The Man Called Midnight: an introduction

Since I first saw Chuck Austen’s interpretation of  Midnight in volume 2 of DC’s 1988 Who’s Who update, radio-announcer-turned-masked-mystery-man Dave Clark has been one of my favorites. Little eleven-year-old Justin was instantly impressed by the character's classy look. (Nothing says dapper like a trim blue suit with matching fedora.)  

When I started researching Midnight, I was surprised to discover how much his suit color varied over the years.  The original Jack Cole stories routinely refer to it as "black."  However, in most of the early depictions, it's difficult to tell whether the suit is blue (and you're seeing black shadows) or black (and the blue you're seeing is simply where the light hits him).

If that's not enough confusion, sometimes Midnight came out looking like the inspiration for Milton Berle's cringe-worthy  Louie the Lilac.   

Despite my appreciation for the fashion sense of Austen's Midnight, I was hesitant to track down any stories.  The descriptions sounded way too childish and campy even for me.  Take this, for example:

Midnight...was aided in his feats by his friend, eccentric scientist Doc Wackey and Wackey's pet monkey, Gabby, who had developed human intelligence and the ability to talk. Midnight also frequently ran into the comical detective Sniffer Snoop and his dog Hotfoot. (July 5, 2014. Comic Vine wiki)

Now I’ll be the first to admit that--when it comes to superheroes--there’s a time and place for the cheesy; but this just sounded over the top.  I feared that reading an authentic Midnight story would be like admiring someone from afar, finally meeting them in person, and then realizing two minutes in that your erstwhile idol is a nincompoop...or, perhaps even worse, a bore!

Recently, however, I broke through that resistance and started reading as many of the original stories as I could. Despite having groan-worthy cheese at times, they weren't nearly as bad as I had feared.  In fact, some aspects of them are pretty impressive. 

I'll be discussing these early Midnight stories in a series of Monday posts (so be sure and check back often, and share your own insights/passion about the character in the comments).

Finally, you may be interested to know that the character of Midnight is in the public domain...sort of. According to the Public Domain Superheroes Wiki, “While the golden age version of Midnight is public domain, all subsequent versions used by DC comics (in the mid-1980s' All-Star Squadron #31-All-Star Squadron #32”) are NOT. 

So that's all for the inaugural installment of the Spring Road Superhero Review. Next Monday, we'll ask whether the origin story recorded in the Who's Who 88 Update is accurate or not.