You can’t always hit a home run, and so there have been numerous characters all throughout the history of comics that were created with noble intent, but who failed to find a connection with an audience and swiftly were seen no more. Characters that are peculiar, ill-considered or just plain goofy. Here then are Five More Best Forgotten DC Super Heroes:
CAPTAIN INVINCIBLE: Captain Darryl Frye had been a regular supporting character in the pages of THE FLASH for several years. He was Barry Allen’s precinct captain, and in that role, he was a father figure and a role model for the police scientist. Which makes his sudden transformation into the bumbling crime-fighter Captain Invincible all the more odd–especially at a time when the stories in teh series were attempting to become more hard-hitting. Having discovered that by overclocking his pacemaker, he could get burst of superhuman strength, Frye decided to use his “Cardio-Power” as a costumed vigilante, taking Barry Allen into his confidence as the only one that knew his true identity. The Captain wore a baggy costume at least two sizes too big for him, and bumbled through a number of issues before fading away entirely as the issue of the Flash’s murder trial began to take up all of the attention in the series. The Captain was created by writer Cary Bates and illustrator Carmine Infantino, who given their many years of experience, probably should have known better.
QUESTAR: A whole lot happened revolving around Questar, the King of Heroes, in his one and only appearance in SUPERBOY AND THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #222. We first learn that he is the greatest super hero of the 30th Century, and that his exploits are featured on holo-vid all across the United Planets. But when the Legionnaires cross paths with him on an alien planet where he’s to be honored, they discover that he’s a fraud, that his exploits have all been made up and performed for teh camera. But as danger looms, it turns out that Questar does have super-powers, he’s just too cowardly to use them in actual fights, But he helps to save the Legion members and he still gets honored by the six-page story’s end. Author Jim Shooter and artist Mike Nasser were responsible for Questar, though presumably they weren’t the ones who clad him in a color scheme virtually identical to that of Superboy (albeit with blond hair.)
GOLDEN EAGLE: Here was a character who had a longer shelf-life than might have been apparent at first blush. Golden Eagle was Charlie Parker, a young fan of Hawkman’s who was transformed into a quasi-duplicate of the Winged Wonder by his old foe the Matter Master. Charlie is written as a young kid, but is drawn by artist Dick Dillin as being much older, which makes scenes of him running around playing Hawkman in his own homemade cosplay costume a bit ridiculous. Anyway, Golden Eagle first appears in JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #116 and is restored to normal by the end of the story by Cary Bates and Dick Dillin. But this doesn’t take, and he shows up again with scant explanation among the membership of Teen Titans West in TEEN TITANS #50-52. Apparently, the Titans West were desperate for members. Golden Eagle was also reimagined as a villain in the later 2000s HAWKMAN series, but that’s virtually a different character entirely with only a surface similarity to Charlie.
HORNBLOWER: Mal Duncan, the African-American member of the Teen Titans, had a bit of a rough ride during the book’s 1970s revival. At the outset, he inherited the costume and identity of the Guardian, but that was discarded after a single issue. Instead, he was given a horn by Gabriel, the Angel of Death, that would equalize him in any fight against a single opponent. But should Mal lose a fight, he’d also lose his life. A few issues later, Mal adopted the costumed identity of Hornblower, attired in a garish costume that was suggested by a fan. But on the final page of the issue, cooler heads prevailed, and suddenly Mal was back in his Guardian duds, his magic horn having been stolen off-camera. This bizarre stop-and-start was carried out by writer Bob Rozakis and artist Jose Delbo.
