.

“Unlike a later and more famous shrinking superhero, the Atom, who could continue shrinking all the way to the sub-atomic realm, Doll Man had only one alternate size — or at least, that’s how it was supposed to be. As actually drawn in his Doll Man form, though, he appeared anywhere from six inches to a couple of feet tall, often varying in size within a single story.”

“He made himself a distinctive costume for the purpose (a legless, armless, blue gymnast's outfit for ease of movement, combined with a high-collar red cape to make movement difficult again, rounded out with bright red footwear that looked like a pair of elf booties), and kept his true identity hidden.”

“Doll Man quickly became Feature’s most popular character, and he appeared on the cover of Feature 30, after which he alternated with humor features,” noted Mike Kooliman and Jim Amash. “He took over the lead feature the next month. In that story, he borrowed the model airplane of young Tim Smith as his personal aircraft to use to catch Grimes, a hideous jewel thief,”

Here, in Feature Comics 59 (Aug. 1942), Darrel’s girlfriend Martha Roberts gets kidnapped by a crook whose serum turns women into department store manikins. Fifth columnists intended to use it to paralyze a whole army camp.

The war was much on people’s minds in June 1942, the month Feature Comics 59 hit newsstands. That month, the Allies halted the Japanese naval advance in the Pacific in the Battle of Midway, and Anne Frank made the first entry in her new diary. It was her 13th birthday.

October 1941: Nor Iron Bars a Cage…

Most secret identities wouldn’t last long in the real world, of course, but Daniel Dyce’s might.

Dyce, a/k/a Quality Comics’ mystery man 711, had one of those rare perfect dual identities.

“He roamed the underworld by night, in search of villains to bring in, like a good superhero should,” recalled comics historian Don Markstein. “But in the daytime, he hung around the jail where he was a convicted inmate. Of course, the fact that he was a resident of a jail cell with the lucky number 711 at Westmoor Prison, from which he obviously derived his superhero name, was just a ghastly mistake.”

A former district attorney, 711 had been wrongly convicted because of a good deed gone wrong. In prison, Dyce was able to come and go as he pleased via a secret tunnel. 

Dyce’s secret identity turned out to be extremely — ahem — convenient. Still, it was a bit cheeky of him to name himself after his own cell number. Something like “Monte Cristo” might have been a safer alternative.

“He even handed out fancy cards, supposedly showing the crooks what fate awaited them, but in reality, they represented the fate that had already befallen the masked hero,” Markstein noted.

His lucky number finally failed him, though. “He is eventually killed in action, his role being assumed by Destiny,” Jess Nivens noted.

Created by George Brenner, the mysterious 711 was one of no less than nine heroes who graced the pages of Police Comics 3 (Oct. 1941). The others included a masked reporter (the Sword), another masked prosecutor (the Mouthpiece), a masked chemist (the Human Bomb), aviator-adventurer Eagle Evans and Steele Kerrigan, who was another wrongfully imprisoned hero.

Ironically, in Police Comics, the law apparently didn’t work too well.

The playboy-turned-crimefighter Firebrand and his peek-a-boo shirt got the issue’s cover spot. But the two breakout stars of Police Comics would be found on the back pages — Arthur Peddy’s Phantom Lady and Jack Cole’s Plastic Man.