As with Midnight, the first time I saw DC's Will Everett version of Amazing Man was in the pages of
Who's Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe Update '88 #1 (AUG 1988) Again, like Midnight, the character's look, background, and powers instantly appealed to me.
His Costume
First, I liked the visuals of the green and yellow outfit. Though not unprecedented, this wasn't a color combination that you saw all that frequently even in the late 80s. (I'm sure it also helped that this color scheme of the school I attended at the time.)
His Race and Backstory
Second, I liked his ethnicity and back-story. Though one didn't necessarily hear a lot of calls for more minority heroes in the late 80s, in retrospect I think one of the reasons Amazing Man struck my fancy was precisely his race. (I also suspect this because when I think back to my earliest memories of seeing superheroes in things like
Challenge of the Superfriends, my favorite on the team included Apache Chief, Samurai, and Black Vulcan. I remember being bummed when they didn't return for the "Galactic Guardians iteration of the SF.)
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| Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics |
Even more important than his skin color, though, was Will Everett's backstory. Roy Thomas and Jerry Ordway did a great job crafting a 1940s hero who was modeled--it seems to me pretty blatantly--on an actual heroic black American of the time period,
Jesse Owens. Will Everett had been a stand-out athlete in the 1936 Olympic games who returned to the U.S. after winning multiple awards, only to face job discrimination based on his race. Will finally found work as a janitor for scientist Terry Curtis. As fate would have it, this fateful decision contributed directly to the next thing I loved about Amazing Man: his powers!
Though the Jesse Owens comparison was evident from the moment I read Amazing Man's backstory, only later did I learn that AM benefitted from yet other fictional and non-fictional inspirations.
Comic Vine relates:
For inspiration, [Creator Roy] Thomas drew upon a real 1940’s hero: Centaur Comics hero Amazing-Man. In homage, Thomas named his Amazing-Man Will Everett, after the Centaur Comics’ Amazing-Man’s creator Bill Everett.
His Power Set
Third, I was attracted to the power set--more specifically, I was attracted to
both versions of his power set. Amazing Man's initial superpowers were essentially the same as those of Marvel's
Absorbing Man. In Everett's case, however, rather than arising from a mystical source, they were the product of scientific experimentation by the Ultra-Humanite.
Having successfully imparted the absorbancy powers to Everett, the Ultra-Humanite blackmailed Will and Dr. Curtis into doing his bidding by holding the latter's baby daughter, Terri, hostage. Of course, Terri was eventually freed, allowing her father and Will to defy the Ultra-Humanite and aid the All-Star Squadron in defeating him.
Curiously, the only powers
Comic Vine seems to recognize for Amazing Man were his initial absorption ones. However,
Who's Who in the DC Universe Update '88 explicitly says that some months after initially helping the All-Star Squadron defeat the Ultra-Humanite:
...exposure to a super-powerful electromagnet permanently altered Everett, replacing his matter-mimicking ability with magnetic powers...[specifically] the power to repel magnetic objects with his right hand and attract them with his left hand.
I'd always like magnetic-power characters (e.g.,
Magneto,
Cosmic Boy,
etc.) but Amazing Man had a nice (and I thought aesthetically
symmetrical) restriction in that he could attract ferrous objects with
one hand and repel them with the other. This gave him just enough power
to be really impressive, without being so powerful that writers had a
hard time coming up with real challenges for him.
Thanks to good folks in the
JSA, All Stars and Earth 2 Facebook group, I now know that this power shift took place in
Young All-Stars #14 (JUL 1988). I'm still curious, however, just
why it was executed. Were there some sort of copyright or trademark dispute (a la the great Captain Marvel vs. Superman battle)? Did DC think Amazing Man needed to be "spiced up"?
