Illustrators' contest: Captain Sun

I just learned about a contest to design the new "dragon suit" for a character named Captain Sun.  The winner gets a $100 Amazon gift card!  

I intend to share this with my kiddos, and may even submit a design myself.  I encourage you to do the same.  Be quick about it, though!  The contest ends on March 31, 2017.

Smash Comics #18: the origin of Midnight?

Synopsis The inaugural appearance of the man in black, purple, blue occurred in January 1941 in Smash Comics #18. On his way home from work UXAM radio announcer, Dave Clark, witnesses the collapse of a twelve-story apartment complex built by the Carleton Construction Company. While helping with the rescue efforts, he discovers that poor quality concrete was responsible for the collapse.
For reasons unexplained, rather than report the faulty construction materials to the police, Dave decides to crash a high-society party being held by Morris Carleton in celebration of his company's large profits from the recent construction of the Tri-State Power Dam.

When Dave bursts through the window at Carleton's residence (already wearing a domino mask--because, doesn't everyone keep one in their glove box?), he accesses his inner Robin Hood by holding the attendees at gunpoint, and demanding they hand over all their money. 

 

After successfully absconding, Dave drops the money off at a nearby hospital.

However, thanks to a surreptitious marking during a brief scuffle at the party, Carleton's underlings are able to identify the hero as he walks along a city street. Fortunately for Dave, rather than identify who he is, they opt to simply lasso him and drag him behind their car, down a gravel road to the Tri-State Dam. 

 
The thugs tie the unconscious Dave to a peg, heave him over the side, and trust that the rising water of the dam will drown him. Naturally, he wakes up in the nick of time and somehow wriggles free from his restraints as the dam begins to crack.

Dave rushes back to the broadcast studio, where he issues an emergency evacuation warning to Cold Creek Valley, giving residents just enough time to flee before their homes and businesses are washed away in the Carletonian flood.

As news of the dam's destruction spreads, Carleton & crew are preparing to skip town with profits before they can be detained for questioning or prosecution. Despite being assured by his underlings that Midnight has been eliminated, when the clock strikes 12:00 AM, a trembling Carleton announces:

Of course, this does not stop Midnight. After summarily dispatching the hired hands, he forces Carleton to hand over $10 million--his profits from the Tri-State Dam.

Just at this moment, the police burst into the room to arrest Carleton, as Midnight escapes through an upper story window. The story closes with Clark announcing the receipt of an anonymous gift of $10 million to the city's relief fund for flood refugees.


Problems with interpreting Smash #18 as Midnight's origin 

Midnight's origin story as presented in the DC 88' Update suggests that the events recorded in Smash #18 represented the beginning of the crime fighter's career:

Inspired by his radio role, Dave Clark, wearing a mask and taking the name Midnight overpowered the evil...Carleton and got him to confess his responsibility for the faulty construction of the dam and building over a loudspeaker that broadcast his confession to the surrounding area. Midnight chose to continue his crime-fighting career... [emphasis added] (Who's Who Update '88, p. 21) 

However, the devil--as they say--is in the details; and there are a number of them which are problematic for understanding Smash #18 as an origin story.

For starters, as soon as Midnight appears at Carleton's party (shortly after the collapse of the apartment complex) there's a lady who seems to know his name already. It's pretty impossible to explain this if Dave Clark just made the decision to become a costumed crime fighter on the drive over.

Second--as indicated above--Midnight is already wearing a domino mask when he crashes the Carleton party. Where did this come from? 

 
Third, as Carleton is frantically trying to pack up for his escape following the failure of the dam, he's seemingly terror-stricken by the clock striking 12AM--a time which Carleton explicitly proclaims "his hour." There's no way that this could refer to anyone other than Midnight, but how is Carleton to know that? If Midnight has only existed for a few hours at this point--that's certainly not long enough for lore about his actions and timing to have developed.
 

Fourth, when the cops arrive on the scene, they immediately identify Midnight by name. Again, how could this be--since he's had zero interaction with law enforcement in his guise as Midnight to this point in the story--unless Smash #18 does not, in fact, represent the origin story of Midnight?

This raises an interesting question: Did Jack Cole even have an origin story in mind when he created Midnight? If not, did he develop one later? If so, was it ever published? If you have insights on any of these questions you're quite welcomed to weigh-in in the comment section.

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.