Volume 1, Number 170
September 2026
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Roger Ash
PUBLISHER
John Morrow
DESIGNER
Rich Fowlks
EDITOR EMERITUS
Michael Eury
COVER ARTIST
Matt Wagner (Specialty piece. Original art scan courtesy of Heritage Auctions.)
COVER DESIGNER
Michael Kronenberg
PROOFREADER
Kevin Sharp
SPECIAL THANKS
Mike W. Barr
Craig Boldman
Jonathan Brown
Marc Buxton
Paul Burns
Ed Catto
Steve Englehart
Don Glut
Grand Comics Database
Heritage Auctions
Karl Heitmueller Jr.
Klaus Janson
Robert Jeschonek
Paul Kupperberg
Paul Levitz
Ed Lute
Brian Martin
Al Milgrom
Stuart Moore
Jimmy Palmiotti
Adam Philips
Scott Saavedra
Walter Simonson
John K. Snyder III
Bryan D. Stroud
Roy Thomas
Matt Wagner
Mark Waid
Marv Wolfman
Doug Zawisza

Comics’ Bronze Age and Beyond!

BACKSEAT DRIVER: Editorial by Roger Ash	2
BRING ON THE BAD GUYS: Shine On: The History of Doctor Light	3
Menace or annoyance?
FLASHBACK: Why Does a God Need a Doctor? An Exploration of Donald Blake	11
Thor’s secret identity or something more?
FLASHBACK: Midnight Master: The History of Doctor Mid-Nite	17
Follow the Golden Age hero into the Bronze Age and beyond
PRINCE STREET NEWS	29
It’s good for what ails ya
INTERVIEW: It’s (Weird) Science With Dr. Radium	31
An interview with Scott Saavedra
BRING ON THE BAD GUYS: The Tragic Tale of Dr. Phosphorus	39
Meltdown with the nuclear menace
FLASHBACK: Doctor… Who?	49
It’s mystic master, Doctor Druid
BEYOND CAPES: The Occult Files of Doctor Spektor	57
The comic no one expected
FLASHBACK: Angel of Crime Alley, Batman’s Mother Figure	63
Throwing the spotlight on Dr. Leslie Thompkins
BRING ON THE BAD GUYS: For Whom the Bell Tolls	71
A resounding look at Dr. Bong
IN MEMORIUM: GERRY CONWAY	78
Back Talk	79

BACK ISSUE™ issue 170, September 2026 (ISSN 1932-6904) is published monthly (except Jan., March, May, and Nov.) by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344. Periodicals postage paid at Raleigh, NC. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Back Issue, c/o TwoMorrows, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614.
Michael Eury, Editor Emeritus. Roger Ash, Editor-In-Chief. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: BACK ISSUE, c/o Roger Ash, Editor, 2715 Birchwood Pass, Apt. 7, Cross Plains, WI 53528. Email: rogerash@hotmail.com. Eight-issue subscriptions: $97 Economy US, $147 International, $39 Digital. Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. Cover artwork by Matt Wagner. TM & © DC Comics. All Rights Reserved. All editorial matter © TwoMorrows and Roger Ash, except Prince Street News © Karl Heitmueller Jr. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING

Is there a Doctor in the House? Issue • BACK ISSUE •

Photo credit: Jesse Chieffo.

When Brian Martin suggested the theme for this issue, I thought it was a great idea. There are a ton of doctors in comics, so coming up with subjects was bound to be easy. I should have known better. Many of the “bigger” doctors had already been covered in these pages-Doctor Doom, Dr. Fate, Doctor Strange, Doc Samson, Doc Savage, etc. There were still lots of doctors to choose from, but I needed to dig a bit deeper.
Since Brian had suggested a story on the DC villain Doctor Light, the starting point was easy. Being a long-time Howard the Duck fan, Dr. Bong was sure to be along for the ride. Dr. Donald Blake has been around since Marvel’s first Thor story in Journey into Mystery, but he still remains an enigma, so he seemed a likely candidate. Keeping with actual medical doctors, Bruce Wayne’s surrogate mother, Dr. Leslie Thompkins, seemed a natural. Since people can’t get enough of Batman villains, why not Dr. Phosphorus? A number of mystical characters are called doctor and since Fate and Strange had been done, we went with Doctor Druid. A character who’s both a medical doctor and a superhero? You know we’ve got to go there, so we present a history of Doctor Mid-Nite. We even have a crossover of sorts with Retro Fan with editor Ed Catto telling us about Doctor Spektor and writer/designer Scott Saavedra spilling the beans on his creation, Dr. Radium. There’s even a doctor themed “Prince Street News.” These may not be the doctors you were expecting, but by the end of the issue I bet you’ll agree that this is a damn fine assortment of doctors.
Last month (April) as I write this, I took a road trip to Cleveland to visit my friend Paul. One of our excursions took us to see the newly erected Superman statue. But this is not just a statue of Superman. Oh, no. It begins with a phone booth. Clark Kent’s clothing is scattered inside, the phone is off the hook, and a word balloon is coming out of the receiver with a worried operator asking Clark if everything’s ok. Next to the phone booth there are three figures. Jerry and Joanne Siegel look skyward in wonder while Joe Shuster kneels between them, drawing the cover to Action Comics #1. Ahead of them flies the Man of Steel himself, Superman! It’s three separate statues that tell a story and form one big image. If you happen to be in the Cleveland area, I highly recommend taking a few minutes to check it out.
While we were in the final stages of preparing this issue to go to print, the news broke that writer Gerry Conway had passed. His contributions to comics were many and Doug Zawisza has written a beautiful piece about him that you’ll find in this issue. I won’t repeat what Doug has to say, but I want and need to say this. I will be forever grateful for his willingness to share his remembrances and stories with the readers and writers of BACK ISSUE. I interviewed him several years ago for an article on Man-Thing. In my short time as editor, I think more issues had commentary from him than didn’t. And there’s still more to come. Issue #172 includes him talking about the creation of Killer Frost.
Rest in Peace, Mr. Conway. Thank you for everything.

Look! Up in the sky! The Superman statue in Cleveland, Ohio featuring not just the Man of Steel, but Jerry and Joanne Siegel and Joe Schuster.
Superman TM & © DC Comics.

by Roger Ash

• BACK ISSUE • Is there a Doctor in the House? Issue

by Brian Martin

Dick Giordano created this stunning image of Doctor Light battling Batman for a 1978 calendar.
TM & © DC Comics.

Depending on where you first encountered Doctor Light you probably either thought he was a villain of epic stature, or a minor annoyance to the average superhero. His story had almost as many variants as there are types of light bulbs. Arthur Light’s criminal career would vary from almost burnt out, to klieg light strength. So, join us if you will, as we fiddle with the dimmer control in the examination of his shining career.
BLINDED BY THE LIGHT
The good Doctor debuted in Justice League of America #12 (June 1962) in a story written by Gardner Fox and illustrated by Mike Sekowsky and Bernard Sachs. As was the norm at the time, the tale was provocatively titled, “The Last Case of the Justice League!” The title comes into play as mascot Snapper Carr is summoned to JLA headquarters by the villainous Doctor Light to scribe a document with the aforementioned title. He then proceeds to tell Snapper how he teleported the individual team members to various planets that would counteract their specific powers.
This story would feature an early use of a common superhero plot device, as Superman and Batman are suspicious of the summons that gather the JLA and proceed to switch identities, thus having each trapped by the scheme meant for the other. Freeing all the members, they then track down Light as he attempts to build a trophy room of light related artifacts. The various battles reveal a few devices that would become SOP for Doctor Light. Weapons that are based on light but are really all sorts of different things. He would use hard light objects, later on Hate Light, Magnetic Light, pretty much anything the plot required, just with the appellation Light added to it.
As well as allowing three different teams to battle the effulgent antagonist, he creates solid mirages of himself, a tactic that would often reappear.
The JLA is of course victorious, and Snapper reveals he was not worried by the title of the paper Light was having him compose as when he dated it he noticed it was… the 1st of April.
All in all, this was a scintillating debut for the character as he baffled and battled the team for an entire issue. Surely he would be a challenging foe battling the team for a long, long time.
THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME
Or maybe not. Immediately after that, the luminous lawbreaker would return in The Atom #8 (Aug./Sept. 1963) by Fox, Gil Kane, and Murphy Anderson. Now just to state up front, I am as big a Ray Palmer booster as there is, but this guy had almost beaten the Justice League, and the Atom takes him down in 15 pages. Thus does the pattern begin.
Things did not improve as Fox, Kane and Sid Greene pitted him against Green Lantern in issue #33 (Dec. 1964) of his title for 12 pages, then he returned in Flash #171 (June 1967), where Fox and Greene teamed with penciller Carmine Infantino to at least give him a full issue before he tasted defeat. These issues do shine a little light on the villain’s motivations as he proclaimed he has decided to destroy the Justice Leaguers individually rather than as a team. That motivation will persist for a little while at least.
NOT THE BRIGHTEST BULB IN THE ARRAY
After these starring roles, the good Doctor Light joined the roster of reliable DC villains to be pulled out when a known foe was needed, or for background in crowd scenes. JLA’s #61 and 65 (Mar. and Sept. 1968, respectively) would use the character this way, and since the latter of those was the last issue Gardner Fox would write, it seemed, for a while at least, that no other writer would go to see this particular Doctor.
Len Wein would change that when he teamed up with artists Dick Dillin and Joe Giella to craft World’s Finest #207 (Nov. 1971). At this time WF was experimenting with teaming Superman up with different co-stars each issue (as detailed by BI editor-emeritus Michael Eury in his Team-Up Companion published by TwoMorrows), but this one was a call back to when the Darknight Detective appeared alongside him every issue. The phosphorescent felon does not appear until the eighteenth page but is the driving force behind the plot and even branches out into using magic against the duo, albeit a light-based form of prestidigitation.
Cary Bates then utilized Light along with artists Irv Novick and Dick Giordano in a 13-page battle with Flash in issue #223 (Sept./Oct. ‘73) of his title wherein a bit of a pattern began to emerge, as it was more than halfway through this tale as well before Doctor Light is revealed as the driving force behind the plot.
After this appearance, it was finally time for the Lighted one to reassert himself as a major contender by again taking on the entire Justice League.
LIGHT IN THE TUNNEL
Justice League of America #122 (Sept. 1975) was the first place I ever encountered Doctor Light and was, in fact, one of the first comic books I ever remember buying and reading! (No wonder I wanted to write an article about him!)
Writer Martin Pasko, along with artists Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin, crafted a JLA Casebook story. This format was used at the time to fill in knowledge that had been glossed over in the group’s history. This one told the story of why the JLA members revealed their secret identities to each other. The instigator of that event was Doctor Light.
Disguising himself as a giant ice creature, Light is taken to Superman’s fortress after the JLA defeats him. This is intentional however as Doc then proceeded with his plan to use an element known as Amnesium to scramble the heroes minds so that they confused their real identities. Green Lantern thought his civilian identity was Barry Allen and so forth. The tale highlights the menace that Doctor Light could provide as his light weapons and his creation of realistic mirages are integral to the plot.
Also showcased was writer Pasko’s knowledge of JLA history, as Light perpetrates this scheme precisely because, as we mentioned, our heroes defeated him that very first time with an identity switch. Adding to the continuity, there is also the fact that Amnesium had been used back in JLA #19 (May 1963) to cause the members to forget each other’s civilian identities after learning them in the course of a case.
Suffice to say, the JLA is triumphant again, but not before enduring a chase through the fortress where exploding mirages, hate light, and kryptonite light underscore that the Doctor could be a formidable menace. At tale’s end, the heroes agree if they had known each other’s civilian identities from the start, the plot would never have begun. As an introduction to the character, it was quite impressive.
But it didn’t last. After appearing as part of a villainous ensemble in JLA #136 (Nov. 1976), that same month Doctor Light was the antagonist in the first issue of the Teen Titans revival, #44. Crafted by writers Paul Levitz and Bob Rozakis with artists Pablo Marcos and Bob Smith, Light attacks the Titans as a means of getting to the Justice League, all the while berating them for their age. The Titans beat him, but at the time were not quite considered to be at the major league level, and thus this was considered another humiliating defeat. When asked about this story, Levitz had no memory except to say, “Loved his appearance in The Atom when I was a kid. Not much in my mind since, except the day I was plotting that Titans story I didn’t finish…”, thus explaining the dual writing credit.
LIGHT FACTORY
Doctor Light must have been considered popular, as the character was finally given an origin in DC Super Stars #14 (May/June ‘77) produced by Paul Kupperberg, Dick Ayers, and Jack Abel. The story shows how a man named Arthur Light developed a device that allowed him to reach into other worlds and planes of existence and steal a device from Thanagar. This story is set before Hawkman ever came to Earth, and Light uses the stolen technology to create his light-based devices. The pinioned paladin tracks him down and returns the original device home, but Light already has his weapons. Why use this specific match-up? Scribe Kupperberg tells BI, “Looking at the story today I don’t have any memory of why I made any of the choices I did. It’s possible the Hawkman connection had been handed to me by the editor, but I suppose we needed an extraterrestrial explanation for Doctor Light’s technology and, of course a superhero for him to fight.”
When asked about the Doctor Light character, Kupperberg states, “I knew about Doctor Light from the get-go. I grew up reading comics in the 1960s, and I was a hardcore DC fan, especially the ones edited by Julie Schwartz. Not that there was all that much to know about him in 1977 when I wrote this. He’d appeared in a few stories in different Schwartz titles but was a typical Silver Age cipher of a character who existed as someone on which to hang a gimmick and a costume.”
Given our focus on the ups and downs of the nefarious Doctor, Kupperberg feels that “Doctor Light had always seemed a minor leaguer to me. Any bad guy who got his ass whipped by the Atom wasn’t someone to be taken too seriously. Marv could have picked any one of a dozen of those Silver Age villains and just as easily turned them into the butt of the joke.” (No, that is not a non-sequitur. For those not already in the know we will find out just what he means, and who Marv is, very shortly.)
Just to put pencil spot on this origin tale, the continuity conscious among us will note that when Tony Isabella wrote Hawkman in the mid-1980s he declared that this story never took place and Hawkman and Hawkgirl never visited Earth before Brave and the Bold #34 (Feb-March ‘61).
STAR LIGHT
As proof of his star power, Light was quickly featured in Action Comics #474 (Aug. 1977) where he battled Superman for…..um….11 pages.
This was obviously a minor setback as he was soon back on the JLA’s radar with JLA #149 (Dec. 1977). This was during Steve Englehart’s fondly remembered run on the book with the Dillin/McLaughlin art team still firmly in place. In this narrative, the Doctor is a daunting challenge that requires all the assembled members, with assistance from the Englehart creation, the Star Tsar, to overcome. Mr. Englehart tells BI that, “My version of him was arrogant, and almost able to back that up. His light powers were very powerful and extensive.”
After his vanquishment in that story, our lustrous lawbreaker had a couple of appearances, battling Batman and Supergirl in Brave and the Bold #147 (Feb. 1979), then, suffering an ignominious defeat in (cough) eight pages to Aquaman in World’s Finest #264 (Sept. 1980). But fear not, a resurrected reputation was on the immediate horizon thanks to one of the greatest creative teams of the Bronze Age.
BURN OUT
The New Teen Titans by Marv Wolfman and George Perez beginning in 1980 was a game changer for DC, but also for our scintillating subject. In issue #3 (Jan. 1981), the creative duo was joined by guest inker Frank Chiaramonte to pit the Titans against a brand new villainous contingent, The Fearsome Five. Consisting of new characters Shimmer, Gizmo, Mammoth, and Psimon, the fearsome five-some were led by Doctor Light.
The group actually heads out to attack the Titans with the stated goal being to intimidate other hero groups. The reader is let in on the fact that this is all part of the plan of overarching villain Trigon. Right from the start (on the book’s cover in fact) we are advised that Doctor L has had his light weapons integrated into his costume by tech wizard Gizmo. This change in M.O. would continue for the life of the character. Wolfman himself tells BI, “I thought visually it would look better for him blasting rays from his hands than him shooting a gun. It made him feel more superish.”
A minor incident in issue three may have had a significant impact on the character’s future. When Psimon, a Trigon pawn, asserts his control over the group, he brain blasts Doctor Light (to the extent that Perez actually shows the Doctor’s brain on the receiving end!). All of the subsequent changes in Light’s behavior can be traced to this, and Wolfman reveals, “Doctor Light was extremely powerful, yet he was mostly ineffective. I couldn’t justify that other than to explain that he was, well, not operating at full capacity. To be a good villain he needed to be smarter. Much smarter.”
Just an aside here. In deference to the villain’s history, Wonder Girl mentions his defeat by the Atom, an occurrence Light shrugs off as “simply luck”.
Most of the FF (not that one!) remain at large until issue #7 when they invade Titans Tower to rescue Psimon. Regular inker Romeo Tanghal had rejoined the creative team as we are given our first real glimpse of the pitfalls to come for our subject. After a pitched battle, Light is the only one of his group left. Robin then distracts him with some quick talking and knocks him out by waving some gas capsules under his nose. An ignominious defeat to be sure. But there was worse to come.
DOWN A DARK TUNNEL
Titans #19 (May 1982) brings the Doctor back into the room. In prison, his motivation to escape includes his past defeat to the Atom (seems like that gets brought up a lot, doesn’t it?) and the successes of those he considers lesser villains. During a routine museum robbery, and battle with guest-star Hawkman, he accidentally activates four statues that are forms of the god Vishnu. Running to the Titans for help, after they succeed in defeating the statues, Robin again takes Light down by himself, in the process commenting that with his powers he should be much better than he is. To make matters worse, in a subsequent questioning, Hawkman intimidates Light to the point that he faints.
December 1983 brought us a crossover between the Titans and Batman and the Outsiders in issues #37 and #5, respectively. The Fearsome Five are the adversaries, and Light is again ineffectual and humiliated by Psimon. At the end of the story, he appears to abandon the criminal life.
Never fear though, he was back in Titans #49 (Dec. 1984) where guest artists Carmine Infantino and Mike Decarlo assist in having an ailing Kid Flash and girlfriend Frances Kane beat a constantly whining Light.
And I absolutely refuse to mention the Bonus Book (a DC feature examined in BI #71) included with Flash #12 (May 1988) by George Broderick Jr., Gordon Purcell, and Tim Dzon in which DL is defeated by…. Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys. Three young kids. He does however write a letter at the very end which led to his next career.
PRISON SPOTLIGHT
“Ten reasons to buy Suicide Squad in 1989.” Ads with that banner appeared in February 1989 DC comics with Doctor Light featured as one of the ten. Light had already contacted the Squad in issue #19 (Nov. 1988) of their title after that letter he wrote. It would not be until #24 (Feb. 1989) that he would become an active participant though.
That same month, in Secret Origins #37, Light would get a post-Crisis origin courtesy of Craig Boldman, Mike Parobeck, and Ken Branch. Writer Boldman says he got this assignment because, “Mark Waid and I broke into writing for DC at just about the same time, and Mark liked my work. He got on staff at DC as an editor and was open to my ideas for Secret Origins. On a rare visit to New York, I visited Mark. He knew my heart was in the Silver Age, and between us we settled on Doctor Light.”
This origin keeps the current characterization, giving us a Light who is a budding inventor who purloins his partner’s weapons (and the Doctor Light sobriquet!) after selling him out to a rival and accidentally causing his death after discovering his nascent heroic career. “I introduced the idea of a previous Doctor Light, a fledgling superhero, because the name struck me more as a heroic one. ‘Light’ has always carried positive connotations,” says Boldman.
“Doctor Light’s reputation as a failure was understandable, but I felt a bit harsh. He became known as the villain that couldn’t beat anybody,” reveals Boldman. “By the time I got my hands on the character, that stench of defeat permeated him, so I felt I needed to work with it. My solution was to portray him as a man who was living with a great overarching fear, which continually hobbled him.” The ghost of that partner we mentioned, Jacob by name, would haunt him for the next little while. Boldman tells BI, “I was glad to see the ‘ghost’ angle followed up on. I’m flattered when another writer picks up the baton and am always interested in seeing where it leads.”
Since there was already an origin story for Light, “That story struck me more as an ‘untold chapter’ than as an origin. It could be reconciled with my version if necessary,” says Boldman.
Back in the Suicide Squad, Light’s tenure was fairly uneventful, with a noted aversion for battling children, and portraying him as the milksop he had become, despite the fact that he kills Sparkler (a teenager) of the Force of July in #27 (May 1989). That is, until he himself was killed.
Issue #36 (Dec. 1989) was a culmination of a thread that John Ostrander had been weaving almost since the start of the series. The previous few issues brought team members to Apokolips, and as this issue begins, the ghost of Jacob convinces Light that he should make a heroic stand against Darkseid’s legions. It does not go well. Co-plotted by his wife Kim Yale, and illustrated by John K. Snyder and Geof Isherwood, Doc is dispatched in… um, two panels and is now condemned to a ghostly existence alongside Jacob.
The writing team was not done with the Doc yet, bringing him back in SS #52 (Apr.1991) in a light-hearted tale illustrated by Jim Fern and Bob Campanella where a demon named…Mister Biff returns Light to life.
CHRISTMAS LIGHTS
Writer Gerard Jones teamed with artists Gene Ha and Romeo Tanghal to rehabilitate our phosphorescent felon again in Green Lantern #36 (Feb. 1993) as he is much more of a threat, crashing a Jordan family Christmas while displaying the fact that his powers now seem to be contained within his body.
Consigned to GL’s power battery at the end of that story, he would remain there until he challenged the new Emerald Gladiator, Kyle Rayner, in issue #80 (Nov. 1986) by Ron Marz, J. H. Williams, and Mick Gray. For this appearance Light sports a new costume, one he will keep for a while. After a brief battle though, he basically flees.
In the wake of that makeover, the good Doctor would remain a more impressive villain (albeit again relegated to a foot soldier) in the DCU for the next little while until in 2004, he became the catalyst for a major change in the way everyone thought of superheroes.
IN THE DARK
Comic characters took a darker turn in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, but the 2004 Identity Crisis miniseries took things a step further, especially where the long-time heroes were concerned. Crafted by novelist Brad Meltzer and artists Rags Morales and Michael Bair, the seven issues were something that has again become commonplace: an Event series that was not a crossover. The series was not the first to kill a prominent supporting character, but it certainly turned the heroic world into a nastier one than most of us Bronze and Silver Age fans were used to.
The story centers around the murder of the Elongated Man’s wife, Sue. Why we are concerned is, when it happens, the prime suspect is Doctor Light. Why? It is revealed that Light had in fact assaulted Sue many years ago and had his mind altered by Zatanna as a consequence. This is retroactively used to explain his mental deterioration into the buffoon he had become and is a call-back to all of those earlier tales from simpler times when heroes would routinely alter the memories of other characters, Doctor Light among them.
I won’t reveal the real killer for those who have not read it, but the Doc did not do it. Further revelations within the narrative would make huge changes to the DCU that would be felt, arguably, to this day. This means Doctor Light screwed up the lives of a lot of heroes in ways beyond his wildest dreams, albeit inadvertently.
With the spotlight on him, Light would quickly become a major thorn, becoming the antagonist in Titans and Green Arrow arcs in short order.
DIMMING THE LIGHTS
Back to the status of a formidable foe again, the radiant rogue would be a mainstay until the next time he died. Are comics the only medium where that statement doesn’t raise an eyebrow?
DC’s 2008 event was Final Crisis, and in the first issue, Light is complicit in one of that series’ pivotal events, the slaying of the Martian Manhunter. This act very swiftly backfires as the Spectre catches up with him and… turns him into a candle and melts him in the tie-in Final Crisis: Revelations #1 (Oct. 2008) (Somewhere Michael Fleisher was smiling). Showing Light’s relevance, ads for the series asked, “Where were you when…” this or that significant event in the series happened, and one featured, “Where were you when Doctor Light met his fate?”
That is pretty much all we have to say about the good Doctor. Except for appearing as a resurrected corpse in the “Blackest Night” event, the luminescent lawbreaker remained dead until the DCU was reset in the “Flashpoint” event.
In the New 52 that resulted, a Doctor Light was created. Then killed. Then resurrected. Seems to be a pattern here.
Doctor Light is like that bulb in the trusty lamp that you read by. After a while, the bulb will burn out. You find a replacement, but sometimes it’s of a lower wattage. When that burns out you might find one of the higher brightness again. Regardless, you keep it in service, no matter how bright it may be at any certain time.

