Looking at the origin story of Neon the Unknown, a character who appeared in Quality’s Hit Comics #'s 1-17, I see from the Public Domain Superheroes website that Tom Corbet (not to be confused with Tom Corbett, Space Cadet), was a member of the French Foreign Legion and the sole survivor of an attack on a local tribe. He drank from a mysterious pool which gave him super powers. It is in those “neonic vapors,” and then Tom glows, can fly, and shoot energy bolts out of his hands.
In this episode people are going mad, rioting in the streets. There is a powder collected by Neon, which he gives to his friend, the professor. He is one of those comic book professors who can whip out a microscope and ascertain the powder “if breathed by men will drive them insane!” That is one talented professor; he doesn’t even need a laboratory to confirm it.
I don’t know what makes Neon Unknown, but it sounds mysterious, doesn’t it? I also don’t know if he got a discharge from the French Foreign Legion, or if he is listed as a deserter.
Jerry Iger is credited as creating him. This episode, from Hit Comics #5 (1940), has Alex Blum with a question mark credited for the artwork by the Grand Comics Database. Blum is another of those old-timers (born in 1889) who went into comic books in their earliest days, when he joined the Eisner and Iger Studio.
[Insert Fletcher Hanks comparison here.] On the other hand, Hanks wouldn't simply have sent the bombers home, and the leaders who ordered the operation in the first place would have been dealt some awful and absurd fate.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that a rather larger share of superheroes wore bandanas in the early golden age than later.