How the Mighty Heroes Are Fallen

In January 1966, the overnight success of the Batman TV program led to a miscalculation in the entertainment industry.

The archly comical ABC show was created to be “camp,” a term defined by Merriam-Webster as “…something so outrageously artificial, affected, inappropriate or out-of-date as to be considered amusing.”

The early TV stories, lifted right from the comic books, didn’t sit so well on actual human beings in tights — even though it was fun to see Adam West address each crazy scheme involving puzzles, umbrellas, Rube Goldberg death traps and brightly colored knockout gas as if it were the imminent detonation of a hydrogen bomb.

A 12-year-old then, I understood that the show was laughing at Batman, not with him. And I didn’t appreciate it one little bit when that same attitude backwashed into superhero comics — not just the Batman comics, but many other bandwagon riders.

Take the revived Archie Comics MLJ superheroes, for example. Subjected to the faux-Stan Lee writing of Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel and the indifferent art of Paul Reinman, 1940s stalwarts like the Web, the Shield, the Fox, Steel Sterling and the Black Hood became goofballs as the Fly-Man title turned into Mighty Comics in 1966-67.

Only the Web — now a henpecked, middle-aged superhero making a comeback attempt — had the seeds of a real story, touching on themes that would be developed in superhero stories 20 or more years later.

But finally, once all the publicity dust settles, things that are said to be “…so bad they’re good” are usually, after all, just bad.

The Batman show, and the comic book superheroes that copied it, all quickly fell victim to the problem that afflicts every camp melodrama. You can’t generate concern about the fate of characters after you’ve encouraged the audience to laugh at them by making them appear ridiculous. The ticking time bomb can’t be suspenseful when we know it’s really a jack-in-the-box.

Do Do That Judo That You Do So Well

A surprising number of superheroes moonlighted as judo, jiu jitsu and karate instructors.

One-page features of “judo tricks” were not uncommon during the Silver Age. Harvey Comics’ stuntwoman turned movie star turned masked crime-fighter, the Black Cat, offered them. In Archie Comics’ Adventures of the Fly, the 1940s superhero the Black Hood was recruited for the task. A little later, in the mid-1960s, Charlton Comics’ ‘action hero” Judomaster joined the club.

But the oddest and most obscure of the lot was Bobby Bell, a teenaged sidekick and/or mascot to a superhero who actually outlasted the hero himself.

In Adventures of The Fly 1 (Aug. 1959), the boy made his debut wearing a costume like the Shield’s (who had debuted two months before in his own title as Lancelot Strong, a Silver Age revamp of MLJ’s Golden Age Shield Joe Higgins).

Apparently president of the Shield’s Young Americans’ Club, Bell’s relationship to the Shield — whether sidekick or just fan — was never made clear because the Shield’s comic was killed after only two issues, the victim of a lawsuit threat. DC Comics had claimed the hero was too much like Superman.

Even his name was ambiguous, shifting from Bill Bell to Bobby Bell or Bob Bell. Whatever. Bell stayed in the ring giving instructions in the martial arts through Adventures of the Fly 11 (July 1961).

This quirky how-to sideline of superhero comics eventually died out, and it’s easy to see why teaching children how to battle each other might raise some eyebrows. Superheroes may not fear the criminal element, but they have a healthy respect for lawyers.

Out of the Shadow of the Superhero

Comic books, like television, are a generally conservative entertainment medium, reflecting social change only after it’s taken hold in the culture at large. That makes it interesting to track the course of women’s rights in comics from the 1940s into the second decade of the 21^st century.

Mary Marvel, Bulletgirl, Miss America, Namora, Golden Girl, Doll Girl, Batwoman, Batgirl, Supergirl, Superwoman, Aquagirl, Miss Arrowette, Fly Girl, Hawkgirl, Power Girl, Ms. Marvel, Spider-Woman, even She-Hulk … the female knock-off version of the dominant male superhero was a venerable tradition, one that paradoxically paralleled American society’s growing recognition of female power even as it kind of condescended to the idea.