(left) The first appearance of Doctor Light in Justice League of America #12. Cover by Murphy Anderson. (right)The Atom #8. The comic that would haunt Doctor Light’s career. Cover by Gil Kane and Murphy Anderson.
TM & © DC Comics.

paul kupperberg

© Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons.

Doctor Light is revealed as the mover and shaker in World’s Finest #207. Art by Dick Dillin and Joe Giella. (inset) Maybe Doctor Light will fare better against Green Lantern. Cover by Kane and Anderson.
TM & © DC Comics.

(left) Doctor Light takes on the Justice League of America once again in issue #122. Art by Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin. (right) The Teen Titans batter Doctor Light in issue #44. Art by Pablo Marcos and Bob Smith. Original art scan courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com).
TM & © DC Comics.

marv wolfman

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(top) Doctor Light’s in fine form in Justice League of America #149. Art by Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin. Original art scan courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). (bottom left) Doctor Light and the Fearsome Five take on the New Teen Titans in issue #3. (bottom right) Doctor Light bounces back quickly and returns in New Teen Titans #7. Covers by George Perez.
TM & © DC Comics.

craig boldman

(left) Doctor Light joins the Suicide Squad. Issue #24 art by Luke McDonnell and Karl Kesel. (right) Doctor Light vs. Darkseid. This isn’t going to end well. Suicide Squad #36 cover by Geof Isherwood.
TM & © DC Comics.

Doctor Light’s past is revealed in Secret Origins #37. Cover by Ty Templeton.
TM & © DC Comics.

THE NEW DOCTOR LIGHT
Debuting in Crisis on Infinite Earths #4 (July 1985), Kimiyo Hoshi is a Japanese scientist studying the effects of the Crisis. The Monitor chooses her to be the new Doctor Light. Unfortunately, Marv Wolfman has no memory of the process behind her creation. She was one of the new batch of characters that Crisis decided to create. Strangely, she may have had an earlier genesis as DC Sampler #2 (Sept. 1984), features a George Perez illustrated spread showcasing forthcoming developments in the Titans series and features an African- American woman referenced as Doctor Light whose provenance is sadly also lost to history.
As much or more than any character created by Crisis, Doctor Light quickly found her place in the DC Universe. She was involved in the revamped Justice League in 1987 and has played a part in many incarnations of the group since. Like the later incarnations of the villainous Light, Kimiyo’s powers are not the result of outside technology, but are contained, or maybe generated would be a better term, within her body itself.
Though never a first-tier star, she has gone on to be a regular character in the DCU, continuing to appear to this very day.
P.S. There was a Golden Age Doctor Light who battled Dr. Mid-Nite in a few issues of All-American Comics in 1947.

(inset above) Doctor Light Kimiyo Hoshi stands beside other female members of Justice League Europe. Cover by Ron Randall and Spike. (bottom) What happened to this Doctor Light? It’s a mystery. Art by George Perez.
TM & © DC Comics.

(left) Doctor Light’s dark past is revealed in Identity Crisis #2. Art by Rags Morales and Michael Bair. (right) The death of Doctor Light in Final Crisis: Revelations #1. Art by Philip Tan and Walden Wong.
TM & © DC Comics.

The writer would like to thank Craig Boldman, Steven Englehart, Paul Kupperberg and Marv Wolfman for their input into the composing of this article.
Brian Martin lives in Oakville, Ontario, Canada, where he was exposed to the joyous light of comic books very early in life and has kept basking in it ever since.

