Silver Streak was a taxi driver was
hypnotized by a swami who enjoyed building race cars. The swami's best race
car, the Silver Streak, seemed to be targeted by someone or something, for
every time someone drove it, they were attacked and killed by a giant insect.
The taxi driver was attacked and killed, but the swami brought him back to life
and put him behind the wheel of the Silver Streak to find the bad guy. Then he
became a costumed hero with a "secret fluid" in his blood which
allowed him to defy gravity. One peculiar trait - Silver Streak's powers can be
transferred to others through blood transfusions. That is how both his
sidekick, Meteor/Mercury, and his pet falcon, Whiz, received their powers. He
battled the likes of the Green Dragon and many other foes during his superhero
career. Silver Streak wore special "suction shoes", which allowed him
to reach greater speeds as well as the ability to run up walls. He was based in
New York city.
Daredevil (Bart Hill) as a child witness his
parents' brutal murder. The murderer also branded Bart with a hot iron, leaving
a boomerang-shaped scar on the left side of his chest. This traumatic
experience left the boy mute. He trained his entire life in the art of the
boomerang, eventually becoming a master boomerang marksman. He then developed a
costume and took to the streets as the vigilante crime-fighter Daredevil.
Prop Bowers is a pilot-for-hire
whose jobs take him around the United States. Unfortunately, wherever he goes,
he finds trouble! Whether from an orange magnate who attempts to use Prop’s
plane to poison a neighbor, or from mobsters who want to use his sky-writing to
rig baseball games. Bowers is assisted by his resourceful secretary and
girlfriend, Delia.
Magician from Bagdad
(Nadir Shan)
is the young King of Bagdad, is the victim of a plot by his advisor, a
sorcerer. But Nadir Shan escapes and finds a “glowing olden jug” which contains
a genie. Nadir Shan lets the genie go in exchange for magical powers. The
genie, having previously sworn to kill the next person who used him, tries to
send Shan into a different time and place. Shan and the genie battle, and the
genie wins, throwing Shan into the future of 1990. The traitorous sorcerer
sends elementals after Shan, and the elementals go on a rampage before Shan finally
defeats them. Shan eventually returns to Bagdad and avenges himself on his
traitorous advisor.
Mad Hatter (Grant
Richmond)
was a little-respected junior partner at the law firm of Fuddy and Bustle who
felt that the legal system made as much sense as the work of Lewis Carroll. So
by night, he put on a costume and became the Mad Hatter. He can shine his top
hat insignia against walls to strike fear into criminals, and he also speaks in
rhyme. The Mad Hatter has no powers but is good with his fists.
Black Venus (Mary
Roche)
was originally an exotic dancer at a Paris night club. She was known as
"Black Venus" because of her beauty and the black curve-hugging
bodysuit. She was engaged to Jean Cartier, a Parisian lawyer. Unfortunately for
Jean, her dancing captured the attention of Yamato, an attache to the Japanese
embassy in Paris. Upon learning of Jean's existence, he arranged to have him
assassinated. When Mary discovered what happened she swore vengeance on Yomata
and the Japanese people in general. Her quest for vengeance led her to study
flying. Under circumstances that weren't entirely clear, Mary wound up becoming
a hostess at a serviceman's canteen on an American-held South Pacific island
off the coast of Australia. She put her flying skills to use by masquerading as
Black Venus, a black-suited aviatrix who flew a black customized Lockheed P-38
long-range interceptor. By that point, Mary got a new boyfriend - Lt. Bill
Evans, a pilot who was stationed at the base where she worked. As Black Venus,
Mary fought against Japanese pilots with ruthless proficiency. In fact, she was
so proficient that the Imperial government issued a large reward for her
capture. In Contact Comics #4, she learned that Yamato (who, by that point,
rose through the ranks of the Japanese military to become a colonel) was
stationed at a Japanese base nearby, she deliberately got herself captured so
that she may get close enough to get revenge. Realizing that Yamato still had
feelings for her, she offered to have dinner with him. With no weapons at hand,
she improvised by grinding the glass in her goggles into shards and tossing
them into his drink - a painful, but, in Mary's view, perfectly justified
death. Getting her revenge did not slow her down - if anything, it made her
even more determined to keep fighting as the Black Venus.
Pilot Brad Hendricks wore the costume of
the Ghost to fight against the Germans in occupied Europe. He also waged an
ongoing war against the Claw, nearly killing the villain on at least one
occasion. Ultimately, the Claw still managed to survive. In his final
appearance, he was captured by The Claw who had allied with Queen Cobra,
tortured and imprisoned in her dungeon. As his story was discontinued, his fate
remains unknown. The Ghost had no powers, but he did have the high-tech Ghost
Plane (possibly a modified Bell P-59 Airacomet) , which was armed with machine
guns. In addition to being a skilled pilot, the Ghost was an exceptional and
fearless athlete and acrobat, displaying feats of strength that would otherwise
kill an ordinary man. He sometimes carried grenades.
Samson is a direct descendant
of the biblical Samson. Like his ancestor, Samson has immense strength and
endurance but loses his powers if his hair is cut. However, the fact that his
hair grew back much faster than normal made up for that weakness. Samson did
not manifest that ability until he reached college age. That's when his mother
revealed his ancestry. Shortly after graduating from college, his college friend,
Professor Dunn showed him a new invention, the "iconoscope", which
allowed the viewer to watch remote scenes without a transmitter. The iconoscope
picked up the image of an eastern holy man who was praying for a higher power
to send someone to battle evil. Samson used his super powers to visit the holy
man and agreed to be that champion.
