HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
For a guy who had only
one appearance in the Golden Age (and in a Canadian comic, at that) he's made a helluva impact on
modern audiences!
Read the rest of this titillating tale, then we'll fill you in...
During the Golden Age,
Doc Stearne had been a regular in the anthology title
Triumph Comics.
"
Triumph Comics"?
WTF?
Triumph Comics was a Canadian comic book.
We presented some background info about them
HERE.
Doc was the typical two-fisted heroic adventurer in civvies of the 1930s-40s.
His nickname came from his daytime profession--he was a psychiatrist!
Doc Stearne continually ended up with patients who claimed they were seeing monsters...and actually
were seeing deadly things of supernatural or alien origin!
Eventually, like most other civvie-clad heroes (
Sandman,
Doc Savage,
Crimson Avenger, etc.), Stearne adopted a colorful set of tights and an appropriate name, though in his case, it was in his
final appearance in 1947's
Super-Duper Comics #3!
Years later, a copy of that book found it's way into the hands of writer-artist Michael T. Gilbert, who, long before Alex Ross did his mass resurrection of public domain characters in
Project SuperPowers
, revived the character in revamped form (though the original eventually
did pop up as the new character's
father).
Since then, Gilbert's version has been an action hero as well as a reprint anthology host.
And
all his appearances are well worth picking up.
Oh, look! There's a bunch of them below!
...when anyone from spies (T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents) to soldiers (Blackhawk) to monsters could be remade into superheroes...with decidedly-mixed results!
.