Take Fly Girl, for example. Introduced in Adventures of the Fly 13 (July 1961) as a traditional damsel in distress, actress Kim Brand didn’t play that role for long. In Adventures of the Fly 14 (September 1961), she was granted a magic ring by extradimensional emissary Turan that enabled her to duplicate the powers of attorney Thomas Troy, the Fly. She co-starred with him thereafter while appearing in solo stories in the Archie comics Laugh and Pep.

The trend even continued outside comics, with Six Million Dollar Men spawning Bionic Women.

Those female copies sometimes served as guinea pigs, trial balloons for plot developments that would later be visited on the more established male hero. Supergirl was “killed” before Superman, and Batgirl was physically disabled before Batman.

The 1979 movie Alien featured a female lead besting a space predator after her male crewmates had failed. And Joss Whedon’s innovative 1997 TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer marked a shift in the culture, featuring a no-nonsense superheroine in the lead who had copied no one, and whose adventures balanced the traditionally male mission of monster hunting with traditional female concerns about high school relationships.

And the permanent cultural shift that has taken place is even more apparent now. Hawkgirl, for example, has effectively supplanted her former mentor Hawkman, and Thor’s original love interest, Jane Foster, gained the powers, the hammer and the status of the thunder god.

The Black Hood: On the Page and in the Air

In the early 1940s, the Black Hood became MLJ Comics’ first cross-media star. The feat would later be repeated by Archie Andrews and Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

Created by Harry Shorten and Al Camy for Top-Notch Comics 9 (1940), the Black Hood was New York City police officer Kip Burland, framed and all but murdered by the green-masked arch-criminal the Skull. Nursed back to health and trained by a hermit, Burland dons a black mask and yellow tights to evade both the police and criminals in his war to bring the Skull to justice, and finally clears his name.

Oddly for a company that would later be defined by Archie’s light-hearted romantic high jinks, MLJ’s superheroes often had brutally violent adventures in the 1940s. Light on super powers, the protagonists leaned toward being somewhat interchangeable tough bruisers in tights. Even the Shield, who began as a superman, eventually lost his powers.

The Black Hood also starred in a pulp magazine, Black Hood Detective, which morphed into Hooded Detective. “The Black Hood’s pulp adventures lasted only three issues, dated September, 1941, November, 1941, and January, 1942,” Richard Lupoff wrote. “The demise of the magazine may have resulted from paper rationing imposed by the government, the United States having entered World War II on Dec. 7, 1941.

“For the pulp adventures of the Black Hood, (publisher Louis) Silberkleit obtained the literary services of George Roberts, a solidly competent pulp scrivener who used the by-line G.T. Fleming-Roberts,” Lupoff wrote. “For the three book-length adventures of the Black Hood, Roberts grappled with some serious problems involved in converting a comic book hero to a pulp adventurer.”

“Kip wears his Black Hood costume under his street clothes, and in at least one instance we see him strip to his tights, hide his civvies in the bushes outside a mansion, and set off to chase the crooks. He seems to have forgotten to come back for them. Or maybe I missed that in all the excitement.”

“Roberts modified the Black Hood’s costume by adding a flowing black cloak, permitting him to disappear into the shadows when it suited him. (Shades of Walter Gibson's crime-fighter, the Shadow.)”

The Black Hood debuted on radio’s Mutual Network in 1943. Using Paul Dukas’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice as its theme music, the 15-minute show ran for 120 episodes over six months and starred Scott Douglas as Kip Burland/The Black Hood. Marjorie Cramer played his Margo Lane-like friend and confidant, reporter Barbara Sutton.

Sound effects: GONG Hit

ANNCR: The Black Hood!

SFX: GONG Hit.

ANNCR: Criminals beware... The Black Hood is everywhere!

