Number 2019: The Masked Marvel’s mind control

Public Domain Superheroes has this to say of The Masked Marvel: “Masked Marvel was a hero whose secret identity was unknown. He fought crime with the help of a trio of assistants known as ZL, ZR, and ZY. He operated out of a glass-domed mountaintop headquarters. He had a number of gadgets and weapons such as a telepathically controlled plane, a zeppelin, a paralyzing ray gun, and a televisor - a device which let him see anywhere in the world. The Masked Marvel had undefined levels of super strength that included feats such as lifting a dinosaur over his head and may have possessed some form of telekinesis to operate his plane.”

I am disappointed! This episode of The Masked Marvel, from Detective Eye #1 (1940), is missing those three assistants, and some of the other tools of his trade. But it sure appears he must have some form of mind power to fly his plane without controls, because all he has is a stick between his legs that he manipulates with his palm. (Uhhhh, that sounds funny.) What I should say is a word of advice to artists: If asked to draw an airplane’s cockpit, look at a photo of a cockpit. Don’t try to fake it.

Credit for the non-reference-using art is given by Grand Comics Database to Robin King.

For more Masked Marvel and more of what history there is on the character, just click the thumbnail:

Number 2214: Up in the air, man

Despite how many comics with many characters I have read in my time, I have still missed a lot of them. That includes Air Man. created by the team of George Kapitan and Harry Sahle. Like Hawkman, Air Man has wings and can fly, but with the help of helium. Like other non-super heroes with gimmicks, he can land a punch, too, which is handy when taking on a whole gang of killers, as he does here.

Air Man was short-lived, appearing in only two issues of Centaur’s Keen Detective Funnies and two of Detective Eye. Centaur was also short-lived, being the first comic book company to go out of business. Sadly enough, Harry Sahle was short-lived. He went on during the 1940s to do a lot of features, including what was a knack for teenage humor. He drew Candy for Quality Comics, and even Archie for MLJ/Archie Comics, then died in 1954 at age 41. Sahle was a journeyman comic book guy, drawing all sorts of comics, including superheroes for MLJ after Centaur went bust.

This episode of Air Man appeared in Detective Eye #1 (1940).

Number 2198: The Eye Sees...and speaks!

The only talking eyeball (as far as I know) in comics was a minor hit in the short-lived Centaur Comics stable. Created by Frank Thomas (“The Owl,” “Billy and Bonny Bee”), the strip was turned over to Mark Schneider, who made his comic book debut with Centaur.

Schneider’s artwork on “The Eye Sees” is crude. Luckily Schneider got better. He joined the staff at Fawcett. He was in the Army during World War II, then came home and continued his art career. Eventually he got into painting covers of men’s magazines. I have a couple I scanned out of the book, Men’s Adventure Magazines, published by Taschen. It looks like he used the same model for all his females, but that isn’t unusual for artists.

David Saunders has an excellent capsule biography of Schneider on his Pulp Artists website.

The story is from Detective Eye #1 (1940).