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- | ====== Timeline of Earth-X (prehistory to 1950s) ====== | ||
- | **Return to [[Timeline of Earth-X]]** | ||
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- | ===== Ancient History ===== | ||
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- | ==== 64 A.D. ==== | ||
- | |||
- | * Midnight and his assistants (Doc Wackey, Gabby, Sniffer Snoop, and Hotfoot) reach the year 64 A.D. during the reign of Nero from 1944 by using Doc's time pills (which enable both time travel and local language translation) to travel back in time. There they are captured and brought to Nero himself. Thanks to his knowledge of ancient history, Midnight is honored as a prophet by Nero. But when Midnight saves his friends from being killed in the Circus Maximus, they inadvertently cause the Great Fire of Rome before returning to their own time. [Midnight, Smash Comics #52 (April, 1944)] | ||
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- | ==== 507 A.D. ==== | ||
- | |||
- | * A warrior named [[Konar]] has adventures in Macedonia. ["The Barbarian," | ||
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- | ===== Middle Ages ===== | ||
- | |||
- | * Tyrone Neville becomes the [[Gallant Knight]]. [Feature Funnies #7] | ||
- | |||
- | ==== 1642 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | * A brilliant scientist named [[Cyrus Smythe|Dr. Cyrus Smythe]] of London invents a formula that can change living creatures into giants. But after he changes a monkey he experimented upon into a giant, the giant monkey attacks him, and his body is smashed against a cabinet full of chemicals, causing his brain to become immortal even as his body dies. Smythe' | ||
- | |||
- | ===== 17-18th Centuries ===== | ||
- | |||
- | * Captain Tyrone Fortune begins adventures. [Feature Comics #25] | ||
- | * Captain Daring begins adventures. [Buccaneers #19] | ||
- | * Black Roger begins adventures. [Buccaneers #19] | ||
- | * Eric Falton begins adventures. [Buccaneers #19] | ||
- | * Adventures on the Spanish Main begins. [Buccaneers #19] | ||
- | * Corsair Queen begins adventures. [Buccaneers #25] | ||
- | |||
- | ==== 1776 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | * The Spirit of America is born as the new flag of the United States of America is flown over the 13 free states. //Note: The Spirit of America is originally known by the nickname of Brother Jonathan (who is essentially the Spirit of New England), and is still known by that name until the War of 1812, when people start calling him Uncle Sam. It is also possible that Brother Jonathan (the spirit of the American people) exists as a separate being who later merges with Uncle Sam (the spirit of the U.S. government).// | ||
- | |||
- | ==== 1777 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | * A patriot named Samuel, wrapped in a replica of the original U.S. flag, is killed while distracting a troop of Hessian soldiers working for the British crown from stopping a wagon train containing supplies for Gen. George Washington and his troops at Valley Forge, shortly before winter. The Spirit of America joins with Samuel to become **[[Uncle Sam (Earth-X)|Uncle Sam]]** (though this name is not known or popularized until the War of 1812), who helps guide America in the decades to come. ["The True Story of Uncle Sam," National Comics #5 (November, 1940); "The Coming of Uncle Sam," Secret Origins v2 #19 (October, 1987)] | ||
- | |||
- | ==== 1789 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | * Our Lady of the Shadows University (or La Université Notre Dame des Ombres) is founded on the French Riviera. In the 20th century, students would include Emma Peel (a teacher at the Grimoire Academy) and Delilah Tyler (Hourgirl), while Sandra Knight (Phantom Lady) would act as the school' | ||
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- | ===== 19th Century ===== | ||
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- | ==== 1801 ==== | ||
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- | * Adam Peril, USN, has adventures based in Spanish New Orleans. [Buccaneers #24-27] | ||
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- | ==== Circa 1808 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | * A young blond American man, son of English parents who fled their homeland to avoid being thrown into debtors' | ||
- | |||
- | ==== 1810 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | * Uncle Sam wins the championship in a hammer throwing contest. ["The Return of King Killer," | ||
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- | ==== 1812 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | * Uncle Sam is invisibly present during the War of 1812 as the United States battles Great Britain once more. Previously known under the nickname of " | ||
- | |||
- | ==== Circa 1830 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | * Quicksilver travels back through time from the year 1949, then loses his super-speed. Becoming a scout with the U.S. Cavalry under the name of Max Crandall, he is later shocked and dismayed when his friends in the local Indian tribes are massacred under the orders of his own commanding officer. A dying shaman returns his super-speed to him through magic, and Max becomes known to Indians as **Ahwehota** (He Who Runs Beyond the Wind) and to Americans as **Windrunner**. After a few years, Max manages to travel through time once more, this time reaching the 1890s. | ||
- | |||
- | ==== 1861 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | * Uncle Sam is helpless to act as brother fights brother during the Civil War. ["The Coming of Uncle Sam," Secret Origins v2 #19 (October, 1987)] | ||
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- | ==== 1865 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | * Uncle Sam invisibly presides over Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, ending the Civil War and making Sam smile for the first time in four years. ["The Coming of Uncle Sam," Secret Origins v2 #19 (October, 1987)] | ||
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- | ==== Unspecified years in the mid-19th century ==== | ||
- | |||
- | * Jeb Rivers and his young partner Catfish begin adventuring during the great days of the old Mississippi riverboats. [Hit Comics #61] | ||
- | * Rance Keane begins adventures with Chaps Shaw. [Feature Comics #22] | ||
- | * Two-Gun Lil begins adventures. [Crack Western #63] | ||
- | * Arizona Ames, his horse Thunder, and sidekick Spurs and his horse Calico begin adventures. Ames later becomes A. Raines. [Crack Western #63] | ||
- | * Bob Allen, frontier marshal begins adventures. [Crack Western #63] | ||
- | * Dead Canyon Days begins. [Crack Western #63] | ||
- | * The Whip and his horse Diablo begin adventures. [Crack Western #70] | ||
- | * Paul Bunyan begins adventures in a small logging village in Maine. [National Comics #1] | ||
- | * Sgt. Jim Reynold (brothers named Tom and Pinky) of the RCMP begins adventures. [Feature Funnies #14] | ||
- | |||
- | ==== Circa 1890 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | * Max Crandall, traveling forward through time from the 1830s, becomes known as **Whip Whirlwind** and battles outlaws in the Old West. After a few years, he manages to travel through time once again, this time reaching the 1920s. | ||
- | |||
- | ==== 1891 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | * Hustace Mulligan, who grows up to be a police inspector and an occasional ally to the Jester, is born. [The Jester, Smash Comics #41 (March, 1943)] | ||
- | |||
- | ==== 1898 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | * Uncle Sam invisibly charges with Teddy Roosevelt' | ||
- | |||
- | ===== 20th Century ===== | ||
- | |||
- | ==== 1910 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | * Thomas Wright is born to Maj. Richard and Anne Grey, but while his parents are told that he was a stillbirth, he is secretly kidnapped by an adoption ring catering to the wealthy, and soon adopted by the Wright family. Tom Wright grows up to be a United States senator. //Note: Thomas Wright must be at least 30 years old by 1940 in order to be a U.S. senator, and his extremely strong resemblance to the somewhat younger Richard Grey, Jr. indicates that they may be brothers, if not exactly twins.// | ||
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- | ==== 1915 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | * Richard Grey, Jr. is born to Maj. Richard and Anne Grey. | ||
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- | ==== 1917 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | * Major Richard Grey, an archaeologist, | ||
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- | ==== 1918 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | * Uncle Sam is invisibly present with American soldiers during the tail end of the Great War, later to be known as World War I. ["The Coming of Uncle Sam," Secret Origins v2 #19 (October, 1987)] | ||
- | |||
- | ==== Circa 1920s ==== | ||
- | |||
- | * Max Crandall, traveling forward through time from the 1890s, becomes known as **Lightning** and battles crooks during the Jazz Age. After a few years, he manages to travel through time once again, this time reaching the year 1986. | ||
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- | ==== 1926 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | * During a forest fire in the Northwest, forest ranger Frank Vance falls unconscious while searching for his very young missing daughter, Carol Vance. Seeing young Carol walk unharmed from a burning cabin, the Lord of Fire approaches the tot and is so impressed that she shows no fear that he makes her mistress of flame, having immunity against injury by fire. The next day Carol is found in the burned-out ruins of the forest, completely unharmed. Now an orphan, Carol is adopted and raised by the wealthy Mr. and Mrs. John Martin. [" | ||
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- | ==== Circa 1927 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | * Richard Grey, Jr., now about twelve years old, attempts but fails to fly like the vultures he was raised with. ["The Man Who Can Fly Like a Bird," Crack Comics #1 (May, 1940); "The Secret Origin of the Black Condor," | ||
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- | ==== 1929 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | * A criminal named John Carver goes into a jealous rage when the woman he loves marries actor Richard Stanton, who became a millionaire playing the stock market. Carver plans his revenge. [Crack Comics #1] | ||
- | |||
- | ==== 1930 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | * May 1: Richard Stanton, an accomplished character actor and famous female impersonator, | ||
- | |||
- | ==== 1931 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | * Richard Stanton' | ||
- | * Tom Hallaway spends time hunting in Africa alongside his friend Arthur Henderson, along with Henderson' | ||
- | |||
- | ==== 1932 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | * After his wife dies of a broken heart, Richard Stanton invents the identity of Madam Fatal, his impersonation of an old woman. He spends the next eight years tracking down John Carver, following the criminal from city to city in search of clues to find his kidnapped daughter. [Crack Comics #1] | ||
- | |||
- | ==== 1933 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | === Unspecified month in 1933 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Richard Grey, Jr., now a young man who has studied the flight of vultures all his life, discovers that he can fly just like them. With his superior intelligence, | ||
- | * Bela Jat, a Hindu mystic, is sent to jail after his experiments with the supernatural take several human lives. Thanks to Bela Jat's arrest, Police Detective Healy gains enough stature to eventually become the police commissioner of New York City by 1940. Bela Jat remains imprisoned for the next seven years. [The Ray, Smash Comics #16 (November, 1940)] | ||
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- | ==== 1934 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | === Unspecified month in 1934 === | ||
- | |||
- | * After a full year, during which time the Black Condor has learned everything he can from Father Pierre, he returns to Pierre' | ||
- | |||
- | ==== 1936 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | === September, 1936 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Bored of high society, millionaire playboy Brian O' | ||
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- | === November, 1936 === | ||
- | |||
- | * The Clock meets a mystery-woman called **[[Orchid (Earth-X)|the Orchid]]**, who typically wears purple suits and is the only daughter of a wealthy father. //Note: The details of this story are unknown.// [" | ||
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- | ==== 1937 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | === Unspecified month in 1937 === | ||
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- | * Darrel Dane begins dating Martha Roberts. ["Doll Man," Secret Origins v2 #8 (November, 1986)] | ||
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- | === February, 1937 === | ||
- | |||
- | * February 13-14: A gangster named Clarence " | ||
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- | === June, 1937 === | ||
- | |||
- | * While investigating the murder of multimillionaire C. Mortimer Smythe and the theft of a diamond worth $3 million, the Clock is nearly captured by Capt. Kane of the NYPD. //Note: This story remains unfinished, but since the Clock and Capt. Kane become allies around this time, it's likely that Kane lets him go.// [The Clock Strikes, Funny Pages #10 (April, 1937); The Clock Strikes, Funny Pages #11 (June, 1937)] | ||
- | |||
- | === August, 1937 === | ||
- | |||
- | * [[Ned Brant]] begins adventures in sports. [Feature Funnies #1] | ||
- | * [[Jane Arden]] begins adventures. [Feature Funnies #1] | ||
- | * [[Lena Pry]] begins adventures. [Feature Funnies #1] | ||
- | * [[Dixie Dugan]] begins adventures. [Feature Funnies #1] | ||
- | * [[Slim and Tubby]] begins. [Feature Funnies #1] | ||
- | * [[Jim Swift]] begins adventures. [Feature Funnies #1] | ||
- | * [[Crack Casey]] has a single case. [Feature Funnies #1] | ||
- | |||
- | === September, 1937 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Millionaire playboy T. James (Jimmy) Harrington II, a former college football player, becomes **[[Hawk (T. James Harrington II)|the Hawk]]**. In his only published case, the Hawk captures a crook who beat up and robbed an old millionaire named Moore of $100,000 he was planning to donate to the city orphanage. The Hawk wears a green business suit with a gray hood over his head along with claws on his fingernails. The Hawk is assisted by Link and Rollo, the only two other men who know his secret identity. The Hawk is hunted by Deputy Inspector Pat Doyle, lifelong friend of Harrington' | ||
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- | === October, 1937 === | ||
- | |||
- | * The Clock teams up with the Orchid a second time to capture a crook called Monk, leader of a gang of crooks operating a protection racket. //Note: The story makes reference to an earlier meeting of the Clock and the Orchid, which was probably published in Detective Picture Stories #2.// [The Clock Strikes, Feature Funnies #3 (December, 1937)] | ||
- | * After a disagreement with his father, wealthy chemist Prof. Mason, a young man named Robert Mason disappears and adopts the identity of **[[Jester (Robert Mason)|the Jester]]**, a mystery-man dressed in a green, red, and yellow medieval jester costume with a domino mask and a small mustache, who is wanted by the police for his vigilante actions. The Jester is athletic and has good hand-to-hand combat skills, but often relies on his pistol. //Note: According to the Jester story in Smash Comics #22, the Jester has been active for several years by 1941, indicating he was one of the first mystery-men to appear in the 1930s, along with the Clock, the Orchid, and the Hawk, as well as the Black Condor, who was not well known until later on.// [" | ||
- | |||
- | ==== 1938 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | === January, 1938 === | ||
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- | * **Jim Swift' | ||
- | |||
- | === February, 1938 === | ||
- | |||
- | * [[Clip Chance]] (at Cliffside) begins adventures with sidekicks Slim and Chink. [Feature Funnies #7] | ||
- | * The Clock exposes a notorious criminal called [[Owl (Baldy Getzmore)|the Owl]] as Baldy Getzmore, a former rum-runner, arranging for Capt. Kane of the NYPD to be present as he opens Getzmore' | ||
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- | === March, 1938 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Capt. Kane of the NYPD asks for the Clock' | ||
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- | === May, 1938 === | ||
- | |||
- | * [[Archie O' | ||
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- | === August, 1938 === | ||
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- | * Richard Spencer becomes [[Black X]], a secret agent (" | ||
- | * [[Captain Cook]] of Scotland Yard begins adventures. [Feature Funnies #13] | ||
- | |||
- | === September, 1938 === | ||
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- | * After New York City Mayor Willis is murdered, Police Commissioner Litz orders Capt. Kane to find anyone to arrest in order to appease the public, while they continue searching for the real killer. Refusing, Kane instead appeals to the Clock to solve the case. In his disguise as drug addict Snowy Winters, the Clock soon discovers that a gunman named Butch McGloin was hired to kill the mayor. After confronting McGloin, the Clock gets a description of the man who hired him and correctly deduces from a distinctive tattoo that it was Police Commissioner Litz. After the Clock tells Kane where he can find the killer, Capt. Kane finds Litz tied up on a chair. //Note: Police Commissioner Litz is forced to resign and is probably brought up on murder charges, and is succeeded by Police Commissioner Chase as seen in the Clock story in Feature Comics #25. Mayor Willis is succeeded by Mayor Tull as seen in the Clock story in Feature Comics #22.// [The Clock Strikes, Feature Funnies #14 (November, 1938)] | ||
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- | === October, 1938 === | ||
- | |||
- | * The Clock is framed for the murder of playboy Stanford Pell by gang boss Tony Malta, and he soon clears his name. [The Clock Strikes, Feature Funnies #15 (December, 1938)] | ||
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- | === December, 1938 === | ||
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- | * [[Richard Manners]], a detective, begins adventures. [Feature Funnies #17] | ||