SFX: Weird TONE UP and UNDER

HOOD: (filter) I, the Black Hood do solemnly swear that neither threat, nor bribe, nor bullet, nor death itself -- will keep me from fulfilling my vow: To erase crime from the face of the earth!

SFX: Tone UP AND OUT

SFX : GONG HIT

MUSIC: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, by Paul Dukas. UP AND FADE OUT UNDER ANNCR.

ANNCR: The Black Hood, who is really patrolman Kip Burland, a fact known only to newspaper woman Barbara Sutton, has just been talking to Barbara on the phone. They were discussing the old Miracle Man and his strange housekeeper Womba. Sergeant McGinty, Patrolman Burland's superior had thought their visit to the Voodoo doctor merely routine. But Kip Burland and Barbara Sutton were fascinated by the black magic of the Old Miracle Man. In fact, the old man had given Barbara an odd emerald ring in a twined serpent setting. Womba, the old housekeeper had objected to the gift. We find the telephone conversation between Burland and Barbara Sutton has been interrupted by a stranger at Barbara’s door — Burland is holding the line.

BARBARA: (Screams) What are you doing here with a gun? You can't come in!

GUNMAN: Oh, I can't --eh? Well, I’m coming in, and no one's going to stop me, either! Not till I get what I came for.

KIP: (filter) Barbara, are you alright?

GUNMAN: There's no one around. I checked and made sure the doorman was out...

KIP: (filter) Barbara!

GUNMAN: I came in and walked up the stairs...

KIP: Well, I've heard enough of that! I'd better get over to Barbara’s right away... (deeper) It’s time for THE BLACK HOOD to go to work!...

The Black Hood’s 1940s superheroic career was wide-ranging but short-lived. During the summer of 1946, in Black Hood Comics 19, he became one of the few Golden Age superheroes to have his secret identity exposed. Captured and unmasked by the Dick Tracyesque criminal Needlenoodle, Burland abandons his costumed identity and opens the Black Hood Detective Agency.

That development was conveniently forgotten, however, when the Black Hood returned to fight Silver Age crime in The Fly and the Black Hood Join Forces (The Adventures of the Fly 7, July 1960).

Archie: Even a Teen Who Is Pure in Heart...

On my 8^th birthday, my aunt Shirley handed me two comic books, one a Superman title and the other an issue of Archie Comics. She carefully explained that the Superman represented the kind of comics I’d be leaving behind, and the Archie reflected the genre I’d be growing into.

“Uh-uh,” I replied firmly. “Nope.”

My parents and grandparents were a little concerned about my stubborn fascination with superhero comics, and hoped it was something I would grow out of.

I hope they’re not still waiting.

What a sweet and ironic retribution, too, when, about two years later, the “mature” Archie Andrews became a superhero. Finally I was buying Archies, but it brought my loving young aunt little comfort.

Pureheart the Powerful, Archie’s superhero identity, actually offered a rationale for superheroes that made a weird kind of sense. If super heroes exist, why don’t we ever see them in action? Archie anticipated the Men in Black movies with his neat answer to that question.

Inspired by a self-help book, Archie uses the power of his pure heart to transform himself into a caped superguy complete with rocket belt (Archie Comics never liked the idea of people just “flying” without a visible motive power).

But the sheer telepathic force of Archie’s willpower wipes out everyone’s memories when his super deeds are done. That clever angle let Archie’s superhero adventures slip neatly into the comics’ teen humor continuity.

The weakness that robbed Archie of his super powers turned out to be the same sexual feelings that delighted and/or plagued him in his regular continuity. Another neat storytelling trick.

Penned by Frank Doyle and drawn by Bob White, Archie’s crusade against evil began in Life With Archie 42 (Oct. 1965), just ahead of the national Batman craze that followed the premiere of the TV show in January 1966.

“By 1965, the superhero revival in American comic books was in full swing, and even the funny guys were starting to get into the act,” comics historian Don Markstein observed. “That was the year Goofy became Super Goof, Herbie became The Fat Fury, and Archie became Pureheart the Powerful.”

