Monday, April 5, 2010

Golden Age Superheroes - Captain Freedom


Today's patriotic hero is Captain Freedom from Harvey Comics. He had a pretty good run in Speed Comics, from issue 13 to 44. I've only seen a couple of Captain Freedom stories but it appears that his adventures were probably done by one of the "art houses" that proliferated during the Golden Age. That simply means that the art and stories were farmed out to "sub-contractors" who would do the stories without much regard for continuity. One of the things that makes me think this is that Captain Freedom wore (by one person's count) at least 16 different variations of uniform during his run. Also he had four kid side-kicks (rather than just one like Batman and Robin or Captain America and Bucky), one of whom was a girl of all things. Her name is Joanie and in one of the stories her hair is blond and in the other she's a brunette. But I diverge - getting back to Captain Freedom, he was secretly Don Wright, two-fisted, hard hitting, fearless young newspaper publisher who, in moments of peril, suddenly changes to the two-fisted, hard hitting, fearless superhero Captain Freedom. Cap falls into the category of "superheroes," like Batman, who doesn't actually have any super powers, but fights evil with his two fists.... well, you get the idea. For the action figure I used a Marvel Daredevil figure which I repainted in one of the 16 versions of his costume that I liked. I think all the 16 had the red skull cap and the yellow gauntlets, but the stars and stripes sort of came and went at the whim of the artist.

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