Nor Johnston McCulley’s Bat who also attributed to Batman’s origin story.

Somebody brought up Sherlock Holmes. Do not overlook Nick Carter, who debuted in 1886, before Sherlock Holmes, and used many traits before Sherlock Holmes (e.g. recurring enemy in Doctor Jack Quartz). Quartz once assembled NIck Carter’s enemies together-the first Rogues’ Gallery ensemble?

O.K., I get you now and it’s a fair point. My initial thought was that you intended something about the common word in the two titles, which was MY mistake.

The word that pops into my particular mind is “archetype”. You know, something like “Hooker with a heart of gold” or “Good Cop/Bad Cop”. Those are cliches, stereotypes, though. But they get to that point through overuse and oversimplification to the point where they get, like the “Women in Refridgerators” syndrome, more than a little tired and lame.

And Tarzan – who I also noted you didn’t mention here and look forward to hearing about in some future installment – well, Tarzan will tell you what happens in the jungle to anything that gets tired and lame.

Because, to my admitedly limited experience, writing is a lot like being in the jungle. For a writer anyway (Fortunately not operating under such difficult laws as “kill or be killed” though it might seem like it at times, but you get the point.) you’re looking for solutions to problems. And given similar problems you’re going to come up with similar solutions. And the average reader might not pick up on how you’ve purposely or accidentily resurrected an archetype in your story but another write might. A good one anyways. Because the average person reads on the surface and a good writer knows that you read the lines, you read between the lines, you read the lines upside down and sideways because every story, every sentence is a made thing. Fashioned out of nothing by a human hand that’s trying, somehow, to pack it with meaning and symbols and codes and importance. What’s a writer if not an artist? And what’s art if not fashioning something out of nothing?

I say this as preface to my opinion that you’re a little too focused on coming up with a direct precursor, Mr. Hatcher. You’re trapped on the surface when the waters run much, much deeper. Finding a more or less exact match to a list of arbitrary criteria is interesting and of no uncertain value. But it’s the traits that are important, not the template. Because none of these characters we’re talking about was forged in a vaccuum or by accident. Because just as archetypes can become lame and tired and devolve into cliche, so to can they be resurrected, refreshed, and rejuvinated. You can take them to a new age and dress them up in new clothing – modernizing them according to your own point of view and the demands of the current climate. But another way is to breed them. To mix those traits that make up your list of criteria, blend those archetypes, and come up with something, hopefully, just a little bit new.

Tarzan will tell you that happens in the jungle too. I want to hear less about the lineage and more about the blending. So, I’m looking forward to the next one and the one after that because they sure do provoke some of my thoughts.

I beg your pardon. I should have pointed out how much I enjoyed the piece, including literally seeing the Spider for the very first time, and finding out that somebody else enjoyed those 70s Phantom paperbacks.

And a note to “JR” about considering “Fantastic Voyage” an influence on the Fantastic Four: That’s not at all possible, as the comic predates that movie (and it IS an original movie; the very complicated special effects kept the project in post–production for so long that Isaac Asimov’s NOVELIZATION was in stores before the film made it to theaters) by several years, specifically 1961 versus 1966.

Superman was given a Fortress of Solitude—name included, unless DC relettered their Golden Age reprints in the 1970s 100–page Super Spectaculars—before Weisinger’s, back in the 1940s, probably by Jerry Siegel, but it was literally in the hills outside of Metropolis rather than the Arctic. Given that starting point, it appears that Mort merely modified an existing Super–concept, and therefore may not even have known about Doc’s Fortress. I don’t know of any other clear “Doc riffs” that Weisinger stole, and as the Man of Bronze—real first name CLARK, incidentally—was not infrequently referred to as a superman, your discounting his influence on Jerry and Joe’s creation is ill–advised. This is not to deny the obvious precedent of Wylie’s “Gladiator” by any means.

Don McGregor did not do just Lady Rawhide but Zorro himself post–Topps, probably for either Image or Dark Horse (I no longer possess copies, and the GCD doesn’t list it at all), but admittedly it was only a limited–run adaptation of the Anthony Hopkins/Antonio Banderas movie.

