Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Mighty Comics

Hi! I'm Rainbow Boy, and if you think you see me shooting a cascading beam of colors out my ass, brother, are you ever seein' RIGHT! I'm making an appeal to all gay rights organizations to accept me, Rainbow Boy, as the official spokesperson for your group or organization. I mean, come on ... Ra-ai-ai-inbow! A-a-a-asssss! I'm everything you're looking for! And don't be put off by my apparent youth! I'm well over sixty years old, having debuted in the early forties! Now come closer, lemme show you how this rainbow ass power of mine works ... hey, what? Get your hands off me! Hey! Fine, if that's the way you want it, I'm leaving ... but you'll never see another piece of ass like this again ... not one that shoots rainbows!

It's the Sixties, and for fans of the bad comic ouvre, there is only ONE word that drives this decade: Batman. Alternatively, Zonk! Or Pow, Bam, Wap, Zowie, et al.

A lot of comics suddenly found themselves under editorial scrutiny at this time, and dozens more which debuted here angled to distinctly take advantage of the camp grandeur of the Batman television show. There were the Harvey Heroes, featured a few months back, as well as fellow newcomers like the Inferior Five, or nice tries like the second generation Plastic Man. These were a mixed bag, especially compared to the unkillable mainstays of the Archie super-hero line, the Mighty Crusaders.

From the Crusaders, we have here the Web, the Shield and Black Hood, bypassing for right now their fellows Hangman, the Fly, Jaguar, the Comet and many others (Cause I don't have THEIR comics). The whole lot of them debuted in the long-ago-renamed MLJ comics, debuting along their most popular property ARCHIE ... in fact, these superhero stories ran right alongside Archie and Pal's high school hijinx in the pages of Pep. Since then, the property has been liberally passed around, and the characters have been under the guiding hands of at least a half dozen different sub-contractors - to name a few, there's Red Circle, DC's ill-fated (but generally likable) Impact line, and a modern reinterpretation going on back inhouse at Archie Comics ... oh, and plus these guys.

Under the heading of "Mighty Comics," the mid-Sixties Radio Comics (no, not that one) brought back these classic Golden Agers as "Go Go Do-Gooders" for the "Action Generation" to "go ape
over." Liberally mixing in Marvel Comic's editorial style and humanist superhero formula with grade-C Batman tv show camp, they reintroduced these characters to a world consumed by a comic craze.

Oddly enough, this theme should have worked and is, in general, a pretty good idea. See, not only did these characters have a driving gimmick which fueled their super-hero identities - they had a driving gimmick in their CIVILIAN identities. The Shield, for instance, couldn't manage to hold down a job for more than a day at most, and sometimes not even that, hindered by his responsibilities as the Shield. The Black Hood, as officer Kip Burland, was wanted by his fellow officers following what I can only describe as one of the least competent frame-ups in the history of everything. And the Web was accurately described as the "hen-pecked hero," being as it was that his wife pretty much got to lay down the law on his spandex antics, gender-bent Bewitched style.

Getting back to the Black Hood's frame-up just for a second, let me expand on this. In his identity of motorcycle cop Kip Burland, the Hood follows the sounds of gunshots to find his "best pal" Pete Hannigan shot dead in front of a bank. Kip is clocked in the back of the nog while leaning over his dead pal's body, and the bulgy-eyed killer (thereafter cleverly dubbed "Bulgy Eyes") stuffs a few stolen dollars in Kip's pockets and hits the bricks. Kip is discovered by ANOTHER "inseparable" pal, Mark Brodie, who does the math (in the same way a retarded terrier might do the math) ... Kip unconscious + Pete dead + bank robbed = KIP KILLED PETE AND ROBBED THE BANK!

Never mind it doesn't explain how Kip got blackjacked on the back of his head while Pete got shot dead while SITTING ON HIS MOTORCYCLE. Or why the few thousand dollars hastily stuffed in Kip's pockets don't total the amount actually STOLEN from the bank. No, it explains nothing, but WHO CARES, because from that moment on Kip Burland is a wanted man!

I'm serious, man, I didn't leave out a BIT of that hardcore detective work. Well, except that Kip, rather than pointing out any of these glaring indications of his innocence, BOLTS from the scene and begins living the life of a fugitive ...

Moving on to the aforementioned Web, the Bewitched premise is pretty much spot-on. Professor John Raymond is a veteran, semi-retired super-hero who decides to get back into the game. Despite his "rusty reflexes," he becomes "one of the most fab crime-crushers on the current scene," much to the consternation of his fussy and emotionally manipulative wife who threatens him with divorce, infidelity (no kidding. Subtle, but there nonetheless...), and probably refuses to play the sausage game, if you follow.

Naturally, most of her appearances are spent brow-beating her put-upon husband until he either acquiesces to her face
but sneaks out the back for some super-heroing, or cracks under the pressure and shows her the back of his hand. "Bitch!" he yells in one scene, "I done TOLD you once already!"

No, wait, I kid. It almost always ends with a sort of maudlin, gag-like scene as with this one.

And that brings us finally to the Shield, the lovable loser among these recycled heroes, only he's not lovable at all.

Bill-or-Joe Higgins (depends on the story) is the Shield, and also a guy who is all-around apparently no damn good at anything. Except beating people up. For Justice, mind you, but still ... Joe's shtick is that he keeps getting fired from his back-breaking blue collar jobs on accounta the fact that no matter WHAT he's doing, he sees a crime occurring and figures he better change into the Shield and stop it. He's washing windows, he sees a cop being held at gunpoint. He's building a railroad, he sees known criminals drive by. He's cleaning the grease trap at Arby's, he sees someone whizzing in the condiment tray. This is a job for the Shield!

The Shield also got to experience that sort of white middle-class it's- the -Sixties -but -not -the -socially -freaked -out -yet -Sixties American poverty, by which we mean he had a nicely appointed apartment and his only evidence of financial woe was that he was often hungry (which I imagine is because you burn a lot of calories fighting crime) and that he can't afford to repair his television. In fact, if he would just take on a freaking roommate
instead of paying for a three-bedroom apartment on an imaginary salary, he
probably could have made it just fine.

I leave you with this shot of the cover to Black Hood #50. You can't see it terribly well, but check out the tank on the "hoodcycle" there ... not only does it feature a lovely portrait of the Hood himself, but you can just barely makeout the handwritten "Hood Cycle" next to it. This is what we had before Lo-Jack.

• Everything's Gay and Gorgeous! Scoobie-Do!
  
• Cornball ... Yocks ... Stupid bit ... Hey, how'd you get back here, anyway?
  
• It probably would've been easier to just HIRE some dancers.