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- | ==== 1939 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | === Unspecified month in 1939 === | ||
- | |||
- | * The Black Condor and his kettle of vultures are present when Gali Kan leads his Yakki raiders on a village in Hindustan, and he manages to take vengeance for Father Pierre' | ||
- | |||
- | === March, 1939 === | ||
- | |||
- | * When the Clock interrupts a bank robbery by Boss Marco and his gang, who use nitroglycerin to blow their way into the Acme Diamond Cutting Co. from the building next door, he is captured. Marco unmasks the Clock and recognizes him as Brian O' | ||
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- | === April, 1939 === | ||
- | |||
- | * **Richard Manners' | ||
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- | === May, 1939 === | ||
- | |||
- | * May 7: Brian O' | ||
- | * May 30-31: New York City District Attorney Ted Downs supposedly commits suicide just as he was about to expose the biggest graft scandal the city's ever known, and the evidence goes missing. After the Clock investigates, | ||
- | |||
- | === June, 1939 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Daniel Dyce, a promising young attorney who is a look-alike to his client, criminal Jake Horn, agrees to replace him so that Horn can see his wife Mary and their newborn son. But after he's been sentenced to life imprisonment as convict #711, he discovers that Horn has been killed in a hit-and-run. He begins to dig a tunnel to freedom. Horn's body, meanwhile, goes missing from the morgue shortly after he is pronounced dead. Possibly Jake Horn revives but retains no memory of his previous life, eventually becoming the mystery-man known as Destiny. [Police Comics #1; "The Marksman: Unusual Suspects, Book Two"] | ||
- | * Hugh Hazard uses Bozo the robot, created by villain Dr. Van Thorp, to fight crime as **[[the Iron Man]]**. [Smash Comics #1] | ||
- | * [[Chic Carter]] has first public case as a crime reporter for the //Daily Star//. //Note: Chic Carter is already well established by this time. There is also an almost-identical Chic Carter of Earth-2 who became the Sword as well. His existence on Earth-2 does not negate the existence of the Earth-X Chic Carter.// [Smash Comics #1] | ||
- | * [[Abdul the Arab]] (Abdul Bey), son of tribal leader Ali Bey, begins adventures. [Smash Comics #1] | ||
- | * [[Wings Wendall]] begins adventures. [Smash Comics #1] | ||
- | * June 2-3: Kent Thurston, a former New York-based private detective who gave up his practice after receiving his inheritance, | ||
- | |||
- | === July, 1939 === | ||
- | |||
- | * June 30-July 1: After the famous chemist Prof. Hans Van Dorn is kidnapped by Garrick Spade, the Invisible Hood (Kent Thurston) infiltrates the Spade Gang in order to rescue the scientist and thus keep the secret of invisibility from them. When the Invisible Hood locates Prof. Van Dorn, the chemist treats his hooded robe with an invisibility solution as an experiment, enabling the crime-fighter to gain actual invisibility whenever he wears the robe. The Invisible Hood alerts the FBI that the gang is hiding in a mine, and the gang members are chased by the police and are killed when their car drives off a ledge. Meanwhile, Spade shoots the uncooperative Van Dorn before Thurston can stop him. After Thurston shoots and kills Spade, then reveals that he is secretly the Invisible Hood, the dying Van Dorn makes Thurston promise to use the power of invisibility only for good. [Invisible Justice, Smash Comics #2 (September, 1939)] | ||
- | |||
- | === August, 1939 === | ||
- | |||
- | * [[John Law]] begins adventures. [Smash Comics #3] | ||
- | * August 29: The Invisible Hood investigates a series of raids on ships by modern-day pirates, and discovers that a gang of crooks has stolen a new submarine prototype along with its inventor, John Webb, forcing him to operate it. Discovering that they plan to sell the advanced submarine to a foreign nation, the Invisible Hood defeats the gang and frees Webb. //Note: Kent Thurston reveals his secret identity to Webb.// [Invisible Justice, Smash Comics #3 (October, 1939)] | ||
- | * August 29-September 1: The Clock goes undercover disguised as Officer Thomas Carter to work in Police Commissioner Chase' | ||
- | |||
- | === September, 1939 === | ||
- | |||
- | * [[Flash Fulton]] begins adventures. [Smash Comics #4] | ||
- | * The German-Soviet invasion of Poland occurs. Janos Prohaska, a pilot in the Polish Air Force, sees his brother and sister killed by Nazi Captain Wolfgang Von Tepp. Prohaska becomes the legend known only as [[Blackhawk]] and begins forming a group of international aviators called the Blackhawks over the next several months. [Military Comics #1] | ||
- | * Bart Hawk, a daring American pilot descended from Chief Black Hawk, is in Poland assisting the Eagle Squadron during the German-Soviet invasion. While there, he meets three Polish pilots: Janos Prohaska, Stanislaus Drozdowski, and Kazimierc " | ||
- | * Kent Thurston travels to Florida to help out his old friend John Blaine, and as the Invisible Hood battles the [[Green Lizard]], a masked gang leader. Defeating the Green Lizard, he unmasks him as Blaine' | ||
- | * After the Clock is framed for three murders and the theft of about $250,000 over two weeks, he figures out that the frame-up is being used to shield the criminal' | ||
- | |||
- | === October, 1939 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Darrel Dane, a young scientist, invents a serum with the assistance of Dr. Roberts that causes him to shrink to six inches tall. While waiting for the effect to wear off, Darrel his fiancee Martha Roberts (Dr. Roberts' | ||
- | |||
- | === November, 1939 === | ||
- | |||
- | * [[Capt. S.R. " | ||
- | * New York City District Attorney Dan Nolen is murdered by a car bomb before he is about to expose a city official who took a bribe. The Clock discovers that Nolen' | ||
- | * Doll Man battles Dr. Rodent. [The Dollman, Feature Comics #28 (January, 1940)] | ||
- | * November 27: After Brian O' | ||
- | |||
- | === December, 1939 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Doll Man battles Germans for the first time when he stops a group of officially sanctioned German smugglers using a U-boat to haul American motors back to Germany. Doll Man's fame begins to grow after this case. [The Dollman, Feature Comics #30 (March, 1940)] | ||
- | * December 27: The Invisible Hood stops the scheme of Sir John Bland, alias the [[Voodoo Master]], who operates from a castle on a man-made island in the middle of a lake near Unionville, using the practice of voodoo to enslave men to do his bidding. The Voodoo Master uses a ray from a glass ball to make the Invisible Hood visible once more while in its presence, enabling his brief capture before he escapes to prime the castle to explode. The Invisible Hood has a sword fight with the Voodoo Master atop his castle and impales him, then flees to safety moments before the castle explodes. [Invisible Justice, Smash Comics #8 (March, 1940)] | ||
- | * December 26-28: After an FBI agent is killed in a car crash, the secret industrial mobilization plans he was carrying to Washington, D.C., are discovered to be missing. Investigating, | ||
- | |||
- | ==== 1940 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | === January, 1940 === | ||
- | |||
- | * < | ||
- | * After a German spy ring steals plans for a poison gas and plan to make gas in every large city in the United States to strike at the same time across the country, the Clock captures the chemist Heizer before he can duplicate the gas. [The Clock Strikes, Feature Comics #31 (April, 1940)] | ||
- | * [[Zero]], the ghost detective, begins adventures. [Feature Comics #32] | ||
- | * [[Bruce Blackburn|Capt. Bruce Blackburn]], | ||
- | * [[Rusty Ryan]] of Boyville begins adventures with sidekicks Ed, Pierpont, Lee, and Alababa. [Feature Comics #32] | ||
- | * [[Perry Scott]] begins adventures, finds gold of Atlantis. [Feature Comics #32] | ||
- | * **[[The Voice]]** (Mr. Elixir) begins adventures. [Feature Comics #32] | ||
- | * [[Samar|Samar of the jungle]] begins adventures. [Feature Comics #32] | ||
- | * [[Wizard Wells]] begins adventures. [Crack Comics #1] | ||
- | * [[Molly]] the model begins adventures. [Crack Comics #1] | ||
- | * [[Lee Preston]] of the Red Cross begins her adventures as a nurse and pilot. [Crack Comics #1] | ||
- | * U.S. Navy Lt. Jim Lockhart invents and designs a navigable torpedo, but when his commanding officer Captain Wells refuses to let him build it, he resigns from the Navy. As a private citizen, he builds the craft he calls the //Red Torpedo// with the assistance of his fiancée [[Peggy Norse]] (also called Meg) in a secret workshop on a remote cove. With the rest of the world at war, Lockhart dons a red mask and costume and calls himself **[[Red Torpedo (Jim Lockhart)|the Red Torpedo]]** after his unique submarine. After Adolf Hitler orders the sinking of a ship sent by the United States, the Red Torpedo stops a German U-boat' | ||
- | * Richard Stanton, a wealthy character actor and famous female impersonator who has been dressing up as an old woman under the identity of **[[Madam Fatal]]** to fight crime for the last eight years, has his first public case. He tracks down John Carver, who kidnapped his infant daughter in 1931, but Carver dies before he can reveal where Stanton' | ||
- | * January 24-25: Playboy millionaire Tom Hallaway becomes a crime-fighting vigilante called **[[Spider (Tom Hallaway)|the Spider]]** in New York City, combining expert archery with trick arrows, and leaving the Spider' | ||
- | * January 25: Brian O' | ||
- | |||
- | === February, 1940 === | ||
- | |||
- | * The Red Torpedo destroys a new German battleship that threatens to give the Nazis complete domination over the Atlantic Ocean. [The Red Torpedo, Crack Comics #2 (June, 1940)] | ||
- | * Roger Kent dies, leaving his tiny kingdom in India to his niece and nephew, Andrea and Denny Kent. Ali Kan, an Indian prince, proposes to Andrea Kent in an attempt to annex the province of Raj, but she turns him down before learning of her inheritance. Traveling to Raj, the Kents' party is attacked by desert bandits secretly working for Ali Kan, killing Denny before Ali Kan rushes in as planned to rescue Andrea. As Ali Kan brings Andrea back to his palace, the Black Condor spots the massacre and, discovering Denny Kent still alive, learns that Ali Kan is responsible. The Black Condor manages to rescue Andrea and brings her to Raj to reunite her with Denny, who is recuperating, | ||
- | * February 23: The Clock encounters the Orchid a third time when, with the help of Pug Brady, he saves a young heir named Harvey Gibbs from being killed before he can receive his inheritance. [The Clock, Crack Comics #2 (June, 1940)] | ||
- | * February 23: The Invisible Hood battles the [[Green Ghost]], a criminal wearing a green outfit and hood over his face who is responsible for several robberies, and who is seemingly invulnerable to bullets. The Invisible Hood unmasks the Green Ghost as two men using identical costumes -- a lawyer named Ward, and Jack Gray -- one of whom fired at the other with blanks, making it seem bullets could not harm him. [Invisible Justice, Smash Comics #11 (June, 1940)] | ||
- | |||
- | === March, 1940 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Joe Hercules, possessing an incredible strength he was born with, has first public case as a modern-day **[[Joe Hercules|Hercules]]**. [Hit Comics #1] | ||
- | * A corrupt French Foreign Legion commander Cracket sends a troop of Legionnaires into the desert to die, and after several days without food or water, Tom Corbet is the only survivor. Discovering an oasis with a pool of strange, phosphorescent water, Tom drinks of it and gains great strength and neonic power, enabling him to perform amazing feats, such as matter transmutation, | ||
- | * Richard Raleigh, an assistant D.A. in District Attorney Tom Darrow' | ||
- | * [[X-5 Super-Agent]] begins adventures. [Hit Comics #1] | ||
- | * [[Jack and Jill Doe]], super sleuths, begin adventures. [Hit Comics #1] | ||
- | * [[Casey Jones]] begins adventures. [Hit Comics #1] | ||
- | * [[Douglas Strange]], Scotland Yard agent, and his twin brother [[Rodney Strange]], former boss of a London gang, begin adventures together as the Strange twins. [Hit Comics #1] | ||
- | * [[The Old Witch]], a teller of weird tales, begins adventures. [Hit Comics #14] | ||
- | * [[" | ||
- | * [[Sally O' | ||
- | * [[Kid Dixon]], a prize-fighter, | ||
- | * Jock Kellogg, an English playboy in London, loses his wealth but gains a magic cloak handed down to him by his ancestor, the great wizard Merlin. Using it, he becomes the world' | ||
- | * **[[Wonder Boy]]** comes from the vacuous depths of outer space and has first public case. [National Comics #1] | ||
- | * [[" | ||
- | * [[The Kid Patrol]] begin adventures. [National Comics #1] | ||
- | * Black Condor arrives in New York City for the first time during his travels around the world, where he makes a vow to fulfill his pledge to Father Pierre to be a force for good in a world beset by evil. //Note: The text states that the Black Condor' | ||
- | * The Spider is framed for kidnapping Thomas Andrews, controlling stockholder of Mercury Realty Corporation, | ||
- | * The Clock' | ||
- | * March 22-25: In a Midwestern town called Glen Valley, an old shopkeeper named [[Uncle Sam (Samuel Smith)|Samuel Smith]] who speaks out against a terrorist group called the Black Legion is found by the spirit of Uncle Sam, who joins with him to gain a physical body and fight injustice as **Uncle Sam**, possessing super-strength, | ||
- | * March 23-25: The 10-foot-tall, | ||
- | |||
- | === April, 1940 === | ||
- | |||
- | * An ordinary, timid electrical lineman named Tom Dalton is electrocuted by 10,000 DC volts, then shocked back to life by 10,000 AC volts, causing him to gain super-powers that include magnetism, super-strength, | ||
- | * The Red Torpedo discovers and destroys a German submarine base secretly built beneath New York Harbor and run by Baron Krieg. //Note: Sometime after this story, Jim Lockhart (the Red Torpedo) apparently breaks off his engagement with Peggy Norse, who is never seen again.// [The Red Torpedo, Crack Comics #4 (August, 1940)] | ||
- | * Neon the Unknown frees all the prisoners in the Dachau concentration camp, then leads them on a march to Berlin, where he confronts Adolf Hitler himself and forces him to sign a peace pact. //Note: Dachau is called Rachaw, Germany is called Dunland, and Adolf Hitler is called Radolf, so these are all obvious pseudonyms used in the story for real-world places and people. It is obvious from world history that Hitler broke the peace pact and found some way to keep Neon the Unknown from ever reaching him again.// [Neon the Unknown, Hit Comics #2 (August, 1940)] | ||
- | * The Invisible Hood encounters the Golden Dragon, a Chinese warlord who kidnaps relatives of munitions manufacturers in order to gain munitions for his millions of followers in China ready to follow him in his plan to conquer the world. The Invisible Hood captures the Golden Dragon and frees two prisoners: Dan, the nephew of munitions king Thomas Clark, and Mr. Harper' | ||
- | * April 22-24: The Black Condor frees a distant land from control by Mount Doom, a dormant volcano controlled by Sihn Fan, who hopes to one day control the world, and which is equipped with super-scientific equipment supplied by a criminal scientist named De Graf. [The Black Condor, Crack Comics #4 (August, 1940)] | ||
- | * April 24-25: Langford " | ||
- | |||
- | === May, 1940 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Red Torpedo fights his opposite number, a pirate called the Lone Shark (later known as the [[Black Shark]]) who uses an advanced submarine called //the Shark//, and apprehends him after a battle beneath the sea. //Note: Although he is not identified as a German, the Black Shark is known to be a paid spy for the Nazis.// [The Red Torpedo, Crack Comics #5 (September, 1940)] | ||
- | * The Spider battles a foreign mad scientist named Dr. Corsica, who has invented a toxin that supposedly grants great strength, but whose test subjects are all women, all but one of whom die during the experiments. //Note: The last test subject is an unnamed redheaded woman who may have gained super-strength at this time, though it remains unknown if Corsica' | ||
- | * Doll Man battles Doctor Python, the so-called master of minds, a mad scientist who collects the heads of brilliant men and somehow preserves the brain, enabling them to work for him. [The Doll Man, Feature Comics #36 (September, 1940)] | ||
- | * Neon the Unknown rescues famous British explorer Sir Humphrey Walker from a lost land, a prehistoric jungle island beneath the ice caps at the North Pole that is populated by savages. The two decide to keep the lost land a secret. //Note: This prehistoric land in the Arctic is undoubtedly the same land later visited by the Invisible Hood, as seen in Smash Comics #19.// [Neon the Unknown, Hit Comics #3 (September, 1940)] | ||
- | * After the Philippines officially gains its independence, | ||
- | |||
- | === June, 1940 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Denny Colt has first public case as **[[the Spirit]]**. //Note: Denny Colt, the Spirit, exists on Earth-X because reprints and original stories featuring the character later appeared in Police Comics, and the Spirit is referenced as a crime-fighter along with Blackhawk and Plastic Man in the Human Bomb story in Police Comics #35.// [The Spirit Section, June 2, 1940] | ||
- | * **The Voice** has his last known case. [Feature Comics #37] | ||
- | * After the [[Kite Men]] attack New York City from above with powerful bolts of electricity, | ||
- | * Neon the Unknown stops an invasion of America from the nation of Kampfland, who use the Trans-Atlantic Bridge -- a bridge joining America with Europe, known as the greatest engineering feat of mankind -- to march troops toward America. After halting the soldiers' | ||
- | * Uncle Sam and Buddy Smith discover artificial floating islands that turn out to be a secret mobile Japanese base for spying on the U.S. Navy's Pacific fleet. When an attack on the west coast begins, Uncle Sam tows the islands toward the California coast, bringing them into close enough range for the Navy's coast artillery to bomb and destroy them. [Uncle Sam, National Comics #4 (October, 1940)] | ||
- | * The Ray battles a disfigured mad scientist called Cadava, who causes destruction to part of New York City with a powerful beam that causes buildings to crumble. Cadava and his assistant Soo Choo are drowned, while the Ray saves the kidnapped Diane, Cadava' | ||
- | |||
- | === July, 1940 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Darrel Dane is sworn in as a special detective of the New York Police Department. [The Doll Man, Feature Comics #38 (November, 1940)] | ||
