Sunday, September 27, 2015

The Battle of Britain, Plus Superheroes


By the dawn of the 1940s, Americans were so hot for superheroics that they even had to go to England to show the British how it’s done. England was, of course, being bombed by the Nazis at the time, so a superhero could find plenty to keep him busy there.
One such was Captain X of the RAF, a Captain Midnight-like mystery man who was really Richard “Buck” Dare, an American foreign correspondent for the “Tribune.”
In his uranium-powered experimental plastic airplane, rather sweetly named “Jenny,” he could whip along at a brisk 700 miles per hour, thwarting German superweapons like anti-metal rays and tank-boats and preventing the blocking of the English Channel and the strychnine gassing of London’s population.
Captain X appeared in Star-Spangled Comics 1-7 (Oct. 41 through April 42), penned by Gardner Fox.
Dare was retconned into being the grandfather of Ronnie Raymond, the younger half of the DC superhero Firestorm.

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