Captain Comics: They’re super! They’re weird! They’re heroes!

By Andrew A. Smith

Tribune News Service

They’re “Super Weird Heroes,” which is the title of the latest collection from comics archivist/historian Craig Yoe ($39.99, Yoe Books/IDW).

Yoe, who has written a cornucopia of delightfully oddball books, is currently excavating the original Popeye, 1950s horror comics and strange romance stories at IDW Publishing. He’s been labeled a “comics archaeologist” — and the title is well deserved.

Case in point: “Super Weird Heroes.” That’s 328 pages of superheroes that someone, somewhere thought were a good idea, but were deservedly short-lived and justly forgotten. Nevertheless, Yoe has dredged this drek out of the basement of comic book history and exposed it to the light, where it squirms for our amusement.

It’s a calling.

“When I was teenager it was superheroes that got me crazy for comics,” Yoe said. “I wanted to voraciously read them, compulsively collect them and burrow deep into their history.”

And what started as passion has become something resembling a career. A super weird career.

“With my partner, Clizia Gussoni, I’ve done like 100 books collecting classic comic book stories, but ‘Super Weird Heroes’ has probably taken the longest,” he said. “It was hard and expensive to track down all these uber-valuable superhero comics. According to the ‘46th Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide’ one would have to spend $105,280 to obtain the rare comics that were used to make up ‘Super Weird Heroes’ — if you could find them.”

Most of the material in “Super Weird Heroes” comes from the “Golden Age” of comics, the first decade or so after the arrival of Superman in 1938. And, yes, that era gave us some of the greatest characters in our modern mythology: Not just the Man of Steel, but Batman, Captain America, Wonder Woman and a host of others.

But it was also an era filled with fly-by-night publishers who hired Depression-starved artists, talent-free writers and rank amateurs to throw anything and everything against the wall. Was it good? Was it bad? Publishers like Lev Gleason and Victor Fox didn’t care, as long as it was cheap. Just churn it out, boys!

Which is why you might see, in 1941, “Speed Comics” right next to “Flash Comics” on the newsstand. The latter starred, of course, The Flash, an inspired character who in one form or another remains with us today in comics, movies and television. The former starred The Hand, who was a big hand.

A big, flying hand, to be sure. A hand of justice! But, alas, a hand that was un-armed. Also un-bodied.

And that’s just one of the super weirdheroes found in this book. Given that they’re assembled in alphabetical order, they don’t build to a climax; the signal on the Weird-O-Meter varies from character to character. Still, by the time you hit Fantomah — a beautiful, white jungle girl who inexplicably becomes a skull-faced banshee when she uses her superpowers — you know you’ve hit seriously weird territory.

Fantomah was created, written and drawn by Fletcher Hanks, whose every story would fit the “Super Weird Heroes” criteria, but who died in obscurity. But obscurity is no obstacle for Yoe, who printed the Fantomah story “directly from the Fletcher Hanks original art in my collection.”

Fantomah shouldn’t be confused with Phantasmo from Dell Comics, a handsome lad who fought crime in a cape and a Speedo — and sometimes just a thong (he’s on page 254). Then there’s Madam Fatal (page 213), who was actually a man — and therefore the first cross-dressing superhero. For some reason that reminds me of Rainbow Boy (page 265), who fought crime with a rainbow crest on his helmet to match the one on his chest, and the one that trailed behind as he flew.

Characters of this type would be the height of gay camp today, but who knows what was going on in the heads of those desperate Golden Agers? Still, I had to ask Yoe what he thought would become of someone like Rainbow Boy had he continued into the modern era.

“There is gold at the end of Rainbow Boy’s rainbow,” Yoe responded. “His phantasmagorical, colorful outfit and his wacko, rainbow mohawk may attract nefarious bullies, but in the end don’t forget he’s a superhero — any attackers are going to get their comeuppance.”

Good point. But the ability to create rainbows doesn’t exactly qualify you for the Justice League. Nor does fighting crime with a marsupial, which was Kangaroo Man’s schtick (page 194).

Continuing on this theme, “Super Weird Heroes” gives us Black Cobra and the Cobra Kid (page 38), who battled evil with, yes, snakes. Finally we have Yellowjacket (page 300), who stung ne’er-do-wells with wasps — that he continually referred to as bees. (Evidently entymology wasn’t a strong suit at Charlton Comics, who published the Insect Avenger.)

Naturally, comics this bad have met with resounding approval.

“I have said many times this is going to be our most popular book,” Yoe said. “The critical and fan response has been fantastic — over the top. The public is mad about superheroes. And all the internet humor has opened people to the wacky and bizarre. So this is like the perfect storm. Comic fans and non-comic fans alike love super weird heroes themselves and ‘Super Weird Heroes’ the book.”

A sequel is already in the works. And, fortunately, Yoe hasn’t come close to exhausting the deep bench of Super Weird Heroes.

“From A to Z, we have Airmail (and his sidekick Stampy) to The Zebra (‘Batman’ was taken),” Yoe said of Volume Two. “I promise you the runt-of-the litter super weird heroes in the second book are going to be every bit as lovable as the first. But, there is a plethora of weirdness in the second volume — minds will be blown.”

Finally, it is a tradition of sorts in bad interviews to ask the interviewee what sort of tree he or she would be, if he or she were a tree. A bad question seems appropriate in this case, where we are celebrating the dregs of superherodom. So what super weird hero would Yoe be, if he were a super weird hero?

“There are more than 30 bizarro long-underwear guys in this book, not to mention their sidekicks,” he said. “That’s more than enough fodder for a different role play each day of a month. So I hardly have to choose. But, I guess I am still that hormone-blasted, teenage boy that got turned on to comics. Any of the numerous heroes that had a variation on X-ray vision sounds pretty good to me.”