In the “Marvel Preview” adaptation of Wylie’s “Gladiator,” Roy Thomas didn’t “skip” anything. It was simply the first part of a somewhat serialized adaptation, as is explicitly stated in the issue, that was never completed. Roy just never got to that part of the novel.

And Marvel’s Phantom was by Dave DeVries and Glenn Lumsden.

Just trying to clarify some things.

“The interesting thing to me I discovered doing all the digging around this last week is that you really can’t find too many predecessors for the Marvel heroes, at least not for what they became.”

That’s largely because the Marvel characters were mixtures of existing superhero types and popular culture figures of the time that leaned heavily towards their pop influences rather than their heroic ones. In that sense it’s easy to see where the influences came from* but a bit harder to find a specific proto-character.

* Spider-man = James Dean “troubled teen”, Dr. Strange = Vincent Price, Fantastic Four = Fantastic Voyage/Swiss Family Robinson, Iron Man = Howard Hughes, Nick Fury = started as John Wayne then became James Bond, Daredevil = Perry Mason

Not coincidentally, Jean-Marc Lofficier, a major force in the Wold Newton game, co-plotted YAS. I can’t recall with certainty if he was directly responsible for the Danner connection, but it’s likely.

Huh. Okay, mea culpa. I had it backwards — I was mostly thinking of what my Aussie friend Paul had said in the past conversations we’d had about the Phantom being such a newsstand comics star Down Under, and so I assumed the Swedes were translating Aussie work. My bad.

Actually, no. There’s lots more. But Tarzan, in particular, had SO MUCH going on and SO MANY imitators in pulps and comics that I decided he would get his own column. Probably next week…. depends on how much time I get to research it, might be the week after, or longer. That’s another one like the Ranger that really deserves a book. But there’s a LOT of Jungle Lords (and a couple of ladies) out there.

Most everyone else that’s been brought up, particularly Holmes and the Pimpernel, I DID consider including and then discarded because I didn’t think you could make the case that there was a direct line from them to Superman or Batman. To superheroes, yes, absolutely, but you have to draw the line somewhere. The Pimpernel was the hardest one to throw overboard, Kane and Finger did actually mention him as an influence (though I was unaware Jerry Siegel had too) but in the end I decided that the Pimpernel was more the source of the secret identity concept, which is a generic superhero idea; everything he brought to the table for Batman specifically, Zorro did too, and Zorro was the better one to talk about, and time was becoming an issue… as it was this took up most of my week. (He said, trying not to sound all defensive and whiny.)

This would make a really cool book project for someone. The interesting thing to me I discovered doing all the digging around this last week is that you really can’t find too many predecessors for the Marvel heroes, at least not for what they became. The Hulk has ancestors galore, of course, in classical literature, and Thor is a gimme; but Spider-Man, the X-Men… you REALLY have to reach there to find anyone in pulps or early SF. You can have lots of fun looking for Vision predecessors, though. There have been a remarkable number of Pinocchio androids in pulps and comics.

Anyway. Carry on. Lots of these things are news to me, particularly the “Gladiator” follow-ups. That’s stuff I gotta check out now.

When Batman was first introduced, though, he had none of the backstory, origin, or motivations we associate with his current incarnation – he really was a straight-up mysterious avenger of the night in the mold of the Shadow. It wasn’t until his origin first appeared in Detective #33 – as a back-up – that the character started to depart from the original concept.

Tarzan’s Jane = Lois Lane

A stretch?

He’s got a (not-so) secret base from which he works, and he’s got a distinctive costume. He has a sidekick, and a superpower (two if you count his ability to disguise himself). He’s got a catchphrase. He’s got both an archvillain with whom he identitifies and a villain(ess) for whom he feels a weakness. He’s even got his own Kryptonite, in his cocaine addiction.

He’s definitely survived. He’s been in comics and, like the Shadow, has met Batman.

Oh, one more! He oftens gets on the bad side of other law enforcement agents he meets while travelling, just as superheroes have to have a fight before they team up…

Other figures I think you have to fit into this mixture are Leslie Charteris’s ‘The Saint’, and also the Green Hornet, both of which predated Superman’s debut in the comics (I’m pretty sure). In fact, the original Crimson Avenger looks pretty much like a ripoff of the Green Hornet.