- | * **[[The Ace of Space]]** (Ace Egan) begins adventures, battles the Slogons. [Feature Comics #38] | ||
- | * In his first public case, [[Quicksilver (Max Mercury)|Quicksilver]] the Laughing Robin Hood battles a mad scientist named Von Lohfer, who places half of the New York City Police Department under his hypnotic control using a hypno-chemical, | ||
- | * Barry Moore, a talented character actor in film, disguises himself as a Chinese man to fight crime as **[[the Scarlet Seal]]**. [Smash Comics #16] | ||
- | * Spotting his old enemy the Black Shark kidnapping a water-breathing woman on the sea floor, the Red Torpedo trails him into a huge cave deeper in the ocean than he'd ever gone before. After he's attacked by a giant lobster-like monster, the Red Torpedo is saved by three [[Mermazons]] (mermaid Amazons), who bring him back to the crystal citadel of Merezonia. The ruler, [[Klitra|Queen Klitra]], tells the Red Torpedo about her enemy, the King of the Caverns, who seeks to enslave the Mermazons. Meanwhile, the Black Shark captures the Torpedo' | ||
- | * The Spider begins using //the Black Widow//, his powerful, silent, missile-like, | ||
- | * New York City is afflicted with a plague of madness, randomly affecting people over several days and causing several deaths and much destruction. Neon the Unknown discovers that the madness is caused by a dust dropped by a plane overhead. Tracking it back to its source, he discovers a secret Nazi base in Nova Scotia, Canada, and destroys the laboratory producing the fear dust. A scientist creates an antidote, and Neon cures everyone still afflicted with madness, then destroys the rest of the fleet attacking the East Coast. ["A Metropolis of Madmen," | ||
- | * After a string of unusual disappearances of planes, buildings, and battleships, | ||
- | * July 18-19: The Ray battles [[Bela Jat]], a Hindu mystic with several magical powers, including creating a physical double of himself out of thin air. Bela Jat attempts to take revenge on Police Commissioner Healy, the district attorney, and the judge who were the three men responsible for sending him to prison seven years earlier, but the Ray saves their lives and battles his henchmen, the giant Shimego and the dwarf Gar. Commissioner Healy saves the Ray by throwing a knife into Bela Jat's back, killing him. //Note: After this story, the Ray resumes his civilian life as Happy Terrill, reporter for the Daily Globe.// [The Ray, Smash Comics #16 (November, 1940)] | ||
- | * Paul Bunyan captures a group of German soldiers when they parachute into the Northwest, intent on establishing a military base for use in a future strike against the U.S. //Note: This story firmly establishes that most (if not all) of Paul Bunyan' | ||
- | * In the Southwestern USA, the Black Condor battles the Yaho, a giant clay statue brought to life through a supernaturally endowed amulet means by two members of the nearly extinct Waquo Indian tribe, who seek revenge on the white man for driving them out of their land. [The Black Condor, Crack Comics #7 (November, 1940)] | ||
- | |||
- | === August, 1940 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Bruce Blackburn first becomes **[[the Destroying Demon]]**. [Feature Comics #39] | ||
- | * Red Torpedo lures the Black Shark into a duel in order to stop a German raid on a British ship called the //Glory//. [The Red Torpedo, Crack Comics #8 (December, 1940)] | ||
- | * The Clock fights an invulnerable giant from Mongolia called Stuporman, who dies. [Crack Comics #8] | ||
- | * The Black Condor battles a group of thinking machines called the Spinning Death, invented by and given artificial intelligence by the Asian mad scientist Lung Woe, who is killed by the original thinking machine. The Spinning Death replicates itself and begins attacking American cities, killing thousands until the Black Condor stops them by their only point of weakness. //Note: The Spinning Death machines resemble the Daleks of Doctor Who; thus, surviving Spinning Death machines might also be connected to the artificial intelligence that took over the Nazi Empire in the late 1960s and replaced Nazi officials with androids under its control.// [The Black Condor, Crack Comics #8 (December, 1940)] | ||
- | * Baron Hoff sets fires on almost every dock in New York City, causing a massive fire that circles Manhattan, which acts as a distraction so that he can fly into the city on his Magno-Gyro and rob a large bank. Quicksilver fights the fire by throwing special gas capsules of his own invention at them, then stops Baron Hoff with the help of a newsboy. [Quicksilver, | ||
- | * Doll Man discovers a hidden village populated by Puritans who have lived there for over 200 years without contact from the outside world. [The Dollman, Feature Comics #39 (December, 1940)] | ||
- | * The Red Bee battles a midget mad scientist called Kulak, who equips his murderous men with masks and electrified swords and belts, and who presumably dies when the hotel he uses as a headquarters collapses during his fight with the Red Bee. ["The Swords of Death," | ||
- | * The Ray battles and helps capture a clarinet-playing musician named Stradivous, who has the power to entrance people with his music and is causing ship captains to sink their ships by playing his clarinet over the radio. [The Ray, Smash Comics #17 (December, 1940)] | ||
- | * August 17: A mad scientist named Fritz Cardif, operating from a glass fortress on the vast reaches of unexplored desert, terrorizes America with his invisible ray, which can ignite any explosive from a distance, and which he has used to destroy several coastal forts from afar. When troops are sent to capture him, he destroys all means of attack -- whether infantry or bombing planes -- before they can even come near him. Neon the Unknown vows to stop him and reaches Cardif' | ||
- | |||
- | === September, 1940 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Bruce Blackburn appears as **the Destroying Demon** for the last time. [Feature Comics #40] | ||
- | * **Lee Preston' | ||
- | * The Red Torpedo rescues Dr. Freiheit, a leader of an opposition group against the Nazis in Germany. [The Red Torpedo, Crack Comics #9 (January, 1941)] | ||
- | * Doll Man captures a sabotage ring operating on the East and West Coasts. [The Dollman, Feature Comics #40 (January, 1941)] | ||
- | * The Ray uncovers a plot by a female crook named Miss White and seven dwarfs who used to have a Vaudeville act to loot a gold shipment from a train. After the seven dwarfs kill Miss White so they won't have to share the loot with her, the Ray destroys them and their train wrecking machine with a blast of power. [The Ray, Smash Comics #18 (January, 1941)] | ||
- | * Four Lamas in Tibet combine their mystic mental power to cause the peaceful President Karla of a Central European country to go to war. Neon the Unknown brings the president around the world to find the location of the four Lamas, based on how strong their hold is on him. After a mental battle of wills between Neon the Unknown and the four Lamas over several hours, the Lamas' heads literally explode from the strain. [Neon the Unknown, Hit Comics #7 (January, 1941)] | ||
- | * Uncle Sam discovers that the Germans are secretly invading America using a fleet of giant underwater destroyers called sub-tanks, which are able to crawl across the ocean floor, thus evading detection. Rallying people on Long Island, he and a group of men from Montauk, New York, fight off the invasion and destroy the fleet. When the soldiers pledge to restore democracy to their own nation, Uncle Sam lets them return home, since there is no state of war between the United States and Germany. [" | ||
- | * Magno battles an unnamed mad scientist in a facility hidden in a swamp, who has transformed several young men into fanged half-men he uses as slaves while keeping several older men prisoner. Magno discovers that his electric current can restore these half-men back to normal, and once he frees the prisoners, he destroys the facility. [Magno, Smash Comics #18 (January, 1941)] | ||
- | * September 1-2: The Spider is captured by the police after he is thought to have bombed a tailor shop. Chuck busts the Spider out of jail with the //Black Widow//, the Spider' | ||
- | * September 14-16: In Big City, Station UXAM radio announcer Dave Clark adopts the identity of **[[Midnight]]**, | ||
- | * September 15-16: The Invisible Hood battles and captures [[Doctor Moku]], a man in a hooded red cloak who uses the so-called " | ||
- | |||
- | === October, 1940 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Doll Man briefly joins the U.S. Army as Darrel Dane and saves President Roosevelt from an assassination attempt by Nazi spies before being discharged from the army. [The Doll Man, Feature Comics #41 (February, 1941)] | ||
- | * Ace of Space' | ||
- | * After the Red Torpedo helps aid England during the Battle of Britain, the Germans use the Black Shark as a hired spy to capture him, but the Red Torpedo escapes. [The Red Torpedo, Crack Comics #10 (February, 1941)] | ||
- | * Jimmy Slade, a press photographer, | ||
- | * Neon the Unknown smashes an anti-American bund run by fifth columnists in the United States. [Neon the Unknown, Hit Comics #8 (February, 1941)] | ||
- | * The Invisible Hood discovers a prehistoric savage land hidden in the Arctic and kept warm by volcanic streams, where he learns that a criminal named Gordon Stack has enslaved the Cro-Magnon men led by Belthor to drill oil wells. //Note: This prehistoric land in the Arctic is undoubtedly the same land previously visited by Neon the Unknown, as seen in Hit Comics #3.// [Invisible Justice, Smash Comics #19 (February, 1941)] | ||
- | * Magno stops a plot to transform a commercial airplane from each major American city into a bomber in order to conduct bombing strikes simultaneously across the country. The leader is a white-haired, | ||
- | * Quicksilver stops a crook named Albert Cruch, who buys an experimental running repeating bomb delivery system so that his gang can loot every bank in New York City. [Quicksilver the Laughing Robin Hood, National Comics #8 (February, 1941)] | ||
- | * October 16: Paul Bunyan volunteers for the U.S. Army. Not long after reaching an army camp on the west coast, Bunyan almost single-handedly staves off a Japanese invasion from the sea. [Paul Bunyan, National Comics #8 (February, 1941)] | ||
- | * October 16-23: A crook impersonates the original Jester and begins a crime spree over a week involving the theft of a box of securities, a million-dollar payroll, a valuable necklace, and a daring bank robbery. Meanwhile, Richard Stanton (Madam Fatal) visits his friend, chemist Prof. Mason, and learns that his son Robert Mason disappeared years ago after a falling out. After Prof. Mason completes a formula for the U.S. government, the Jester imposter arrives to steal it and knocks out Stanton, then kidnaps Prof. Mason for his boss. Stanton awakes, having recognized the Jester as one of Ratney' | ||
- | |||
- | === November, 1940 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Darrel Dane (Doll Man) celebrates Martha Roberts' | ||
- | * **[[USA, the Spirit of Old Glory]]**, a feminine spirit of America, has first public case; she came into being as Betsy Ross sewed the first American flag. [Feature Comics #42] | ||
- | * Zero, ghost detective, time-travels to thousands of years in the future and battles Loro, Mogur, and other Martians. //Note: These Martians of the far future are human and obviously descended from settlers from Earth.// [Feature Comics #42] | ||
- | * Quicksilver stops the bombing of New York City by a group of Fifth Columnist bombers, then hitches a ride back to their Grand Canyon headquarters and destroys it. [Quicksilver the Laughing Robin Hood, National Comics #9 (March, 1941)] | ||
- | * Neon the Unknown returns to the French Foreign Legion, revealing that he is really their former fellow Legionnaire Tom Corbet, and that he survived death in the desert to become the famous hero. Neon then discovers a secret tunnel joining North Africa with Gibraltar and stops an invasion of Axis troops on British-held Gibraltar, then destroys the tunnel. [Neon the Unknown, Hit Comics #9 (March, 1941)] | ||
- | * November 5-6: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt is elected for an unprecedented third term in office. Presidential candidate Horatio Brown, defeated in the election, is given an offer by the Devil himself to become dictator if he steals the defense plans for the Panama Canal. The next night Brown does so and packs to move into his own island kingdom. ["The Man Who Sold His Country," | ||
- | * November 15: Midnight battles a sorcerer named [[Chango the Magician]], an old Vaudeville star with real magic who uses Pig Latin spells to control objects and bring them to life, enabling them to flee from their owners and walk, run, roll, or fly into his hands. Midnight finally stops Chango when he steals the U.S. Bullion Depository building, stopping it mid-flight out of Fort Knox. [Midnight, Smash Comics #20 (March, 1941)] | ||
- | * November 15: Paul Bunyan is put in command of a special detail of U.S. Army soldiers to intercept an invasion force of 10,000 Japanese soldiers who have infiltrated Canada. Bunyan and his men stop the Japanese invasion through a mountain pass at the Canada-U.S. border, and the enemy forces surrender. //Note: Paul Bunyan leaves the U.S. Army shortly after this story, though how is not explained; possibly he was given an honorable discharge for being well over 35 and thus too old for service, despite his virtual immortality.// | ||
- | * November 14-16: U.S. Senator Tom Wright goes against the wishes of a crooked political boss [[Jaspar Crow]] from Skull Creek, who virtually controls the Senate, when he decides to vote against a bill. When Crow has Wright shot and leaves his dying body on a country road, the Black Condor finds him still alive but mortally wounded and discovers that they are physically identical. Delivering Wright to [[Dr. Foster]], the Black Condor impersonates him and votes against the bill, then learns that Wright has died. Dr. Foster convinces the Black Condor to take Wright' | ||
- | * November 25-26: When German U-boats begin escaping with stolen munitions from ships in American waters, the Red Bee discovers the men behind the scheme -- Mr. Hanson the owner of Hanson' | ||
- | * November 24: The Spider uncovers a plot by his old enemies the Crickets to steal the jewels of a German refugee named Baron Karl Von Ernst, whom they kill with a bomb. Preventing them from stealing the jewels, the Spider confronts the gang leader called the Big Cricket before his men can kill the Spider. The Spider then manages to trap the Crickets to Cobb's Mill, where the police arrive to arrest the whole gang except the leader, whom the Spider personally kills before he can shoot the police. [Alias the Spider, Crack Comics #11 (March, 1941); Alias the Spider, Crack Comics #12 (April, 1941)] | ||
- | |||
- | === December, 1940 === | ||
- | |||
- | * December 15: The Red Torpedo prevents an invasion of Manila in the Philippines. For the first time, the Red Torpedo' | ||
- | * In his last known solo case, **Magno** saves an archaeologist named Van Nest from a group of unknown occultists seeking the power of Kali-Hana, the scriptures of ancient, deadly powers from ancient Egypt. //Note: After this story, Magno is switched over to Earth-2.// [Magno, Smash Comics #21 (April, 1941)] | ||
- | * After a case in Chinatown involving gun smuggling to Japan, the Red Bee is switched over to Earth-2. [The Red Bee, Hit Comics #10 (April, 1941)] | ||
- | * When Senator Tom Wright (Black Condor) attempts to push through a bill granting better conditions to miners, it is defeated thanks to the political machine of Jaspar Crow, who has set himself up in an exploitative mining operation in Pennsylvania. After Crow frames the murder of a foremen on the miners, turning the sympathy against them in the hopes of quelling a possible strike, the Black Condor prevents further bloodshed but fails to capture Crow himself. The mining bill passes after a second vote. //Note: After this story, the Black Condor is switched over to Earth-2.// [The Black Condor, Crack Comics #12 (April, 1941)] | ||
- | * Neon the Unknown stops a plot in South America by Nazi fifth columnists who try to use natives to cause disruption and sabotage throughout South American cities. [Neon the Unknown, Hit Comics #10 (April, 1941)] | ||
- | * Happy Terrill saves the life of a freckled, dark-haired eight-year-old boy named [[Jack Budworth|Jackie " | ||
- | * December 12: Midnight meets [[Gabby (Earth-X)|Gabby]], | ||
- | |||
- | ==== 1941 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | === January, 1941 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Zero, Ghost Detective, meets the Reaper (Death). [Feature Comics #44] | ||
- | * Rookie patrolman Chuck Lane (the direct descendant of a real court jester) takes over from Robert Mason as **[[Jester (Chuck Lane)|the Jester II]]** in New York City, wearing a somewhat modified version of the original Jester' | ||
- | * January 13: Happy Terrill (the Ray) becomes the guardian of the orphaned Jackie Budworth, nicknaming him " | ||
- | * January 13: Adolf Hitler, frustrated by how such figures as Neon the Unknown have thwarted his plans again and again, consults the last living necromancer in Germany, Damus the wizard. Damus summons Neon the Unknown and has a wizard' | ||
- | * January 13: While visiting London, England, Kent Thurston saves James Gotham from a murderer, then visits Gotham Castle with him on the night that Gotham becomes the new owner of his family estate. As the Invisible Hood, Thurston uncovers a plot by Gotham' | ||
- | |||
- | === February, 1941 === | ||
- | |||
- | * **Rusty Ryan** forms **[[the Boyville Brigadiers]]**, | ||
- | * < | ||
- | * A wave of sabotage sweeps across America, damaging most of the country' | ||
- | * The Invisible Hood battles the Crystal Queen and Caglio the magician, who steal the ancient Blue Crystal and use its strange powers to kill people with the Blue Death and fire destructive blasts. But the Crystal Queen and Caglio end up killing each other after arguing over control of the Blue Crystal, and the object is apparently lost in an explosion of her fortress, which the Invisible Hood alone survives. [Invisible Justice, Smash Comics #23 (June, 1941)] | ||
- | * < | ||
- | * February 12: Neon the Unknown exposes a secret pact between Adolf Hitler and Tchebitsky, the leader of the small country of Slovia, to allow Nazi Germany to annex it, and he leads a revolution that ousts Tchebitsky and fights off a German invasion. [Neon the Unknown, Hit Comics #12 (June, 1941)] | ||
- | * February 12: After Bud is kidnapped, the Ray rescues him from a crook called the Beetle who uses him to deliver a stolen contract for supplies meant for war-torn China to Long Woo, a Tong leader in San Francisco' | ||
- | * < | ||