Soon Betty Cooper became Superteen and Jughead Jones a surprisingly effective Captain Hero. The trio had already been super-secret agents a la the Man from UNCLE, so this evolution seemed natural.

“Even Little Archie got into the act — Little Pureheart was first seen in Little Archie 40 (Fall, 1966),” Markstein wrote. “To celebrate this efflorescence of superheroics in Riverdale, the 142nd issue (Oct. 1966) of Archie Giant Series magazine reprinted all these guys’ origin stories.”

“But the glory was short-lived. Pureheart the Powerful/Captain Pureheart lasted six issues, exactly as long as Superteen’s tenure in Betty & Me. Little Pureheart made only three appearances, the last in Little Archie 44 … Jughead as Captain Hero bucked the trend by hanging on for seven issues, but it too was gone as of November 1967, and the entire ‘Pureheart’ scenario became a fond memory for fans of superhero comics.

Their lighthearted adventures delighted me while they lasted, as did those of their Archie’s Mad House colleagues Captain Sprocket and Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

Even Archie’s rival Reggie Mantle had donned envy-green tights as Evilheart.

Odd name for a superhero, I always thought. 

The Vulpine Victories of the Ever-Vanishing Fox

Quick. Name a newspaper photographer who takes crime scene pictures while in his superheroic secret identity, and whose initials are PP.

You said “the Fox,” right? Because he was the original.

Combine the occupation of Spider-Man, the costume of the Black Panther and Wildcat, the girlfriend of Superman, the vehicle of Batman and the name of Zorro, and what do you get?  The Fox, an MLJ superhero who debuted in June 1940 and was created to battle the KKK, of all things.

Newly hired at the Daily Globe, photographer and former Penn State athlete Paul Patten is assigned to cover the Night Riders, a gang of hooded terrorists obviously meant to represent the Ku Klux Klan.

As a means of getting photos, he invents his crimefighting identity of the Fox, complete with belt camera. Accompanying him on his adventures is a feisty girl reporter with an alliterative name, Ruth Ransom.

The character’s feature ended March 1942 with the last issue of MLJ’s Golden Age Blue Ribbon Comics. But ironically, two months before artist Irwin Hasen — who’d created the Fox — had teamed up with Bill Finger to create DC’s Wildcat for the first issue of Sensation Comics. The costumes were strikingly similar.

For an obscure superhero, the Fox has had a fair number of revivals — in the Silver Age, in the 1980s and again in the 21^st century in a miniseries created by artist Dean Haspiel and the talented comics writer Mark Waid. He’s had a Foxmobile, a superhero team and even a She-Fox with whom to share his adventures.

In his Mighty Comics iteration in the mid-1960s, where I first saw him, the Fox was said to be Paul Patten Jr., son of the original. The superhero pines for disco dancer Delilah Monaco, but she’s interested only in his alter ego. Appearing in Mighty Crusaders 4 and 5 in 1966, the Fox joined a super group called the Ultra-Men which also featured the Golden Age stalwarts the Web and Captain Flag.

The Fox deserves at least a footnote in history for having the weirdest-ass victory yell in comics: “Yah yah yah yah yaaahh!”

The Wrenching Misadventures of Capt. Sprocket

Precisely because melodrama and farce are merely two sides of the same coin — like opera and musical comedy — superheroes have been prime targets for parody from the start.

The concept was parodied even before Superman arrived with characters like Popeye, and immediately afterward with characters like the Red Tornado (Ma Hunkle) and Supersnipe, “the boy with the most comic books in the world.”

The 1940s saw funny animal parodies like Mighty Mouse, Super Rabbit and Hoppy the Marvel Bunny, and, in 1952, the superheroes were among the first targets of Mad Magazine.

