Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: The Human Fly

Edit: I know, and my face is redder than Rick Rojatt's - despite my skepticism and harsh words, the Human Fly was a real guy. I feel like a dope, but nonetheless, here's the article as it originally appeared...


Eep Eep! All hail Brak! Um ... hold on, wait a minute, I'm not Brak I'm ... well, at my best guess, I'm a weightlifting orangutan in a Beatles wig. All hail DC's line of G-ed up Science Fiction comics. I appeared in an issue of Mystery in Space or Strange Adventures or Spacey Weirdness or Galactic What The Hell? or something or other as an alien creature in an interplanetary zoo! And what made the rubes line up to see my act? The innate human curiosity to see an orangutan in a Beatles wig lift weights. Come on, admit it, you'd wanna see it too.

After the zoo folded, most of us got sold to labs for cosmetic experiments. Not me, though ... after all, I'd spent my time in captivity buffing up and shooting steroids. I tore through my captors like I was busting through a soggy napkin. Their gory entrails stained my orange pelt a brackish red. All hail Brackish Red! Since then, I've shaved myself and now I compete on the Weider circuit. I'll see you at the next Arnold Classic! But until then, we present...

By gum, it's yet another Fantastic First Issue from Seventies Marvel ... well, actually, according to the cover, it's a "First Fantastic Issue," implying that other fantastic issues will be following. Ha ha, this is a lie.

This is the Human Fly, the character promoted as "The Wildest SUPER-HERO Ever -- Because He's REAL!" "Real" being comic book code for "Pretty much we largely made him up just about in entirety."

The premise of the series is that an anonymous young man is involved in a terrible car accident which apparently shatters every bone in his body, to judge from the full body cast he's shown in immediately afterwards. Despite being told by doctors (whose bedside manner could use some work) that he's going to be a cripple for the rest of his life, the Fly spends every waking hour rebuilding his body through secret exercises, until not only does he return to his former state of health, but he develops amazing additional new agility and strength. Oh, and the doctors gave him a steel skeleton.

Which means he can't produce platelets anymore, and he's gonna die if he ever gets cut. But I digress.

Deciding to be symbol for the disabled, he collects assistants from the ranks of other accident victims. This includes Ted Locke, a brilliant engineer who lost his hands in an explosion while trying to save a woman and child from a bridge he'd rigged to explode. Um ... oh, and this was in the Vietnam War, so it wasn't just a case of Ted blowing up bridges for no reason. Anyway, having lost his will to live (and his HANDS, ha ha!), Ted is given a cause to fight for when the Fly recruits him for his team. I like Ted because he has claws for hands. Raar!

Then there's Kendall Blaze, the beautiful and daring pilot whose terrible disability is ... that ... um ... well, she doesn't have any. But, she WAS in a terrible accident, and ALSO had her confidence shattered, and was even in one of those full body casts for a while, so she counts. Kendall's backstory was that she was a co-pilot on a commercial airliner which went into a vicious dive when the pilot - a misogynist who didn't put much faith in female co-pilots - had a sudden heart attack and collapsed. Kendall pulls the plane out of its dive at the last second, and although it still crashes, there isn't a single loss of life. Except the pilot, I guess, whose heart exploded at 15,000 feet. Unfortunately, they don't clarify that point for us.

Looking back on the thing, I'm not precisely sure why the plane had to crash in the first place. The pilot had a heart attack, and then the plane went into a dive, and Kendall crashed it. Maybe she does suck at flying. Nonetheless, this does lead to my favorite two-panel
transition in the history of comics. Panel One, Pilot says 'You know, I don't believe a lady pilot can fly a plane," Panel Two, Pilot says "Oh Christ, my heart!" HAHAHA!

The Fly and his team (including ever-so-Yiddish publicity agent Arnie Berman, whose endless use of the word "boychik" makes me want to pummel Bill Mantlo to death) are bedevilled by investigative reporter Harmony Whyte, who has a name more suited to getting dollars stuffed in her pants than in anchoring a news program. Harmony is dedicated to finding out the Fly's true identity, ostensibly so she can reveal him for the glory-hungry hypocrite she suspects him to be ... and why finding out his real identity would help her do that, I dunno. I also have a hard time imagining her pitching this idea to her editor. "I need the company to expense me travel around the world with a full camera crew so I uncover the true identity of this guy who walks tightropes and jumps pools of fire. What's that? No, why would I want cover the hostage
crisis or the SALT talks? I've got a stunt man to expose!"

