Don't Call Her "GIRL Reporter"!

Jane Arden: Crime Reporter ran from 1927 to 1968, predating other female reporters like Brenda Starr: Reporter and Superman's Lois Lane by over a decade.
She's best-known as the FIRST American comic character to have a World War II-related storyline when her writers tossed out the strip's ongoing gangster plotline in a single daily strip and sent her to cover the warfront on September 25, 1939, less than a month after Germany invaded Poland!
Like most major 1930s-1950s comic characters, she was multi-media, with a radio show that ran for two years, a low-budget b-movie (that, while beeing pretty good, didn't do well enough to warrant a series) and comic books.
We at Atomic Kommie Comics™ feel that she deserves to return to the pop culture spotlight, so we've digitally-restored and remastered the best covers from her comic book run for a line of collectibles in our Heroines™ section for girls and women who want a strong, positive role model!
Have a look at Jane Arden: Crime Reporter, 'cause if you're doing something bad, she's looking for you!

PyroMan--the Shocking SuperHero!

Despite his name, PyroMan is not a fire-based hero! (That ability is possessed by The Flame, in the Lost Heroes of the Golden Age of Comics™ lineup.)
Wrongly-convicted and sent to the electric chair, Dick Martin somehow survived electrocution and gained electricity-based powers which he then used to escape, prove his innocence, and bring the real criminals to justice!
He then donned a costume and fought crime and saboteurs by using his electromagnetic powers to fly, deflect bullets, and zap baddies!
Atomic Kommie Comics™ has launched a line of kool kollectibles for the Electric Enigma (catchy, eh?) with four of the best covers from his run in Startling Comics, where he alternated with The Fighting Yank on the cover! Among the digitally-restore and remastered covers are his 1st appearance and the classic Alex Schomberg cover above.
Alex Ross' Project SuperPowers featured him and Hydro (aka HydroMan) together on the cover of their 4th issue, to create a pseudo-Human Torch/Sub-Mariner theme. I suppose water and electricity go together as well as water and fire do...
Pick up Project SuperPowers, the best Golden Age revival on the stands today, and have a look at our retro-styled goodies at Atomic Kommie Comics™.

Beware the Black Owl (BOTH of them!)

We already covered The Owl here, but there was another hero (actually two of them in the same costume) based on the wise bird of legend.
The first Black Owl debuted in Prize Comics #1 as K the Unknown, but became Black Owl in #2. He didn't get a cover appearance until Prize Comics #7, which also featured the comic book intros of pulp hero Green Lama and literary character Monster of Frankenstein!

Now stop me if you've heard this one...
Bored millionaire playboy Doug Danville decides to battle cowardly, superstitious criminals as a fearsome creature of the night.
Utilizing his personal fortune, he creates a masked identity with various non-lethal armaments and takes on the criminal element for several years.
Sounds like a whole slew of heroes of the period, eh?
But there's a twist, folks!
When World War II breaks out, he enlists in the Army!
(Most heroes remained on the Home Front battling spies and saboteurs.)
Realizing it would be best for the city he protects if The Black Owl was still believed to be fighting crime, Doug passes on his costume and equipment to another man in Prize Comics #34...

The second Black Owl was Walt Walters, father of a pair of patriotic teen superheroes, Yank & Doodle whom Doug Danville had teamed up with on several occasions, most notably Prize Comics #24, when they, Green Lama and several other characters, took on the Monster of Frankenstein!
Once Dad became a superhero, the kids became his sidekicks, but remained Yank & Doodle, instead of renaming themselves something avian to match their father's motif!
(Luckily, their costume's color schemes matched!)
When Walt is shot and wounded in Prize Comics #64, he retires from active crimefighting, serving as a non-costumed assistant to Yank & Doodle until their series is cancelled several months later.
Note: we never learn what became of Doug Danville after he entered the Army...

Alex Ross has now incorporated both Black Owls (and Yank & Doodle) into his Project SuperPowers Golden Age revival series, with one of the BOs somehow becoming a living black hole!

While we won't go that far, Atomic Kommie Comics™ has incorporated both Black Owls into our Lost Heroes of the Golden Age of Comics™ line, even giving them their own section featuring the first cover appearance as well as the best cover art for each Black Owl on t-shirts, mugs and other goodies!

So, whether it's The Owl or The Black Owl, we have something on WHOOOever (sorry, couldn't resist) holds your interest!

And buy Project SuperPowers, the best Golden Age revival series on the market!

Ominously Lurks...The Owl!

"I'm not a Batman rip-off...and get off my flying Owl-Mobile!"

Comics in the 1940s were noted for, among other things, a tendency to see what worked, then take elements from it, mix it with a few other things and see if that new version would sell!

Sometimes the recombination sold better than the original!
For example: Batman's still going strong as a multi-media phenomenon, but most of his "inspirations", including The Shadow and Zorro, are only marginal pop culture characters today (though both had periods when they eclipsed Batman)!
On the other hand, The Owl was one of those who, while interesting, didn't quite hit the heights.

