dr_hermes (dr_hermes) wrote in scans_daily, @ 2009-03-14 23:12:00 |
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Entry tags: | era: golden age |
Why use a good name only once? (and today's mystery photo)
This is Alex Schomburg's cover for MYSTIC COMICS# 6, October 1940. The Destroyer was fairly successful for a Timely character (their big three of the Human Torch, Captain America and Sub-Mariner overshadowed any other heroes in sheer exposure). The Destroyer was American war correspondent Keen Barlowe, who had been given a variation of a super-soldier serum and went on to fight as a saboteur in Germany itself. The striped pants are debatable as a fashion statement but the full-face mask is a nice eerie touch. Roy Thomas re-introduced him in the 1970s series THE INVADERS and I think he's been revised and tweaked any number of times since then. But why use a good name once when you can hitch it up to the wagon a few more times? In addition to this character, Marvel has also had a Destroyer who was an obscure mediocre villain from an early Human Torch story in STRANGE TALES, an animate suit of super-powered armor created by Odin, a revenant monomaniac created by Jim Starlin to harass Thanos (and thus being a sort of lesser-Orion to the lesser-Darkseid). But if you ask your average fan of adventure stories about the Destroyer, you are most likely to get a reference to the very good series of paperback novels started by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir back in 1963 and still being published. Oh, and someone might mention the KISS album too, you never know.
This author wrote the stories of a famous character who is not originally from comics but who has been published by a half-dozen comics companies.