- | * February 21: Midnight investigates a string of bank robberies by an eccentric old scientist named [[Mortimer " | ||
- | |||
- | === March, 1941 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Doll Man gains a one-time only partner in young Ray Corley, who learns his secret identity and who goes to school with Tommy Roberts, younger brother of his fiancée Martha Roberts. //Note: This story is set in the spring.// [The Doll Man, Feature Comics #43 (April, 1941)] | ||
- | * Chic Carter, crime reporter, has first public case as a mystery-man named **[[the Sword]]**. [Smash Comics #24] | ||
- | * Wings Wendall dons a new costume. [Smash Comics #24] | ||
- | * **The Scarlet Seal' | ||
- | * USA the Spirit of Old Glory stops the Advance Front, an army of Nazi American fifth columnists, from marching on Washington, D.C. [USA, the Spirit of Old Glory, Feature Comics #46 (July, 1941)] | ||
- | * USA the Spirit of Old Glory assists the FBI to capture a gang of Nazi saboteurs. //Note: The FBI man called the chief is most likely Tim Healy, whose Earth-2 counterpart later employs Joan Dale, alias Miss America.// [USA, the Spirit of Old Glory, Feature Comics #47 (August, 1941)] | ||
- | * Merlin the Magician personally presents a huge diamond called the All-Seeing Eye to Prime Minister Winston Churchill for England' | ||
- | * **Wizard Wells' | ||
- | * < | ||
- | * When the great physicist Dr. Albert Einstein is the latest in a string of scientist kidnappings, | ||
- | * The Invisible Hood travels to Panama and is taken to the hidden Mayan city of Tempera, ruled by the tyrant Chac Mool, who overthrew the real ruler Chima and works with Nazi agents planning to blow up the Panama Canal. The Invisible Hood defeats the false ruler and the Nazi agents and restores Chima to the throne. [Invisible Justice, Smash Comics #24 (July, 1941)] | ||
- | * < | ||
- | * < | ||
- | * March 15: Rod Reilly, an idle millionaire playboy, becomes a crime-fighter named **[[Firebrand (Earth-X)|Firebrand]]** in order to take down the crime syndicate that controlled New York City, but the police mistakenly believe that the Firebrand is the leader of the syndicate. The Firebrand is assisted by his manservant, ex-prize-fighter [[Slugger Dunn (Earth-X)|" | ||
- | * March 22: One evening while waiting on the steps of the United States Capitol, Sandra Knight saves her father [[Henry Knight|Senator Harold Henry Knight]] (a former judge) from getting shot by an assassin named Ace Diamond, and calls herself a " | ||
- | |||
- | === April, 1941 === | ||
- | |||
- | * The full membership of the [[Blackhawks]] ([[Blackhawk]] of Poland, [[Stanislaus Drozdowski]] of Poland, [[Kazimierc " | ||
- | * Aviators [[" | ||
- | * Captain " | ||
- | * [[Archie Atkins]], desert scout, begins adventures in Africa. [Military Comics #1 (August, 1941)] | ||
- | * [[Col. Shot]] and [[Slim Shell]] (Shot and Shell) begin adventures in the U.S. Army Corps. [Military Comics #1 (August, 1941)] | ||
- | * Larry Noble (also called Jerry), an ex-Hollywood stuntman and the son of Senator Walter Q. Noble, with his pet eagle, Sam, has first public case as [[the Yankee Eagle]], helping out the U.S. Navy. [Military Comics #1 (August, 1941)] | ||
- | * The [[Death Patrol]], an independent flying squadron led by [[Del Van Dyne]], and comprised of several escaped criminals ([[Butch]], [[Hank]], [[Peewee]], [[Slick]], [[Gramps]]) are formed. **Peewee** is killed. [Military Comics #1 (August, 1941)] | ||
- | * [[Capt. Foghorn]], a privateer like his ancestor John Paul Jones, begins adventures on the four-masted schooner Albatross, a deceivingly advanced ship built in the form of an old schooner, and even equipped with a Q-boat; the ship's crew are all children, and the Captain' | ||
- | * In his first published case, the Firebrand fights crooks with a protection racket aimed at window-washers and steeplejacks who murder anyone with a sniper rifle who doesn' | ||
- | * Daniel Dyce finally completes a tunnel leading out of the prison he's in after two years imprisonment, | ||
- | * [[Eagle Evans]], flier of fortune, along with his sidekick photographer Snap Smith begin adventures. [Police Comics #1 (August, 1941)] | ||
- | * [[Steele Kerrigan]], a 20-year-old prisoner, is pardoned by the Governor after he stops a prison riot while serving his third year at State Prison (after being tricked by a gang to act as a lookout when he was 17), and becomes an amateur crime-fighter. [Police Comics #1 (August, 1941)] | ||
- | * Newly elected D.A. Bill Perkins has first public case as the mystery-man known as **[[the Mouthpiece]]**. [Police Comics #1 (August, 1941)] | ||
- | * [[Dick Mace]], a young American detective, begins adventures. [Police Comics #1 (August, 1941)] | ||
- | * U.S. Navy Lt. Roy Lincoln of Washington, D.C., a chemist and the son of a famous explosives expert, assists his father to create a new super-explosive called 27-QRX. After German agents kill his father, Roy ingests the explosive capsule to keep it from them, inadvertently gaining invulnerability and the power to cause explosions with his hands, and accidentally destroys the lab, killing the four Nazi agents. Roy creates an invulnerable suit from the same kind of fibro-wax used to house the explosive capsule, which is equipped with an air-lung allowing him to swim underwater, and becomes the mystery-man known as **[[Human Bomb|the Human Bomb]]**. Discovering that the German Consul is behind the murder of his father, he uses his explosive power to kill him. //Note: Roy Lincoln is engaged to be married to Jean Caldwell, a strawberry blonde woman. Roy is a reserve member of the U.S. Navy. The Human Bomb later uses his ability to create explosions from his hands to propel himself through the air with giant leaps.// [The Human Bomb, Police Comics #1 (August, 1941)] | ||
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- | * Test pilot [[Tex " | ||
- | * Neon the Unknown finds mines placed in New York Harbor that destroy war supplies heading to England. He soon discovers and destroys an underwater Nazi base with an arsenal large enough to invade the United States. [Neon the Unknown, Hit Comics #14 (August, 1941)] | ||
- | * An epidemic of blindness plagues factories with defense contracts all over America, and the FBI discovers that all or most of the men hired to replace them are members of the Black Legion, the fifth columnist organization. Uncle Sam also discovers that military personnel are also going blind. Uncle Sam meets with President Roosevelt and the Congress to come up with a plan to fight the Black Legion. Uncle Sam and Buddy Smith find the Pacific Island base used by the Black Legion and discover their plans to make not only all of America' | ||
- | * Paul Bunyan leaves the North Woods and begins traveling throughout the Western United States, briefly getting a job as a cowhand at a ranch in the Colorado foothills before moving on to other adventures. [Paul Bunyan, National Comics #14 (August, 1941)] | ||
- | * April 12: In her first case as a costumed mystery-woman, | ||
- | * April 12: Wealthy young socialite Carol Vance Martin becomes **[[Wildfire]]** the mistress of flame. Wildfire is able to command the flame and reshape it into various forms, such as a physical hand that can hold people without burning them. Wildfire can also throw precise flame-darts and create an impregnable shield of flame. In her first known case, Wildfire saves a new munitions plant used for U.S. defense after it was set on fire by saboteurs. Learning that they work for the Green Masked Bund, Wildfire tracks them down to their headquarters, | ||
- | * April 12: The Spider foils the plans of a Nazi saboteur named Hansel, who sets off five explosions in a week to sabotage the city's work on a tunnel under the river in New York City. The Spider escapes a murder attempt by Hansel and his men, and kills Hansel before the police arrive. [Alias the Spider, Crack Comics #15 (August, 1941)] | ||
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- | * April 12-19: Criminal " | ||
- | * April 21: The Jester nabs a group of Nazi saboteurs after they target the Navy yard. [The Jester, Smash Comics #25 (August, 1941)] | ||
- | * April 22: **USA the Spirit of Old Glory** has her last case of this era before transferring her magic to Joan Dale to become Miss America. [USA, the Spirit of Old Glory, Feature Comics #48 (September, 1941)] | ||
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- | === May, 1941 === | ||
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- | * Having an hour to spend before a meeting, //Daily Star// reporter Joan Dale falls asleep at the foot of the Statue of Liberty and wishes for the power to do good; then the spirit of liberty herself (which is actually USA the Spirit of Old Glory) grants Joan the magical power of transmuting anything or anyone (including herself) and several other magical powers, such as teleportation and telekinesis, | ||
- | * Quicksilver uncovers a plot by the leader of the Lansmen (an offshoot of the Black Legion) to create local revolutions across America, beginning in Smithtown, for the eventual purpose of weakening the United States for a German invasion. [Quicksilver the Laughing Robin Hood, National Comics #15 (September, 1941)] | ||
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- | * Doll Man uncovers a Nazi plan to use Devil' | ||
- | * Gen. Alfredo Muerte leads a revolution on the Caribbean island nation of Libertad. Rod Reilly, vacationing at his family' | ||
- | * Roy Lincoln brings his father' | ||
- | * When the Hermese Embassy in Washington, D.C., burns down, killing the ambassador, the tiny Asian nation of Herma blames the U.S. and threatens war. Phantom Lady discovers that the fire was caused by agents of Imperial Japan, who plan to step in and take over Herma in the guise of protecting it from the U.S. Phantom Lady finds and rescues Ambassador Kivoya of Herma, ending the threat of war between the U.S. and Herma. //Note: Imperial Japan is referred to in this story as Kioland.// [Phantom Lady, Police Comics #2 (September, 1941)] | ||
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- | * Much of America' | ||
- | * Neon the Unknown discovers that Nazi agents are planting bombs in the basements of skyscrapers in New York City, intending to blow up all major buildings as a prelude to invasion. Neon confronts Adolf Hitler himself a second and final time as he prevents him from carrying out his plans. //Note: Adolf Hitler is called Herr Schickler in this story. After this story, Neon the Unknown is switched over to Earth-2.// [Neon the Unknown, Hit Comics #15 (September, 1941)] | ||
- | * After Dr. Roberts is kidnapped by Nazi agents, who seek the secret of his new ray, which he's building for the War Department, Doll Man tracks down the kidnappers and rescues Dr. Roberts. ["The Red Light of Doom," Doll Man Quarterly #1 (Autumn, 1941)] | ||
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- | * May 11: The Invisible Hood discovers a plot by a Nazi spy named Zergon (disguised as Lt. Jergens of the U.S. Navy) to steal the // | ||
- | * May 10-12: Plastic Man gets a job with the New York City Police Department under Captain Murphy when he captures both a Canadian opium-smuggling ring and Senator A.J. Simms, who is involved in the ring. [Plastic Man, Police Comics #2 (September, 1941)] | ||
- | * The Jester captures a young man named Terry Hills after he stages the elaborate murder of his father using radio in order to receive an early inheritance of $10-million. //Note: After this story, the Jester is switched over to Earth-2, as indicated by Chuck Lane's superior officer Inspector Mulligan being renamed Detective McGinty as of the Jester story in Smash Comics #27.// [The Jester, Smash Comics #26 (September, 1941)] | ||
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- | === June, 1941 === | ||
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- | * [[" | ||
- | * Justin Wright becomes **[[Just ' | ||
- | * The Spider battles an invasion of the Green Horde, green-skinned monster men from beneath the earth in Manhattan, armed with green rays and a green gas that causes many people to become paralyzed. Defeated by the horde, the Spider is brought to the underground world to meet the leader, who claims that his brain controls his men and that he can blow up every surface city at the touch of a button. The Spider overcomes the leader and chokes him to death, causing all the invaders to collapse and die, and he reverses the paralyzing green gas. //Note: After this story, the Spider is switched over to Earth-2.// [Alias the Spider, Crack Comics #17 (October, 1941)] | ||
- | * Doll Man and Dr. Roberts foil a Nazi fifth columnist plan to ship faulty aluminum ore to aircraft manufacturers. [The Doll Man, Feature Comics #49 (October, 1941)] | ||
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- | * Firebrand uncovers a plot to swindle poor Oklahoma farmers out of their land, which holds large pockets of oil beneath them, all to supply the Axis with millions of barrels of oil. [The Firebrand, Police Comics #3 (October, 1941)] | ||
- | * After Don Borden is kidnapped by a Nazi spy nest, Phantom Lady frees him and helps subdue the spies after being framed for the kidnapping herself, and Don begins to notice her resemblance to Sandra Knight. //Note: After this story, Sandra Knight begins wearing a green domino mask whenever she becomes Phantom Lady, in order to disguise herself a bit more now that she is better known; this is, of course, a retcon from All-Star Squadron, which pictured her first in a green mask and then in green-tinted goggles.// [Phantom Lady, Police Comics #3 (October, 1941)] | ||
- | * Doll Man battles a winged super-villain called the Vulture, alias a man named Aylmer who owes money to the mob and goes on a theft spree in New York City, and later strikes dead his father, a pet show owner. Doll Man saves Martha Roberts, who is targeted by the Vulture when she wears a valuable diamond, but the villain escapes. //Note: Although they were shown to be engaged as early as the Doll Man's origin story, this story implies that Darrel and Martha are merely dating, and that he hasn't yet popped the question.// ["The Vulture," | ||
- | * Darrel Dane is briefly framed for murder by a couple of confidence men with a fake oil field, and even Martha Roberts and Dr. Roberts think he's guilty, until Doll Man clears his name. [" | ||
- | * Darrel Dane battles a costumed thief called the Black Gondolier. //Note: Martha Roberts is again referred to as Darrel Dane's fiancée in this story.// ["The Black Gondolier," | ||
- | * A famous Hollywood director named Emil Von Blon receives the help of the U.S. Navy to film a massive naval battle supposedly for a patriotic movie. Uncle Sam's sidekick Buddy Smith gets a job reading a script in a submarine, while Uncle Sam observes while aboard one of the battleships. But the battle ends up being absolutely real, sinking the //U.S.S. Idaho// and the //U.S.S. Oregon//. The spirit of George Washington himself warns Uncle Sam that this supposed movie battle is a real invasion of America, and Uncle Sam uncovers Nazi agents supposedly hired as extras for the film take over several ships, while a German fleet several miles out in the Atlantic awaits the signal to join the invasion. Uncle Sam and Buddy each work to stop the invasion, but after it is all over, the general public still believes it was all just special effects done for a movie. //Note: After this story, Uncle Sam is switched over to Earth-2.// [Uncle Sam, National Comics #16 (October, 1941)] | ||
- | * June 9: Roy Lincoln is invited to the White House, where President Roosevelt asks him to become the head of a new naval chemical research laboratory in Washington, D.C. There, the Human Bomb discovers that the President has been blackmailed by the threat of a purple mist. The Human Bomb tries to save the President when a group of armed Nazi assassins enter the White House, hidden by the purple mist. The Human Bomb helps navigate the President' | ||
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- | * June 22: German troops successfully smash into the Soviet Union. //Note: In Earth-X history, the Nazis were able to largely defeat the Soviet Union before the United States became involved in the war. Because the war on the Eastern Front was much less difficult, the Germans were able to better defend the Western Front.// [" | ||
- | * June 22: While battling Nazi spies on Earth-2, Uncle Sam suddenly has an urge to create a vortex that allows him to return from Earth-2 to Earth-X. There, he learns that the Nazis have been more successful in their war plans on Earth-X, and that there are no powerful masked mystery-men to defend freedom. //Note: Uncle Sam is unaware at this time due to a Nazi occult spell that he is from Earth-X, and he either does not remember the handful of mystery-men that still exist on Earth-X, or does not take them seriously since they have no powers.// [" | ||
- | * June 22-26: Senator Northrup Bristol hires Curwen, a famous sculptor, to create realistic masks allowing his hired men to impersonate more than half the U.S. Senate, at the same time kidnapping all those senators, so he can pass a slavery bill conscripting children as young as twelve to a government camp for a year's worth of training. Senator Mason speaks out against the bill, and a mob of angry parents marches on Washington, D.C. But Bristol' | ||
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- | === July, 1941 === | ||
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- | * Two mad scientists, Dr. Link and Dr. Blink, gather the brains of 50 of the worst killers in the world and use them to somehow transform a two-bit hood into a Frankenstein-like powerful figure intended to be the greatest criminal the world has ever seen -- [[King Killer]]. King Killer turns against his creators and leaves to go on a crime spree, then forms a gang that builds fortified cities for him in the desert. After crime seems to disappear in America for several weeks, King Killer uses his influence in Washington to make the desert county of Rex, containing his Rex City (his capital) and other cities, into its own state. Then criminals are able to escape into Rex to avoid prosecution for their crimes. When Uncle Sam learns that the bank president is being kidnapped, he impersonates him and allows himself to be kidnapped and taken to Rex himself. Uncle Sam then prevents King Killer from emptying the Everytown Prison. A mob of American citizens and police then march on Rex City, and Uncle Sam personally battles King Killer, his physical match, destroying Rex City in the process. After King Killer takes Buddy Smith as a hostage, Uncle Sam manages to overcome King Killer, who is imprisoned in a specially constructed, | ||