In
issue #10 of Fantastic Comics, Samson gained a young sidekick whom he
named David. He had no apparent super powers and was the sole survivor of a
plane crash. Orphaned after the crash, Samson took him into his care.Later,
Ajax / Farrell Productions revived several Fox characters, including the
Phantom Lady, the Flame (Ajax-Farrell) and Samson (Ajax-Farrell). The second
Samson had a modified costume and did not possess the same weaknesses as the
first Samson.
Fighting Yank (Bruce
Carter III)
whose great-grandfather Bruce Carter I was a soldier in the Revolutionary War.
Given a special mission by General George Washington, Carter was killed by
British spies, and the information he was carrying fell into enemy hands. His
spirit was confined to earth for his failure. Bruce Carter III was the spitting
image of his great-grandfather. He was visited by the ghost of Bruce Carter I,
who showed him the location of a magical cloak and tri-corner hat that could
give the wearer invulnerability and super strength. Only Carter III's
girlfriend, Joan Farwell, knows of his dual identity. She figured it out during
their first encounter (as she pointed out, she knew him too well to be fooled
by a domino mask). In addition to his superhuman strength and invulnerability,
Fighting Yank was frequently aided by his grandfather's ghost, especially when
he was in mortal danger. The ghost could manipulate the physical world and
provide Bruce III with information and encouragement.
Fantomah is a mysterious
goddess-like being who protects the jungles of Africa. She has vast magical
power, to the point of being practically omnipotent, and can transform herself
into a frightening blue phantom/skeleton creature as well as a floating skull
with blonde hair. Like her fellow Fletcher Hanks creation, Stardust, Fantomah
often used her vast magical powers to sentence her enemies to bizarre and
brutal punishments. For instance, in Jungle Comics #7 she transforms a band of
greedy diamond miners who oppressed the natives into one man, then sends that
man to an "unfound world" to be enslaved by hideous green fanged
monsters, then sent into a pit of cobras, and then absorbed into a wall by a
giant hand. Besides greedy treasure hunters and slavers she wreaked her brutal
vengeance on such bizarre foes as Org, who controlled giant spiders with a
hypnotic drum, and Professor Zomax, who wanted revenge on nature after being
successively attacked by a lion, an elephant, gnats, a snake, and a gorilla. Later
writers and artists who lacked Fletcher Hanks's uniquely grotesque imagination
portrayed Fantomah as an ordinary human adventurer. Initially she was a
conventional "jungle girl" character along the lines of Sheena or
Tiger Girl, although she retained more limited mystical powers. In still later
stories she was "Fantomah, Daughter of the Pharoahs," the queen of a
lost civilization descended from the ancient Egyptians. She had a pet black
panther named Fury. In this incarnation her enemies included Ghazia,
"priestess of the vulture-headed goddess," who commanded an army of
mummies.
Stardust the Super
Wizard
lived on a "private star" far out in space. He patrolled the cosmos
fighting criminals, racketeers, spies, and terrorists, but comes to Earth after
intercepting a radio signal from America. Upon his arrival, he stopped a group
of terrorists secretly plotting the assassination of the President. Stardust
stopped the crooks by taking their snipers to the police and destroying their
bombers by turning their own bombs against them. The spies then tried to hit
him with an atom smasher, but Stardust disarmed them by using his magnetic ray
to take their weapons and his suspending ray to cause them to float in mid-air
until the police could retrieve them.Stardust faced numerous aliens and
criminal masterminds including ones such as the Super Fiend who set fire to the
planet Mars. The villain then tried to send the burning planet colliding
straight into the Earth. Super Fiend was stopped by Stardust who exiled the
fiend to planet Mars. Stardust also battled the villainous Kaos who used an
army of giant vultures from the planet Venus to attack the Earth and get him a
bride. Stardust defeated Kaos' winged horde and saved the grateful girl who
came to live on his private star. Kaos is turned into a worm and sent back to
Venus as a treat for the birds. Another villain was the Demon who created an
earthquake machine capable of creating powerful tsunamis. The Demon planned on
using his tidal waves to destroy New York, but Stardust threw the Demon into
the wave and then disintegrated his body. Stardust then calmed the waves and,
by using fiery skywriting, let the people of New York know they were safe.
Miss Fury (Marla Drake) was a wealthy
socialite who discovered that another girl was wearing the same outfit to a
party. Her housemaid, Francine, suggested that (to prevent embarrassment) Marla
could wear an African panther skin that her uncle had willed to her. Her
friend, Albino Jo, advised against wearing the ceremonial outfit, meant to be
worn only by a witch doctor however, it fit her precisely.
However,
Marla never made it to the party. On the way, she instead ends up helping to
recapture an escaped murderer. The press bestowed the name "Black
Fury" on her though she later corrected them that she was "Miss
Fury." Having enjoyed her first case, Drake continued as a costumed crime
fighter. Fighting enemies such as General Bruno Beitz, Baroness Erica von
Kampf, Miguel Rico, Dr. Diman Saraf, and Whiffy.
Miss
Fury's vigilantism soon got the attention of Detective Carey who sought to find
her true identity and if her alliances were with or against the law and later
fell in love with Marla. One ongoing plotline was Marla's adoption of Darron,
the abandoned son of Erica Von Kampf and Gary Hale (Marla's former fiancé).
Marla was unaware of the toddler's parentage but, she rescued him in Brazil
from the brutal guardianship of Diman Saraf, who planned to use him in a deadly
experiment. She was initially denied custody of the boy because she was a
single woman, which broke her heart but, her courage and heroism in the rescue
eventually won over the authorities. Marla was then, for the duration of the
series, an unmarried woman with a child: a rather progressive scenario for a
1940s adventure strip (and because she had a job with a clothing designer, she
enlisted the help of her friend Francine, who offered to be Darron's governess
after losing her job in a war plant because of returning servicemen — a
significant issue facing working women after the war).