Captain Sprocket bowed in Archie's Madhouse 25 (April, 1963). That title offered mostly lighthearted science fiction and monster parodies, Sabrina the Teenage Witch being the most famous example. The Universal film monsters of the 1930s and 1940s were immensely popular then, having been introduced to a vast new audience of youngsters through the late shows on local television.

At 9, I enjoyed the misadventures of the mildly inept but ultimately effective captain, who began as a red-suited super-spaceman. The name “Sprocket” suggested the space-age term “rocket” while remaining suitably silly. He swiftly evolved into an orange-suited, caped superhero of a deliberately generic brand.

In fact, I subscribed to Archie’s Madhouse because of Captain Sprocket, even though his appearances were irregular. By age 9, you can still be awestruck by superheroes while also recognizing their inherent absurdity, and I believe I found Captain Sprocket to be a means of splitting the difference.

“Captain Sprocket may be the superhero who had the longest continual run at MLJ/Archie Comics, though it’s possible The Shield, who had a surprisingly long career in the back pages of Pep Comics, edges him out,” observed comics historian Don Markstein. “But most of the company's ‘40s stars, who came and went in a couple of years, aren’t in the running. Nor is their biggest ‘60s star, The Fly, who ran longer than most of the company's super guys but had a gap between incarnations. And yet, Sprocket has never had his own title, never been a member of The Mighty Crusaders, and isn’t taken very seriously by either readers or creators.”

Captain Sprocket did, however, inspire at least one more superhero parody. When Archie Andrews became Pureheart the Powerful in the superhero boom of 1965, his costume turned out to be almost identical to the good captain’s.

Captain Sprocket finally found himself on a super team in Archie 655 (May 2014). In this parody of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain Sprocket joined with other notably obscure Archie Comics characters like Cat Girl, Super Duck, the vegetarian vampire Captain Pumpernik and Cosmo the Merry Martian (as well as Archie and Jughead) in the Good Guys of the Galaxy.

The Short and Double Life of Private Strong

Even given the quirky history of comic books, The Double Life of Private Strong was an odd title.

For one thing, what other superhero comic was named after the protagonist’s secret identity? For another, why would a title created by two industry legends — a title that was launched at the perfect time to become popular — be killed after only two issues?

Created for Archie Comics by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby in June 1959, just ahead of the 1960s’ boom market for superheroes, the title took the route that had proven successful with DC’s the Flash (and would work well for Green Lantern the next month, in July 1959, and later for the Atom and Hawkman). In each case, a popular 1940s superhero was rebooted, updated and streamlined for the jet age.

Simon and Kirby’s most successful creation had been 1941’s Captain America, a Marvel character they essentially parodied for Prize Comics with 1954’s Fighting American. Ironically, in their third try at a star-spangled superman, they were revamping a character they might once have been accused of copying.

That’s because the first flag-costumed patriotic superhero had been the Shield, published in January 1940 by MLJ, which would become Archie. Joe Higgins, an FBI agent who possessed superhuman strength and durability, fought criminals and spies as the Shield until 1948 (although his super powers had faded by then).

In retooling the Shield, Simon and Kirby amped-up the superman factor, granting him flight, super-strength, invulnerability, super-vision and the ability to project lightning. The orphaned son of a scientist who’d given him his expanded-mind powers, Lancelot Strong was adopted and raised by a kindly farm couple.

All that was a bit too similar to Superman for DC, which promptly threatened legal action and ended the title after its second issue. However, this Shield would reappear once or twice more as a guest star in the second superhero title Simon and Kirby created for Archie, The Adventures of the Fly.

They made the Shield’s secret identity that of an Army private, perhaps because most young men were drafted in those days, and perhaps because their most successful character had also hidden his red, white and blue costume under the tan of an U.S. Army uniform.

They Might Be Mighty

The company that became Archie Comics, MLJ, has often anticipated the popularity of superheroes while being unable to fully exploit that knowledge.

