Here Comes The Red Demon

In 1947, comic artist Jim Draut had contacted the legendary Jack Kirby and Joe Simon and gotten a job working for Harvey Comics with his original idea of a Hellish vigilante whose secret identity was a worker in the court of law took off decades before Marvel's Daredevil. The Red Demon who at first was just called The Demon was really Judge Straight that unlike a certain blind lawyer didn't trust even his own judgement as the state's youngest jurist when it came to dispensing his own personal brand of justice. The adventures of the satanic savior ran from Issues 4-7 of Black Cat, although they had the boneheaded decision to wait until Issue 6 to go over the character's secret origin. At a masquerade party, mob leader Bull Brewster is wearing a devil costume while he is killed by an unknown guest and the one blamed with is Joe Munsi. Judge Straight quickly sentences him to death in the electric chair in just two days, but the harsh words of Joe's wife make him think he might have been a teensy bit harsh with his premature judgement due to the lack of evidence, so he follows a black cat to the secret hideout of Brewster's thugs and finds the deceased don's devil outfit. Straight puts on the dead man's devil duds and uses it to intimidate the hideout's manager ironically named Eel scaring the thug into confessing that he killed Brewster. The newly dubbed Red Demon manages to carry Eel to the police just in time before Joe was about to get the ultimate tan, and from this point on he would fight evil in his bright red outfit in the dark of night which no one found suspicious considering the mob boss was killed in the same getup. He even had a Hell-themed lair in his house's basement along with a throne of a goofy-looking demon with a big mouth making the crimson crimefighter look like he was getting eaten by his own furniture complete with roaring fire in the background just to make as Hell as possible. The Red Demon's further cases had him proving the innocence of a typical butler blamed for murder, accidently causing the death of a lout whose only crime was crashing a little girl's tea party, and puts the kibosh on a crime wave centered out of a coffee house. The Red Demon wasn't the only devil-themed superhero in the Golden Age, but he did set the standard of a court official pulling double duty as a costumed good guy.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

All I Need Is A Miracle Man

Image
Mick Anglo was one of the earliest creators of British comic books, mostly known for making the character Marvelman which was later rebooted in the 80s by Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman. The idea behind Marvelman was after DC Comics had shut down Fawcett's production of Captain Marvel comics blaming it for being a copycat of Superman. That ceased European reprints that Miller's publishing company of L. Miller And Sons was doing, so they created their own version as a young blonde titled Marvelman. This included an entire superhero family with supporting heroes Young and Kid Marvelman making it available to a wide range of readers. Mick Anglo decided to come out with a copy of his own copy of a copycat superhero for Spanish readers billed as Superhombre, that was also the name eventually used for Spanish reprints of Superman. Anglo's Superhomrbe was written by Juan Llarch and drawn by Emilio Giralt Ferrando with black and white interiors in 1958, and was later reprinted for Engl...
Read more

Bingo The Racist Wonder Boy

Image
"Comics" McCormick could be viewed as being history's first fan fiction writer. Created by Ed Wheelan, the young boy named Comics is a member of the The Little Conquerors Social And Reading Club where they talk about comic book characters. Mr. McCormick would regularly have dreams where he had crossovers with the various fictional superheroes that run in the comics that "Comics" is a fan of. In Terrific Comics #5, "Comics" and his friends are fanboying about the latest character, Bingo, who was a parody of the original Captain Marvel(the Shazam one). In his own story, whenever Jerry Jones Jr. would say "Ka-bang", he changes into Bingo the Wonder Boy, which of course is a name out of a baker's dozen of young comic book characters with a similar moniker, including Batman's old chum. "Comics" tries out the magic word and summons up Yama Lama of Ka-Bang, a racist caricature of a Tibetan guru which here is a wish-granting genie. ...
Read more

The Super-est American Hero

Image
When you need help defeating the Axis powers, you cut to the chase by building the Chronopticon to travel to the year 2350 and get a mutant super soldier. Lasting for only four issues of Fight Comics in 1941, Super-American was a fusion of Superman and Captain America. Allan Bruce is the world's first timelord and uses his new time machine to get help from Americans in the future where everyone has superpowers. They send back one of their unnamed citizens to assume the role of a stars and stripes sporting superhero. This reverse-Buck Rogers uses his powers of strength, speed, flight, and invulnerability to first take on some pesky fifth columnists assaulting Washington lead by the Nazi stooge Tyrannus. Their initial mission fails, so Tyrannus gets help from his commanding officer, the sneakily named Vultro, while Super-American flies all the way over to Europe to stop their plan to use brand new "air torpedoes" on the Allied Forces. Further installments show the original ...
Read more