Golden Age Figures - The Hood & Death's Head

 
I thought I'd offer something a little different today and cover both a Golden Age hero and one of the more memorable (certainly creepy) villains of the period. The hero is the Hood, from Holyoke, who had a pretty good run in Cat-Man comics of about 23 issues. The Hood was in reality FBI Agent Craig Williams who, frustrated that criminals were evading the law, took justice into his own hands as a costumed vigilante. Although he apparently didn't have any super powers, he would mete out justice with his wits and his fists. In this particular story the Hood takes on a supernatural foe called the Death's Head - literally a disembodied head wrapped in an Indian-type headdress. The head proclaims, "Our civilization of the East is far beyond your understanding. In India where I was beheaded I was given life by a great mystic.... With my great will power I will rule the world! Little by little I will control all the great minds of the world and thus the earth itself." Now you've really gotta hand it to the guy - even being beheaded hasn't stifled his ambition! The head takes over the will of a sailor who carries him around in a box. Of course The Hood manages to overcome the Death's Head, who goes flying over a cliff in a car. The Hood figure was made from a Mattel Secret Wars Wolverine figure with the head from a Hasbro GI Joe Cobra Commander figure and the cape from a Superpowers Collection Martian Manhunter. AC Comics revived the character and the costume is sort of a hybrid between the original Holyoke version and the Ac Comics version. As for Death's Head, I used the head from an Indiana Jones Cairo Swordsman figure that had been a little distress before it came into my hands through play-wear. That actually worked to my benefit when I was painting the face. I'm not sure where I got the table but I believe the box was a Playmates Star Trek figure accessory.

Golden Age Action Figures - Swiftarrow

Today we have another really obscure Golden Age custom action figure conversion. Let's face it, the only way I would ever get action figures of characters from that period was to make them myself. Today we have Swiftarrow, one of a number of archer characters from the period. The Arrow from Centaur was one of the first in 1939, while the best known was Green Arrow from DC who started life in 1941 and who, in various incarnations, still battles crime up to the present day. Swiftarrow was from the publishing house of Spark (also known as Fact & Fiction Publications), and first appeared in the pages of Golden Lad #1 in 1945. He had four adventures (through Golden Lad #4, 1946), two of which I've seen and both of which are relatively short at five pages when many Golden Age superhero stories ran 8-12. I've read that different artists did the art chores and the Golden Age Hero Directory shows three different costumes, but the red and green one depicted here is the one I'm familiar with. The action figure was made using parts from three Toy Biz figures - Daredevil head and body, Captain America arms and Silver Surfer legs. I carved the quiver of arrows from balsa wood and the cross bow was a leftover part from another figure (always gotta keep a big parts box when you're customizing).

Golden Age Custom Figures - Man O' Metal

 
This is another one of those characters who suffers some horrible accident that would have killed anyone else but, on this particular individual, turns him into a super powered hero. In this case a steel worker named Pat Dempsey was accidentally covered in white hot molten steel. Instead of melting into a pile of singed flesh, an "inexplainable chemical reaction of the skin texture," results in Pat being endowed with the power to burn "his way through the thickest barriers," and he was also bulletproof and had the "strength of an Elephant." Thus, whenever Pat would be exposed to flame or electrical current he'd be transformed into the Man O' Metal, with blue skin and flames radiating out from his body - a little like whenever Hydroman from the same company got exposed to water he assumed his powers. Man O' Metal ran for about 20 issues of Heroic Comics from Eastern Color Printing and was drawn by the same guy (H.G. Peters) who also drew Wonder Woman in her early adventures. As for the action figure - I used the lower body of a Toy Biz Hydroman (a Marvel super villain), and the torso and arms from a Toy Biz Ka-Zar figure, which I cut in half. The head is from a Toy Biz Superman and I took a flame accessory from a Toy Biz Jack O'Lantern and attached it to the figure's back with a brass nail. I chose to paint the flesh silver instead of blue because I thought it looked more metallic - a little artistic license.

Battleships Lost at Pearl Harbor

Since I was talking about pet peeves about mistakes I've seen in naval history programs yesterday I thought I'd address another one today. There have been a number of programs over the years that have gotten it wrong about how many battleships were total write offs as the result of the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941. There were officially eight battleships at Pearl Harbor on that date and one ex-battleship (the Utah). Some programs will say that only one of the battleships (Arizona) was a total write off and that the rest were returned to service, albeit after considerable reconstruction. In reality USS Oklahoma was also a total write off. It was the only one of the battleships at Pearl Harbor that day that rolled over and was only showing her bottom after the attack was concluded. After considerable salvage efforts Oklahoma was raised and dry docked by December 1943, but it was late in the war and she was considerably damaged so reconstruction was not deemed worth while. She remained at Pearl Harbor awaiting disposition, where she was photographed with the brand new USS Wisconsin alongside in 1944, before finally being sold again to an Oakland scrapping company in 1946. Oklahoma departed Pearl Harbor under tow on May 10, 1947 but seven days later the tow parted and Oklahoma sank to the depths of the vast Pacific Ocean - maybe the final casualty of the war. As for the target ship Utah - it remains at Pearl Harbor to this day along with the Arizona, where it rests with the remains of 47 crewmen. Just setting the record straight.