by Jonathan Brown

In Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Captain James T. Kirk asked a nefarious space alien, “What does God need with a starship?” The being was posing as the Almighty and had lured other characters to the edges so that it could steal the USS Enterprise. In realizing that this “God” seemed limited and in need of a mode of travel, Captain Kirk used the question to tease out the true identity of this creature. Surely a being of infinite power and knowledge could go wherever it pleased. In posing this question, the space alien is revealed to not be God, but a villain. In the years preceding this film’s release, Marvel creators and fans asked a similar question about the comic Thor: Why does a god need a Doctor? Why does a god need a secret identity?
Long before Thor strode across galaxies and timelines as the cosmic champion we know today, he lived behind the blue eyes of a mortal doctor. Donald Blake was once as integral to the Thor mythos as Steve Rogers is to Captain America or Bruce Banner to the Hulk. He was Thor’s disguise, yes, but he was also his conscience, his grounding, his lesson, his burden, and sometimes, his victim. Today, Blake is an Easter Egg in Odinson’s first MCU outing, a little-known concept to contemporary readers. It is often remembered only as a relic of the Silver Age discussed at conventions, comic shops, and on Facebook groups. But in truth, he is a far richer part of the Norse gods’ Marvel legacy. To trace Donald Blake’s history is to trace the evolution of Marvel Comics itself. He is the man behind the god. The man forgotten, reimagined, erased, resurrected, corrupted, and reinterpreted across six decades. The man who once carried the soul of the thunder.
Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, and Jack Kirby introduced Donald Blake in Journey Into Mystery #83 in 1962. They were breaking the world and causing a Big Bang that would provide the foundation for the shared continuity we would come to see as a universe. Fantastic Four and Hulk had already launched the Marvel Age, and a new house style was forming, one where heroes carried emotional burdens alongside superpowers. Blake’s debut exemplified this vision. He was a frail, thoughtful physician with a limp, a quiet man who approached life with compassion and caution. Finding Mjolnir transformed him into Thor, but the dramatic tension didn’t come from the transformation itself. It came from the question: what does a god learn by living as a man?
Silver Age secret identities were common, but Blake was unusual. Rather than hiding a hero’s power, Blake’s mortal limitations shaped Thor’s character. Blake needed humility; Thor needed humanity. The early issues are full of scenes that show Blake hesitating, wrestling with ethics, worrying about Jane Foster, or arguing with himself about whether the world needs Thor or the gentle hand of a doctor. In these early years, the character has the quiet sadness of someone who sees wonders beyond reach, who is capable of greatness he cannot fully grasp without sacrificing the life he has built.
But everything changed in 1968, when Stan Lee penned Thor #159. Lee detonated a continuity bomb that continues to reverberate: Donald Blake was not real. He had never been a child, never been a student, never lived a life before Thor’s exile. He was an enchantment, a persona crafted by Odin to teach Thor humility.
With this revelation, Blake shifted from character to symbol. He became the incarnation of a divine lesson. Thor’s human life was not quite his own—it was a narrative of reformation designed by his cosmic father. The issue remains one of the most philosophically ambitious of the Silver Age, and it reframed Blake for every subsequent writer.
Yet Blake’s fictional origins did nothing to diminish the emotional weight he carried in the decade that followed. Marvel entered the Bronze Age in the early 1970s, a period marked by deeper psychological storytelling, experimentation, and social relevance. Writer Gerry Conway, who took over Thor during that period, inherited not just a superhero but a metaphysical paradox: a divine being posing as a man who never existed.
In a 2022 interview at Terrificon published by Conskipper, Conway recalled how he began writing the series: “Stan gave up Thor, and Roy didn’t want to write Thor, so I began writing Thor.” His entry was almost casual, but the results were anything but. Conway leaned into the psychological duels inside Blake’s mind. If Stan Lee revealed Blake was imaginary, Conway wrote him as someone who felt painfully honest. Conway often portrayed Blake as a man torn between identities, wandering through emotional landscapes where certainty was impossible. In these stories, Blake struggles not only with love for Jane Foster, for Earth, but with belonging. He performs surgeries with trembling care, only to be wrenched away by forces of destiny. He wonders if his affections are his own or borrowed from the god inside him. In one memorable issue, Blake’s self-doubt nearly cripples him more than his physical impairment ever had. Conway approached Blake like a man awakening from a dream he cannot test, living a life with roots that might dissolve if pulled on too hard.
The tension Conway explored captured Marvel’s shifting tone. The world was growing more complex, and so were its heroes. Secret identities were no longer simple disguises; they were battlegrounds of psyche and soul. Blake’s humanity grounded Thor during this era, even as cosmic threats escalated. Yet this deepening complexity also revealed the strain in the dual-identity structure. Thor was being pulled upward into myth, while Blake was pushing downward into human vulnerability. Something had to give.
That “something” arrived in 1983, when Walter Simonson took over Thor with issue #337, delivering what many regard as the ultimate run in the character’s history. Simonson approached the book with infectious creative energy, cosmic imagination, and a commitment to revitalizing the series from top to bottom. And one of his first decisions was simple but seismic: Donald Blake had to go. In a later interview with Comic Book Resources for their “Dialogue with Walt Simonson” series, Simonson described the decision with characteristic understatement. He explained that removing Blake “achieved a couple of things,” noting only that the change allowed the story to move in new directions. But the magnitude of that shift cannot be overstated.
Simonson’s removal of Blake liberated Thor from the constraints of mortal life. No longer tied to hospital rooms or earthly romance, Thor could now inhabit the full scale of Norse mythology. Under Simonson’s pen, the book became an operatic epic: the arrival of Beta Ray Bill, the forging of Stormbreaker, Loki’s schemes, apocalyptic visions of Ragnarok. Each of these stories thrived because Thor was finally free to be a god without apology.
And yet, in Blake’s absence, a subtle emptiness emerged. Thor was powerful, noble, mythic— but he was no longer human. The emotional counterweight that once grounded him had vanished. Simonson compensated with brilliance, but the silhouette of Blake lingered on the horizon like a ghost.
As the 1980s progressed, the fate of Donald Blake took an even stranger turn behind the scenes. Marvel underwent significant editorial shifts under Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter. Shooter was an ambitious, sometimes controversial figure with a vision for a more streamlined Universe. At one point, Shooter spearheaded a massive reboot concept called “Marvel’s Big Bang,” intended to reimagine characters from scratch. Years later, writer Doug Moench, who was present during these discussions, recalled in fan forums and retrospective conversations that Shooter’s plan would have killed off Donald Blake entirely. Not retired, not reimagined—killed.
Moench remembered that in the reboot, Thor would have been a mantle accessible to anyone who found his magical walking stick. Instead of a doctor, the mortal identity might have been “a plumber or whatever.” The casual phrasing underscores how disposable Blake was in the late 1980s. What had once been Thor’s humanity was now an abandoned storytelling device, a remnant of a bygone era.
The reboot never happened. Shooter left Marvel, and Big Bang collapsed. Blake survived by accident more than design. Yet the proposal revealed how precarious his existence had become.
Then came the 1990s and early 2000s, a period of reinvention, grim realism, and blockbuster event storytelling. Thor himself went through multiple deaths, resurrections, and cosmic transformations. By 2004, the character died again during Ragnarok, and the entire Asgardian mythos went dormant. When Thor finally returned in 2007, Marvel faced a decision: rebuild the god, or rebuild the man as well?
Enter J. Michael Straczynski. Straczynski, known for the mythologically infused TV epic Babylon 5, brought an emotional sensitivity and structural elegance to his Thor relaunch. In a June 2007 interview with journalist Matt Brady for Comic Book Resources, JMS articulated his affection for the forgotten mortal half of the equation. “I always liked Dr. Blake,” he said, adding that Blake had never been used to his full narrative potential. Straczynski didn’t just restore Blake; he redefined him. In this new interpretation, Blake becomes a fully realized, autonomous being who shares existence with Thor rather than existing merely as his shell. Thor and Blake meet in the Void, as Odinthon engages in Thorsleep after recreating Asgard on Earth, during this run of the comic. Straczynski dramatized their reunion with almost biblical symbolism. In a liminal nowhere-space between worlds, Blake confronts Thor—not with accusations, but with a plea: they both have the right to exist. They both have value. They both matter.
This scene, quiet yet monumental, reintroduced the emotional core Thor had been missing. Through Blake’s eyes, Thor sees a world scarred by war, fear, and division. This perspective leads Thor to rebuild Asgard not in the heavens, but hovering above Broxton, Oklahoma—a small town full of ordinary people whose lives intertwine with the gods. The mortal and the divine coexist once more. Blake’s compassion anchors Thor, and Thor’s power protects Blake’s adopted home. For a time, the partnership works beautifully. But comics are stories of cycles—rebirth, reinterpretation, and sometimes, darkness.
In 2020, writer Donny Cates and artist Nic Klein embarked on a new journey for Thor, one that began by revisiting an old loose thread: what happens to Donald Blake when he isn’t being used? Cates’s run reveals that Blake was not simply dormant during Thor’s godly adventures; he had been imprisoned in a pocket dimension, a false, idyllic reality where nothing changed. Initially, Blake believed that paradise was real. But years of static perfection became suffocating. Eventually, he realized he was trapped. Forgotten. Abandoned.
This revelation fractures him. Slowly, Blake’s gentle demeanor erodes. The man who once healed becomes the man who hungers. When he escapes his confinement, he emerges as a broken reflection of Thor’s neglect, a figure twisted into something vengeful, cunning, and terrifying. He is not evil for evil’s sake. He is a wounded identity demanding recognition.
Cates never turns Blake into a caricature. Instead, he writes him as a psychological study: a man created without agency, erased without ceremony, and revived without consent. His violence becomes a grim metaphor for what happens when an identity is treated as disposable.
The conflict that follows, between the god and the man he once was, is one of the most chilling in Thor’s history. Medium-depth though we take it here, the beats are unforgettable: Blake stalking Asgardian allies, Blake wielding the cane like a weapon, Blake confronting Odin’s sins and Thor’s indifference. The storyline transforms Blake into the embodiment of every unresolved tension in Thor’s life.
Across sixty years, Donald Blake has undergone more reinventions than nearly any other Marvel character. Each era reshapes him to reflect its own anxieties and aspirations: the Silver Age required humility, the Bronze Age required psychological depth, the ’80s required mythic freedom, the 2000s sought emotional grounding, and modern comics delve into trauma, identity, and the consequences of divine neglect. Blake has been a man, a mask, a metaphor, a partner, and a monster, but through every transformation, one truth remains constant: Thor is always more compelling when he faces the humanity he cannot escape.
Perhaps the question is not why a god needs a doctor, but whether the reader does. Is Donald Blake there for us more than he is there for Thor? In my day job, I speak extensively about theology, and I often point out that many scholars have noted that when we talk about the divine, we often end up talking about ourselves. Maybe the heroics of a god are just too alienating to us in these fleshy bodies. Donald Blake says our stories as humans matter. That humanity has a name. A limp. A walking stick. A past that might not be a past at all. Behind the thunder, there has always been a man with blue eyes. And though he is often forgotten, he remains the quiet heart that makes the god matter.

Thor #254 reprints #159 under a wonderful new cover by Rich Buckler and Joe Sinnott.
TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Dr. Donald Blake makes a fateful discovery in Journey Into Mystery #83. Art by Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott.
TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

(left) Dr. Donald Blake in action in Journey Into Mystery #108. Art by Jack Kirby and Chic Stone. Original art scan courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). (right) The splash page of Thor #159 asks an extremely important question. Art by Jack Kirby and Vince Colletta.
TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

(left) Donald Blake learns that he was created by Odin in Thor #159. Art by Jack Kirby and Vince Colletta. (right) Donald Blake comes face-to-face with Doctor Doom! Cover by John Buscema and Joe Sinnott.
TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

(top left) Donald Blake and Thor by Bob Layton. (bottom) Dr. Donald Blake returned to a place of prominence during writer J. Michael Straczynski’s run. Thor #1 (2007) art by Olivier Coipel and Mark Morales. (top right) This is not your father’s Dr. Donald Blake. Thor #10 (2020) cover by Olivier Coipel.
TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

JONATHAN BROWN holds an MA in Religious Studies from the University of Georgia, and an MDiv from Candler School of Theology. He serves as a pastor in the Baltimore-Washington Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. He is deeply interested in the intersection of faith and pop- culture especially how comics reflect our modern mythological identity.

