Nazi-Punchers HIT COMICS "Ghost of Flanders in 'SpyMaster Sheink Steals the Secret Scouting Plane!' "

He's the Comic Character James Gunn Rescued From Obscurity in the Recent Superman Movie...

...and he's doing what he did best, kicking Nazi asses on the Home Front!






And, that's it!

No "The End" or epilogue.

Another story began on the very next page in the comic!

That's just how things rolled in the Golden Age.
Written and illustrated by George Brenner using the "Wayne Reid" house pseudonym, this never-reprinted tale from Quality Comics' Hit Comics #19 (1942) is straightforward about the concept that spies and saboteurs didn't deserve the niceties of the Geneva Convention!
And, though they didn't show it, it's implied the stolen scoutcraft was recovered.

Ghost of Flanders Will Return!

Nazi-Punchers HIT COMICS "Ghost of Flanders in ' Who He Is and How He Came to Be"

Thanks to #JamesGunn 's Easter Egg in the new #Superman movie...

...specifically, this image on a multi-character mural at the Justice Gang HQ of a costumed hero with a World War I bi-plane overhead and a field of red poppies at his feet, we see that the head of the DC Cinematic Universe has plans for a certain obscure character who never appeared in a DC comic called Ghost of Flanders!

His strip ran for eight issues in Quality Comics' Hit Comics 18 thru 24 (1941-42).
Keeping in mind that this 1941 story (published before Pearl Harbor) appeared only 23 years after the end of World War I (considered the War to End All Wars) and taught extensively in American schools, and you might understand the significance of his nom du guerre.

Note: Though the costume design remained the same throughout the character's series, the coloring changed several times.
The color scheme seen in the mural is something of a compromise!

1) Why is the red poppy so frightening to German spies?
It ties in to Flanders Field as explained HERE!

2) How, you may ask, did Ghost of Flanders end up at DC?
DC purchased all of Quality's assets when the company folded in 1956.
They continued publishing Blackhawk without interruption thru 1968 (as we showed HERE), but held off on using any of the other characters until they revamped/revived Plastic Man in 1966 as we showed HERE.
In the 1970s, with the development of the 100-Page Super-Spectacular format, they began reprinting some of Quality's Golden Age characters including Quicksilver (renamed "Max Mercury" since Marvel had a super-speedster named Quicksilver since 1963), Black Condor, The Ray, Doll Man, and Phantom Lady, among others.
This led to a revival of the Quality characters in an annual JLA-JSA "Crisis on..." story involving "Earth X", where the Nazis had won World War II...and killed the Blackhawks and Plastic Man (and, presumably the rest of the Quality heroes and heroines except for these six!)

Art by Nick Cardy

This led to the featured Quality heroes coming to Earth-One and receiving their own title!

Art by Ernie Chua/Chan

Since then, post-Crisis on Infinite Earths, almost all the Quality heroes and heroines have been inserted into whatever the DC Universe currently is, largely thanks to Roy Thomas' integrating the Golden Age Quality/Fawcett/Fox characters into the All-Star Squadron!
But Ghost of Flanders didn't even make it to a group shot in any of those stories!

Ghost of Flanders Will Return!