Nick Terry, a police detective who felt the law was too easily manipulated by racketeers and gangsters (and their lawyers) decided that operating outside the law on behalf of justice would be the way to go!
(Any number of Golden Age heroes, including The Whisperer, Black Hood, Guardian, and DareDevil, had the same concept of one who upholds the law having to indulge in extra-legal methods to achieve true justice.)
He became a Caped Creature of the Night to battle criminals (like Batman, The Shadow, and The Sandman, among others.)
Nick also used a plethora of themed weapons and gimmicks (including an Owl-Mobile, and Owl-Light) not unlike Bat-you-know-who and Green Arrow. (Although since he wasn't a millionaire like most of the aforementioned characters, it's never explained how Nick affords all this stuff!)
His nosy reporter girlfriend (Can you say "Lois Lane" or "Vicki Vale" boys and girls?) eventually discovers his dual identity and forces him (ala Captain America's Bucky) to make her his similarly-costumed sidekick, Owl-Girl! (think HawkGirl, but with hyphenation!)
One of his unique features (he did have a couple, don't get snarky) was that he wore a full-face cowl with sight-enhancing lenses, predating a similar style later worn by Spider-Man!
And, he does have a very distinctive look! You won't mistake him for anyone else!

The Owl never had his own title in the Golden Age.
Instead, he was the cover-feature of Dell's Crackajack Funnies for over a year before being downgraded to the back of the book in Popular Comics for another year before finally being cancelled.

But, that's not the end of the story...

In the 1960s, with the pop-culture success of Marvel Comics and the Batman tv series, superheroes were in vogue again!
Curiously, while Marvel, DC, and Archie revived their Golden Age characters, other publishers with old heroes chose to do new characters instead...with one exception!
Gold Key now owned the Dell super-heroes, and though they did several short-lived new characters, they did revive the Golden Age character in their library most similar to Batman.
Guess who?
The Owl finally got his own comic!

And because they felt it should be as much like the tv Batman as possible, Gold Key camped it up beyond belief...
It only lasted two issues.
And except for a cameo appearance in a Gold Key horror comic, The Owl fluttered into oblivion...

But that's still not the end of the story...

Recently, The Owl was one of the many Lost Heroes of the Golden Age of Comics™ revived by Alex Ross in his acclaimed Project SuperPowers series.
So, we at Atomic Kommie Comics™ felt the time had come to expand our line of Owl collectibles.
(The fact we had just purchased a large comics collection including a near-complete run of Crackajack Funnies had nothing to do with it, we swear!)
Have a look at the classic covers we've emblazoned on items from t-shirts to blank sketchbooks, to mugs and many other goodies.
And pick up Project SuperPowers, the best Golden Age of Comics revival on the stands today!
(You thought we were gonna do a "Whooo..whooo" joke of some kind? We're saving that for later...)

"So, what's your super-power?" "I can turn into water..."

Comic book scientists are incredibly clumsy.
They spill or ingest chemical concoctions that would kill any ordinary human, but always end up granting them amazing powers!
Such is the case of Harry Thurston, who developed a chemical that would convert any matter it touched into water!
And, of course, he spilled it on himself, turning his arm to liquid. Thankfully, labmate Bob Blake used another chemical to revert Harry's arm.
Deciding to take things a step further, Bob Blake then injected himself with the chemical, making his whole body turn to water and, after using the same antidote that restored Harry's arm, discovered his force of will could control the level of transformation from human to liquid and back to human!
Like most scientists who gain weird powers, he became a costumed hero to fight enemy agents and crooks.
Strangely, he strapped a .45 automatic to his belt when he first donned his costume, but never used it! (You may ask: whatever happened to Harry Thurston, who had the good sense to not inject himself with dangerous chemicals? AFAIK, he never appeared again!)
With his ability to both become and control water, HydroMan was a remarkably-effective crimefighter, as long as he avoided sub-zero temperatures which would freeze him solid (his Achilles heel!)

HydroMan never had his own comic, but he was the cover feature from #1 onward for the first year or so of Reg'lar Fellas Heroic Comics.
It is from this series that Atomic Kommie Comics™ has created a new line of kool kollectibles for our Lost Heroes of the Golden Age of Comics™ series, including his 1st appearance, and his 1st issue with partner RainBow Boy!

Note: HydroMan was created by Bill Everett, who later went on to create some other water-based heroes for Timely/Marvel including The Fin and some little-known guy called Namor, The Sub-Mariner.
Oh, him you've heard of...

Alex Ross revived HydroMan in Project SuperPowers, even teaming him with PyroMan on the cover of Vol. 1 #4!
Oddly, he's renamed HydroMan "Hydro", even though the only extant Hydro-Man in comics is a seldom-used Marvel villain! (It's not unusual for characters at different companies to have the same name, especially if one's a hero, and the other's a villain. Example: The Sandman...a villain at Marvel, and several different heroes at DC!) But I digress...

Pick up Project SuperPowers, the best Golden Age revival on the stands today, and have a look at our retro-styled goodies at Atomic Kommie Comics™ (And when is Dyanmite going to do their own Alex Ross art-based line of Project SuperPowers collectibles? I'll be among the first to get 'em when they come out!)