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THE GOLDEN AGE
Doctor Mid-Nite first appeared in All-American Comics #25 (April 1941) and was created by Charles Reizenstein and Stanley Josephs Aschmeier. Also known as Charles McNider, the hero will always be remembered as the first comic book superhero with a physical handicap. After a mob hit, McNider was left blind… or so it seemed. McNider found he could see in total darkness. After creating a costume and some darkness themed offensive weapons, Doctor Mid-Nite was born. Why the hyphen and strange spelling, you ask? According to champion of all things Golden Age Roy Thomas, “I assume the original was spelled that way because of the more famous Captain Midnight... I don’t know if the Quality character Midnight (see sidebar at the end) preceded Doc or not.”
Hyphen or not, Doctor Mid-Nite was the very first differently abled superhero. Some even speculate that Mid-Nite was an inspiration to Marvel’s Daredevil, the most famous blind costumed hero. Thomas discounts this speculation. He told BACK ISSUE, “I can’t imagine that he was. Stan was apparently told to revive the Lev Gleason Daredevil, and he and/or Bill Everett came up with the blindness thing. (I believe Bill’s daughter Wendy or one of his other kids is legally blind, and Bill thought it came from that...) but Stan was perfectly capable of coming up with the blindness thing.”
Doctor Mid-Nite soon develops his signature blackout bombs, kind of reverse flashbangs where with a sudden explosion, an area is plunged into total darkness. He also takes an animal sidekick in Hooty the owl. Doctor Mid-Nite joins the Justice Society of America in All-Star Comics #8 (Jan. 1942), and stays on as a consistent member of the team until the end of the JSA’s run in the early ‘50s. Doctor Mid-Nite also had a long run in in All-American Comics as he became a constant in the Golden Age, even if he was rarely featured. Thomas recalls, “…so far as I know, the only member of the JSA who in the Golden Age was never on a single comic cover besides All-Star. (Even the Atom appeared in a group shot on the cover of the Big All-American Comic Book.)”
THE SILVER AGE
When the Golden Agers made their comeback starting in “The Flash of Two Worlds,” (Sept. 1961), the JSAers slowly trickled back into DC continuity, but Doctor Mid-Nite was never given a Silver Age tryout or a legacy counterpart. McNider did make his Silver Age debut in “The Flash of Two Worlds” in a brief cameo with the rest of the Justice Society. He would have his first major Silver Age appearance with the second JLA/JSA team up in Justice League of America #29-30 (Aug-Sept 1964) as the two squads of heroes fight the Crime Syndicate of Earth 3. For the rest of the Silver Age, Doctor Mid-Nite would be a frequent member of the JLA/JSA annual meet ups, but Mid-Nite was rarely featured in most of the action. But even in these brief bursts, he stood out. With his unique costume, his quiet demeanor, and his cool abilities, the good Doctor was always a Silver Age treat. But it seemed DC was not that interested in increasing his presence. And as the Silver Age turned into the Bronze Age, despite the swashbuckling potential of the character, Charles McNider would fade further into the background.
BRONZE AGE
That’s not to say that the good Doctor faded into the shadows completely. Wherever the JSA popped up, Charles McNider usually followed, and this is where we begin our journey, with Doctor Mid-Nite in the ever- experimental Bronze Age. Like any hero, it’s hard to delineate where their Silver Age escapades end and their Bronze Age adventures begin. For our purpose we will look to Adventure Comics #418 (April 1972) with a true Bronze Age discovery. One guesses that in the bowels of the DC archives someone discovered a written and penciled Doctor Mid-Nite story from 1948! Editor Joe Orlando got Sal Amendola to ink the feature and, boom, we have the first solo Doctor Mid-Nite story of the Bronze Age. I guess this was the solo tryout that Mid-Nite never got in the Silver Age, but it was not to last as the good Doctor was replaced by The Enchantress in the very next issue of Adventure Comics.
Mid-Nite takes part in the classic JLA/JSA/Seven Soldiers crossover in JLA #100-102 (Aug.-Oct. 1972), and his next Justice League appearance is in JLA #123-124 (Oct.-Nov. 1975) where Doc and the JSA team with the JLA to fight the omnipotent Cary Bates. Yes, the real-life DC writer finds himself transported to Earth 2 where he gains godlike powers. Bates transforms the JSA into members of the Injustice Society with Mid-Nite becoming the Shade. Mid-Nite and the others are seemingly killed in battle with the JLA, so at least that’s one thing Mid-Nite does in the Bronze Age… dies! But he gets better.
Mid-Nite only seems to appear in the annual JLA/JSA crossovers and JLA #159-160 (Oct.-Nov. 1978) by Gerry Conway and Dick Dillin are no exceptions. In these issues, Mid-Nite and the JSA are time tossed again and meet heroes from DC’s past to stop the evil Lord of Time. Fun fact: JLA #160 was the very first comic I ever bought! And in it, Doctor Mid-Nite finally gets to be more than just Batman in goggles. When the JLA and the JSA are stricken with chronal radiation, Mid-Nite diagnosis their conditions and does his best to make them comfortable. These issues show Mid-Nite more as the doctor and less as the atypical mystery man. He is not instrumental in defeating the Lord of Time, but in these epic issues where the heroes of the DC Universe meet such champions as Jonah Hex and Enemy Ace for the first time, Doctor Mid-Nite is firmly established as a doctor first and an adventurer a close second.
We now turn our attention to Earth 2 and the Justice Society. In February 1976, DC revived the JSA’s original title with All-Star Comics #58 (Feb. 1976), and it is Doctor Mid-Nite who kicked off the Bronze Age era of the world’s first superhero team. In this revival issue by Gerry Conway, Ric Estrada, and the legendary Wally Wood, Mid-Nite plays a prominent role. The JSA springs into action when the team gets an alert that three major cities will experience disasters that will eventually lead to the end of the entire world. The JSA revival series closes out with Mid-Nite in his usual role of appearing in group shots, but there is one panel in All-Star Comics #71 (Apr. 1978) where McNider must ignore a JSA distress call because he is in the middle of a delicate surgery. Physician, do no harm!
Which brings us to the end of our All-Star Comics revival. But there are a few Bronze Age rarities still lurking in the shadows and only the eyes of Doctor Mid-Nite can find them. In Wonder Woman #235 (Sept. 1977) by Conway and Jose Delbo, Charles McNider pops up to help an injured Steve Trevor. Historical minded fans will remember that this was the brief period in which Wonder Woman took place on Earth 2 to coincide with the Linda Carter TV series that was set in World War II, so it is only natural that a JSA member or two would show up. Mid-Nite helps Diana cure a monstrously transformed Steve Trevor in the next issue (Oct. 1977). The JSA with Doc along for the ride helps Earth 2 defeat Angle Man in Wonder Woman #243 (May 1978) written by Jack C. Harris, and that’s it for the character in the pages of the Bronze Age Wonder Woman.
From there, we have our final major appearance of the character before the Golden Age Roy Thomas fueled resurgence of the 1980s, and finally, we get some solo time with the Doc. DC Comics Presents #29 (Jan. 1981) features “Whatever Happened to Dr. Mid-Nite?” by Bob Rozakis and Alex Saviuk. This rotating “Whatever Happened to…” feature allowed the creators at DC to feature some lesser known and somewhat forgotten heroes, and it was a haven for Golden Age goodies in those pre-All-Star Squadron days. Here, an older Charles  McNider finds himself losing his sight as he is on patrol. He consults an old colleague who developed a pair of glasses that help the blind see silhouettes of their surroundings. A blind crook murders Mid-Nite’s friend and he must track down the killer while the hero’s vision is failing. Being experienced fighting blind, the JSA great defeats his foe and incorporates his friend’s tech into his goggles. So, “Whatever Happened to Dr. Mid-Nite?” He got a new pair of glasses. The end. But hey, it was nice to see the Doc in a solo feature!
HEY NOW, YOU’RE AN ALL-STAR
Other than the annual JLA/JSA mash-ups, it was not a great time for the Golden Age greats as the 1970s turned into the 1980s, but that would all change with the advent of the All-Star Squadron, and our Doctor was right there from the beginning as Thomas ushered in a new golden age for the Golden Age. Roy Thomas and Rich Buckler kicked off the All-Star Squadron in a bonus back-up feature in Justice League of America #193 (Aug. 1981). Thomas wanted a few of the original JSA members to be front and center as All-Star Squadron kicked off. Thomas told BI why Doc Mid-Nite was one of those heroes. “I always thought of him, Hawkman, and the Atom as a sort of trio (which they were in one story, in All-Star #43)... so when I launched All-Star Squadron, I informed DC that I wanted to have the three of them be the core around whom the new Squadron was formed. Didn’t really make a lot of logical sense, since none of the three of them had a real super-power, except for Hawkman’s artificial wings. It was just a whim… I did rather like his costume, though, even though it was what I call a ‘church-window’ costume, one with so many colors and bits that it lacks focus for the eye. That’s true of the Golden Age Hawkman, Green Lantern, too.”
In a momentous debut of the Bronze Age, Doctor Mid-Nite made the cover of All-Star Squadron #1 (Sept. 1981)! In one of the most iconic covers of the early 1980s, Doctor Mid-Nite is one of the JSAers shown rifling through photos of heroes who would be potential members of the new All-Stars! His very presence on the cover solidified Mid-Nite as a piece of heroic history, a gatekeeper to new heroes in the next narrative step of Golden Age history!
All-Star Squadron #7 (Mar. 1982) reveals what branch of the military each member of the JSA joined. Doctor Mid-Nite is shown as a member of the US Medical Corps with his assistant and love interest Myra Mason serving as his nurse. Charles McNider was tasked with finding a cure for “tropical fever,” so once again McNider’s medical acumen takes precedence over his more adventurous, two-fisted side. Other than a reprint in Detective Comics #445 (Mar. 1975), this is Myra’s first post Golden Age appearance. With the JSA serving in the military, All-Star Squadron starts focusing more on the lesser-known Golden Age greats.
But that doesn’t mean Thomas is done with Mid-Nite. In All-Star Squadron #10 (June 1982), McNider witnesses an attack by the Japanese air force. He switches to his alter ego and runs to help his fellow soldiers. Accompanying Mid-Nite is Hooty the Owl, marking the triumphant return of his Golden Age pet!
MID-NITE IN CRISIS
All-Star Squadron #50 (Oct. 1985) is the first Crisis on Infinite Earth crossover in the pages of All-Star Squadron. Crisis would change everything for Roy Thomas and the All-Stars as the cosmic reset would erase Earth 2 and place the Golden Age heroes in the past of Earth 1. The Earth 2 versions of Golden Age heroes like Superman and Batman would disappear. There was no Earth 1 version of Doctor Mid-Nite (he was one of the few JSAers who didn’t have a double), but the Crisis would still impact the good Doctor profoundly.
Having no Earth 1 version, Mid-Nite was safe from retcons or replacements. Like every DC hero, Mid-Nite had a new history, and Roy Thomas was eager to explore it. In Secret Origins Vol. 2 #20 (Nov .1987), Thomas and artist Mike Clark present “The Secret Origin of Doctor Mid-Nite,” a retelling of the Doctor’s classic history. Within, Thomas and Clark give readers an extended retelling of Doc’s origin, complete with Hooty, the blinding, the career as a surgeon, the career as a writer, and the costume. But it’s with Myra Mason that the story shines. Myra is Doc’s constant companion as he must deal with blindness and rage of no longer being able to practice his medical arts. The relationship and bonds are close and inspiring, but quite chaste. Myra is clearly deeply in love with her boss, but McNider keeps the union plutonic, especially after the accident. In fact, this story sparked speculation that McNider was homosexual, but Thomas since denied McNider’s queer coding. Thomas has gone on record that Mid-Nite’s confession about not being able to return Myra’s affections was due to his responsibilities as a blind crime-fighter, not anything deeper.
The issue of Secret Origins featuring Doctor Mid-Nite established the Doctor’s presence on the new post-Crisis Earth. He was now firmly entrenched in this new reality as Thomas would continue to use the character, albeit sparsely. Doc’s next stop would be in the pages of the All-Star Squadron spin-off, Young All-Stars. Doc settles in as support once again as he is the hero who races to the side of fallen teammates to administer medical aid. He does briefly take center stage in Young All-Stars #3 (Aug. 1987) as the newly formed Young All-Stars join with the JSA and remaining members of the All-Star Squadron to battle Axis Amerika. Somehow, Thomas gives little moments to all the members of his huge cast, Doc included.
Mid-Nite’s final appearance in the title is in Young All-Stars #27 (July 1989) by Roy and Dann Thomas and Dave Simons. In this issue, the Thomases tell the story of a day in the life of just about every Golden Age hero one can think of. Doc attends a meeting of the JSA and the group debates how to help Russia during famines in the darkest days of World War II. Some members of the team are worried that the time might be labeled “commies” if they provide too much aid to their Russian allies. Doc states, “If there’s one thing the JSA will never have to worry about is being accused of being pro-communist.” Doc’s ironic statement would foreshadow (for now) the end of his career as a long standing, if background, member of current DC history and signal the beginning of the legacy of Doctor Mid-Nite.
INFINITE LEGACY
In America vs. the Justice Society #1-4 (Jan.-Apr. 1985), the JSA are accused of being Red sympathizers by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Instead of unmasking to prove their loyalty, the JSA, including Doctor Mid-Nite, choose to retire. Later, in Last Days of the Justice Society Special (July 1986) also by Roy and Dann Thomas, due to machinations of Hitler in the final days of the War, the JSA are ripped from reality and forced to fight the forever battle of Ragnarök. This was a way for the powers that be at DC to explain the JSA’s absence in the present and neatly pack the Golden Age away.
Infinity Inc. #1 by Thomas and Jerry Ordway hit stands on March 1984, about a calendar year before Mid-Nite and his pals were lost to Ragnarök. In it, readers were introduced to a whole new generation of characters connected to the classic JSA. The story starts with four members of the new team crashing a JSA meeting. Doctor Mid-Nite is in attendance, and once again… that’s it. He has nary a line in the rest of the issue.
It looked like the Mid-Nite legacy would be an afterthought just like it was in All-Star Comics and All-Star Squadron. But in Infinity Inc. #19 (Oct. 1985) by Roy and Dann and a very young Todd McFarlane, the history and potential of the Mid-Nite character would finally be exploited. The issue opens with the Infinity heroes rushing an injured Jade into a hospital. An aggressive Star-Spangled Kid begins barking order at a young African American woman in a lab coat. He calls her “nurse” and gets a gruff correction from the woman that she was a doctor. Suddenly, this woman stood out. She was not just a background character, she was Doctor Elizabeth “Beth” Chapel, brilliant surgeon and no-nonsense professional. Charles McNider makes a dramatic entrance and praises Chapel. He also informs his fellow heroes that he was at the hospital treating another hero, Rex Tyler aka Hourman. The stage was set for the Thomases and McFarlane to spawn a new generation of heroes (see what I did there?).
As for the creation of this new Doctor, Thomas tells BI, “I thought there should be a new Dr. Mid-Nite, with his/her named spelled correctly. A doctor could be a female, so I used that tack, and made her black in the interests of general diversity.” Chapel would not have to wait long to realize her heroic destiny. Infinity Inc. #20 (Nov. 1985) presents the rise of two new legacy heroes. In dual origin stories, Rick Tyler becomes the new Hourman and Chapel begins her journey to become the new Doctor Mid-Nite, or in this case, Midnight.
Since Charles McNider first emerged in the Silver Age, this issue of Infinity Inc. is probably the comic that explores the Doctor more than any other (at that point). So much happens in the darn thing. It is a Crisis crossover and the hospital in which Chapel, Tyler, McNider, and more are currently working falls to a Crisis induced earthquake. McNider springs into action along with the original Hourman to save the helpless patients. Nuklon, Rick Tyler, and the JSAers are all equipped to deal with the cataclysm, but Beth Chapel is a normal, albeit brilliant, surgical intern. While all this goes on, the Thomases brilliantly weave Chapel’s history into the action. She grew up in a large family in the American South and is underestimated because of her gender and her race. She clearly knows her supervisor McNider’s secret, but she stays silent out of respect for her mentor. At the end of the issue, Chapel is caught in an explosion while saving an elderly patient and is blinded. Clearly, this was the issue that was meant to bring the Mid-Nite legacy to the next generation. Even Hooty gets in on the act as McNider reveals that his current pet is the fourteenth owl to hold the Hooty moniker. So, we even get a legacy nod for the bird!
Infinity Inc. #21 (Dec. 1985) sees the legacy continue as Chapel goes home to North Carolina to recover. There, readers meet her little brother and her pastor father. Thomas mixes religious background with a passion for science to make Beth Chapel a rich new character filled with conflicts and contradictions. Rick Tyler travels to make sure the newly blind Chapel is okay. Sadly, the promising surgeon is wallowing in self-pity and anguish over her injuries. This issue is also a Crisis crossover, so when shadow demons attack, Chapel leans into her spiritual side and prays for divine intervention. When her bandages are ripped away, Chapel discovers that, like McNider, she too can see in darkness. She fights off the shadow demons and dedicates herself to helping others. Rick helps her design a new yellow and black costume (McFarlane design, y’all) which Chapel’s choir leader mom sews out of some old church robes. A new hero is born with background in faith, science, legacy, and tragedy.
Next issue (Jan. 1986), just about every JSAer and Infinity Inc. member is off in space doing Crisis things, but the new Doctor Midnight and new Hourman are holding down the fort on Earth. With all the classic and legacy heroes off in the Crisis, it gives the Thomases time to explore Chapel. Things get edgy in this issue, as the two neophytes are abducted by Civil War era Union soldiers time tossed by the Crisis. These soldiers are profoundly brutal and racist and attack Chapel with guns, knives, and racial slurs. Two soldiers even get into a gun fight over who gets to sexually assault her. Umm, yikes. Chapel uses her predecessor’s blackout bombs for the first time as she truly begins to get comfortable as Doctor Midnight even though she doesn’t have a hyphen.
Things get poignant in Infinity Inc. #30 (Sept 1986) as the events of The Last Days of the Justice Society of America finally catch up to the timeline of Infinity Inc. The legacy heroes find out about the fate of the JSA. They are destined to fight Ragnarök for eternity, so to all intents and purposes, the JSA is lost to their sons and students forever. The usually emotionally controlled Beth Chapel breaks down upon hearing of the loss of Doctor McNider. She barely has time to compose herself when she must become the caregiver again and tell her friend, the new Hourman, of his father’s fate. In Infinity Inc., the history of the Doctors Midnight continues, but that legacy was soon to meet an ignominious conclusion, at least for the time being.
In Eclipso #11-14 (Sept.-Dec. 1993) by writer Robert Loren Fleming and artist Audwynn Jermaine Newman, Chapel is sent by Amanda Waller with her fellow Infinity Inc. member Wildcat II and a bunch of other heroes to confront Eclipso. Chapel is horrifically murdered while tending to a dying Wildcat. Her last words are Chapel begging Eclipso to let her live so she could tend to her patient. A revealing character moment, yes, but also a moment of sheer ‘90s excess as a hero with rich potential, a hero who was meant to continue the legacy of Doctor Mid-Nite, was snuffed out in an instant. Despite the ignominious exit of Chapel, Thomas brushes off the death and tells BI, “The same as I told whatshisname, the Sandman writer, when he called and half-assedly apologized for killing off Fury of Infinity, Inc. ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘You didn’t kill her. That was just a clone.’”
A LEGACY FINALLY, FULLY, BORN
With Beth Chapel unceremoniously killed in Eclipso, there was no continuation of the Mid-Nite legacy until Matt Wagner and John K. Snyder III got together and focused their attentions on the overlooked hero. “John had been talking to Archie Goodwin about doing a painted prestige series that would reboot one of DC’s existing characters,” Matt Wagner told BI. “This was in the period of Grendel: God & The Devil story arc; my name came up as a possible writer. I remember we circled around several different characters before settling on Doctor Mid-Nite.”
“Doctor Mid-Nite was always a very cool character that I felt had been completely undeveloped,” Snyder III adds to Wagner’s assessment of the good Doctor. “He had great potential. He had the heroic and mysterious Pulp fiction leanings with the very name and his cloak, hood, goggles, and general attire, and the special ability to see in the dark though he was blind.” Snyder III agrees with Wagner’s memories of the genesis of the series as well. Snyder III said, “I had spent my formative years in comics enjoying working on monthly books in the assembly line format and wanted to make a jump of taking on all artistic chores with fully painted books and illustrations.”
This time, the creators truly focused on what it would be like if a superhero was a true man of medicine. Doctor Mid-Nite #1 hit stores in February of 1999 and was an instant critical success. Snyder III remembers how excited the creative team and DC Comics were for the series. He told BI, “I had previously worked with writer Matt Wagner on his Grendel series, and we had discussed working together again, specifically at DC Comics on a prestige format project. We began discussing possibilities with DC editor Archie Goodwin and between the three of us decided upon Doctor Mid-Nite as the subject of our project. Matt and I were having daily development discussions, and I began drawing up concepts for the series, background characters, villains, and sending them to Matt, and from there he wrote and sent back the initial outline for the series. I assembled it all into a physical proposal complete with Matt’s outline and my character and design sketches and sent the package to Archie Goodwin at DC Comics. We were then approved to move forward; it was a thrilling time.” Wagner agrees that Goodwin was pivotal in the launch of this new Doctor Mid-Nite. “Archie, of course, was already a legend in the field as both a writer and an editor when we first began this project and he was so supportive and instrumental in how the whole thing finally came together. It was an utter tragedy that he passed away before Doctor Mid-Nite finally saw publication.
Never had the character been treated with such care, focus, and respect. It certainly was one of the most beautifully drawn books on the stands that year and breathed new life on a legacy that was almost forgotten after the events of Eclipso. McNider and Chapel were gone, but Doctor Mid-Nite was never more vital. From the opening pages of the first issue, Wagner and Snyder III establish this new Doctor Mid-Nite as a noir driven crime fighter, detective, creature of the night, and medical professional. Above all-a doctor. In many of the JLA/JSA stories of yore, Charles McNider seemed redundant to Batman, and Wagner wanted to make sure his new Doctor Mid-Nite was not another vigilante cliche. “It was really important to both of us that we portrayed him as a superhero doctor and not just another Batman proxy,” Wagner informed. And in the opening scene of this new chapter of Mid-Nite, it was clear that Wagner succeeded.
While Wagner avoided the Batman parallels, he does put a great deal of The Shadow into his new creation, complete with a team of assistants and a brilliant analytic mind. The issue opens with Mid-Nite trying to recruit Camille Marlowe, a budding mystery writer and drug addict. She takes an experimental drug to keep her genetic condition of xeroderma pigmentosa controlled. In other words, she has a severe light allergy, which makes Marlowe a perfect foil, assistant, and friend to the new Doctor Mid-Nite and his world of shadows. Wagner also introduces readers to Mid-Nite’s other two assistants, Nite-Lite and Ice Sickle, two street wise African American badasses who are every inch the heroes as the titular character.
Mid-Nite introduces himself to Marlowe as Pieter Cross and promises to help her with her light sensitivity so she can kick the illegal steroid she’s addicted to. Cross takes her on his “evening rounds.” He doesn’t just bust heads and break bodies, Pieter Cross heals. He gives meaningful work to the homeless, treats everyone under his protection as patients. His “Bat-Cave” is a free clinic. McNider and Chapel were both dedicated caregivers, but Cross is to doctors what Batman is to detectives, what Superman is to protectors, and what Wonder Woman is to warriors. With this new hero, the “Doctor” is more important than the “Mid-Nite.”
“Along with regular discussions with Matt, my thought was to lean in on those Pulp fiction origins,” Snyder III told BI. “To emphasize his scientific and technological abilities with echoes of Doc Savage and The Shadow, complete with his own set of operatives, just as they had in their Pulp adventures, and to set it all against a dystopian city in desperate need of a vigilante doctor. We envisioned a literal night doctor on the city streets helping out the poor and uninsured, in hand with battling corporate medical and industrial corruption.”
The new Mid-Nite would not just battle traditional villains; Wagner and Snyder III wanted their new hero to face down all medical injustice. He helped the homeless, the poor, sex workers, exploited kids, and everyone else overlooked by the health system. He was a new type of hero, but one immersed in the roots of pulp adventure and the Golden Age of comics. Snyder III recalls, “We absolutely wanted to keep the Golden Age spirit of the original Charles McNider, while at the same time creating Pieter Cross as a new modern character. In time, in Pieter Cross’s later appearances past our initial series, the legacy aspect of Charles McNider and Pieter Cross was connected by other writers, and I think that worked out quite well.” After meeting Cross, Marlowe puts her journalistic skills to work and tracks down the backstory of this man of medicine. She learns Cross was born in Norway, a gifted genius who graduated Harvard Medical School at nineteen. As Marlowe is trying to find out the Doctor’s secrets, she visits his HQ, a smart mansion where Cross conducts experiments across all fields of science. Here, Wagner and company get super pulpy as the connections between Doc Savage and The Shadow become very apparent.
Marlowe and Cross track down the super steroid that helps Marlowe with her condition. During their investigation, Cross is dosed with the steroid by a shadowy criminal organization distributing the drug. Cross and Marlowe are attacked, and the doctor suffers a near fatal car wreck. Like Charles McNider and Beth Chapel before him, Cross is blinded in the wreck. Instead of discovering the origin of Pieter Cross, Marlowe is witness to the creation of a legacy hero. Cross falls into depression after he loses his sight and his career, but Marlowe visits Cross at his mansion, and tells the doctor he can still do good. When Marlowe leaves, an owl, another constant symbol of the Mid-Nite legacy, flies through a window and scratches Cross. Instinctively, Cross rips the bandages from his eye and finds he can see in total darkness. Cross seems to know about the legacy of Doctor Mid-Nite and tells Marlowe that he’s “Borrowing from a legacy of the past.” He dons the iconic hood, cape, and goggles, and a new Doctor is born.
Wagner looks back on the creation of the legacy hero. “He’s a healer and a solver, not a paramilitary warrior. In our story, Pieter Cross is already something of a vigilante, a rogue physician working on the fringes of the established medical community by operating at night and taking a vested interest in the vulnerable and disenfranchised members of society. We see him distributing condoms to hookers and clean needles to junkies. So, he’s basically already Dr. Mid-Nite before he actually becomes Dr. Mid-Nite. In fact, his moniker on the streets is ‘The Midnight Doctor.’”
As villains for the new Mid-Nite, Wanger and Snyder III reach deep into the Batman mythos for a new, very disturbing take on The Terrible Trio. First appearing in Detective Comics #253 (March 1958), the Trio, made up of masked animal themed criminals Shark, Vulture, and Fox, was created by Dave Wood and Sheldon Moldoff. In Doctor Mid-Nite, Wagner and Snyder created a new Trio, part Lovecraftian cult, part captains of industry, this new triumvirate of terror were the perfect protagonists for Doctor Mid-Nite. Where Mid-Nite tried to heal the city, the Terrible Trio were a cancer infecting every cell of their environment.
With the third issue (April 1999), the Trio’s plan is revealed as the classic Bat villains attempt to poison Portsmouth Bay to wipe out the rich part of town. They have already bought up all the poor sections of town, where Doc operates, at cheap prices. With the wealthy having nowhere to go, the Trio’s decaying real estate will be priceless. What follows is an action-packed Wagner/Snyder III punch-‘em-up that would make any James Bond fan elated. By the time the smoke clears, Doc and company stand victorious and the legend of Doctor Mid-Nite is solidified. Over twenty-five years later, Wagner remains proud of the project. “Like I said, I think a lot of people saw him as a second-rate Batman,” Wagner told BI. “And so, he never really had much of a following. Our plan was to avoid those Bat-comparisons as much as we possibly could. Again, the difference is that he’s a doctor… a superhero doctor… We accomplished what we set out to achieve… the whole superhero doctor thing. He really does come across that way in the book. And we also had a lot of fun taking a goofy set of earlier-era Batman villains—The Terrible Trio—and gave them a real sense of menace. And, c’mon… John’s art was magnificent on that series. Stunningly gorgeous!” Finally, after all those decades of standing in the shadows, a Doctor Mid-Nite had left his mark. But unlike McNider and Chapel, this Doctor would stick around and be in the forefront of DC Comics for a long time.
FULL CIRCLE
Charles McNider’s greatest successes came as a member of the Justice Society of America, while Beth Chapel’s heyday came with Infinity Inc. So, it came as no surprise when Pieter Cross leaped from the pages of his miniseries and became a founding member of the new JSA. In early 2000, everything old was new again as the JSA and the Golden Age greats of DC Comics became one of the best sellers of the era. It was the old guards of the 1940s, the Infinity Inc. greats of the 1980s, and the modern-day versions of legacy heroes. Luckily for DC, just a year before JSA’s debut, Wagner and Snyder III introduced the new Doctor Mid-Nite. In JSA #7 (Feb. 2000) by writers David S. Goyer and Geoff Johns and pencilers Stephen Sadowski, Pieter Cross jumped from the pages of his own critically acclaimed miniseries to DC’s latest hit book. The heroes fall afoul of a possessed Obsidian. The team gets controlled by their shadow selves, but Black Canary manages to escape. She plunges out a window and suffers some grave bodily harm. Lucky for Dinah, Pieter Cross was on his rounds.
The new Doctor Mid-Nite helps Dinah with her injuries and mentions that he once did a fellowship with Charles McNider. This bit of business was not mentioned in Wagner’s series, but Goyer and Johns now tie the Mid-Nite legacy together. Mid-Nite helps the team defeat the possessed Obsidian. Who better to defeat evil shadows other than a man who can see in total darkness? This meet-up kickstarts a long-standing tie between Mid-Nite and the modern JSA, but it also was the introduction to Pieter Cross to the larger tapestry of the DCU.
But this time, this Doctor Mid-Nite would not be just a background character, a Batman clone, or a guy to fill out group shots. This time, Mid-Nite would serve as the physician for the super beings of DC. After Cross joins the JSA, he begins to appear frequently around the DC Universe. If there was a medical anomaly or a severe injury, Cross would show up to utilize his expertise. Suddenly, Mid-Nite is the man of the hour. He became a strategist and genius in residence for the JSA. He strikes up a romance with Black Canary that continues in some semi-frequent guest spots in Birds of Prey. Mid-Nite became a friend and a confident to the new Mr. Terrific and their banter became a highlight of Johns’ JSA run. Cross would become a mentor to the new Blue Beetle Jaimie Reyes (Blue Beetle Vol. 7 #31 (Nov 2008)) and he frequently consults with Batman on all things medical
After the three-issue miniseries, Wagner and Snyder III had a great deal to be proud of. The legacy of Doctor Mid-Nite was now firmly embedded in the DCU thanks to their brilliant portrayal of their superhero physician. Indeed, Snyder III fondly looks back on his time with the character. “Again, it’s great to see that after over 25 years since Matt and I co-created the Pieter Cross version of Doctor Mid-Nite that he’s become part of the DC Universe,” Snyder remarked. “And looking back, I feel very fortunate that Matt and I had the opportunity to have free rein creatively on the project. Perhaps today we wouldn’t have that kind of freedom. It’s great to be identified with Doctor Mid-Nite after all these years. It was a major undertaking for me to visually create this world and co-create this now-established modern version of this classic Golden Age character. It was a labor of love with many hours at the drawing board, and it’s gratifying to see my work on the series being recognized today.”
In the pages of Green Arrow, Flash, Justice League, Booster Gold, Brightest Day, Wonder Woman, Hawkman, Green Lantern Rebirth, Detective Comics, Power Girl, Manhunter, Identity Crisis, and so many more, Doctor Mid-Nite became ubiquitous across the DC Universe, curing the heroes and the world of anything and everything. Not bad for a hero and a legacy that was an afterthought for so many years.
Today, the legacy of Doctor Mid-Nite lives on, again with a newer version of Beth Chapel. This Doctor Chapel is a bit younger and more spirited than the version from Infinity Inc., but she serves the legacy proudly. A legacy that has run through three heroes and parts of nine decades. A legacy that introduced the world to the idea of a superhero who overcomes a handicap to fight the good fight and serve his country and humanity as champion, a hero, a crime fighter, and always, as a doctor.