- | * Uncle Sam and Buddy Smith travel to the Panama Canal, where they prevent the assassination of President Vargas of Panama, then fight alongside the people of Panama and U.S. soldiers against German soldiers called the Black Guard on the ground. Uncle Sam prevents the canal from being bombed by mines, then stops a Black Guard ship flying the U.S. flag from destroying the canal. As the U.S. Navy arrives at the Panama Canal to fight off the remaining Black Guard ships, the ship Uncle Sam and Buddy are on explodes, and they manage to land in the ocean miles away but unharmed. They soon reach a tropical island with a population of 20,000 ruled over by failed 1940 U.S. presidential candidate Horatio Brown, who tells them the Panama Canal will soon be destroyed thanks to his betrayal, but after Buddy shames Brown, he decides to stop the German plans himself to redeem himself. Taking a plane, Brown reaches Panama before Uncle Sam and Buddy, and destroys the hut containing the switch set to explode the Panama Canal, killing himself and the German spies within. [Uncle Sam, National Comics #17 (November, 1941); "The Man Who Sold His Country," | ||
- | * The Steel Helmets under the control of Senator Northrup Bristol stage a coup and manage to overcome Uncle Sam himself after the people lose faith in him due to a newspaper smear campaign, causing him to lose all his strength. Killed in a bomb, Uncle Sam is sent to a heavenly realm where he meets the spirits of other wartorn nations and is determined to return to Earth to fight back. Meanwhile, Bristol puts himself in the White House and controls the United States as a dictator. Buddy organizes a group of kids into an Uncle Sam Club, causing Uncle Sam to slowly regain his strength as he fights to return to the earthly realm. Upon his return, the Steel Helmets mount an army to fight him, and Buddy gathers true Americans to fight for Uncle Sam in Everytown. During the battle, Uncle Sam's full strength returns, and the Steel Helmets are overcome. Bristol is shot by his own men after he tries to escape. ["The Steel Helmets," | ||
- | * After Rod Reilly develops a new combat bomber capable of taking off or landing on only 50 yards of field, two Nazi agents working for exiled German consul Wilhelm Strasse steal it. Rod becomes the Firebrand and retrieves his plane, leaving a group of German spies and soldiers to be captured by the U.S. Navy. [The Firebrand, Police Comics #4 (November, 1941)] | ||
- | * Phantom Lady saves Don Borden and the English ambassador from two Nazi spies named Kurtz and Heine, who sabotaged a dirigible before a test flight with a time bomb and replaced the American crew with Germans. //Note: Don Borden sees Phantom Lady face to face and does not recognize her as Sandra Knight, indicating she has already begun using a green mask, even though it's not pictured in this story. Phantom Lady is switched over to Earth-2 after this story.// [Phantom Lady, Police Comics #4 (November, 1941)] | ||
- | * Roy Lincoln discovers a liquid that, upon exposure to his explosive hands, becomes charged with deadly explosive power like nitro-glycerine. Later, as he and his fiancée Jean Caldwell take a plane to Havana, Cuba, to meet her parents, Roy spots a German U-boat approaching a tanker. Becoming the Human Bomb, he leaps out of the plane and destroys the torpedoes the U-boat fires on the tanker, then disables the U-boat, allowing the tanker to tow it to Havana where the crew are taken prisoner. //Note: After this story, the Human Bomb is switched over to Earth-2.// [The Human Bomb, Police Comics #4 (November, 1941)] | ||
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- | * **X-5 Super Agent' | ||
- | * Germany attempts a five-point invasion of England by sea and air one night, and six members of the Death Patrol stop the invasion at each of the entry points. [Military Comics #4] | ||
- | * July 8: Miss America foils a gang of fifth columnists when they try to forcefully recruit a young German-born American Hugo Wolsak. [Miss America, Military Comics #2 (September, 1941)] | ||
- | * July 9: Midnight and Gabby the talking monkey battle a group of criminals armed with a liquefying ray, who use it to loot Big City while causing destruction. [Midnight, Smash Comics #28 (November, 1941)] | ||
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- | === August, 1941 === | ||
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- | * Stormy Foster becomes **[[the Great Defender]]** after gaining strength through his own Super-Vitamin. [Hit Comics #18] | ||
- | * Rip Graves becomes **[[the Ghost of Flanders]]**. [Hit Comics #18] | ||
- | * **[[The Sniper]]** (identity unknown) has first public case, based in Europe. [Military Comics #5] | ||
- | * **[[Margo the Magician]]**, | ||
- | * [[Don Q]], a spy, begins adventures. [Crack Comics #19] | ||
- | * Miss America foils a forgery scheme, then as Joan Dale threatens to quit her reporter job at the //Daily Star// after receiving no respect for her work from the editor, despite being personally thanked by FBI agent Jeff Healy. [Miss America, Military Comics #3 (October, 1941)] | ||
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- | * A wave of sabotage hits the Eastern Seaboard, destroying the Sampson Powder Plant with explosives, and trapping hundreds of people in flooded subway tubes. The Nazi saboteurs frame the Firebrand by leaving his signature torch outside a bombed powerhouse. After he discovers that the saboteurs have kept his friends the Drakes prisoner in their own beachfront home and used it as their base, the Firebrand captures the saboteurs for the police, though he is still thought to be their leader. [The Firebrand, Police Comics #5 (December, 1941)] | ||
- | * August 6-7: The U.S. Naval base on Guam Island is bombed by Japanese bombers, while Japanese warships shell Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. At a special meeting of Congress, Uncle Sam warns Henry Stimson, the Secretary of War, not to leave the Eastern Seaboard unguarded in order to protect the West Coast. Suspecting a trick, Uncle Sam and Buddy Smith travel to Maine, where they soon discover that a fleet of German ships are about to invade America through New England. Uncle Sam calls Stimson for reinforcements, | ||
- | * August 7: Midnight once more battles Chango the Magician, who briefly hypnotizes Gabby to work for him, and temporarily turns Midnight into a small dog, before escaping once more. ["The Return of Chango," | ||
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- | * Buddy Smith invents the Bumble-Boat, | ||
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- | === September, 1941 === | ||
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- | * Midnight battles Prof. Craft, inventor of a disintegrating ray that he uses to kill public officials so he can replace them with his own men made their doubles through plastic surgery. Midnight saves the lives of Mayor Smith, District Attorney Kane, and Police Chief O' | ||
- | * Quicksilver stops the plot of Dr. Henry Strugheim, a scientist working in plastics research who has created metal-eating bugs brought to life by heat, which he has sent to sabotage several defense plants, causing widespread destruction of new heavy artillery and bombers used by the U.S. military. [Quicksilver the Laughing Robin Hood, National Comics #19 (January, 1942)] | ||
- | * Investigating reports of terrible giants seen in mines, Uncle Sam and Buddy Smith discover Kid-Land, a subterranean world populated by the children stolen by the pied piper of Hamlin centuries ago, who have never grown any older. Buddy helps defend Kid-Land against their enemies in Evil Land, the giants, witches, and goblins banished from Fairy-Tale Land and led by the wicked Witch Queen. Uncle Sam befriends a giant and stops a giant monster kept locked up in a secret chamber for 500 years by the Witch Queen, whom it immediately kills upon being loosed. With a new spirit of peace and cooperation established between Kid-Land and Evil Land, Uncle Sam and Buddy return to the surface to let the miners know it's safe to go back to work. ["War in Kid-Land," | ||
- | * When King Killer escapes from prison, President Roosevelt asks Uncle Sam to capture him, but King Killer provides a distraction from his escape by creating a fake gold rush at Ghost City, where he calls himself Rellik (" | ||
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- | * September 20-22: A pall of darkness settles over Washington, D.C., blotting out all light in the city in a black fog. Investigating, | ||
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- | === October, 1941 === | ||
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- | * [[Hack O' | ||
- | * The Clock meets [[Butch]], a tough-girl sidekick. [Crack Comics #21] | ||
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- | * After the ghost of Simon Bolivar appeals to the ghost of George Washington for help, Uncle Sam and Buddy Smith travel to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to put an end to the anti-American sentiments there that are secretly financed by the Nazis to create divisions in the Americas. They soon uncover and defeat a Nazi plot using tribes from the Amazon jungle to destroy the coastal defenses of Brazil, with the help of a group of patriotic Brazilians. //Note: This story indicates that Buddy Smith is Uncle Sam's actual nephew.// [Uncle Sam, National Comics #20 (February, 1942)] | ||
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- | * October 5: Uncle Sam and Buddy Smith encounter the great violinist Malvolo, whose hands were crushed in a train wreck and replaced with the cursed hands of a killer, causing him to become deranged, and giving him the ability to command a horde of fierce apes. ["The Fiddler of Death," | ||
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- | * October 10: Reserve officers Rod Reilly and Slugger Dunn report for duty in the U.S. Navy as an ensign and a seaman, respectively, | ||
- | * October 11-12: Joan Dale quits the //Daily Star// and joins the FBI as a secretary working for Tim Healy, though she uses her reporting experience to investigate as if she was an FBI agent. As Miss America she creates a patriotically themed costume for herself; prior to this she used her powers in plainclothes. Miss America foils a plot by Ramon and his dance band working for a Nazi agent named Romboli to coordinate the bombing of Camp Bragg by robot-controlled planes, which is her first true public appearance. //Note: Secret Origins v2 #26 places this story on October 11, 1941, and adds a blue domino mask to her costume. After this story, Miss America is switched over to Earth-2.// [Miss America, Military Comics #4 (November, 1941); "The Secret Origin of Miss America," | ||
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- | === November, 1941 === | ||
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- | * Uncle Sam stops a sabotage plot in the factories of Autoville, then single-handedly builds a new town to house the workers, who had previously been forced to live in trailers and shacks. Uncle Sam then captures the leaders of the sabotage group, including businessman I.J. Grab. ["The Man Behind the Man Behind the Gun," National Comics #21 (March, 1942)] | ||
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- | * **Madam Fatal' | ||
- | * Red McGraw becomes known as the [[Dragon]]. [Doll Man #2] | ||
- | * In her first well-documented adventure, the mysterious woman known only as [[X of the Underground]] successfully impersonates a male Gestapo officer, and also meets Bob Gray, an American war correspondent who becomes infatuated with her. //Note: The dialogue indicates that X has already been causing trouble for the Nazis, conducting clandestine operations in several of the nations they occupy, for quite some time before the events of this story.// [Military Comics #8 (March, 1942)] | ||
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- | * November 24-26: Despite receiving the highest marks in college, Dan Richards graduates at the bottom of his class at Empire City's Police Academy, thanks to being distracted by his work on a private crime laboratory, to the great disappointment of his girlfriend [[Kit Kelly]]. During their first patrol the next day, Dan covers the beat of his Kit's brother Jim Kelly along his own when Jim walks off with crooked politician Al Armand. When Armand tries to pay Jim to kill a crook named Johnny Cosentino while in the line of duty, Cosentino instead murders Armand and frames Jim, and Dan arrives on the scene. Jim is charged with murder, while Dan is suspended until the case can be investigated. Consulting his crime laboratory, Dan looks up Cosentino' | ||
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- | === December, 1941 === | ||
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- | * **Hercules** retires. [Hit Comics #21] | ||
- | * **Jack and Jill Doe' | ||
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- | * December 7: On Earth-2, Uncle Sam, having recruited the Red Torpedo, Magno, Miss America, Neon the Unknown, and the Invisible Hood, finally travels to Rex Tyler' | ||
- | * December 7: The same vortex that transports Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters to Earth-X also transports Midnight and Doll Man, who independently track Uncle Sam down to Rex Tyler' | ||
- | * Hourman is found unconscious by the Japanese, who keep him a prisoner for the next two months, trying to discover the secret of his tremendous strength. [All-Star Squadron #35] | ||
- | * Uncle Sam washes up on a beach in Hawaii days later and is found by U.S. soldiers who don't believe his story about preventing an invasion of Pearl Harbor, thinking him crazy. Uncle Sam is incarcerated in a padded cell by the military for the next two months, during which time he realizes that by stopping the attack on Pearl Harbor, America does not join in the war effort, allowing the Axis powers to invade even more of Europe and Asia. Uncle Sam spends much of his time attempting to create a vortex to return to Earth-2. [All-Star Squadron #32] | ||
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- | * December 31-January 1, 1942: After his fiancee Joan Rogers' | ||
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- | ==== 1942 ==== | ||
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- | === January, 1942 === | ||
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- | * Polish nobleman Baron Povalsky becomes **[[the Marksman]]**. [Smash Comics #33] | ||
- | * The Clock switches to a domino mask from the full-face cloak he wore previously. [Crack Comics #23] | ||
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- | === February, 1942 === | ||
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- | * After being released from U.S. military custody, Uncle Sam returns to Everytown where he is reunited with his nephew, Buddy Smith. After Buddy is framed for murder, Uncle Sam discovers the true killer to be gang lord " | ||
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- | * February 22: Uncle Sam has another vision of an attack on U.S. soil, this time on the coast of California. He now finally succeeds in creating a vortex that transports him back to Earth-2. Unbeknownst to him, one of his preliminary attempts allows Baron Blitzkrieg to transport himself from Earth-2 to the Berlin, Germany, of Earth-X. [All-Star Squadron #32, 35] | ||
- | * February 22: Baron Blitzkrieg of Earth-2, displaying his powers and loyalty to the Adolf Hitler of Earth-X, is hailed a hero by the Nazis. Hearing of masked men fighting for the French Resistance in Paris, he travels there. Midnight and Doll Man, having learned of a planned Japanese attack on the U.S. set to take place the next day, battle German soldiers, resulting in Doll Man being injured. As Baron Blitzkrieg confronts Midnight on the edge of a rooftop, the latter spots the tell-tale signs of Uncle Sam's vortex just below him and leaps into it with Doll Man in his hand, followed by a few Nazi soldiers. They all ended up in Earth-2' | ||
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- | * February 23: Using the power of the Spectre, Uncle Sam leads an All-Star Squadron task force (Doll Man, Black Condor, Phantom Lady, the Human Bomb, the Ray, and the Red Bee) back to Earth-X. Arriving at Goleta, just outside Santa Barbara, California, as the Japanese invasion begins, the team assists in the defense of California. Meanwhile, the Spectre, forbidden to enter Earth-X, inadvertently causes the two parallel universes to enter the same vibrational plane and struggles to keep them from destroying each other. On Earth-X, attacking a Japanese Destroyer, the team finds Baron Blitzkrieg, who has Hourman chained to the front of a cannon, having discovered the Japanese had him. The team battles Baron Blitzkrieg, who singlehandedly defeats and captures them. All except the Red Bee, thought dead in the battle, awaken in the ruins of a fortress on the Channel Islands off the California coast, where Baron Blitzkrieg has brought them to die while the Japanese shell the coastline. The Red Bee, having survived and swam all the way there, attacks Baron Blitzkrieg, acting as a diversion just long enough for Hourman to regain his powers and break loose, but not before Baron Blitzkrieg breaks **the Red Bee' | ||
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- | === March, 1942 === | ||
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- | * March 3-5: While covering a battle in the air between American and Japanese planes, Happy Terrill' | ||
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- | * March 15-16: Black Condor saves the life of a former fifth columnist named Jed Hawks, who warns him about a joint German-Japanese attack on the Panama Canal on March 15th, which is today. While Hawks steals a bomber to go to Panama and the Black Condor flies there himself, a two German aircraft carriers sneak into American waters in the Caribbean Sea and release several bombers that strike the Panama Canal. Meanwhile, Japanese submarines wait for the signal to attack from the Pacific. The Black Condor takes over a German bomber and bombs one of the aircraft carriers, but he is shot down by the Germans. Hawks saves the Black Condor' | ||
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- | === April, 1942 === | ||
- | |||
- | * < | ||
- | * April 1: Due to the havoc-wreaking passage of Harbinger, who brings bits of the Crisis era with her, Uncle Sam believes the barrier between the worlds might close permanently. He and Black Condor and the Ray recruit several mystery-men from Earth-2 to fight the Axis on Earth-X, including the Blackhawks, the Spider, Manhunter and his dog Thor, the Human Bomb, Midnight, the Jester, and Doll Man. Their last recruits are Plastic Man and Phantom Lady, and Rod Reilly (Firebrand) watches them as they leave. //Note: At some indeterminate time later, the Earth-2 Rod Reilly (Firebrand) travels to Earth-X, the Jester and the Spider both return to Earth-2, and the Blackhawks find their Earth-X counterparts and bring them together to form their own team of Blackhawks before returning to Earth-2. It is possible that a few others allied with members of the Freedom Fighters also later travel from Earth-2 to Earth-X. It is never explained how so many individuals from Earth-2 can travel to Earth-X without upsetting the cosmic balance. An untold story may explain who returns to Earth-2 and who decides to remain on Earth-X permanently.// | ||