MS. FLASH: Yet another contribution from writer Cary Bates, Ms. Flash was Patty Spivot, Barry Allen’s lab assistant at the police precinct where he worked. In a strange twist of fate, Patty was struck with electrified chemicals in the same manner that Allen had been years before, granting her the same powers of super-speed. After working out what has happened to her, Patty decides to adopt the costumed identity of Ms. Flash, and she confides this in Barry Allen–what is with him and would-be super heroes sharing their secret with him? Unfortunately, Patty’s speed was unstable, and began to cause devastating explosions wherever she ran. Fortunately, this entire sequence of events had been a daydream on the part of Barry Allen in the split-second it took him to whisk Patty out of the way of the accident. Good thing, too, because a girl with super-powers, that’d be crazy right? Ha, ha, ha! Irv Novick supplies the as-always-reliable artwork, and the story appears in the 5 STAR SUPERHERO SPECTACULAR Dollar Comic. Ms. Flash was gone, but Patty stuck around as a regular supporting character in the ongoing FLASH series.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
The sexism of Ms. Flash was painful. Though I think New 52 Patty got upgraded to Barry’s girlfriend for a while.
I don’t think Questar was bad for a one-shot. Neither was Golden Eagle except he didn’t stay that way.
Having added a black member the Titans never seemed to know what to do with him. In the original book, his role seemed mostly to keep reminding his teammates he grew up Black On The Mean Streets. Rozakis tried to give him an upgrade but should have stopped with the Guardian. Though in fairness, I enjoyed this as a teen.
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You need a better scanner, those comic book pages look like they were xeroxed in the 1970s. Three of them are a big fuzzy glob.
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When it comes to Hornblower someone was to lazy to look up who the real biblical angel of death is — Azrael ( Gabriel is God’s messenger ).
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Actually, it WAS Azrael – Gabriel was just the referee. Like, literally. He gave Mal the horn after the fight. A fight in a boxing ring with the Angel of Death. T-KEE-YORRR!!!!
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Actually, it WAS Azrael – Gabriel was just the referee. Like, literally. He gave Mal the horn after the fight, a fight in a boxing ring with the Angel of Death. T-KEE-YORRRR!!!
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Captain Invincible: at least when they did it to Perry White ( Masterman ( super-powers from alien fruit )- Action Comics#278 ( July 1961 ) thanks dc-microheroes.fandom.com for the issue ) it was part of an alien invasion plot.
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Ms. Flash: Wasn’t that unusual for a super-hero to dream someone they knew gained super powers? Wasn’t more like Lois Lane dreaming she was Superwoman [ Action Comics#60 ( May 1943 ) ].
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Ms. Flash ( Patty Spivot ): I knew Patty Spivot’s name seem familiar, she was played by Shantel VanSanten the CW The Flash series where she was a police detective and Joe West’s new protegee and brief love interest of Barry Allen.
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Poor Mal — he was introduced during the brief period when the Titans were operating in “civilian” guise, so he fit in reasonably well. But once his teammates switched back to spandex full-time, he stood out like a sore thumb. None of the attempts to give him a superhero identity worked out very well, although in retrospect making him the Guardian was probably the “least worst” idea. I assume his inconsistent status was the result of the various editors on the series (Joe Orlando, Julius Schwartz, Jack Harris) having different ideas for what to do with him.
I remember in the immediate aftermath of CRISIS, they gave him yet another outfit and retconned his horn into some kind of hi-tech gizmo. But I don’t think that really stuck either. I have no idea what his current status is, if he’s even around. Meanwhile, his girlfriend Bumblebee seems to have survived the various reboots more or less intact…
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It had to have been editorial. What Joe Orlando and Paul Levitz thought was an elegant solution to a problem, but apparently Julie and Nelson didn’t like it — Nelson had plans to link up the Guardian’s and Speedy’s backstories, and perhaps he saw this as a problem rather than a way in. And then the Nelson idea (I think Nelson was the main editor on these, because they read like his interests. not Schwartz’s) looked so awful on the page, Mal had become The Hero So Wretched We Won’t Put That Costume on Covers.
And then poor Jack C. Harris had to spend two-thirds of his run wrapping up plot lines from Nelson’s run, and only had one issue to mess with the Titans origin and ring down the curtain on the book.
A sad, sad run.
