Captain Combat, Mascot Superhero

Bernard Baily is mostly known for creating DC characters like Hourman and The Spectre, although one of his lesser-known creations was a one-off called Captain Combat. First premiering in the massive special Star-Studded Comics from Cambridge House Publishers in 1945, it also got a reprint a year later by Canadian publishing company Superior which led many comics historians to believe that he was originally a Canuck. The story is of an unnamed acrobat hired to part in a holiday parade as the comic book character Captain Combat who tries to pick up an actress dressed as Mother Goose on his float. After the parade, the faux Captain overhears a crook dressed as Santa Claus trying to woo a roomful of other Santas into going on a crime spree with bubble pipes filled with poison. The head Santa uses one of these tricky pipes to put Combat to sleep and dump his slumbering body in the frozen river, even though the Captain manages to pull himself out of the deep freeze. Combat takes out one of the Bad Santas who unknowingly kills a butler while burgling a rich guy's pad, and then uses the jolly old elf's costume to fit in with the other Christmas criminals. The cosplaying acrobat busts in on the crooked Clauses while the head Santa threatens to kill them with his own lethal toy pipe, to which he accidently inhales the poison killing himself. Captain Combat was in reality just the mascot for some comic book company, but this nameless stand-in managed to literally bring the character to life. Other Golden Age heroes like The Rainbow were just regular guys who decided to become real superheroes, even if only for a single adventure. It's never known if the pretender Captain Combat went on to have a career as a superhero afterwards, or even if he got to have his date with Mother Goose, but at least there a few less killer Santas for the next Christmas horror movie.