by Marc Buxton

Roy Thomas

John K. Snyder III’s outstanding cover art for Doctor Mid-Nite #1.
TM & © DC Comics.

(top) Doctor Mid-Nite debuts in All-American Comics #25. Art by Stan Asch. (bottom) Doctor Mid-Nite joins the JSA in All-Star Comics #8. Cover by E. E. Hibbard.
TM & © DC Comics.

A story from the Golden Age is printed for the first time in the Bronze Age in Adventure Comics #418, and Doctor Mid-Nite has his first solo story! Art by unknown artist, inks by Sal Amendola. (inset) Justice League of America #29 cover by Mike Sekowsky and Murphy Anderson.
TM & © DC Comics.

(top) Cary Bates takes out the entire JSA, including Doctor Mid-Nite. Justice League of America #123 art by Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin. (bottom left) Doctor Mid-Night takes part in another epic crossover. JLA #160 cover by Dick Dillin and Dick Giordano. (bottom right) All-Star Comics returns and Doctor Mid-Nite is along for the ride. Cover by Al Milgrom and Jack Abel.
TM & © DC Comics.

(left) Doctor Mid-Nite gets a solo story in DC Comics Presents #29. Art by Alex Saviuk and Joe Giella. (right) Doctor Mid-Nite helps pick the members of the new team on the cover of All-Star Squadron #1. Art by Rich Buckler and Dick Giordano. Original art scan courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com).
TM & © DC Comics.

(top) The new Doctor Midnight and Hourman on the cover of Infinity Inc. #21. Art by Todd McFarlane and Tony Dezuniga. (bottom) The new Doctor Midnight, Hourman, and Wildcat are introduced to the team. Infinity Inc. #25 art by Todd McFarlane and Tony Dezuniga. Original art scans courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com).
TM & © DC Comics.

(left) Doctor Mid- Nite’s origin is retold and expanded in Secret Origins #20. Cover by Kevin Maguire and Bob Wiacek. (right) A promotional piece for the Doctor Mid-Nite miniseries by John K. Snyder III. Art provided by Snyder III.
TM & © DC Comics.

(top) Design and final painted version of Doctor Mid-Nite. Art provided by Snyder III. (bottom) Cover for Doctor Mid-Nite #2.
TM & © DC Comics.

matt wagner

(top) Pieter Cross recruits Camille Marlowe. (middle) A close-up of the Terrible Trio. (bottom) Doctor Mid-Nite enters the Terrible Trio’s stronghold in issue #2. Art provided by Snyder III.
TM & © DC Comics.

john k. snyder III

Photo by Cara Zimmerman Walton.

A stunning page by John K. Snyder III from Doctor Mid-Nite #3. Original art scan courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com).
TM & © DC Comics.

(left) The new Doctor Mid-Nite on the cover of JSA #8. Art by Alan Davis and Mark Farmer. (right) The new Doctor Mid-Nite in action as a doctor. JSA #8 art by Stephen Sadowski and Michael Bair. Original art scans courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com).
TM & © DC Comics.

THE SPIRIT OF MIDNIGHT

Yes, Doctor Mid-Nite does indeed have a long, storied, and complex history. But the good Doctor and the heroes he inspired aren’t the only heroes to use the Midnight Monicker. Another hero currently owned by DC Comics also uses Midnight, and this one was created for a very strange reason… the fear over a comic book legend being killed.
Step back in time to 1941 and Quality Comics. At the time, Quality had the rights to the newspaper strip hero The Spirit. Will Eisner’s creation was a massive hit at the company, and Quality’s owner, “Busy” Arnold, must have felt an extreme sense of anxiety when Will Eisner, the Spirit’s creator, went off to fight World War II. Arnold was afraid that Eisner would be killed fighting the Axis, so he wanted a Spirit clone created just in case Eiser was KIA.
Enter the great Jack Cole who presented the hero known as Midnight in Smash Comics #18 (Jan. 1941). In appearance, Midnight was identical to The Spirit. Same blue suit, same fedora, same domino mask. In his civilian identity, Midnight is radio announcer Dave Clark. Operating out of Big City, Clark is the narrator and lead actor for the radio series “The Man Called Midnight.” After a broadcast, Clark stumbles across a building collapse. After rescuing as many people as he can, Clark investigates and finds that construction tycoon Morris Carleton skimped on the concrete, causing the collapse. For the first time, Clark dons the derivative suit of Midnight and takes down Carleton. So, by day Clark narrates the adventures of Midnight and by night, Clark becomes Midnight.
For a redundant hero, Midnight stuck around a long time at Quality, running until Smash Comics #85 (Oct. 1949). Not bad for a Spirit knockoff. Of course, happily, Will Eisner survived the War, so Quality had Spirit and Midnight. Eventually, Midnight picked up an animal sidekick in Gabby the monkey, and a goofy scientist pal in the reformed mad scientist, Doc Wackey. Midnight’s adventures saw him face off against such Golden Age menaces as the magician Chango (whose spells are in Pig Latin), the femme fatale Circle, the Laughing Killer, the Men from Mars, and the Amazonian Robustia. Midnight even journeys to hell with his scientist and his monkey to fight Satan himself.
Of course, DC Comics purchased Quality Comics, and with it the Quality library of characters. DC didn’t get Spirit, but it did get Midnight, who kind of faded into obscurity. A few notable appearances include All-Star Squadron #31-32 (March-April 1982), where Midnight crashes an All-Star Squadron meeting to deliver the unconscious body of fellow Quality hero Doll Man. This kicks off an adventure where Midnight, Doll Man, and the other Quality heroes must save the parallel Earth X from the Nazi menace that conquered that reality. Hey, Midnight might be obscure, but he did kick off that classic Earth X tale. In the pages of Secret Origins Vol. 2 #28 (July 1988), Roy Thomas and Gil Kane update the origin of Midnight, retconning Big City as New York City.
A new Midnight appears as a back-up in Ms. Tree #1-7 (Summer 1990-Spring 1992) where the hero is known as Robert Avery in the first five appearances and Robert Mason in the final two. This Midnight was created by Ed Gorman and Graham Nolan and was featured in some very Spirit-like adventures. Yet another Midnight was created for back-ups in Bug! The Adventures of Forager #3 (Sept. 2017) to #6 (Feb. 2018). This hero journeyed to the Phantom Zone and had some surreal wacky adventures of his own. In these back-ups, this Midnight was kind of a selfish jerk who charged a homeless person a stipend for saving him. But the whole thing was kind of zany, just like the entire history of Midnight, a character created in case a comic book legend caught a bullet during WWII.

Midnight by Jack Cole in Smash Comics #18.
TM & © DC Comics.

MARC BUXTON is a proud contributor to websites like Comic Book Resources and Den of Geek US. He is an English teacher, and Marc’s loving wife thinks he owns way too many comic books. Marc has been reading comics since the dawn of time and is still deeply in love with every era of the great medium.