Author Bill Mantlo offers a text piece to explain the background and genesis of the Human Fly (As an aside, I always consider a text piece explaining the concept of the character to be a sign of trouble. Also, if the character drives around in an RV, that's trouble too. And if they have both ... well ...) He starts off with "The Human Fly is me," which to my mind kills all the suspense regarding the Fly's secret identity. Oh wait, there's more...

The whole text piece is done in earnest, Mantlo claiming straight-faced through the entire article that the comic was entirely based on the story of triumph personified by a "young Canadian man" who, like the fictional Fly in the comic, endured a crippling injury, overcame it, had his skeleton replaced
with a steel skeleton, then fought beside Spider-Man.

Mantlo really tries to sell the text piece, claiming that the real-world analog of the comic book character had been praised on television around the world, and had even landed the appellations "space-age daredevil" as well as "the living bionic man," and furthermore had been favorably compared to Spider-Man and Captain America (?) in the news media. Worse yet, he gives
the 'real-world' Fly actual quotes, such as "I've got 50,000,000 kids out there depending on me. I've got as lot of people to support...youngsters in hospitals, struggling against cancer, polio, cerebral palsy or whatever. I've got a lot of people to support."

Polio? Isn't that .... cured .... now? Ah, probably not back in '77 .... me, I had a cousin who suffered from 'whatever,' so I know how serious that is.

Mantlo is pretty freely mixing pop culture with urban legend and outright fiction, not to mention that he's trying way too hard to sell the 'real story' of the Fly in that damn text piece. Of course, the inspiration for the character is largely based on the attention-seeking daredevils who populated the airwaves
and newspapers in the late Seventies ... see "Real People" and "That's Incredible!" for a plethora of examples ... along with a real-life inspirational story. Some of our more veteran (By which I mean "Old") readers will remember
the news stories of a young man, crippled by only possessing one leg, undertaking a cross-country run for the purpose of showing the world what the disabled could really do ... and that man's name? Of course, it was ... Forrest Gump.

The Fly is surely the most earnest super-hero of the Marvel Universe, as he lays all his motivational cards on the table
at every possible opportunity."After expenses, any money I make goes to charity ... to help the disabled." he tells the tv cameras on more than one occasion. Likewise, the Fly is focused on creating an example for others survivors of deabilitating accidents. And this is hard to make fun of, so I won't. But moving on ...

Art chores on the series were provided in part by Lee Elias, well-known to Golden Age enthusiasts for his Black Cat work. I really love Lee Elias' work, and I'm only sad that the Human Fly never gave one-page tips on performing "Judo Tricks."

Seventy-Seven, the year of the Fly's debut, is also about the same time that Marvel created regionalistic super-hero Captain Britain for its Marvel UK comics line. Considering that as well as the Fly's Canadian origin and distinctive white-and-red costume, I can't help but wonder if he was intended to be a regionalistic Canadian hero. I find myself thinking about this somewhat idly, but even so I propose that the baton was a concession to French-Canadian interests. Ha ha.

On a costume note, I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out what doesn't work on the Fly's costume. The flared gloves might be a little much, also the extravagant caplet or the bizarre white piping that bisects his body at several points. Or it could be the the flared eyehole designs which make him look like he's wearing immense albino fake eyelashes. Or the baton. Probably the baton.

Actually, the two things which stand out for me are the rocket design on his belt (why a rocket? What does a rocket have to do with being a human fly? I'm so confused) and the fact that, in closeups, the Fly is pretty clearly wearing Chuck Taylor's Converse All-Stars canvas tennis shoes.

Most puzzling to me is that the Fly had two guest stars in his first two issues, but only one of them gets any cover credit at all, much less an appearance. The two guest stars in question were Spider-Man and the Ghost Rider, and the guy who gets the cover appearance is ... Ghost Rider. Spidey plays a pretty pivotal role in the climax of the first issue, but not only doesn't show up on the cover, he isn't even mentioned on the cover. in fact, there's no HINT from the cover that there's even a guest star in that issue, much less Marvel's flagship character. So much for Marvel's merry marketing machine ...

The only final note I can think to leave you on in terms of Human Fly is the fact that Bill Mantlo, at one point in the third issue, referred to the Fly as a "manchild." That's a term you don't usually hear without the words "lumbering" or "hapless" preceding it.