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).

Something to Keep in Mind about Self-Worth

Thoughts from my great friend Jim Hampton, the one fixed point in a changing age.

I'm Crossing You in Style Some Day

Audrey Hepburn as the Truman Capote character whose cards read "Holiday Golightly, Traveling."

When I first watched Blake Edwards’ 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany’s at age 12, I was immediately fascinated by Holly Golightly’s veneer of toughness over vulnerability, particularly because Audrey Hepburn’s plucky portrayal of Truman Capote’s character was counterpointed by the poignancy of Henry Mancini’s song Moon River.

 “I suppose you think I’m very brazen or très fou or something.” Mad parties, mean reds, the cat in the rain. Youth and beauty and longing.

Thus have gay voices always reached across the generations to each other, even when others could not hear them.

At the 11th Hour, Call Doctor Mid-Nite...

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, 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 airing 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 conerns were behind the idiosyncratic spelling “Mid-Nite.”

Turnabout being fair play, when Fawcett brought its version of Captain Midnight to the comic books in 1942, they superheroed-him up with “a skintight scarlet suit and used an array of gizmos like Dr. Mid-Nite which released clouds of blinding darkness,” Wikipedia notes.

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-superability 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.

Buck Rogers: Optimism and Armageddon

The art may seem a little crude, but the sense of wonder is palpable in the early Buck Rogers newspaper strips.

Jumping belts, ray guns, rocket ships, robots, domed cities, tiger women — fresh fantasy delights daily that began for America’s children before the Great Depression and helped sustain them right through it. Whatever their privations, they always had the Future.

“Anticipating the Wall Street Crash by nine months, the escapist action doubtlessly benefited from the worsening economic straits of the Depression Years, by providing escapism,” noted Andrew Darlington. “Eventually the strip was reaching a massive readership, syndicated through nearly 400 newspapers.”

A bored financial writer for the Philadelphia Retail Ledger named Philip Francis Nowlan had penned a tale for Hugo Gernsback’s new science fiction pulp magazine Amazing Stories, calling it Armageddon 2419. The head of the syndicated National Newspaper Service, John Flint Dille, spotted its potential as something new, a newspaper adventure strip. The first episode by Nowlan and artist Dick Calkins appeared on Jan. 7, 1929 – oddly enough, the same day that the Tarzan comic strip was launched

In another synchronicity, the cover of the August 1928 issue of Amazing Stories, where that first story appeared, perfectly depicted a smiling Buck Rogers soaring through the air in a flying harness. But that wasn’t Buck Rogers at all. The cover illustrates E. E. “Doc” Smith's serial The Skylark of Space, which began in the same issue.

A precursor to Flash Gordon, Superman and Star Trek, Buck Rogers quickly crossed over into dramatic radio, movie serials and toys. It also gave us Ray Bradbury.

“I learned that I was right and everyone else was wrong when I was 9,” the famed fantasy writer recalled. “Buck Rogers arrived on the scene that year, and it was instant love. I collected the daily strips, and was madness maddened by them. Friends criticized. Friends made fun. I tore up the Buck Rogers strips.

“For a month I walked through my fourth-grade classes, stunned and empty. One day I burst into tears, wondering what devastation had happened to me. The answer was: Buck Rogers. He was gone, and life simply wasn’t worth living.

“The next thought was: Those are not my friends, the ones who got me to tear the strips apart and so tear my own life down the middle; those are my enemies.

“I went back to collecting Buck Rogers. My life has been happy ever since. For that was the beginning of my writing science fiction. Since then, I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space-travel, sideshows or gorillas. When such occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room.”

Suicide Has Rarely Been This Much Fun

As instantly recognizable as its superhero titles or its science fiction anthologies, Silver Age DC Comics offered another genre that became familiar to its readers — the “uncanny team” comic book.

Actually, the heroes were canny while the menaces they fought were uncanny — alien invaders, giant monsters, mad scientists, what have you. Without super powers to support them against these fantastic foes, the heroes had to rely on their wits, their uniformly dauntless courage, some mid-century high tech and each other. Being miniaturized or propelled into other times or dimensions were not uncommon experiences for them, certainly no cause for panic. In the idiom of the day, they were cool cats.

Such uncanny teams included the Challengers of the Unknown, the Sea Devils, Cave Carson’s intrepid band of spelunkers, Rip Hunter’s temporal explorers and — borrowed from Quality Comics — the World War II military fliers the Blackhawks, re-enlisted into the fight against extraterrestrial enemies and super villains.

Often, the team consisted of the main hero, his strong pal, a young guy and the girl — a configuration borrowed by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby for what was arguably the most significant team of the 1960s, the Fantastic Four.

And in Brave and the Bold 25 (Aug.-Sept. 1959), writer Robert Kanigher and artist Ross Andru introduced us to the Suicide Squad, a/k/a Task Force X, a team headed by pilot and military intelligence officer Col. Rick Flag (clearly a hero from the “Mike Hammer,” “John Shaft” and “Peter Gunn” School of Coincidental Naming).

The team included physicist Jess Bright, astronomer Hugh Evans and military nurse Karin Grace, “all the last living members of their respective crews, all willing to die to save the world and uplift their lost friends’ legacies,” as C. David noted. “They’re basically a crew powered by pure survivor’s guilt.”

They proved to be just the kind of plucky people you might hear say, “Never thought we’d be trying to save a whale from a flying dinosaur!”

First, Fascism Wants You To Remain Ignorant

The fact that you remain unaware of the nature of fascism doesn’t mean that fascism is not a grave national threat, right here, right now. In fact, it is. Think Benito Trump. 

Americans somehow prefer to think that their smugly defensive “common sense” ignorance protects them, when in fact it bares their throats to the knife.