by Ed Lute

Welcome to the weird and wacky world of science, Dr. Radium style! In the future, the last scientist Dr. Radium, his beleaguered assistant Roy, and the time displaced Penny explored science with reckless abandon. The original It’s Science with Dr. Radium series, published by Slave Labor Graphics, ran for seven issues (cover dated Sept. 1986-March 1988). However, readers also got more of the anomalous scientist and his companions in several one-shots including the 1989 It’s Science with Dr. Radium Special and Dr. Radium and the Gizmos of Boola Boola! (Jan. 1992) as well as another ongoing, Dr. Radium, Man of Science, which lasted for five issues (cover dated Oct. 1992–Jan. 1995). Behind every story was creator, writer, and artist Scott Saavedra.
BACK ISSUE’s exclusive interview with Saavedra explores the creation of this idiosyncratic character, the comics themselves, and the current status of the character. So, come along kiddies because science class is in session as we revisit one of the quirkiest comics of the 1980s and 1990s.
ED LUTE: Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed today.
SCOTT SAAVEDRA: You’re welcome. I have to tell you that I was very surprised by your request. It’s been a few years for me since I did Dr. Radium. I can’t remember the last time I talked about these comics. I wasn’t even sure if anyone even remembered him. [Laughs] It’s just weird. I get more people coming out of the woodwork about a little magazine I did called Comic Book Heaven.
LUTE: BACK ISSUE does theme issues, and It’s Science with Dr. Radium was one of the assignments for the Doctor issue. Since I liked the series, I jumped at the chance to pitch for it. I was happy that I got the assignment.
SAAVEDRA: Great! That’s my earliest work, so I have mixed feelings about it. It was the stuff I started with, and I can see all my mistakes. I don’t tend to look back at it too often. I’m always more interested in moving forward. You may not know this, but I work on RetroFan magazine for TwoMorrows. I’m the graphic designer.
LUTE: I did know that. I had an article published in RetroFan.
SAAVEDRA: I thought I recognized your name from somewhere when you contacted me.
LUTE: Let’s start at the beginning. Where did the idea for Dr. Radium come from?
SAAVEDRA: The publisher of Slave Labor Graphics [SLG] Dan Vado and I had a mutual acquaintance. I didn’t know Dan. But I was told by someone I knew, who knew that I liked comics and wanted to do them someday, that he knew a comic shop guy who is publishing comics. I think Dan had published one comic at that point. I was 26 at the time. There was this black and white boom in comics. I got in there early enough to rise a little by the end of it.
After I heard there was this guy who was going to publish comics, I sat down and did a couple of sample pages. What I wanted to do was come up with a topic that was full enough to capture any kind of story I wanted to do. So, I thought I would draw something about a scientist in the perfect world of tomorrow, and I thought that the perfect world of tomorrow probably doesn’t need scientists because they know everything. [Laughs] That was kind of my hook for where the humor might be.
I came up with the character just fiddling around in a sketch book and took the two pages to Dan, and he looked them over. He said “Yeah, I’ll publish you.” The book didn’t come out until later that year, but I immediately quit my job at Macy’s selling shoes. I haven’t looked back, although I don’t do comics anymore per say.
I’ve always been a graphic artist/graphic designer, or what we used to call when I was in high school a commercial artist. So, I’m kind of graphic handyman. That’s how I always saw myself even though at the time I was looking to do comic books. I wanted to write and draw them.
So, Dan green lit the character and the comic called It’s Science with Dr. Radium. And then I realized (and this was a really horrible realization to have) that I didn’t know what I was doing. [Laughs] I wrote two funny pages, but I didn’t know how to write a story. That turned out to be a source of frustration for me over the years that I worked on the character.
Even though he published the comics, Dan wasn’t quite so sure of me at first. He eventually had faith in me, and we got to be good friends. He was the best man at my wedding, and I’m godfather to his first son, so our relationship picked up after that. That was scary though not really knowing what I was doing. It took me a while to kind of fake it, which is what I felt that I was doing.
When I referenced earlier that I find it difficult to look at those early comics is that I just didn’t know. I had no confidence in what I was doing and yet it did develop a small following so that surprised me. For a couple of years that was pretty good.
LUTE: I loved revisiting the Dr. Radium stories in preparation for this interview. I especially love the humor. It’s right up my alley. What helped you develop the sense of humor that you brought to Dr. Radium?
SAAVEDRA: Yeah, it’s kind of an absurd sense of humor in those stories. To tell you the truth (which is sort of the thing when you’re going to tell a lie so maybe I should rephrase that), but I had no idea I had a sense of humor growing up. I just really didn’t think I was particularly funny. I’m the oldest of seven kids, my family is full of funny people. You know, even when my dad died years ago, at the funeral people who he worked with were like “Oh your dad was such a funny guy.” My family just see things in a funny way.
But I never felt that that was me. I was very shy. In high school, I decided to take a speech class feeling that that would help me build my confidence. I did a speech on Superman because that was the thing that I was really interested in in tenth grade. So, I did this speech and as part of the speech I would be drawing. And I would say “And Superman’s secret identity was Clark Kent.” Then I would whip the paper around and there would be a drawing of Clark Kent which I probably traced or copied from one of the comics. My fellow students in the class would go “Oh” and they were really surprised by that because I guess nobody had seen a speech where somebody was drawing something. [Laughs] In the course of giving what was written as a straight up story about the creation of Superman and his place in popular culture, I was realizing how absurd some of it really was and was ad libbing wise cracks. I did not expect it. I didn’t know I would do that. It wasn’t part of my plan. My plan was to wow them with the drawing. The teacher came up to me afterwards and she said, “That was really funny.” She asked if I would like to be part of the speech team.
So, I did the speech in competition and would win third, second, and first place. I did really well. But I knew that something was up when I went to compete in one of my early speech tournaments, and the judge fell out of her chair laughing. [Laughs] And everybody else in the room sort of rolled their eyes and looked down. They were like, well we know who won this round. [Laughs] And I got first place.
I do not talk about this stuff very much. Who wants me to talk about my one high school semester of being a competitive speech prodigy or something? Even though I have a lot of awards, I choked when it came to the semi-finals in California. I was like seventh place or something. But It did show me that I had a sense of humor, and it helped me build it up. From there you just push at the envelope around you, and see what gets people to laugh.
By twelfth grade, I was kind of being more open, louder about my sense of humor. Getting into trouble because I was saying stuff I heard around the campus because they were sexually tinged. Phrases like “wham, bam, thank you ma’am.” I was just amused by that. I just had no idea what it really meant. I didn’t know it was vulgar. It was just something that was amusing to me, so I got called out for that. Its kind of how babies learn, you keep figuring out what works, what gets a good reaction, that’s hard to do when you are at home all the time and drawing and trying to create cartoons. You are having to rely on your sensibilities and your instinct. But I got to do it sort of loudly and kind of see where this development was going.
Another thing that affected my sense of humor was that I met Jack Kirby when I was around fourteen or fifteen or so. He lived locally. I showed him some of my artwork. He was in the phone book. My dad took me to see him, and I took some of my artwork. My dad said, “Maybe he’ll hire you as an assistant.” Well, he didn’t need an assistant. Jack Kirby was just fine without me. [Laughs] But, he looked at my superhero drawings and he said, “You don’t have it. You don’t have that anger, that hatred.” I’m fifteen years old or so, I wasn’t mad at anybody. I grew up in suburbia. I had a very docile upbringing. So, no I didn’t hate anybody. But he did see one drawing that was a caricature of myself. He said, “You should focus on that.” So, well if Jack Kirby thinks I should focus on that, then that’s what I should focus on.
Those were two really seminal happenstances that kind of pushed me towards humor. It’s easier to draw because I draw a terrible Batman. [Laughs] I wanted to be a Batman artist so badly but that was not for me. [Laughs]
By the time I got to Dr. Radium I had developed a sense of humor, and things occurred to me that were amusing, but still, it comes back to not having an idea, a story idea. Or worse not having anything to say except for unrelated, disconnected goofiness. So, yeah it was a happy challenge because I was drawing comics.
LUTE: Another of my favorite aspects of the Dr. Radium series were the characters, particularly the supporting cast like Roy and Penny. Let’s start with Roy. What’s going on with him? One minute he doesn’t seem to know what’s going on around him and the next, he hears Dr. Radium’s voice and he thinks, I’ve got to get out of here.
SAAVEDRA: Yeah, creating the characters was an attempt to give me room to tell stories. You couldn’t just have Dr. Radium. I needed someone who was smarter than Dr. Radium and that was the computer Rez. Roy was the person who had things happen to him because he was the assistant. I don’t know, but I think my thinking on it changed (this was a long time ago), that Roy would be wanting to be a scientist, he wanted to grow up to be one. Even though in my mind, he was old enough to legally suffer these deprivations. But the desire was to have a built-in victim, and maybe a little bit of the dynamic in [classic British sitcom] Fawlty Towers. So, Basil Fawlty was the main character played by John Cleese. I don’t recall all of the character names, but his wife on the show [Sybil] was kind of bossy and like the brains of the outfit. Then there was the Spanish waiter [Manuel]. He was the one who would always get smacked in the back of the head for not doing something right. Well, Roy was that character for Dr. Radium.
LUTE: Ok. So, what about Penny? What’s the story with her?
SAAVEDRA: Well, Penny was the audience’s viewpoint in how they would see all the nonsense going on in front of them. Much in the way the customers on Fawlty Towers would be normal people who would be appalled by the behavior going on around them. That was her function. I can’t honestly tell you how well I did or didn’t utilize these components to tell stories. That was the intent though.
LUTE: Ok, let’s talk about the Elvi? [Laughs]
SAAVEDRA: [Laughs] Oh, the Elvi. Ok, I was briefly an assistant to [artist] Joe Chiodo. He was known for his pin-up girls. He had a little bungalow in Los Angeles, and I lived 45 minutes away or so in Southern California. His roommate was [artist] Dave Stevens. Joe and I had a mutual friend, and the friend told Joe that I moved back home after dropping out of college and was kind of in a funk. I wasn’t in a good place; I didn’t know what I was going to be doing. I was trying to figure that out and my friend called Joe and said, “Can you use an assistant? Scott’s good.” Joe said sure, and we had a fine time working together. I learned a lot working with Joe.
Most everything I’ve ever learned in anything has been through experience and just a willingness and an interest in what I was doing. There was not real formal education in what I’ve done. A lot of it was born out of an intense interest in print and comics and magazines and books. Creative stuff like that. So, Joe had me help him to do some coloring, so that’s where I got my first comic book credits. And then I started doing some coloring on the first trade paperback collection from Eclipse for The Rocketeer.
Anyway, it was Joe and Dave and me working or not working or going out for coffee or whatever. We drank a lot of coffee in those days. [Laughs] But, we would listen to music, a lot of music, at three o’clock in the morning. Elvis would come on, and Joe would just say “Elvi,” and it would just crack me up. I always just thought that was the plural of Elvis because there are just so many Elvis impersonators. It just makes sense that there would be a plural for Elvis, and when I sat down to create the nominal bad guys for Dr. Radium I created these little blobs with snouts who wore Elvis impersonator wigs and called them the Elvi. It was just one of those things. When you’re creative you have to be alert to what’s going on around and you pay attention to what makes you laugh. And Elvi made me laugh. They have no particular skills or gifts, needs or wants, they are just blobs who served a purpose and maybe that’s unfortunate in the long term because maybe if they had some secret desire I would have been able to use them more. They just had no particular function other than to make me laugh. They are just so strange.
LUTE: There are references to different things from popular culture in the stories. There was one that really stood out to me though. In the story “Big Science,” there is an obvious reference to the movie Planet of the Apes. I love that movie. Are you a big fan of it?
SAAVEDRA: Oh, my goodness, yes! I saw that first movie when I was nine or something. My little brain exploded. It was a level of creativity that I had not seen too much of before. My family because it’s so large, we almost always went to drive-ins. We all piled into the station wagon, and we saw a lot of Disney movies. I mean not the good Disney movies, sometimes you would get The Jungle Book which is a personal favorite of mine. Sometimes you get one of those, but then you get That Darn Cat or The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes or something that was noise and sounds or noise and activity moving on the screen in front of you. Sometimes what was going on was funny and sometimes the actors were attractive. Whenever they put Tim Conway into a movie I was delighted. A lot of those regular character actors that would turn up in those Disney movies. I really liked them. I even liked Dean Jones and he didn’t play really exciting characters. Most of those movies just didn’t stimulate the imagination.
But holy smokes Planet of the Apes! I saw Planet of the Apes and Beneath the Planet of the Apes the same night. It was a double feature, and at the time my dad worked at the drive-in theatre. I don’t know what he did there, but he came out at some point and brought me a hamburger and I had popcorn and a soda. When you’re from a big family and you get to do something kind of by yourself. It was just a magic moment and then to see a movie that changes your brain. It’s a great memory. I absolutely love that movie. I just loved being able to put that into Dr. Radium.
In fact, I was talking to Ed Catto, the editor on RetroFan, and he said, “Do you think you want to do an article on Planet of the Apes? I know you like it.” I said absolutely not. There is too much to talk about in Planet of the Apes, and I’m not an expert. I just like it a lot. I like it so much that I don’t think I could properly convey it. I know my limitations as a writer by now, and I don’t think I could do that article. I’m too goofy about the movie still. I’ve seen it a lot.
LUTE: The Dr. Radium stories including never before published ones were released as a series of three books as The Dr. Radium Collection. In the introduction to Volume Three you stated, “I almost decided to leave Dr. Radium in our present time in ‘A Doctor A Day…’ but chickened out at the last minute.” What did you mean by that?
SAAVEDRA: I’m not sure exactly what I was going to do, but it was part of my struggle of trying to figure out the best way to utilize the character to tell a funny story. I couldn’t decide.
Sometimes if you allow yourself to be able to do anything with your characters, I don’t think you come up with as many good ideas as you can come up with as if you are trying to move over obstacles. So, if you put your characters in a difficult position I think you give yourself an opportunity to force yourself to really do something you might not do otherwise as if you took the easiest path.
In the world of tomorrow that Dr. Radium lived in science was basically magic because anything could happen. I think I discovered that the people were pretty useless around him and they had no problems. They were not particularly interesting. Originally, I thought if I brought him to the present it might give me the opportunity to do more satire about the world that existed at the time these stories were published. By taking him back to the world of tomorrow, I think I was trying to challenge myself to not take the easy way out by leaving him in the past which is our present. I can’t really say now, so go with the written record.
LUTE: The Dr. Radium Collection books were released in reverse order with the oldest stuff being in the last volume and the newer stuff being in the first volume. Was there a reason for that?
SAAVEDRA: You know there really is. We had reprinted material from the first seven issues of It’s Science with Dr. Radium already. I didn’t know if this book series would go all the way through to the third volume. It was published long after Dr. Radium had finished. I liked the format though. The original stuff had been reprinted previously, and I didn’t feel like I needed to see it again at least right away anyway. So, I just decided to do things in reverse order and get the things that weren’t already reprinted out there first. I had these extra stories that we put in there also.
I also thought that maybe fans or potential fans (not just random customers) who may have somehow been attracted to the series would like to read newer stuff. If I had started with the earliest issues there may have been people who had already seen it.
So, we moved backwards in time. In my mind I thought that was kind of amusing because he’s a time traveling character. I like the later work I did much more than the earliest work I did so I wanted to make sure there were one or two volumes with material that I wasn’t as embarrassed by.
LUTE: We haven’t seen Dr. Radium for a while. Why did you stop doing It’s Science with Dr. Radium?
SAAVEDRA: The craziness of this all is that I started to feel like I was getting the hang of it just as I didn’t want to do it anymore. It was so frustrating because I think the last issue paid me out at $100.00 or something like that. I thought that I can’t do this to my wife and my kids. I just felt done, and that I needed to do something else.
At SLG, we had [Johnny the Homicidal Maniac creator] Jhonen Vasquez (a lot of comic fans don’t know him, but he was at the forefront of goth comics), he still sells even though he hasn’t made a comic in decades. His old comics back from when I was doing Dr. Radium still sell. He makes some amount of money every year on these back issue sales. I thought I did not capture the audience that way. I needed to move on and not have to deal with it. Jhonen was kind of my touchstone at how well I was doing with the audience and of course with the straight-ahead numbers. The numbers were just in the toilet. There was just not enough good reason to keep it going. You can only do something for nothing for so long. [Laughs]
LUTE: So, no more Dr. Radium on the horizon?
SAAVEDRA: No, not from me at least. I sold the character to Fox. There was interest in an It’s Science with Dr. Radium show. They were on the cusp of making a final decision on the show, and I had heard from different sources that they were going ahead with it and there was a good chance they were going to do something because it had moved that far ahead. But the license was going to be up in days or something, so they just decided to buy it. That was cheaper for them. It was a lot of money for me, but it was cheaper for them than to go through the process of renegotiating a contract and all that. They just weren’t interested in doing that. It turned out that there would not be a show, and I was sad about that. But at the same time, I was just in a frame of mind where I was not giving that project my complete attention. That was stupid on my part, but it was just where my head was at the time. I was just done with the character.
You know, almost from the get-go, almost from the beginning of It’s Science with Dr. Radium interest started to burble up in the idea of doing a Dr. Radium cartoon. It took three years for talks to really begin. Getting lawyers and all of that crap to begin. It just didn’t work out. I would have loved to have had a cartoon show on when my kids were little. That would have been great. But I’m not sorry that I didn’t have to deal with, I don’t want to say showfolk, but showfolk. It’s just not a world that I’m familiar with and comfortable with. I like print. I like publishing. There’s money to be made and everything, but I’m just sort of happy in my little corner of the universe. It’s a good place to be.

scott saavedra

Courtesy Scott Saavedra.

Art from the first The Dr. Radium Collection from SLG. All art in the article by Scott Saavedra unless otherwise noted.
TM & © 20th Century Fox.

(left) The experiment begins in It’s Science with Dr. Radium #1! (right) The Elvi appear and we meet Dr. Radium in the initial story. Original art scan courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com).
TM & © 20th Century Fox.

(left) Dr. Radium enlists Roy’s “help” (disguised as an Elvi) in It’s Science With Dr. Radium #1. (right) Penny butts heads with Dr. Radium in It’s Science With Doctor Radium #4.
TM & © 20th Century Fox.

The covers to It’s Science With Dr. Radium hint at the wackiness to come.
TM & © 20th Century Fox.

(left) Saavedra may enjoy Planet of the Apes a little. (right) Dr. Radium prepares to infiltrate the Elvi in It’s Science With Dr. Radium #4.
TM & © 20th Century Fox.

(left) Don’t cry if you missed Dr. Radium’s Man of Science series, it’s been collected in trade paperback! (middle and right) The Dr. Radium Collection from SLG. Whether you read them first to last, or last to first, just read them.
TM & © 20th Century Fox.

A special thank you to Scott Saavedra for allowing the author to interview him. This article would not have been possible without his invaluable assistance.
Ed Lute doesn’t know a lot about science (he’s a Language Art guy), so he had to get his scientific knowledge from somewhere. Thank goodness Dr. Radium was around to teach him about science stuff such as time travel, pill bugs, the “perfect” world of tomorrow, and of course the Elvi. Who says you can’t learn anything from comic books?

