Phantom Girl's #metoo moment

Whether by design or providence, The Dork Review again delivers timely comic book material to the masses...this time in the form of Secret Origins #42 (July 1989).

Freedom Fighters: the other FF

The good folks over at The Dork Review once again gave me reason to be thankful.  This time, they were kind enough to provide a little more background on a superhero team that I basically knew only as a name:  The Freedom Fighters.  They did this by sharing the character profiles of each member of the Freedom Fighters, along with a generalized team origin and profile.  At least some of these come from the previously mentioned 1988 DC Who's Who Update.

 

The reason that I even cared about this, was that according to '88 Update, the Freedom Fighters were one of the superhero groups (the other being the All Star Squadron) with which my main man Midnight was "affiliated." Though the Update left me with the impression that Midnight was a regular active team member, in trying to research for this post, I've come to suspect that his involvement was far less substantive than I had initially assumed.




Comic Vine's entry on the Freedom Fighters illustrates this with their careful language about Midnight vis-a-vis the FF.

As part of that retcon, Secret Origins #26 revealed that most of the original Freedom Fighters (Invisible Hood, Miss America, Neon the Unknown, and the Red Torpedo) actually survived the attack on Pearl Harbor. In addition, instead of being a team  whose sole purpose was to travel to Earth-X, the retconned Freedom Fighters was a more fluid group. Other heroes were said to be more important players in the team, including the Jester, Midnight, and Miss America. [emphasis added]

In the wake of the Crisis, the DC multiverse was condensed into a universe. Because of that, the Freedom Fighters’ history changed. With a single Earth, there was no longer an Earth-X. This meant that the Freedom Fighters were simply an offshoot team of the All-Star Squadron that fought during the unified Earth’s World War II. Also in this new history, the Freedom Fighters helped the newly-formed Justice League fend off the second Apellaxian invasion, and had gained new members, including Midnight and the Jester. [emphasis added] 

So, in the end, I'm left to wonder: Were there any actual comic books in which Midnight fought alongside the FF, or are there simply allusions to his having done so in some set of unrecorded adventures?  Outside of character and team bios, I couldn't even locate a good image through Google search depicting Midnight along with the rest of the Freedom Fighters.  So what's the deal here?  Can anyone else confirm or deny my impression?

Re: Donald Trump, Paul Manafort, and wiretapping

As fortune would have it, I just happened to be reading the Secret Origin of Miss America (h/t The Dork Review) when news stories broke about the machiavellian spying operations undertaken against the Trump campaign by the federal government.

I'm just gonna leave this right here:

 

Midnight's Origin: take 2

Any reader of the Spring Road Superhero Review knows I'm a fan of Midnight (fedoras are just cool, there's no two ways about it).  The very first post on this blog explained that Midnight was created by a guy named Jack Cole around 1940 for Smash Comics.  Thanks to sites like the Digital Comics Museum, anyone with an internet connection can locate and read the golden age adventures of Midnight.

At some point,the rights to the character were purchased by DC Comics, who further developed the Midnight's back story.  Though I could piece some of the DC additions together from entries and other things I'd read online, there was always a blind spot because I'd never read Midnight's re-vamped origin story from Secret Origins #28 (July 1988).  Thanks to The Dork Review, however, that's no longer the case.

There are some notable differences from Cole's story--most of which I'm guessing DC supplied to fill plot holes in the original.  I had hoped to post a full-review of all the differences I spotted for today, but life got in the way, so I'll mention only the first two.

In DC's version, Dave Clark had come from serving as a stand-in for a radio serial about a fictionalized crime fighter named Midnight.  It was this that gave him the idea and name for the moniker her later adopts.

In the original, Clark was just happened to witness a building collapse on his way home from work, and there's no particular explanation for why he chooses the name "Midnight."

Smash Comics #18

Secret Origins #28

Additionally, in Cole's original story, the first person to address Clark as "Midnight" is some random woman at Morris Carleton's penthouse, whereas in the DC version, Clark identifies himself as Midnight.

Secret Origins #28

Smash Comics #18

Secret Origins #28

Sadly, that's all I have time to include for now.  Hopefully, I'll return to this topic and flesh it out later. In the meantime, take a trip over to The Dork Review and enjoy the goodness!