- | * Tom Hallaway (the Spider), discovering that the Crow of Earth-X was never captured like his Earth-2 counterpart, | ||
- | * Plastic Man joins the police department in Mammoth City, working under Captain Murphy. | ||
- | * **[[Unknown|The Unknown]]** has first public case. [National Comics #23] | ||
- | * Adventures on the U.S.S. Pawnee Destroyer 171 begin. [National Comics #23] | ||
- | * Ensign [[Jack Smith]] begins fighting the Japanese in the Pacific using his electric battery-operated one-man submarine, the // | ||
- | * April 30: Feeling helpless from all the headlines about murder and sabotage, wealthy sportswoman Dianne Grayton decides to do something about it after being egged on by a wealthy friend, Bob Ableson. That evening two saboteurs destroy a train, and while fleeing their car runs out of gas. Reaching the Grayton estate, they force Dianne' | ||
- | |||
- | === May, 1942 === | ||
- | |||
- | * < | ||
- | * King Killer, enemy of Uncle Sam, aligns himself with Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. [Uncle Sam Quarterly #3] | ||
- | * Uncle Sam meets and teams up with John Bull, the Spirit of Great Britain. [Uncle Sam Quarterly #3] | ||
- | * Hack O'Hara battles recurring foe the [[Butcher]] for the first time. [Crack Comics #24] | ||
- | * The Black Condor uncovers a hidden underground arms plant in a mine in the Rocky Mountains set up by fifth columnists to supply the German Army if the U.S. is ever invaded, then evacuates the mine before it explodes, destroying the plant and all the armaments. //Note: J. Edgar Hoover appears in this story under the pseudonym of "J. Emery Glover."// | ||
- | * When their ship the //U.S.S. Russell// docks at Cairo, Egypt, Rod Reilly and Slugger Dunn uncover a plot by Nazi agents to sabotage the ship. Rod becomes the Firebrand and captures the spy gang with the help of Rod's fiancee, Joan Rogers, a Red Cross volunteer nurse. [The Firebrand, Police Comics #10 (July, 1942)] | ||
- | * April 29-May 1: Roy Lincoln is summoned by J.C. Hanley, a Department of Commerce official, to travel with him to Argentina to ensure a new boxite deposit discovered in the mountains is used to make aluminum for the Allies, and not for the Axis. But upon reaching the property, the plane is shot down, and Hanley is killed by German soldiers there. Roy becomes the Human Bomb and soon learn that the owner has been killed by the Nazis, and his daughter is kept a prisoner. The Human Bomb defeats their leader, and the Nazis retreat into the boxite mine to escape through the tunnel to the other side of the mountain. The Human Bomb pursues the Nazis into the mine and captures them for the Argentinean army, then discovers that the boxite is being passed through a tube to a fake British ship in the harbor, and alerts the local police. //Note: Roy Lincoln' | ||
- | * May 1-2: Midnight battles Prof Porgy, a mad scientist and former partner of the now-reformed Doc Wackey. But Prof chemically causes Wackey to temporarily become a criminal once more, and the two go off to invent a rocket ship over the next several weeks in order to travel to the planet of gold. [Midnight, Smash Comics #35 (September, 1942)] | ||
- | * May 15: After a con artist named [[Oscar Oople]] steals $6-million in jewels in order to marry a large red-haired woman named Petunia, the Jester takes him to jail. [The Jester, Smash Comics #34 (July, 1942)] | ||
- | * May 29: The Spider Widow encounters smuggler Madam Largossi and two Japanese spies, Tohoto and Huti, arranging for their capture by the Coast Guard. [The Spider Widow, Feature Comics #58 (July, 1942)] | ||
- | |||
- | === June, 1942 === | ||
- | |||
- | * May 30-June 1: While on assignment in Istanbul, Happy Terrill is sent to Occupied Hungary with Bud and three other reporters using faked passports in order to investigate the shocking murder of Nazi officials there. There the Ray saves members of the Hungarian underground who are responsible for the murders. Happy reveals the location of the underground to the Gestapo in order to gain their trust and lead them into a trap, allowing him to kill them in a brush fire after he sets fire to crops meant to supply the Germans on the Russian front. Happy and Bud escape Hungary and return to Istanbul before they can be captured. [The Ray, Smash Comics #34 (July, 1942)] | ||
- | |||
- | === July, 1942 === | ||
- | |||
- | * **Ned Brant' | ||
- | * One rainy night, Phantom Lady helps capture a group of Nazi saboteurs in Washington, D.C., after Sandra Knight and Don Borden find the corpse of a federal investigator. [Phantom Lady, Police Comics #11 (September, 1942)] | ||
- | * The Firebrand saves Senator Barrow from the White Gardenias (a white supremacist organization similar to the Ku Klux Klan) and exposes Senator Beep as a member of that group. [The Firebrand, Police Comics #11 (September, 1942)] | ||
- | * After his editor orders him to return home to New York City, Happy Terrill and Bud charter a plane but are surprised when it instead flies them to Russia. After they are shot down by the Russians, they learn they were kidnapped by Mongols. Bud is taken to Moscow and put under the care of Ileana Kamova. Traveling to a location on a map found on the dead pilot' | ||
- | * The Human Bomb battles a scientist-musician named Hoiman Schtrugmeyer, | ||
- | * July 6: Doc Wackey and Prof Porgy complete their rocket ship and take off for the planet of gold in outer space, and the two scientists and Prof's hired men sleep through the voyage. But when the rocket lands, it turns out that it simply circled the Earth, then landed in the desert, where Midnight followed them through Doc's wrist radio. [Midnight, Smash Comics #35 (September, 1942)] | ||
- | * July 27: When a group of Axis spies from Germany, Italy, and Japan lure the Spider Widow (Dianne Grayton) into a trap, kidnapping her to bring her back to Berlin by U-boat, a private investigator named Tony Grey dons the winged and masked purple and green costume of **[[Raven (Tony Grey)|The Raven]]** and rescues her. After letting the U.S. Navy capture the U-boat and the spies within, the Spider Widow and the Raven each unmask, and she kisses him, but neither can recognize the other while in the dark. From this point on, the Raven always acts as the Spider Widow' | ||
- | * July 27: The Black Condor tracks down Jaspar Crow in North Dakota (who escapes) and battles a Nazi agent named Elsa Papendorf. [The Black Condor, Crack Comics #25 (September, 1942)] | ||
- | * July 27-28: Plastic Man battles a 17th century scientist named Dr. Cyrus Smythe, whose brain has survived intact for 300 years, and who has invented a serum allowing himself to grow into the size of a giant and back at will. Although the body he's in is killed, Smythe' | ||
- | |||
- | === August, 1942 === | ||
- | |||
- | * **Douglas Strange** and **Rodney Strange**, the Strange twins, have their last case together. [Hit Comics #24] | ||
- | * **Ensign Jack Smith' | ||
- | * After Sandra Knight and her father Senator Henry Knight visit U.S. Army testing grounds to find new army tanks in poor shape, Sandra goes undercover by getting a job in the factory as a riveter, where she makes a friend named Maisie. Phantom Lady quickly discovers saboteurs at work damaging one tank with acid, sledgehammers, | ||
- | * Roy Lincoln (the Human Bomb) discovers a Nazi spy ring using musical notes played on a regular radio music show, and the U.S. Navy is able to crack the code and bomb a German ship heading for an American oil tanker along the Atlantic coast. [The Human Bomb, Police Comics #12 (October, 1942)] | ||
- | * Francisco Rivera, a South American dictator, flees to the Moon in a rocket ship when his dictatorship is about to be overthrown. The paranoid Rivera sabotages his men's space suits, causing them to die upon reaching the Moon, which he proclaims as his new domain. As he slowly dies of starvation and then oxygen deprivation, | ||
- | * While traveling by train through the Appalachian mountains, Dianne Grayton and Tony Grey's train is derailed by Nazi agents who kidnap Dianne and all the important government officials from the train. As the Raven, Tony follows the truck with the prisoners to a ranch hideout in the woods, where he spots a Nazi assaulting Dianne and fights him, giving Dianne a chance to slip into her Spider Widow disguise. Together the two escape on horseback through the woods and summon the U.S. Army out on maneuvers to follow them back to the hideout, where the army captures the spies and frees the prisoners. [The Spider Widow and the Raven, Feature Comics #61 (October, 1942)] | ||
- | * < | ||
- | * When the Jester encounters a gang of criminals shrunken to the size of small dolls, he tracks down the criminal scientist known as the Professor, who uses a formula to briefly shrink the Jester himself. After using the formula on the Professor, the Jester uses the antidote on himself and the whole gang before the police arrive to arrest them. //Note: The shrinking formula is eerily similar to the one invented by Darrel Dane, the Doll Man.// [The Jester, Smash Comics #36 (October, 1942)] | ||
- | * July 27-August 3: Midnight dies in battle with a criminal named Cyclops Ceylon, and the world mourns one of its greatest crime-fighters. Given the opportunity to pass into Heaven, Midnight instead decides to go to Hell in order to pick a fight with the [[Devil (Earth-X)|Devil]], | ||
- | |||
- | === September, 1942 === | ||
- | |||
- | * **The Mouthpiece** has his last known case. [Police Comics #13] | ||
- | * **" | ||
- | * **Wonder Boy** disappears for the first time. [National Comics #26] | ||
- | * **Tor the Magic Master** has his last known case. [Crack Comics #26] | ||
- | * **Don Q** has last adventure and disappears. [Crack Comics #26] | ||
- | * **X of the Underground** has her last adventure and disappears. [" | ||
- | * [[Yankee Guerilla]] makes a single appearance. [Crack Comics #26] | ||
- | * In his last public case as **the Firebrand**, | ||
- | * Phantom Lady is framed for bombing a neutral foreign consul in Washington, D.C., and hunted by the law. While driving with her friend Maisie, Sandra Knight gives a ride to a woman wearing a Phantom Lady costume beneath her coat, and Phantom Lady discovers that she is an impostor working for Nazi agents. Phantom Lady stops their next plan, which is to bomb the White House. [Phantom Lady, Police Comics #13 (November, 1942)] | ||
- | * Dianne Grayton (the Spider Widow) meets the Raven at a secret mountain rendezvous on the West Coast when they are attacked by Japanese spies, and Dianne is used to capture the Raven. Escaping from her trap, Dianne becomes the Spider Widow and frees the Raven. The two then capture the entire nest of spies. [The Spider Widow and the Raven, Feature Comics #62 (November, 1942)] | ||
- | * The Ray accompanies a British and American invasion of Occupied Norway, laying waste to the coastal defenses and opening up a new front in the war. //Note: Happy Terrill' | ||
- | * **Jaspar Crow** kidnaps Wendy Foster and brings her to Mongolia in order to lure the Black Condor into a trap there as part of his revenge on Senator Tom Wright. The Black Condor escapes thanks to the help of the kettle of vultures he was raised with and has his final confrontation with Crow, who enters the gates of the Forbidden Plateau, where he is overcome by madness and presumably dies in the wilderness. The Black Condor brings Wendy safely back to America. [The Black Condor, Crack Comics #26 (November, 1942)] | ||
- | * September 3: The professor who brought Midnight back from the dead arrives after one month to claim Doc Wackey, using him in a dangerous experiment that grants him super-speed and causes him to go crazy and commit a super-speed crime spree, until the effects wear off. ["Doc Wackey Goes Berserk," | ||
- | * Midnight battles Zor the caveman, a supposed living Neanderthal discovered frozen in Siberia by naturalist Sir Squinchworth. But Zor becomes docile once he's eaten, indicating he was purposely starved by Squinchworth to make him appear vicious. Midnight brings him back to Doc Wackey' | ||
- | * September 9-10: [[Woozy Winks]] saves Zambi the Soothsayer from drowning and in return is granted the protection of nature, keeping him from all harm. Flipping a coin, Woozy ends up using it for crime and comes to the attention of the law and Plastic Man. ["The Man Who Can't Be Harmed," | ||
- | * September 24: Roy Lincoln investigates strange reports of hauntings at Skull Valley out west, where workers for the Jameson Chemical Works are housed. As the Human Bomb, he soon discovers that a German actor named Franz Kurtman and his men are pretending to haunt the houses in order to make factory workers ineffective and thus harm the U.S. defense efforts, and he rallies the workers to stop the skull-masked Nazi agents from blowing up the plant. //Note: This is the last story that features Roy Lincoln as the head chemist of the U.S. Navy Laboratory; at some point after this story, Roy becomes a civilian once more and opens up a laboratory in his home.// ["The Living Dead of Skull Valley," | ||
- | * September 24-25: The Spider encounters Doctor Monk, a green-robed mad scientist with a formula that can alter a person' | ||
- | |||
- | === October, 1942 === | ||
- | |||
- | * A boy known only as Kit and his grandfather are killed by Nazis, and in Eternity they find that he still has 75 years of life left to live. Kit does not, however, become Kid Eternity, though his Earth-S counterpart does. //Note: All of Kid Eternity' | ||
- | * **[[G-2 the Unknown]]** begins adventures. [National Comics #27] | ||
- | * **Samar' | ||
- | * Happy Terrill (the Ray) begins dating fellow reporter Sue Saunders, after having met her Earth-2 double several months earlier. The Ray battles a murderer called [[Headman|the Headman]], descendant of Henry Gorgon, a royal executioner from 1776 to 1798, who is compelled to keep killing people by taking their heads. //Note: Sue Saunders of Earth-X is a brunette, not a redhead as the Earth-2 version is.// [The Ray, Smash Comics #38 (December, 1942)] | ||
- | * The Jester encounters Terwilliger J. Thump, a kleptomaniac who also happens to be the uncle of the police commissioner, | ||
- | * The Spider Widow and the Raven capture another group of Japanese spies in the Rocky Mountains. [The Spider Widow and the Raven, Feature Comics #63 (December, 1942)] | ||
- | * The Human Bomb encounters the Chameleon, a crook able to blend in with his surroundings and effectively become invisible. After some investigation he discovers the Chameleon is the elderly Prof. Thorndike, his old university chemistry teacher, who had been discharged from the university and stole a formula in order to sell it to an airline and get enough money to continue his experiments. But while the Human Bomb is wearing the invisible cloak, Thorndike blunders into his explosive hand and is killed instantly. //Note: This story establishes that Roy Lincoln went to Georgetown University, where he studied chemistry under Prof. Thorndike.// | ||
- | * < | ||
- | * October 24: Plastic Man convinces Woozy Winks to give up crime and turn himself in. Woozy becomes Plastic Man's sidekick. ["The Man Who Can't Be Harmed," | ||
- | * October 24-25: While Sandra Knight and her spinster Aunt Priscilla are visiting the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, Phantom Lady stops two criminals working for a German spy from drugging the soldiers' | ||
- | * October 24-25: Manhunter and Thor encounter a green-robed villain called the Cobra, who has murdered several men, and Manhunter is poisoned by a snake' | ||
- | |||
- | === November, 1942 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Lance Gallant' | ||
- | * Hack O'Hara battles the Butcher again. [Crack Comics #27] | ||
- | * When a small, bald, timid, henpecked scientist named **[[Hustace Throckmorton|Hustace P. Throckmorton]]** is goaded into jumping off a roof to fly like the Black Condor by a gang of boys, he's taken to the emergency room at the hospital, where Roy Lincoln' | ||
- | * After his editor Steve Hine's daughter Carol is taken prisoner, Happy Terrill is fired after pursuing a story based on the theory that Oscar Slott of the Slott Bomber Company is really Nazi agent Otto Schlottbl who sabotaged his plant. Investigating, | ||
- | * The Jester encounters con artist Oscar Oople, who surrenders into his custody. [The Jester, Smash Comics #39 (January, 1942)] | ||
- | * November 22: Woozy Winks is released into Plastic Man's custody. [Plastic Man, Police Comics #14 (December, 1942)] | ||
- | * November 22-23: Midnight discovers that Zor the caveman is actually a modern-day man who was disfigured and trained to be a Neanderthal by Sir Squinchworth and his wife Lady Squinchworth, | ||
- | * In an untold tale, Midnight battles a criminal called Two-Face. | ||
- | |||
- | === December, 1942 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Sandra Knight visits the home of Baron Thorpe, who runs an informal school instructing gullible women on how to be a spy. One young woman named Melinda uses her knowledge to plant a clock containing a dictagraph within it, then delivers it to Baron Thorpe, not realizing he is a real Nazi spy and has helped him learn when the U.S. Navy ship the //S.S. Ambria// is sailing the next day. Phantom Lady, suspecting Thorpe, rescues Melinda from from her imprisonment in Thorpe' | ||
- | * **711** (Dan Dyce) is gunned down by a racketeer named Oscar Jones. [Police Comics #15] | ||
- | * A psychic tells an ordinary man on the street whose name remains unknown that he has the occult power to foresee death, trouble, and disaster. As **[[Destiny (Earth-X)|Destiny]]** the man can transport himself to an unknown destination full of danger whenever he blanks his mind. Destiny tries to bring to justice 711's killer, Oscar Jones, who instead escapes. As he watches the ghost of 711 soar into the sky for his final reward, Destiny vows to carry on where 711 left off. //Note: The unnamed man known as Destiny is not, as some think, Dan Dyce's ghost, but another individual altogether. He may or may not be Jake Horn, the man whose place Dan Dyce took in prison and who was killed in a hit-and-run accident in 1939 but whose body went missing at the morgue shortly after.// [Police Comics #16; "The Marksman: Unusual Suspects" | ||
- | * In the Ray's last published solo case, Happy Terrill and Bud are among those in a crowd who witness the sinking of the //U.S.S. Foster// at its launching ceremony. Realizing that the ship's hull was weakened by powerful acid from the champagne bottle broken upon it at the ceremony, the Ray stops the same thing from happening at the second launch of a destroyer two hours later. [The Ray, Smash Comics #40 (February, 1943)] | ||