There’s nothing like a good pun. (inset) What does Penny know that we don’t?
TM & © 20th Century Fox.

by Bryan D. Stroud

Something about Gotham City draws in the bizarre, and few have fitted that category more dramatically than Dr. Phosphorus, the hideously transformed villain who was once Dr. Alexander Sartorius.
How and when did the transformation occur? Our first glimpse of Dr. Phosphorus came about in Detective Comics #469 (May 1977) and was the result of the efforts of writer Steve Englehart, who started his run on Detective Comics with this issue, quickly rolling out two other new characters along with Dr. Phosphorus in the forms of Rupert Thorne and Silver St. Cloud. Artwork was capably achieved with Walter Simonson on pencils, Al Milgrom providing inks, and John Workman with the lettering detail. The editorial team included Managing editor Joe Orlando, Julius Schwartz and Associate editor E. Nelson Bridwell.
The splash page to “…by Death’s Eerie Light!” depicts our hero returning from his patrolling the city to find Alfred collapsing from a mysterious illness. There are no ambulances available as Gotham is in the throes of an epidemic. A swift change of outer garb and soon Bruce Wayne is delivering his manservant to the hospital. Later, back in his Batman uniform, he learns that they’ve received some 50 cases of the same unknown ailment and the doctors are baffled.
Next to arrive is Commissioner James Gordon, who encounters a Dr. Bell, who promptly berates the lawman for his perceived shortcomings. Bell is also a city councilman, so his maneuvering is political in nature. Later, Gordon shares a note with the Dark Knight: “Phosphorus burns when exposed to the air! The good citizens of Gotham City have earned my righteous wrath, and they will burn for it—for I am—Dr. Phosphorus.”
Soon, the World’s Greatest Detective heads back to his apartment to try and discover what has caused the epidemic. He decides that it must be something in the water supply. He further learns that Commissioner Gordon has also succumbed, so it’s off to Gotham reservoir to investigate.
Spotting a bright light in the trees near the reservoir, we get our first glimpse of Dr. Phosphorus. He’s transparent save for visible hair and eyes and is otherwise a walking, talking luminescent skeleton wearing the shredded remains of pants. Truly a walking horror. He monologues that he has sworn to destroy Gotham City as it has destroyed him and by association, it’s guardian, the Batman. To carry out that vow, he has soaked in the reservoir, poisoning the city’s water supply.
In addition to the radiation his body produces, Phosphorus’ touch itself burns, making him difficult to fight, let alone contain. The Dark Knight quickly wraps his fists in his cape and is able to stagger the villain, but both figures have fallen into the water with Dr. Phosphorus holding our hero in a burning death grip. Fortunately, the water neutralizes some of his radiation and Batman is able to break his grip. The villain declares that he cannot kill Batman now as it is their first encounter and the thrill of the game would end too soon. With that, he flees as the Batman recovers, leaving the story on a cliffhanger, but it was followed by a 6-page treatment titled “The Origin of Dr. Phosphorus,” delivered by the same creative team.
The dramatic first page begins with Dr. Phosphorus greeting Dr. Bell at his apartment on the outdoor balcony. This apparently happens after the earlier encounter with Batman. Bell seems to recognize him from what had transpired earlier, perhaps from the news and as Phosphorus advances, he reveals that he is Bell’s former colleague, Dr. Sartorius. Bell exclaims that Sartorius is dead.
A flashback reveals both Bell and Sartorius were members of the exclusive Tobacconist’s Club, populated by the most powerful figures in Gotham City. Dr. Sartorius was admitted by virtue of his successful Park Avenue practice and his association with Dr. Bell at Gotham General Hospital. Sartorius then met the city council chairman, Boss Rupert Thoren. Sartorius was looking for a tax shelter and Thorne alludes to a potential tax haven that might be just the ticket. Thorne holds a document citing a report on a nuclear power plant. He offers “advice” to Sartorius to invest in the plant, to which the good doctor quickly agrees.
Sartorius sinks his savings into the plant, but politics being what it is, the citizens balk. A ballot fails and so the project is moved to an offshore platform. With dwindling funding, corners are cut on the facility. Sartorius visits to check on his investment. He is alone and things appear to be in order until he sees sparks that indicate the reactor core is cracking open.
He flees in desperation, diving behind a wall of sandbags, but an explosion follows, driving “five million slivers of red-hot sand” throughout his body. The sand, it turns out, was radioactive and was changed by the reactor from silicon to Phosphorus.
Returning to the present, it is now clear why Dr. Phosphorus is confronting Dr. Bell. He and the other members of the city council are being held responsible for the accident that transformed Sartorius into the nightmare that is Dr. Phosphorus.
Phosphorus offers to spare Bell and the rest of the council if he can move Batman out of the way of his plans for revenge. Bell reaches for the phone to call Boss Thorne, wrapping up the story.
Writer Steve Englhart offered his recollections on the origin of Dr. Phosphorus for BACK ISSUE: “I think it was my wanting to bring in a new villain. I knew from the start that I wanted to bring back the pulp stuff from the ‘40s and that included the monsters with Professor Hugo Strange and the Joker certainly and just do the classic Batman stuff, but I wanted to get there. That was going to be a change. Bringing back all the pulp stuff and making it darker. And I had other things I wanted to do. Bringing in Silver St. Cloud and getting to know Bruce better and using the origin of Dr. Phosphorus to introduce Boss Thorne and the Gotham City Council.
“I think my concept was, if I come in and immediately change everything, that’s where I want to go, but I’m not sure I want to do that politically. Just come in and say, ‘Hey, Julie (Schwartz), I’ve just changed your entire book.’ So, that’s why I came up with a new villain who was cool looking who worked well with Batman, but he was also, I guess, sort of my calling card. I was there to play. I was actually there to do something and not just resurrect stuff, even though the resurrection was what I really wanted to do.
“He wasn’t quite a throwaway villain. I did use him a couple more times, but there was not much depth to him. I liked the idea of somebody who glowed in the dark up against Batman being dark and my rational mind knew about chemical elements and so I thought, ‘Well, Phosphorus burns,’ and so this guy gets pelted with silicon and then jumped up. It was just a matter of putting things together. How do I get a guy that glows in the dark? So, Phosphorus made sense.
“As to the rest of it, I just made up an explanation as to why he was living Phosphorus, but it was funny because thereafter I did full length stories. I think only that first issue had the old Detective format of a shorter story and then a short story in the back, so I made use of it by making the short story in the back into the backstory of the front story.
“When I took over Detective, that was the format they used and as I went forward, I needed to devote the whole book to the Batman story, but in the beginning, I wanted to just ease in. I’ve never been one for coming in and saying everything’s different now that I’m here. I wanted to make the transition sensible and not freak anybody out.”
Steve Englhart had actually been recruited to DC/National and recalled: “When Jenette (Kahn) asked me to come over and fix the Justice League and I said, ‘Okay, but I want to do Batman, too,’ the one comment I had was that Julie was well known for being a hands-on editor and the stuff I did was done basically with me being the editor. So, I said, ‘If you wanted me to do what I do for you, Jenette, I don’t want Julie to be micro- managing me.’ I liked Julie, but I didn’t want him to be micro-managing me.
“When I started to do Detective, he basically let me do what I wanted to do, so I assume that she had a word with him, but he was never resentful or persnickety about anything. In the end, he wanted a good comic and I don’t know whether he knew my stuff and had faith in me or she just said, ‘Let him do what he wants to do,’ but in any event, I never had a problem with Julie. I don’t think that he had anything to say about Dr. Phosphorus.
“The thing I remember from that run is that I was going to have Hugo Strange beaten to death on camera and Julie said, ‘I think it would be better if you did it off camera.’ So, we did it off camera. I didn’t have a problem taking good advice from him. Again, I just didn’t want him micro-managing me. He was a pleasure to work with. We were doing Justice League together, too. He didn’t give me hard time and I hope I gave him some good comics.”
When asked if there was any significance to the name Sartorius, Englehart offered, “There was a story I read in high school that they later turned into a movie called Dr. Sardonicus, about a guy who had been, I think, frightened by some terrible thing, so his face was in the sardonicus smile. It’s a medical condition in that your face just sort of freezes in a smile and it’s called sardonicosis or something. So, I just liked the sound of Dr. Sardonicus and modified it a little to Dr. Sartorius.”
Per Englehart, Dr. Phosphorus’ design was left in the hands of Walter Simonson: “I might have said that he was a skeleton on fire. I might well have done that, but if Walter says he did the whole thing, I wouldn’t argue with it.”
In the very next issue (Detective Comics #470 (June 1977), we are given the follow-on tale in “The Master Plan of Dr. Phosphorus,” delivered again by Englehart, Simonson, and Milgrom.
Things begin in a strange way when Batman is served with a subpoena to appear before a grand jury. Soon he is paying a visit to Commissioner Gordon at Gotham General where Alfred is also present and asks if he knows anything about the subpoena. Gordon doesn’t but suspects Boss Thorne is behind it.
Dr. Bell appears and Batman notes that he also serves on the city council along with Thorne and asks him if he has any knowledge about the subpoena. Bell admits he requested it, intending to “close down” the vigilante. Batman exits via the window with Bell’s threats following.
Elsewhere, at Gotham’s Sprang Memorial Arena where a rock show is underway, the lead singer collapses. Then over the PA, Dr. Phosphorus announces that his poisonous fumes have been introduced to the air conditioning system and the crowd has three minutes to live.
Segue to the Batcave and our hero gets near a Geiger counter and triggers it, alerting him that his wounds from his encounter with Dr. Phosphorus are radioactive. Just then, Chief O’Hara calls to inform Batman about the events at Sprang arena. His next move is to the new nuke plant in the bat-boat, but he’s turned back by a mob of “guards,” under the direction of the city council.
Changing tactics, our hero decides to host a party aboard his yacht with a hand-picked guest list including Rupert Thorne, Dr. Bell, and an intriguing lady named Silver St. Cloud.
Soon, he excuses himself, changes into his Batman uniform, and uses a SCUBA setup to return to the offshore nuke plant and a final showdown with Dr. Phosphorus. He is amply prepared in a radioactivity resistant uniform and can begin overpowering his adversary. In desperation, Phosphorus, seeking more power, leaps toward the reactor, but is also trying to lure the Batman to his doom. The fiend grabs onto a beam, but it melts beneath his grip and he appears to fall to his doom while Batman averts his fall with a batarang and rope, ending the 2-part storyline.
Walter Simonson shared his memories of the origin of Dr. Phosphorus with BI: “I don’t know if it’s what Steve (Englehart) remembers, but it’s what I remember about Dr. Phosphorus. The original idea for the character actually belongs to my major professor at Rhode Island School of Design. I was an illustration major, and the head of the department was Tom Sgouros. We became good friends after graduation. He knew I liked comics and he did, too.  I learned he had an opportunity to work for Al Capp on Li’l Abner, but he decided he wanted to be the best Tom Sgouros he could be rather than the second best Al Capp, so he didn’t take the job, but went on to be a really good painter and illustrator and I think he and his brother invented a character called ‘Phosphor.’
“I don’t remember his description of the character. It might have been a skeleton with fire around it. So, I had that in the back of my mind. At some point, I think what probably happened was I gave it to Steve for those couple of issues of Detective we did and Steve turned it into the character.
“The other change that got made was that Julie Schwartz decided that Phosphor wasn’t a good name and he changed it to Dr. Phosphorus, which he maybe thought sounded more scientific, but that’s where the name came from.”
When asked about his brief time on Detective, quickly followed by the Marshall Rogers and Terry Austin art team, Simonson recalled, “I don’t think there was ever an expectation that I would be staying on the book with Steve as the writer. I got two issues and I was happy to do them.”
Simonson further shared, “I had nothing to do with the actual origin of Dr. Phosphorus. That was all Steve. I think I suggested the character just from stuff I owed my old teacher, and it was really just a name and an appearance. I think that was all I really contributed, so Steve put everything else in to make the character work.”
Inker Al Milgrom, who generously supplied the scans of original art accompanying this piece offered brief comments: “Not much to say. They handed me Walter’s breakdowns and said, ‘Ink these!’ Always fun working with two of my good buddies. I remember thinking I would try to go very heavy on blacks to give it that dark, creature of the night feeling. Still, it looks a bit crude to me. I probably should have devoted a bit more time to polishing up Walter’s breakdowns before inking. I’m sure the deadline might have had something to do with that.”
Following this 2-part debut of Dr. Phosphorus, he pretty much went dormant for a number of years, making only the occasional appearance in the DC Universe, including the Starman title in 1994, where his physical appearance had changed a bit. No longer the villain sport hair or eyes, for example, and seemed to be better dressed. It also appeared he’d been killed in the storyline, but we learn later still, in a story by Royal Gray with art by Marco Mars titled “The Return of Dr. Phosphorus” in Batman: Detective (June 2007) that he’d survived to seek revenge yet again, but this time the Batman was able to neutralize him and his death-dealing fire with simple baking soda, long known for its fire retardant properties.
Finally, Walter Simonson was given another crack at his co-creation in a story titled “Legacy,” written by Tom King and appearing in the special anthology edition of Detective Comics #1027, celebrating the 1000th appearance of Batman in the title. Simonson recalls, “I did one story with Tom King where Tom brought back Dr. Phosphorus. I got to do a short story with him. It was a lot of fun. We had a good time with that.”
This tale is unique in that it’s told in caption form with internal monologues and shifts from battle scenes between Batman and Dr. Phosphorus interspersed with panels of an aged man in bed with a woman attending and a cat nearby, alluding to Selina Kyle, looking after Bruce Wayne while he dies of cancer, which is also taking the life of Dr. Phosphorus. A poignant and creative story that aptly delves into the intertwined relationship between good and evil.
In the end, Dr. Alexander James Sartorius, aka Dr. Phosphorus could be categorized as a sympathetic monster. Through no fault of his own, his life was upended when he was exposed to the radiation that changed him at a cellular level, leaving nothing of his prior existence to hold onto. Lacking even the ability to touch another human being without causing harm, is it any wonder that he was altered mentally as well as physically and was consumed with the idea of revenge?
Though his appearances have been sporadic, he has made a lasting impact in the Batman’s world. So, on a darkened night, when a glowing, animated skeleton is on the loose, beware the approach of the doctor who does not heal, but destroys, Dr. Phosphorus.

Dr. Phosphorus squares off against Catwoman on the cover of issue #23. Art by Terry and Rachel Dodson.
TM & © DC Comics.

(left) Dr. Phosphorus makes demands of Dr. Bell. Detective Comics #469. Art by Walter Simonson and Al Milgrom. (right) Dr. Phosphorus makes his first appearance on the cover of Detective Comics #469. Art by Jim Aparo.
TM & © DC Comics.

steve englehart

steveenglehart.com.

continued on page 43

Dr. Bell learns a horrible truth in Detective Comics #469. Art scan courtesy of Al Milgrom.
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al milgrom

Batman battles Dr. Phosphorus in this exciting sequence from Detective Comics #469. Art by Simonson and Milgrom. Art scan courtesy of Al Milgrom.
TM & © DC Comics.

continued from page 40

(top) Mass murder on an amazing level. Detective Comics #470 art by Walter Simonson and Al Milgrom. (bottom) The final battle with Dr. Phosphorus. Detective Comics #470 art by Simonson and Milgrom.
TM & © DC Comics.

(left) The battle concludes in Detective Comics #470. Cover art by Jim Aparo. (right) Dr. Phosphorus returns to take on both Batman and Batgirl. Cover by José Luis Carcia-Lopez.
TM & © DC Comics.

walter simonson

Marvel Cinematic Universe Wiki.

Walter Simonson’s eerie entry for Dr. Phosphorus in Who’s Who #6.
TM & © DC Comics.

(left) A different look for Dr. Phosphorus on the cover of Starman #13. Art by Tony Harris. (right) Catwoman made a not-so-welcome discovery. Art by Terry and  Rachel Dodson.
TM & © DC Comics.

(left) Give Dr. Phosphorus a hand for this appearance on the cover of Arkham City: The Order of the World #4. Art by Samwolfe Connelly. (top right) James Gunn provided a decidedly different take on Dr. Phosphorus in the animages Creature Commandos series. (bottom right) Walter Simonson gets another shot at Dr. Phosphorus in Detective Comics #1027.
TM & © DC Comics.