Who Won the Battle of Jutland??

While I don't really think I'm going to definitively answer the Title question, I recently watched (again) a History Channel program from a few years ago about the battle and wanted to clear up a couple of facts they got wrong. For those unfamiliar with the battle, it was fought on 31 May-1 June 1916 during World War I and was the largest naval battle of the war. In fact it was the largest naval battle between battleships that has ever been fought. The German High Seas Fleet included 16 dreadnoughts (or all-big-gun) battleships and 6 of the older pre-dreadnoughts, 5 battle cruisers, 11 light cruisers and 61 destroyers. The British Grand Fleet included 28 dreadnoughts, nine battle cruisers, 8 armored cruisers, 26 light cruisers and 78 destroyers. The two forces met rather late in the day of 31 May and engaged off and on for several hours, with a sort of running battle carried out during the night of 31 May-1 June. At the end of the battle the British had lost 14 ships of 111,000 tons while the Germans lost 11 ships of 62,000 tons. The British lost a total of 6,784 dead, wounded or captured, while the German losses amounted to 3,058 killed or wounded. By any measure the British losses were certainly greater, and accounted for the German claims of a victory. However, the British always maintained that they had won a strategic victory because the German fleet never again came out to face the full power of the Grand Fleet - which is the conclusion of the History Channel program. Well, first off The German commander, Admiral Scheer, never intended to take on the British fleet in a full-blown engagement. He was outmatched and he knew it. He always hoped to lure out selected portions of the British fleet and destroy them piecemeal, thus weakening the fleet, so the assumption that he ever intended to fight the whole of the Grand Fleet is erroneous to start with. And then there's the statement that the German fleet never came out again. Not true - they sortied again on 18/19 August 1916 (about two and a half months after Jutland) with the object of bombarding the British east coast town of Sunderland and - again - lure out a selected portion of the Grand Fleet as they had tried before. Despite the fact that the two fleets did not come into contact the 18/19 August sortie of the German fleet had a profound impact on British strategic planning. No longer were they willing to hazard their fleet in the southern North sea and were even willing to accept the odd coastal raid or perhaps even a small scale landing by the Germans rather than chance submarine attack or the mine danger. The High Seas Fleet sortied again on 18/19 October with Zeppelin and submarine reconnaissance support, but finding nothing of interest returned to base. Then on 3 November, in response to the grounding of two U-Boats on the northern Danish coast a battle cruiser, four dreadnoughts and a flotilla of destroyers were dispatched to render assistance, rescuing one of the boats, but suffering two of the dreadnoughts damaged (not seriously) by British submarine torpedoes. Afterwards the German naval effort shifted to the submarine attack on British trade, so there were no further sorties by the battle fleet until late in the war. So, looking back, I really think that it was the Germans who won the Battle of Jutland - but then the British can console themselves that ultimately they won the war.

Golden Age Action Figures - Atoman

 
Today another child of the Atomic Age - Atoman - from Spark Publications. This character actually lasted for two issues of his own comic, unlike yesterday's Atomic Thunderbolt who disappeared after only one. In this case we have one of the world's first nuclear scientists, Barry Dale, who finds he has absorbed enough radioactivity that he now has the power to explode atoms - rather than just dying of radiation poisoning like most anyone else would. Atoman finds he can smash mountains, wipe out cities (although I'm not quite sure why he would want to do that), leap thousands of miles and move faster than thought (!). He even envisions himself as the shape of mankind for the future. But until that happens he figures he'll use his vast power to aid mankind, regardless of race, creed or nationality (which makes the whole destroying entire cities a bit problematic). I haven't actually see his stories but I rather liked the character. I made the figure from a Superpower Collection Green Lantern and the head from an Aquaman. The cape was made from T-shirt material with a large red star-burst cut from felt on the back.

Golden Age Action Figures - Atomic Thunderbolt

This was a one-shot-wonder character from the Regor Company that headlined the first and only issue of Atomic Thunderbolt Comics. I have never actually read the story but I rather liked the look of the character. This was a period after the first Atomic Bombs had been dropped and the end of World War II when a lot of new characters were introduced into comicdom who got their powers as a result of atomic radiation - rather than just dying like most people would. Atomic power sort of took over from electricity and explosions and lightning effects in the creation of superheroes in the aftermath of the dawn of the nuclear age. In this case Professor Josiah Rhonne had been searching for a way to end the threat of nuclear war with his experiment in transmutation. This process subjected people to neutron bombardment by which the professor hoped to change the atomic structure of the human body and make the tissue immune to radioactivity and atomic explosions. The professor required a human test subject and, low and behold, he stumbles across poor William "Willy the warf rat" Burns, who had turned into a beach-comer/bum after a close encounter with a Nazi torpedo during the war. Willy agrees to participate in the experiment but an accidental explosion in the lab turns Willy into the Atomic Thunderbolt, who can radiate energy and fly. The action figure was made using the body from a Toy Biz Cloak and the head from a Kenner Peter Elliot from Congo the movie.