- | * December 22: While in pursuit of a crook called Bullets Balow, Midnight discovers a fantasy land in the clouds called the Land of Flight, where Balow arrived sometime earlier (and where time acts differently) and married the ugly Queen of Flight. After Midnight captures Balow, a beautiful woman named Velvet provides Midnight with a rocket ship, and he uses it to return to the real world before it disappears. [Midnight, Smash Comics #40 (February, 1943)] | ||
- | |||
- | ==== 1943 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | === January, 1943 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Destiny arrests Oscar Jones, who killed 711. [Police Comics #17] | ||
- | * The Spider Widow and the Raven battle the Spider Man, a small Nazi saboteur wearing nothing but a spider mask and shorts, and riding a giant, lifelike mechanical spider who kills and terrorizes workers at a factory being used in the defense effort. [The Spider Widow and the Raven, Feature Comics #66 (March, 1943)] | ||
- | * The Jester encounters Lady Satan, who tries to scheme Inspector Mulligan into marrying an older accomplice for the insurance money they'd gain upon his death. Despite her obvious guilt, Lady Satan sweet-talks her way out of jail. [The Jester, Smash Comics #41 (March, 1943)] | ||
- | * January 21: Plastic Man is drafted into the armed forces, but President Roosevelt himself personally asks Plastic Man to join the FBI instead. Plastic Man and Woozy Winks begin working under the direction of Chief Branner. //Note: According to All-Star Squadron #1, Plastic Man was already an FBI agent before Pearl Harbor, but that was only when he was on Earth-2.// [Plastic Man, Police Comics #18 (April, 1943)] | ||
- | * January 21-22: The Black Condor battles the [[Black Dragon Society (Earth-X)|Black Dragon Society]] led by Draku, who kidnaps Wendy Foster in an attempt to gain Dr. Foster' | ||
- | |||
- | === February, 1943 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Brenda Banks has first public case as **[[Lady Luck]]**. [Smash Comics #42 (April, 1943)] | ||
- | * After months of trying to figure out who he is, Dianne Grayton (the Spider Widow) learns that the Raven is really private detective Tony Grey when he reveals his identity to her and her uncle, attorney John B. Keller, after the Spider Widow and the Raven capture a murderer. [The Spider Widow, Feature Comics #67 (April, 1943)] | ||
- | * February 20: The Jester' | ||
- | * February 20: The Human Bomb encounters three midgets calling themselves Hirohito, Mussolini, and Hitler, respectively, | ||
- | * February 20: Plastic Man goes on his first assignment for the FBI, battling a scientist who has discovered a way to imbue plants with animal characteristics and vice versa. Plastic Man battles Hugo, a monster who is half-man, half-tree. ["The Forest of Fear," Police Comics #19 (May, 1943)] | ||
- | * February 20: Midnight meets a private detective called [[Sniffer Snoop]], who has a pygmy-sized polar bear named [[Hotfoot]] as a sidekick and competes with Midnight for the title of greatest detective of all time before settling in as another of Midnight' | ||
- | |||
- | === March, 1943 === | ||
- | |||
- | * While protecting the secret of camouflage invisibility, | ||
- | * Roy Lincoln (the Human Bomb) is forced to accompany his fiancee Jean Caldwell and her wealthy Aunt Sofie when Sofie buys the Mallow House, a house that has been abandoned for 20 years and which Sofie thinks is haunted. Instead, the so-called ghost is really Sofie' | ||
- | * March 22: The Spider encounters the Fly, a killer in a purple fly costume, after he murders wealthy theater-owner Ted Tembroke. The Spider soon learns that he is really John Duke, Tembroke' | ||
- | |||
- | === April, 1943 === | ||
- | |||
- | * The Marksman attempts to kill Adolf Hitler, but Hitler escapes death once more. [Smash Comics #43] | ||
- | * The radio station that Dave Clark (Midnight) works for is now called Station XABC as of this story. ["The Murder Mask," Smash Comics #43 (June, 1943)] | ||
- | * Rookie patrolman Chuck Lane meets con artist Oscar Oople once more, this time armed with truth pills, one of which he uses on Chuck, who confesses that he is the Jester, even showing his costume beneath his uniform to Inspector Hustace Mulligan. But Mulligan doubts the Jester' | ||
- | * Phantom Lady (Sandra Knight) saves her father Senator Henry Knight from being killed by a time-bomb set beneath his house by criminals. //Note: This is the first of three murder attempts on Senator Knight or his daughter over two months.// [" | ||
- | * In a tunnel, the Spider Widow encounters a strange man with a lion-like head called the Tiglon Man, along with several escaped lunatics in possession of old Indian relics. She barely escapes with her life, leaving the Tiglon Man and the lunatics to die. ["The Spider Widow Meets the Tiglon Man," Feature Comics #68 (June, 1943)] | ||
- | * April 25: During an Easter egg hunt at the Knight estate, Sandra Knight and Don Borden uncover a plot by a man dressed as the Easter Bunny to kill Senator Henry Knight with explosives in the shape of golden eggs. Phantom Lady unmasks the Easter Bunny as Killer Dan, a criminal whom Knight sentenced to prison ten years ago when he was a judge. //Note: Phantom Lady wears a black domino mask in this story. This is the second of three murder attempts on Senator Knight or his daughter over two months.// [" | ||
- | |||
- | === May, 1943 === | ||
- | |||
- | * The Marksman begins a series of cases outside of Europe, mostly fighting the Japanese, until 1945. [Smash Comics #44] | ||
- | * Con artist Oscar Oople and kleptomaniac Terwilliger J. Thump meet and, realizing they have a common enemy in Police Inspector Hustace Mulligan, trick Mulligan into taking sleeping pills. After he falls asleep they wheel Mulligan into an old maids' home, where he is smothered with attention. The Jester tries to turn the tables on Oople and Thump, but they escape along with Mulligan, leaving the Jester behind. [The Jester, Smash Comics #44 (July, 1943)] | ||
- | * Sandra Knight (Phantom Lady) is nearly murdered by two assassins working for a gang boss who wants to get even with her father Senator Henry Knight for his racket-busting. //Note: This is the third of three murder attempts on Senator Knight or his daughter over two months.// [Phantom Lady, Police Comics #19 (May, 1943)] | ||
- | |||
- | === June, 1943 === | ||
- | |||
- | * When Roy Lincoln (the Human Bomb), **[[Curley McGurk|Montague T. " | ||
- | * Receiving a note from the Raven that Senator Henry Knight is being held prisoner, Phantom Lady rushes to the docks, where she fights a gang and frees both the Raven (who was captured shortly before) and Senator Knight. [Phantom Lady, Police Comics #20 (July, 1943)] | ||
- | * Red McGraw has his last case as **the Dragon**. [Doll Man #6] | ||
- | * Tony Grey (the Raven) introduces Sandra Knight (Phantom Lady) to Dianne Grayton (the Spider Widow), in order to capture the gang responsible for the assassination attempts on Sandra and her father, Senator Henry Knight. But after the Spider Widow and Phantom Lady track down the gang leader and fight the gang with the Raven' | ||
- | * The gang responsible for trying to assassinate Senator Henry Knight lures Phantom Lady, the Spider Widow, and the Raven into a trap by sending a note to Phantom Lady purportedly from the Spider Widow challenging her to a duel, while the Spider Widow receives a similar note. Spying on the two as they duel, the gangsters recognize them without their masks before they start shooting at them, striking the Raven with a bullet in the back. Phantom Lady and the Spider Widow capture the killers and hand them over to the police, while the Raven is hospitalized for a few weeks. [" | ||
- | * June 18: In Tom Hallaway' | ||
- | |||
- | === July, 1943 === | ||
- | |||
- | * In his last case on Earth-X, the Jester investigates the murder of mystery writer Mischa Macbeth, author of the " | ||
- | * While talking on the phone with Sandra Knight (Phantom Lady), Dianne Grayton (the Spider Widow) is kidnapped by a gang and taken to the remote Lookout Hotel. There Dianne finds that the Raven has supposedly joined the gang responsible for assassination attempts on Sandra and her father, Senator Henry Knight. The big boss, Larkins, arrives soon after disguised as Senator Knight, since he intends to replace him for a few days in the U.S. Senate. Phantom Lady arrives to rescue the Spider Widow but ends up needing a rescue by the Raven. On the run from the gang, the trio manage to capture Larkins, but he is accidentally shot by his own gang when they fire on the getaway car. ["The Spider Widow with the Raven and Phantom Lady," Feature Comics #70 (August, 1943)] | ||
- | * The Raven attempts to end the feud between the Spider Widow and Phantom Lady by forcing them to work together, only to put all their lives in danger when gangsters try to kill them. Working together, they defeat the gang, and the two heroines become friends at last. [" | ||
- | * Saying goodbye to the Spider Widow and the Raven, Phantom Lady learns that her father Senator Henry Knight is involved in tests of a super-submarine, | ||
- | * The members of **the Kid Patrol** retire, possibly to join the military. [National Comics #35] | ||
- | * July 9-10: Allied forces invade Sicily and Italy. //Note: In the timeline of Earth-X, this is the only front the Allied forces are able to make in Western Europe, since the D-Day invasion of Normandy is a disaster. The Allies have some success and eventually occupy Italy and strike through the Balkans. The fighting continues in Eastern Europe for some years until the end of the war in Europe.// | ||
- | * July 17: In their last published case together, **the Bombardiers** rescue an escaped American POW from Japanese soldiers. //Note: After this story, the Human Bomb returns to crime-fighting with Hustace Throckmorton as his sidekick in Washington, D.C.// [The Human Bomb and the Bombardiers, | ||
- | |||
- | === August, 1943 === | ||
- | |||
- | * In his last solo case, **the Black Condor** fights disguised Nazi spies led by Washington correspondent Joe Logan, who try to quash an appropriation bill for new transport planes, and he is assisted by a newly elected, idealistic young senator from the Corn Belt named Elmer Briggs, who keeps the bill alive by filibustering until the Black Condor exposes the spies. [" | ||
- | * In her last solo case, **Phantom Lady** (Sandra Knight) fights a group of lunatics who have escaped from the asylum and taken over her home after tying up the servants. [Phantom Lady, Police Comics #23 (October, 1943)] | ||
- | * August 15: In her last solo case, **the Spider Widow** saves a friend named Alice from being killed by her husband Emory, who was bewitched by headhunters during a trip to South America into having an uncontrollable desire to collect human heads during each full moon. [The Spider Widow, Feature Comics #72 (October, 1943)] | ||
- | |||
- | === September, 1943 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Uncle Sam and Buddy travel to Occupied Europe to assist their friend the Vagabond, a wandering guerilla leader in the Resistance whose real name is unknown. [National Comics #37] | ||
- | * Plastic Man is framed when Dr. Phineas T. Gleason, working for gangster Pinky Flowers, creates a robotic Plastic Man out of reconstituted rubber tires to commit robberies. Woozy Winks, seeking to prove Plastic Man's innocence, is captured and sent through the Plastic Man-making machine, which doesn' | ||
- | * Hustace Throckmorton' | ||
- | * September 14: Midnight battles supposed invaders from Mars, who are really crooks working for Prof. Drizzpan and equipped with his inventions, who steal blueprints of inventions for the lazy scientist. [" | ||
- | |||
- | === October, 1943 === | ||
- | |||
- | * [[Beezy Bumbles]] begins adventures. [Crack Comics #32] | ||
- | * October 12-14: After Manhunter captures his gang, Rocks Hannigan organizes a national underworld convention in Beach City in order to lure Manhunter there to kill him. Instead, Manhunter and his dog Thor end up capturing about 50 gangsters from all over the country. [Manhunter, Police Comics #25 (December, 1943)] | ||
- | |||
- | === November, 1943 === | ||
- | |||
- | * **Wonder Boy**' | ||
- | * The Blackhawks meet Wang the Tiger, a Chinese freedom fighter against the Japanese Army whose secret identity is Mandarin Wang, a collaborator with the Japanese. //Note: This story concept is later reused as the 1964 origin story of Chop-Chop in Blackhawk #203, which portrays Liu Huang (Chop-Chop), | ||
- | * The Human Bomb and Hustace Throckmorton encounters a mad scientist called Patch-Eye, who is a genius in robotics and managed to create a robot named Symphrosiba, | ||
- | * November 12-13: After Chief Branner discovers that Plastic Man is really the wanted criminal Eel O' | ||
- | |||
- | ==== 1944 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | === January, 1944 === | ||
- | |||
- | * U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt has a fatal heart attack, causing the governmental balance of power to go the wrong way when Vice President Henry Wallace succeeds him as president. President Wallace pushes for an Allied invasion of Normandy for June even though intelligence reports that the German defenses are much too strong for such an invasion. | ||
- | * After Manhunter and Thor capture wanted criminal Red Tolan, a judge places Tolan' | ||
- | |||
- | === February, 1944 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Midnight and his assistants (Doc Wackey, Gabby, Sniffer Snoop, and Hotfoot) use Doc's time pills (which enable both time travel and local language translation) to travel back in time from 1944 to ancient Rome in 64 A.D. during the reign of Nero. There they are captured and brought to Nero himself. Thanks to his knowledge of ancient history, Midnight is honored as a prophet by Nero. But when Midnight saves his friends from being killed in the Circus Maximus, they inadvertently cause the Great Fire of Rome before returning to their own time. [Midnight, Smash Comics #52 (April, 1944)] | ||
- | * Roy Lincoln and Hustace Throckmorton have opened up the Lincoln-Throckmorton Laboratory by this time under the business name of Lincoln-Throckmorton Laboratories, | ||
- | * After Dr. Arthur Sims invents a serum allowing a brain to remain alive after the body's death, two bodyguards drag gangster Tony Conroy into his laboratory to save his life, but leave him there after Sims confirms he's dead. Manhunter and Thor track down and capture the bodyguards for the police, but can't find Conroy. Dr. Sims decides to remove Conroy' | ||
- | |||
- | === March, 1944 === | ||
- | |||
- | * The adventures of Carnie Callahan, nicknamed the [[Barker]] (a carnival barker) begin. [National Comics #42] | ||
- | * Sometime after this point, Officer Dan Richards (Manhunter) and his girlfriend Kit Kelly presumably break off their relationship, | ||
- | * March 9-11: Dave Clark (Midnight) is framed for murder by a female gang-lord named Darla, who wants Clark to reveal Midnight' | ||
- | |||
- | === June, 1944 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Working from a plan by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Gen. Deering places six men together as a Europe-focused paramilitary group called the [[Black Hawks]], inspired by the original Blackhawks, who have moved their operations to the Pacific Theater of War by this time. [[Bart Hawk]], an American Indian descended from Chief Black Hawk, becomes the field team leader, and other members include his friend [[Weng " | ||
- | * June 6: The Allies make an attempt to invade Normandy, but the D-Day invasion proves a disaster, since the German defenses are deemed too secure. Thousands of Allied soldiers die or are captured in the doomed invasion. The Allies give up on Normandy as an invasion spot and redouble their efforts fighting the Germans in Italy and the Balkans. | ||
- | |||
- | === July, 1944 === | ||
- | |||
- | * After last case, Brian O' | ||
- | * July 6: Manhunter' | ||
- | |||
- | === August, 1944 === | ||
- | |||
- | * August 4: Manhunter' | ||
- | |||
- | === September, 1944 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Rusty Ryan and the Boyville Brigadiers, fighting in the Pacific, land on an island populated by dinosaurs. There, they kill a young Tyrannosaurus Rex and its adult mother. [Feature Comics #83] | ||
- | * Hustace Throckmorton, | ||
- | |||
- | === October, 1944 === | ||
- | |||
- | * **Merlin the Magician** disappears. [National Comics #45] | ||
- | * Stormy Foster retires as **the Great Defender**. [Hit Comics #34] | ||
- | * **Wonder Boy** disappears once again. [Bomber Comics #4] | ||
- | |||
- | === November, 1944 === | ||
- | |||
- | * President Henry Wallace, very unpopular because of the D-Day disaster, barely wins the election against Thomas E. Dewey of the Republican Party. | ||
- | * November 29-December 1: Wily criminal lawyer Arno Roxx frames Manhunter for the murder of banker Larkin, and Manhunter subjects himself to being arrested, though he convinces the police not to unmask him until the next day. That night Manhunter escapes from jail and forces Roxx to confess to murdering Larkin himself while dressed up as Manhunter. [Manhunter, Police Comics #38 (January, 1945)] | ||
- | |||
- | === December, 1944 === | ||
- | |||
- | * **G-2 the Unknown** retires. [National Comics #27] | ||
- | |||
- | ==== 1945 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | === Unspecified month in 1945 === | ||
- | |||
- | * The Dragon (Red McGraw) is killed in battle while fighting the Japanese in Occupied China. He leaves behind a wife and son in the United States. ["The Marksman: Unusual Suspects" | ||
- | * The White School on the multi-dimensional island of Tourmaline is attacked and bombed by a group of former students turned Nazi mystics from Earth-X, members of the Thule Society who seek to use the Clock Tower to conquer parallel universes and other dimensions. To defend itself, the island disappears into the mystical dimension of Darkworld, causing the Nazi mystics to drown in the ocean. Most of the instructors and students are saved, each returning to his or her world of origin and given partial amnesia about the island and the school. [" | ||
- | |||
- | === January, 1945 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Allied Forces continue to push through Italy and into the Balkans, the only war front left in Europe. The German Army is still divided, fighting the Allies in Italy and the Balkans in the west and the Russians in the east. | ||