In November 1940, the publisher introduced the first flag-draped patriotic superhero, the Shield, but that concept would get knocked out of the ballpark 14 months later at what would become Marvel Comics.

From 1939 into the late 1940s, MLJ published dozens of mostly low-powered, surprisingly gory superheroes, with one of them — the Black Hood — branching out into radio drama and pulp magazines.

As the Golden Age superheroes vanished, Archie Andrews paid the bills. But just as the Silver Age superheroes were becoming popular in 1959, the publisher tried again with the Shield, a Superman-ish reboot by Jack Kirby that ran afoul of DC Comics’ lawyers and disappeared after two issues of the oddly titled The Double Life of Private Strong.

Kirby’s second MLJ creation headlined The Adventures of the Fly, which ran for 30 issues until October 1964 and guest-starred the Black Hood and the Shield. The insect-powered hero with a magic ring inspired an animal-powered hero with a magic belt in The Adventures of the Jaguar.

Within a year, the Fly had returned as Fly-Man, gaining the advantage of additional powers like the ability to expand to giant size along with the burden of some heavy-handed “humorous” writing.

The renamed “Mighty Comics” could never quite fan away the smell of flop sweat, with the cheeky voice-over narrator’s attempts to mimic Stan Lee’s confidence coming across more as desperation.

The fact that the Fly’s nom de guerre was changed to Fly-Man in May 1965, months before the Batman TV show premiered in January 1966, demonstrates that the name change wasn’t inspired by Batman or Superman, but by that newly popular hyphenated hero, Spider-Man.

Almost all the company’s old Golden Age superheroes were revived before the Mighty Comics line died along with the Batman boom in 1967.

The only character I found really interesting was the Web, a criminology professor who’d left his heroic days behind in the 1940s. Marrying one of his students, John Raymond saddled himself with a nagging wife and mother-in-law who forbid him to do anything silly like fight crime in tights. He began to sneak around behind their backs to do just that, nursing some unexpected aches and pains in his middle-aged muscles. 

As a metaphor for lost dreams, for the exuberant illusions of youth fading into the disappointing limitations of age, the character had a certain poignant appeal.

Meet Bob Phantom, Just a Regular Guy and the Scourge of the Underworld

I always suspected that Bob Phantom, an early MLJ superhero, added the friendly, aw-shucks “Bob” just so he wouldn't seem too fancy.

 “However silly his name might be, Bob Phantom debuted in Blue Ribbon Comics 2 (Dec. 1939), only a year and a half after Superman had founded the superhero genre in comic books, and just a few months after others had started populating the newsstands,” Don Markstein observed.

“In fact, he was the very first long underwear guy published by MLJ Comics. (The Wizard would have tied Bob, but the Wiz's original superhero suit consisted of a tuxedo. Other very early ones, such as The Shield, The Comet and Steel Sterling, didn’t reach the public until the first couple of months of 1940.)

“The publisher demonstrated its lack of practice at crafting super-powered crime fighters by not explaining how Bob managed to do what he did. In his first 6-page story, which was probably written by Harry Shorten (Tippy Teen, There Oughta Be a Law) and definitely drawn by Irv Novick (Captain Storm, Batman), he demonstrated an ability to appear out of (or disappear into) nowhere, survive a gunfire attack unharmed, and know things he had no way of learning.”

“Bob” was secretly Broadway columnist Walt Whitney, who goaded the police to arrest criminals. So he was Walter Winchell as a superhero? I must say, the mind reels.

Actually, it seems likely that Bob got his silly name simply because people had run out of variations on the evocative mysterioso term “Phantom.” By the late 1930s, you had Lee Falk’s comic strip superhero the Phantom, the pulp magazine superhero Phantom Detective, Gene Autry’s Phantom Empire movie serial and so forth. Even in the current Mickey Mouse newspaper comic strip story (running from May 20 to Sept. 9, 1939), the redoubtable rodent was busy battling the Phantom Blot.