Since Dark Horse has been enjoying at least some initial success with their revival of Captain Midnight (at least enough to announce an upcoming spinoff featuring another Golden Age hero, Skyman) I thought I’d take a look at the Fawcett version of the character that they’re using as source material. I say “the Fawcett version” because there were quite a few different versions of the character, none of which agreed 100% on exactly who he was.

Initially, he was a fairly conventional airplane driver who had fairly conventional military style adventures, though he did engage with the supervillain like Ivan Shark on a fairly regular basis, and there were the more fantastic elements, usually involving super weapons of some sort. And the fact that the independently owned and operated do-gooder soon joined The Secret Squadron, a covert, black-op group created prior to WWII (clearly no one was worried it’s initials wouldn’t be confused with Nazi Germany’s SchutzStaffel). But there was also a movie serial…

..a comic strip…

…and a comic book version that had a run in The Funnies.

Then there was the Fawcett version which turned him into the quasi-superhero in the red gliding suit with flying clock chest insignia that most of us are familiar with, “us” being obsessive fans of very old funny books. This version turned the aviator into a genius inventor and dumped the supporting cast from the radio show with the exception of comic relief mechanic Ichabod “Ikky” Mudd who was the source of some particularly low comedy.

Clearly there were a lot of strong covers but at this point of his comic book career, the late 1940′s, like Captain Marvel Midnight was increasingly space oriented, as in this one where the Captain takes time away from busting crooks and cheap tyrants to play spaceman.

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Here’s an example of “Ikky’ Mudd in action as Sergeant Twilight. Wikipedia says this was a regular feature of the comic. Wow.

And here’s a really weird story, well, it’s a pretty standard story with a really weird detail. For some reason writer Bill Woolfolk wanted a bunch of 40′s kids to believe that then contemporary South Americans still worshipped Quetzalcoatl which as far as I can tell is absolute bullshit. The “high priest” kind of looks like a Rabbi so was the whole “Feathered Serpent” just a beard so he could write a story about Jewish oppression? Don’t know, but either way, still weird.

And better than the actual stories…the ads!