The Question Of Captain K-O

Gerona Publishing excelled at one-shot anthology comics, some of which featured ongoing characters, but the character they created for the single issue of K-O Komics' cover is a cryptic mystery to this day. The one dubbed Captain K-O appears like an amalgam of the Golden Age versions of Captain America, Green Lantern, and The Flash. He has the clashing colors of green and red that would look okay during the Holiday season, but for any other time of the year looks very out of place, and certainly not for camouflage. Captain K-O's outfit bears a resemblance to Marvel Comics' Thor, but as K-O Komics came out in 1945 and the Norse God wouldn't appear until 1962, a good number of people believe that the artwork provided for this character was done by none other than Thor's original designer Jack Kirby, even though the actual artist still remains unknown. The cover was provided by a studio called Jason Comic Art who had art for everything from funny animals to presidential biographies, as well as some Canadian comic titles, although its unknown as to whether Jack Kirby was actually hired to do the cover or if it was a copy of some other character Kirby was noodling around with. K-O Komics itself is one of the first ones to purposefully misspell the word "comics" in order to stand out among other ones also using the word in their title. This single issue does feature the debut of characters like The Magnificent Epod, Prof. Jabberwacky, Duke Of Darkness, and The Menace who continued their adventures in other Gerona comics, but none of them managed to grab the spot on the front cover of their own premiere. Why Captain K-O was used instead of the other comic's cast remains a question, possibly because of his dynamic but equally generic superhero profile made the publisher go with a piece that might be just a Jack Kirby rip-off. It would have been interesting to see Captain K-O as a bizarre composite of several different superheroes created specifically to be a cover model who doesn't have any powers in his real life, even though clueless fans would think he had abilities far beyond those of mortal men. It's still interesting to speculate how far a superhero spoof might have progressed at the height of the Golden Age.

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