- | * Elderly billionaire J. Pilbeam Highbinder visits the Lincoln-Throckmorton Laboratory seeking a cure for his poor health, but when crooks burst in and kidnap him, Highbinder accidentally ingests a small amount of the 27QRX super-explosive that gave Roy Lincoln (the Human Bomb) and Hustace Throckmorton their explosive powers. When the Human Bomb and Throckmorton rescue him, Highbinder helps them fight off the kidnappers with great strength and unbound energy, though he has no explosive powers. [The Human Bomb, Police Comics #40 (March, 1945)] | ||
- | |||
- | === February, 1945 === | ||
- | |||
- | * **The Marksman' | ||
- | * **Chic Carter' | ||
- | |||
- | === March, 1945 === | ||
- | |||
- | * March 28: While escorting a crook to his trial, Officer Dan Richards is one of the few survivors of the train derailment of the Lightning Express, and the only one to survive completely unscathed. Investigating as Manhunter, he discovers that United Central Railroad Lines manager Hobbs is responsible for the disaster, which he caused in order to cover up his theft of $500,000 from the railroad company by killing the crook he'd hired to do the job. [Manhunter, Police Comics #42 (May, 1945)] | ||
- | |||
- | === April, 1945 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Mallory Drake becomes mystery-man **[[the Whistler]]** and begins adventures. [National Comics #48] | ||
- | |||
- | === May, 1945 === | ||
- | |||
- | * May 8: After four years of battling the German Army, the Soviet Union unconditionally surrenders to Nazi Germany. Now that Germany has one less front to worry about, it concentrates its forces to fight the Allied armies in the Balkans. | ||
- | * May 27: The Human Bomb and Hustace Throckmorton investigate reports of a sea serpent in the coastal resort town of Bumboat Beach, only to discover that the sea serpent is an advanced robot remotely controlled by two crooked businessmen trying to take over the resort. The Human Bomb disables the controls for the robotic sea serpent and captures the crooks. [The Human Bomb, Police Comics #44 (July, 1945)] | ||
- | |||
- | === July, 1945 === | ||
- | |||
- | * The Human Bomb and Hustace Throckmorton rescue Jim Gordon, a reformed thief recently released from prison, from crooks seeking to use his safe-cracking talents for their jobs, saving Gordon' | ||
- | |||
- | === August, 1945 === | ||
- | |||
- | * August 23: Prof. Padsel, Doc Wackey' | ||
- | |||
- | === October, 1945 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Midnight battles a sultry villainess called the Lorelei. [" | ||
- | |||
- | === November, 1945 === | ||
- | |||
- | * During civic elections in Empire City (which may be New York City), Mayor Lowry campaigns as the man who crushed crime, backed by Big John Rafferty, who controls crime in the city and declares an armistice until after the elections. Suspecting something, Patrolman Dan Richards stages a fake crime and poses as a crook in order to learn the mayor' | ||
- | |||
- | === December, 1945 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Imperial Japan wins World War II in the Pacific with the United States' | ||
- | * The adventures of a beautiful and seductive dame named [[Torchy Todd]] begin. [Doll Man #8] | ||
- | * Hack O'Hara again battles the Butcher. [Crack Comics #41] | ||
- | * The radio station that Dave Clark (Midnight) works for is now called Station WXBZ as of this story. [Midnight, Smash Comics #63 (February, 1946)] | ||
- | |||
- | ==== 1946 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | === February, 1946 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Celebrating its victory in the Pacific, Imperial Japan lays down its arms in triumph. Nazi Germany takes this opportunity to turn on Imperial Japan, forcing the Japanese Empire to bend to the Third Reich' | ||
- | * Meanwhile, the United States, having been defeated in the Pacific, is forced to withdraw from Hawaii and all territory west of Hawaii. After withdrawing all U.S. troops and most civilians, U.S. President Wallace leaves an atomic bomb in Pearl Harbor on Oahu, destroying the naval base there and crippling the Japanese Navy after it had begun to use it. Numerous uprisings against the Germans in occupied territory begin, since the Allies are convinced that the atomic bomb will now win the war in the eleventh hour. | ||
- | * Adolf Hitler, seeing the use of the atomic bomb as a threat to German supremacy, quickly makes further demands on Imperial Japan. When Japan refuses as expected, Germany drops two atomic bombs on Japan. One in Hiroshima and the other in Nagasaki. Japan surrenders days later, and the Third Reich places a puppet government in charge of the Empire of Japan. | ||
- | * The Third Reich' | ||
- | * The Blackhawks celebrate the weakening of both Imperial Japan and the Third Reich, which results in the dissolution of Japan' | ||
- | |||
- | === March, 1946 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Realizing that World War II could only escalate and result in worldwide destruction for all, now that both the Axis and the Allies possess the atomic bomb, President Dewey negotiates an armistice between the Allies and Nazi Germany. Most of Europe remains within the empire of the Third Reich, while Italy, much of the Balkans, and half of the Mediterranean remain under Allied protection. A cold war between the Allies and the Axis sets in for more than a decade. | ||
- | * The Blackhawks meet [[Lady Fear]], lady adventuress in the Far East. [Modern Comics #49] | ||
- | * Hack O'Hara versus the Tigress (not any of the Earth-2 versions). [Crack Comics #42] | ||
- | * Manhunter' | ||
- | |||
- | === May, 1946 === | ||
- | |||
- | * May 16: After the Human Bomb helps the police smash a den of crime, a scrawny, bespectacled, | ||
- | |||
- | === June, 1946 === | ||
- | |||
- | * **The Death Patrol** has its last adventure. [Modern Comics #52] | ||
- | |||
- | === July, 1946 === | ||
- | |||
- | * In his last solo case as **the Human Bomb**, Roy Lincoln and Hustace Throckmorton protect Formez Grocery from crooks. //Note: Sometime after this story, the partnership of the Human Bomb and Throckmorton ends, and the Human Bomb begins working with the Freedom Fighters on a more regular basis.// [The Human Bomb, Police Comics #58 (September, 1946)] | ||
- | |||
- | === December, 1946 === | ||
- | |||
- | * The radio station that Dave Clark (Midnight) works for is now called Station XYZ as of this story. [" | ||
- | |||
- | ==== 1947 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | === Unspecified month in 1947 === | ||
- | |||
- | * The Freedom Fighters are battling German soldiers in Europe when the criminal scientist Dr. Gwythyr Doome and his partners arrive from 1943 on Earth-2 in a time craft, then subdue and kidnap the heroes to use against the All-Star Squadron on Earth-2 in 1943. //Note: The Freedom Fighters presumably went on several missions in Europe and the Pacific as a strike force against the Axis, coordinating their efforts with the Allied command. They were probably parachuted in to their locations and flown out once again after their missions were done.// [DC Universe: The Time-Space Gambit, Book 1] | ||
- | |||
- | === January, 1947 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Manhunter' | ||
- | |||
- | === May, 1947 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Manhunter' | ||
- | |||
- | === July, 1947 === | ||
- | |||
- | * **Eric Vale' | ||
- | |||
- | === September, 1947 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Manhunter is shot in the shoulder. ["The Autographed Slug," Police Comics #72 (November, 1947)] | ||
- | |||
- | === October, 1947 === | ||
- | |||
- | * October 29-30: Shortly before the civic elections, Empire City Mayor John Kyle is murdered, followed by District Attorney Al Baker and City Treasurer Smith, each one poisoned by a cyanide-filled doll sent by Boss Heeley. Manhunter saves Police Chief Ladd from being killed in the same way. Heeley and his henchman are killed when they get into a car accident on their way to deliver more dolls to civic leaders in order to clear the way for their own candidates. //Note: Empire City, not named as such since the earliest Manhunter stories, may simply be a nickname for New York City. The police chief is given the name of " | ||
- | |||
- | ==== 1948 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | === Unspecified month in 1948 === | ||
- | |||
- | * The multi-dimensional island of Tourmaline emerges into the physical realm from the Darkworld, appearing as a seemingly new island in the South Pacific simultaneously on Earth-1, Earth-2, Earth-S, Earth-X, and Earth-4. Gareth Gallowglass, | ||
- | |||
- | === February, 1948 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Doc Wackey, mistaken for King Ragoz, consort of Queen Menna of the matriarchal nation of Femalia, is kidnapped and brought to Femalia. Learning of the nation' | ||
- | * February 25: Manhunter is shot, the bullet grazing his head. [Manhunter, Police Comics #77 (April, 1948)] | ||
- | |||
- | === May, 1948 === | ||
- | |||
- | * " | ||
- | |||
- | === August, 1948 === | ||
- | |||
- | * When Prof. Hangnail invents a rocket ship to fly to Mars, Midnight' | ||
- | |||
- | === November, 1948 === | ||
- | |||
- | * November 15-17: Manhunter and Thor save the lives of Governor Woodley and a crowd of hundreds at a dog racing benefit, when a gang of thieves use a bomb as a distraction for a robbery. Manhunter apprehends the suspect, Lucky, after Thor identifies him. Governor Woodley later presents Thor with a special award for bravery. [" | ||
- | |||
- | ==== 1949 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | === Unspecified month in 1949 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Richard Stanton (Madam Fatal) finally locates his daughter and heir to his fortune, kidnapped 18 years earlier as an infant by John Carver. Now fifty years old, Stanton retires from crime-fighting as Madam Fatal. ["The Marksman: Unusual Suspects" | ||
- | |||
- | === January, 1949 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Doc Wackey invents an invisibility serum that causes anyone who swallows it to become invisible for a few hours, though it doesn' | ||
- | |||
- | === March, 1949 === | ||
- | |||
- | * **" | ||
- | * Doc Wackey invents an anti-gravity vibrator that cancels gravity, allowing one to float in the air, but Sniffer Snoop loses it in a river. ["What Goes Up," Smash Comics #82 (April, 1949)] | ||
- | |||
- | === April, 1949 === | ||
- | |||
- | * **Rusty Ryan** has his last known adventure. [Feature Comics #135] | ||
- | |||
- | === May, 1949 === | ||
- | |||
- | * **Batch Bachelor** begins adventures. [Crack Comics #61] | ||
- | |||
- | === June, 1949 === | ||
- | |||
- | * **Quicksilver** disappears after his last case for several years when his full super-speed returns, causing him to accidentally travel through time to the 1830s where he is known as Windrunner, until he manages to travel through time again to the 1890s where he is known as Whip Whirlwind, and then finally reaches 1986, where he is known under his old stage name, Max Mercury. [National Comics #73] | ||
- | * June 10: An old Vaudeville impersonator called Mimic the Great, now broke and unable to get a new job in show business, uses his skills in disguise to impersonate Manhunter, framing him for a robbery. Thanks to Thor recognizing the false Manhunter as a fake, the real Manhunter' | ||
- | |||
- | === July, 1949 === | ||
- | |||
- | * **Molly the model' | ||
- | * **Batch Bachelor' | ||
- | * **Hack O' | ||
- | * **Beezy Bumble' | ||
- | |||
- | === August, 1949 === | ||
- | |||
- | * During **Midnight' | ||
- | * **Black X** retires. [Smash Comics #85] | ||
- | * < | ||
- | |||
- | === September, 1949 === | ||
- | |||
- | * [[Stuntman Stetson]] begins adventures. [Feature Comics #140] | ||
- | |||
- | === October, 1949 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Policewoman **Sally O' | ||
- | * The adventures of **the Barker** end. [Barker #15] | ||
- | * A crook called Makeup impersonates and frames Manhunter for a bank robbery committed by his gang. Once again Thor clears Manhunter' | ||
- | |||
- | ==== 1950 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | === Unspecified month in 1950 === | ||
- | |||
- | * < | ||
- | |||
- | === February, 1950 === | ||
- | |||
- | * **Stuntman Stetson** retires. [Feature Comics #144] | ||
- | * The notorious criminal Killer Jordan frames Manhunter for the murder of Frankie Green, but Manhunter tracks Jordan down and clears his name. ["On a Charge of Murder," | ||
- | |||
- | === June, 1950 === | ||
- | |||
- | * **Lady Luck** retires. [Lady Luck #90] | ||
- | * In his last case, **Manhunter** and his dog **Thor** battle and capture Canis, a criminal biologist who has given himself canine abilities such as extrasensory perception, night-vision, | ||
- | |||
- | === July, 1950 === | ||
- | |||
- | * **Torchy Todd' | ||
- | |||
- | ==== 1951 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | === Unspecified month in 1951 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Margo the Magician battles ghostly pirates in San Francisco. Tracing their origin, Margo reaches the multi-dimensional Grim Island and meets Doctor Occult of Earth-2, Doctor Mist of Earth-1, Captain Marvel of Earth-S, and Yarko the Great of Earth-4. Together, the mystical heroes of five Earths confront Gareth to stop his island from being a menace to each of their worlds as a gateway to Hell. After a short battle commences, a time-traveling Abby Cable of Earth-1 from 1987 convinces Gareth to allow the other mystics to help him ward off the forces of Hell by founding a new school of magic called the Grimoire Academy to defend five Earths from a demonic invasion. Margo the Magician becomes one of the school' | ||
- | |||
- | === February, 1951 === | ||
- | |||
- | * South Korea, backed by the Nazi puppet government of Japan, invades North Korea, which is backed by the Allies, and the Korean War begins. The Blackhawks pledge to fight for North Korea. //Note: This is the very first Quality Comics story mentioning the Korean War, although Korea remains unnamed in the story. The Korean War exists on Earth-X because of this story and depictions of the Korean War in G.I. Combat.// [Blackhawk #39] | ||
- | |||
- | === July, 1951 === | ||
- | |||
- | * [[Pete " | ||
- | |||
- | === October, 1951 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Martha Roberts, fiancée of Darrel Dane (Doll Man) becomes mystery woman **[[Doll Girl]]**, teaming up with him as the Doll Team. [Doll Man #37] | ||
- | |||
- | ==== 1952 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | === January, 1952 === | ||
- | |||
- | * The Grimoire Academy of Applied Learning on the multi-dimensional Grimoire Island opens its doors to students from Earth-X, Earth-1, Earth-2, Earth-S, and Earth-4. This school is built and founded by the 16-year-old prodigy Gareth Gallowglass of Earth-1, Margo the Magician of Earth-X, Doctor Mist of Earth-1, Doctor Occult of Earth-2, Yarko the Great of Earth-4, and Shazam of Earth-S, who each contribute their knowledge and experience to the curriculum. [" | ||
- | |||
- | === August, 1952 === | ||
- | |||
- | * The First Lunar Expedition occurs when the Spirit agrees to go on a voyage to the Moon in a rocket ship invented by Prof. Hartley Skol, chairman of the Interplanetary Flight Commission. Since the experimental ship is largely manned by convicts receiving pardons for their crimes in exchange for assisting with the dangerous voyage, the Spirit is recruited to head the crew and keep them in line. On the Moon, the men discover a book that indicates a South American dictator named Francisco Rivera escaped to the Moon ten years earlier when his overthrow was imminent. [The Outer Space Spirit] | ||
- | |||
- | === September, 1952 === | ||
- | |||
- | * The First Lunar Expedition led by the Spirit returns to Earth after more than five weeks in space and on the Moon. Dutch Birch, a crewman, decides to stay behind on the Moon and is equipped with enough supplies to keep him alive for the next two months. The rocket ship is drawn back to Earth by the Central Rocket Station in Central City. The rocket ship has a close encounter with a UFO on the way back. [The Outer Space Spirit] | ||
- | |||
- | ==== 1953 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | === August, 1953 === | ||
- | |||
- | * **Doll Man** and **Doll Girl** have their last solo case. [Doll Man #47] | ||
- | |||
- | === December, 1953 === | ||
- | |||
- | * The Korean War ends with a ceasefire and an armistice signed by Japan-backed South Korea. //Note: This is the last known Quality Comics issue depicting the Korean War as being fought in the present, indicating that this war on Earth-X lasted until this time.// [G.I. Combat #13] | ||
- | |||
- | ==== 1954 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | * Imperial Japan (a puppet government of the Third Reich), begins flexing its military might to recapture lost territory in China and Indochina. The United States becomes involved in the Indochina Wars, fighting Japanese and Japanese-backed troops in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. //Note: This is speculation based on the numerous wars fought in Indochina as depicted in G.I. Combat from this issue on, although on Earth-X the enemy is Imperial Japan, not the Communists.// | ||
- | |||
- | === December, 1954 === | ||
- | |||
- | * In his last solo case, **Plastic Man** battles the Wizard. //Note: Although the Plastic Man series continues until #64, all issues from next issue on contain reprints only.// [Plastic Man #52] | ||
- | |||
- | ==== 1956 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | === October, 1956 === | ||
- | |||
- | * **The Blackhawks** go into semi-retirement as Blackhawk marries and has a son. [Blackhawk #107] | ||
- | * **T-Man' | ||
- | * The Indochina Wars end with victory for Imperial Japan (a puppet government of the Third Reich) over Allied forces. //Note: This is speculation based on the last issue of G.I. Combat published by Quality Comics.// [G.I. Combat #43] | ||
- | |||
- | ==== 1957 ==== | ||
- | |||
- | * After a 10-year cold war between the Allies and the Axis, Nazi Germany uses a faked English attack on a German ocean liner to invade England, where it installs its own puppet government led by Oswald Mosely. Queen Elizabeth II and much of the Royal Family is rescued and brought to safety in Canada. Edward VIII, who abdicated in 1936, is invited back to England to assume the throne as king. Many underground resistance groups throughout the British Isles are formed and fight back against the Occupation for the next decade. | ||
- | |||
- | === June, 1957 === | ||
- | |||
- | * Will Prohaska Hawk, son of Blackhawk (Janos Prohaska) and Bart Hawk's sister, is born. | ||
- | |||
- | **Continue to [[Timeline of Earth-X (1960s to the future)]]** | ||
- | |||
- | **Timeline of Earth-X:** [[Timeline of Earth-X (prehistory to 1950s)|prehistory to 1950s]] | [[Timeline of Earth-X (1960s to the future)|1960s to the future]] |