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Ah, right, I remember the Speedy/Guardian stuff from SUPERMAN FAMILY. Superhero Genealogy 101: If two characters have the same last name (even if it’s a really common one, like “Harper” or “Wilson”), then they MUST be related!
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“If two characters have the same last name (even if it’s a really common one, like “Harper” or “Wilson”), then they MUST be related!”
Even if they were created at two different companies, like Freddy “Captain Marvel Junior” Freeman and Kit “Kid Eternity” Freeman.
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If there’s a good story to warrant it, why not? Halo’s “host body” was once Violet Harper’s. I think it would be interesting to see Halo interact with the clone of Jim Harper if they shared DNA. A surrogate uncle,
Neither are the same people (psyches) as the ones who used to inhabit those bodies.
But if they were teammates, I could see a familial bond forming.
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I actually liked Golden Eagle and Questar and steadfastly ignore the post-Crisis GE. Not setting Hawkworld in the past really added to Hawkman continuity mess, didn’t it?
Questar could have made for a great recurring character. A hero without a heroic nature would have made for great stories but The gap between Levitz runs back then was pretty bereft of good stories.
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The gap between Levitz runs was caused by the DC Implosion.
With 40% of the line canceled, they had to find work for their contracted freelancers, so Paul bowed out of LEGION to make one more book available. And it got handed to Gerry, who had no interest in writing the Legion but had a very large freelance contract that got filled with whatever was available that could fill up his time (and give DC a return on what they were paying him).
Ironically, Gerry passed off LEGION to Roy Thomas, who had no interest in writing it, but needed books to do until the new stuff he was co-creating was up and running. And Roy passed it back to Paul, and history was made.
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A lot of what Cary Bates was doing in FLASH at that time was strongly influenced by HILL STREET BLUES — Cary was trying to get that kind of realism into the comics, but was hampered by Carmine Infantino at that particular stage of his career, where he just wasn’t going to get it, and even if he did, couldn’t draw it.
Captain Invincible seemed pretty clearly a riff on HSB’s Captain Freedom, though a deluded guy who thinks he’s a superhero in a world where superheroes are common plays differently than one in a world in which they’re fantasy.
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I believe the True Believers min years later at Marvel proved Bates had the chops to pull off what he wanted had he had an artist and editor not working at cross purposes from him.
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Yeah, I’m sure he could — he’d just have been better off doing in it FLASH while Don Heck was still drawing the book. Though I think Don’s run ended before HSB started.
I don’t think Cary had any editorial resistance — the Captain Invincible appearances were edited by Len Wein, Ernie Colon and Cary himself. But he just had the wrong artist…
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I remember one of the Editors (Ernie Colon?) mentioning in a letter column that Bates had been influenced by Hill Street (then very popular). I think what you say is spot-on,
It did not seem to be anything any one was trying to hide,
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No, I don’t think anyone was trying to hide anything. If they were, Captain Invincible wouldn’t have been so clearly a riff on Captain Freedom, I’d guess.
kdb
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Names like “Captain Invincible” & “Questar” could be repurposed for villains. I could see someone with a high opinion of themselves, or overcompensating, or just deranged, calling themselves “Captain Invincible”
I don’t be think there can be too many villains. Shouldn’t be a shortage of foes for our heroes.
I think there are too many superheroes. So many that dozens lay dormant. Not enough panel space for them all.
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I thought the Golden Eagle was not a bad concept.
Since “Kid Sidekicks” were out of fashion, maybe, if he were brought back, you could explain that there is an affinity between the Matter Master’s Metachem and Nth Metal. (which is why Matter Master and Hawkman are fated enemies, like Hath-set and Hawkman. This could even be something that survives the Crisis and continues even after the Charlie Parker of the New Earth” no longer remembers having been the Golden Eagle.
Ms. Flash seems like a first draft of Jesse Quick, a chanter intended to be more complex (and that stayed around).
I liked the Golden Gradian character for Mal. It seemed to make more sense than the other ideas.
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Golden Eagle was also made an honorary Justice League member so it was important to know who he was!
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