BRYAN D. STROUD is a longtime fan of DC Comics, particularly the Silver and Bronze Ages, and has been contributing to the website of his lifelong best friend, Ron Daudt, for over a decade, doing reviews of those classics.

by Paul Burns

It is unlikely Doctor Druid will ever win any popularity contests. Indeed, he often tops polls of Worst Ever Avenger. What may not be known about him is he is Marvel Comics’ first Silver Age superhero, predating the Fantastic Four by five months. From that viewpoint it can be argued he deserves more respect than he gets. This article proves Druid has at least a fascinating history, along with three surnames. And the first of those is Droom!
Doctor Anthony Droom debuts in Amazing Adventures #1 (June 1961) in “I Am The Fantastic Dr. Droom!” by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko.
Droom travels to the Himalayas to treat a dying Tibetan Lama. After he walks over hot coals and faces a lion/ape creature, the Lama appoints Droom his successor, problematically transforming him into an Asian man. He promises to teach Droom black magic and the ways of mysticism.
Droom’s adventures continue in Amazing Adventures #2-4 and 6 (July-Sept. and Nov.1961), with him telepathically thwarting various alien invasions across economical five-page strips. But that is where Droom’s saga ends. Almost.
“I always liked [Doctor Droom], but I forgot about him,” Stan Lee admits in Alter Ego #104 (Aug. 2011). “It was a one-shot thing. And one day while we were trying to think of some new heroes, I thought I’d like to bring back a magician.”
That character would be a renamed Dr. Strange (from Steve Ditko’s creation, Mr. Strange). Lee influenced Ditko to adapt Droom’s origin for the Sorcerer Supreme. We will later discover that Droom and Strange’s origins are fundamentally linked way beyond Lee’s reluctance to let a good concept go to waste.
Anthony Droom languishes in limbo until 1974, when Giant-Size Man-Thing #3 reprints the Doctor Droom story from Amazing Adventures #6, with a significant alteration: Editor Len Wein changes the name Droom to Druid in all but one panel of the story. Two years later, Roger Stern was selecting stories for reprint title Weird Wonder Tales, as he explains to Jarrod Buttery in BACK ISSUE #86 (Feb. 2016): “I was always looking for stories for the mystery/monster books that hadn’t already been reprinted. I noticed that a short series of ‘Dr. Droom’ stories had appeared in early issues of Amazing Adventures. But I thought the name ‘Dr. Droom’ might be a problem… it sounded a little too much like Dr. Doom. I didn’t know it at the time, but during Len’s tenure as editor, the sole non-Kirby Droom story-it was drawn by Paul Reinman-had been reprinted, in Giant-Size Man-Thing #3, with Droom re-lettered as ‘Druid’.”
Stern realizes that wasn’t the only change that had to be made: “So I followed through, rewriting the origin story to remove a bit of unintended racism, and re-established him as Dr. Druid. Then, John Tartaglione touched up Druid’s appearance, sprucing up his beard and giving him a more consistent look.”
Weird Wonder Tales #19 (Dec. 1976) sees the full debut of Doctor Druid. Jack Kirby and John Verpoorten’s cover depicts Druid’s new Kirby designed red costume and blue cloak, with the “new” hero facing the monstrous Gorlion. The issue reprints Amazing Adventures #1 with the obvious title change “I Am Dr. Druid” and altered dialogue by Larry Lieber.
Weird Wonder Tales #19-22 (Dec. 1976-May 1977) reprints other Amazing Adventures Droom strips with altered art by Tartaglione and lettering by Jim Novak. The exception being issue #21, which reprints Tales to Astonish #12 (Oct 1960). “I Discovered Gorgilla! The Monster of Midnight Mountain” did not originally feature Droom at all. The altered strip has Doctor Druid in place of a blond monster hunter called Scotty. Druid is also inserted as the ‘host’ for WWT’s back-ups, furthering the intention of him being the star of the whole title. A new John Byrne illustrated splash page is inserted in Weird Wonder Tales #22 (May 1977) which reprints Amazing Adventure #2’s “The World Below.” This final issue of the series features a superb Dave Cockrum and Ernie Chan cover, and a column by Archie Goodwin lamenting the demise of the title.
Druid next materializes in the pages of The Incredible Hulk #210 (Apr. 1977) by Len Wein and Sal Buscema. Wein was apparently “So tickled with what I’d done that he decided to guest-star Dr. Druid in Incredible Hulk,” according to Stern.
Druid and the Hulk team-up to thwart the world conquering plans of the Maha Yogi. UK comic Mighty World of Marvel #266-271 (1977) reprints Hulk #210-211 with Pablo Marcos providing new covers.
In Ghost Rider #26 (Oct. 1977), Jim Starlin and Don Perlin have Druid trailing Johnny Blaze’s demonic alter-ego. After a battle with the “Tool of Satan” as Druid calls him, the Master of the Unknown dispatches the Ghost Rider with “The Arcane Token of Tibiro.” After knocking Blaze out and establishing he isn’t evil, Druid goes against his Hippocratic Oath, walking away from an unconscious Johnny. He really does need a better bedside manner.
Contest of Champions #1 (June 1982) features a one panel meeting between Druid and Daimon Hellstrom, who will reappear fatally in his future.
Druid meets the Avengers for the first time in Avengers #225 (Nov. 1982). Steven Grant and Greg LaRocque have Druid’s ancestor, Amergin, possess him to hypnotize the Avengers, transporting them to Avalon in the 12th century, where they meet the Black Knight to help him fight The Fomor, dark monsters from “the other side.” During the battle, Amergin is killed, but not before he sends the Black Knight’s spirit to his stone body in 1982. Druid teleports, promising the Avengers they will meet again, with Hawkeye replying “Don’t call us, curly.. we’ll call you.”
Steven Grant wrote a three-part Black Knight story as a prequel to this story, which was eventually published in Marvel Fanfare #52-54 (Aug.-Dec. 1990) as he explained to Magazines and Monsters in 2015: “It was among the first things I ever pitched to Marvel. Spinning off a Defenders story Steve Englehart had done, that basically stranded Dane Whitman, the modern Black Knight, in the body of his 12th century ancestor, fighting alongside Richard Lionhart in the Crusades. I had about a six-year storyline worked out that would’ve taken him around most of Eurasia, colliding with a lot of history and legend, and to eventually end up off Ireland on the Island of Avalon, helping defend the doomed island from the onslaught of the Fomor, essentially the Titans of Irish myth. This became the Avengers story, with my way to time travel him back to the 20th century… where his body had been turned to stone and then to rubble.”
Druid and the Black Knight reunite in Solo Avengers #4 (Mar. 1988). Roger Stern and Paul Ryan tell the tale of Druid’s transformation into Ernst Wythim, the Last Knight, thanks to the curse of the Knight’s Ebony Blade.
Druid headlines his own adventure in Solo Avengers #10 (Sept. 1988), encountering demons in the New York subway, courtesy of D.G. Chichester and co-writer Margaret Clark. “We went through those Marvel Universe handbooks reading entries, we spent a long time trying to figure out who to use,” Chichester explained on the Capes & Lunatics podcast. “The druid aspect was interesting, this character who was obsessed with knowledge of the occult and that was almost as academic in a way of doing it, that became an intriguing twist on things. As a character, he’s this portly, middle aged, rotundish figure with undefined powers, so certainly not as sexy or Ditko-esque as Doctor Strange when it comes to the occult.”
The unfair comparison with Marvel’s other mystic is highlighted in Power Man and Iron Fist #118 (July 1985) when Luke Cage snarkily informs Druid: “You know I called Doc Strange first. He wasn’t home.” Regardless, Druid gets Cage and Iron Fist into K’un Lun. Quite proficient for a “middleweight sorcerer-dude” as Cage ungratefully calls him.
Fifty issues after they last met, Druid reunites with Earth’s Mightiest Heroes in Avengers #276 (Feb. 1987). Roger Stern explains the Doctor’s return on his message board: “I always intended Druid to be the Charles Emerson Winchester of the group…pulling his own weight on the team but often getting on other members’ nerves. He was supposed to fill the group’s Pain-in-the-Ass Quotient, much as Hawkeye had done once-upon-a-time…in a very different way, of course. Druid was the erudite wise-ass, as opposed to Hawkeye’s lovable butt-head.”
Stern is joined on his Avengers tenure by John Buscema. Druid aids the team against Baron Zemo and his Masters of Evil in Avengers #276-277 (Feb.-Mar. 1987) by telepathically forcing Blackout to remove the black cube surrounding the mansion. The Wasp nominates him for membership in Avengers #278 (Apr. 1988) and he is inducted in the following issue. From the outset, Druid has his eye on the leader role, but he has one obstacle: then current chairperson, Captain Marvel. In Avengers #286 (Dec. 1987) Stern (with Ralph Macchio providing the script) show Druid “astral eavesdropping” on his team members. Unfortunately, Stern didn’t have the opportunity to continue Druid’s machinations.
Stern’s time on the Avengers ends with Avengers #287 (Jan. 1988): “I was fired,” he told the Marvel Masterworks Resource Page in 2006, “I’d disagreed with one editorial suggestion about the Avengers lineup. My editor wanted a change that I thought distasteful, and I sent him a memo to that effect. I would have liked to have discussed the matter further, but I was never given a chance. Instead, I received a message that I was fired.”
Mark Gruenwald gave his take in his “Mark’s Remarks” in Avengers #288 (Feb. 1988): “I had Roger fly into New York for a conference to map out the next year’s Avengers story line. The bottom line was that he didn’t want to proceed with the story line we all discussed. I was not interested in forcing a writer to write something he didn’t want to. I informed Roger that I wanted to proceed with the agreed-upon story line and thus, I would hire another writer.”
Doctor Druid and Captain Marvel have a tough time under the stewardship of new writers Ralph Macchio and Walter Simonson, who were happy to go along with Gruenwald’s plans for the Avengers. Walter Simonson begins his tenure with Avengers #291 (May 1988).
Doctor Druid is seduced in his dreams by a mysterious blonde woman. Meanwhile, Captain Marvel is still having confidence issues, admitting: “I hate it when I let Dr. Druid do my thinking for me.” Druid, convinced of an impending disaster, believes the team needs a more effective leader.
Captain Marvel is almost ready to relinquish leadership in Avengers #292 (June 1988) telling Druid, “should I ever decide to step down as the Avengers’ chairperson…there will be a ready candidate at hand.” The mystery blonde continues to groom Druid, calling him “my Lord and master.” Playing to his sense of importance, she places a crown on his head, introducing him to his devoted subjects.
Running concurrently with Druid’s manipulation is the saga of Sub-Mariner’s wife Marinna’s transformation into the monstrous Leviathan. Druid is very much on the side of killing her, and in Avengers #293 (July 1988), he casts an illusion to lead Marinna to attack Atlantis, convincing Sub-Mariner to slay his wife with the Black Knight’s sword. Marinna becomes collateral damage in Druid’s schemes.
Druid’s seductress is revealed as Kang Nebula. She is also Kang’s lover, Ravonna, as Peter Sanderson reveals in Avengers Annual #21 (Jan. 1992). As Ravonna keeps up the pretense of being Nebula during this period, I will continue referring to her as Nebula in this article.
Druid has never looked more heroic and commanding than on the cover of Avengers #294 (Aug. 1988), but it’s an illusion created by Nebula. Druid hypnotically finds himself the savior of “his people,” using new powers to defeat a monster, emboldening him to take charge in reality. With Captain Marvel and Black Knight incapacitated, it’s easy for Druid to influence the remaining Avengers into appointing him leader.
Avengers #295-297 (Sept.-Nov. 1988) wraps up the Druid and Nebula saga. Nebula transports a mechanical dinosaur from the future to battle Thor, who is resistant to Druid’s hypnosis. Druid, further sinking into mania, mind controls She-Hulk into battling Thor and the Black Knight as the Council of Kangs reveal Nebula is seeking an omniverse destroying weapon created by a Celestial living in a time bubble.
Three Kangs travel back in time to stowaway on the Avengers’ quinjet and materialize just as the team reaches the time bubble. One Kang frees the Avengers of their mind control, and She-Hulk takes great glee in knocking out Druid, shortly before Nebula is torn from the Avengers’ ship with Druid leaping after her. Both vanish into the timestream. “I wrote eleven issues of The Avengers,” Simonson explained in Modern Masters: Walter Simonson (July 2006). “What happened with the Avengers was I found very quickly that I kept having to alter my stories in the midst of writing them. I’d have an issue out, be writing a new plot, and they’d say, “Oh, and by the way, next issue Thor’s out in space. You can’t use him.”
Following the decision to put new Avengers Reed and Sue Richards back into the Fantastic Four, Simonson quit the Avengers, transferring his intended Avengers stories over to the FF title, completing the time bubble saga in Fantastic Four #337-341 (Feb-June 1990). Nebula attempts to mind control the team members to partial success before she catapults back to Druid.
Roy & Dann Thomas and Bob Hall rescue Druid and Nebula from the “Bubble at the Heart of Time” in Avengers Spotlight #37 (Oct. 1990) and spearhead Druid’s most redemptive and heroic era. Roy Thomas states in regard to the original Doctor Droom stories, “I didn’t see them till sometime after they’d been published. I was intrigued by the similarity between Droom’s origin and that of Dr. Strange later…I used that when I wrote the character of course.”
Nebula intends to use her mastery over “Anti Time” to conquer earth before the age of heroes. Druid finds himself in Tibet, where the Thomases reveal the Lama who gave Druid his powers was the Ancient One all along. “It seemed unavoidable,” Thomas explains, “the bits were so much alike. Better to tie them together than to have it be some amazing coincidence.”
The Ancient One reveals Druid was a “precursor” to Dr. Strange, a temporary champion to shield the Earth until Strange was ready to accept the mantle of Sorcerer Supreme. Druid gets over his outrage of being a “test run” pretty quickly, abandoning his previous selfish and egotistical traits to embrace the honor of being the mystic harbinger of Strange.
Druid performs a ritual, summoning the “Three Mother Goddesses of War” which splits him into three. He keeps his younger body (with a full head of hair) after defeating Nebula. Despite this transformation, Thomas admits “I didn’t figure he’d ever become the next Dr. Strange.”
Roy & Dann Thomas continue Druid’s rebirth in Dr. Strange: Sorcerer Supreme #33-34 (Sept.-Oct. 1991) as Druid explains the Ancient One’s revelation to Strange and Clea, as the two mystics become embroiled in the “Infinity Gauntlet” crossover, and travel to Tibet to explore a possible connection to Dr. Doom’s origin with theirs. Druid ponders the possibility Strange was a “test run” for Doom.
Confessing “I just like crossovers,” Thomas has another opportunity to reunite the Doctors in the “Infinity War” event. Dr. Strange: Sorcerer Supreme #46-47 (Oct.-Nov. 1992) has Druid and Strange as members of a “Strange Bedfellows” occult team alongside Scarlet Witch, Agatha Harkness, and Shaman. Thomas didn’t consider them a permanent team: “I doubt if I thought of them as anything but a temporary alliance for that story.”
The artist on this two-parter was Geof Isherwood. “We also worked on Conan,” Thomas states. “I was intrigued that Geof was related to the man who wrote the story/book on which Cabaret was based.”
Isherwood began illustrating Strange with Dr. Strange: Sorcerer Supreme #37 (Jan. 1992). “When I heard Strange was coming open, I said, I’d love to draw Strange,” Isherwood explained to NERDwatch podcast in 2017. “And I was really much more interested in drawing him with the mystical visuals that you can have rather than something like the Punisher, which is just shoot-em-ups. And it’s like that today, when in doubt, just take out your gun and just shoot the hell out of something. And it’s just done ad nauseum. So, I loved the idea of Strange with all the mystical elements.”
Following his involvement in the Cap Wolf saga in Captain America #402-407 (July-Sept. 1992) and a short-lived leadership of occult team, the Shock Troop, which debut in Quasar #45 (Apr. 1993), Druid adopts an alarming new look in Secret Defenders #15 (May 1994). Everything in his wardrobe is now ostentatious; a large golden ankh on his chest, an animated blue cloak, fetching knee-high patterned boots, topped off by a high ponytail. We are definitely in the ‘90s!
Despite this wardrobe malfunction, Secret Defenders, written by Tom Brevoort and Mike Kanterovich and illustrated by Bill Wylie, Jerry Decaire, and Tony DeZuniga, puts Druid front and center as the leader of the team, appointed by Dr. Strange (him again!) as his replacement. Strange is satisfied he has chosen wisely after Druid resists temptation to alter reality with the powerful Moebius Stone. Druid enlists fellow Shock Troop member Shadowoman, his lover in both a past life and the present.
Proving he hasn’t lost his penchant for control and manipulation, alongside a problematic attitude to women, Druid places Shadowoman into a statue of the bride of the demon, Slorioth, to avoid telling her he took a piece of her soul before she died and placed it in her own shadow. He justifies his deceit by concern for her mental health. It’s left to Druid’s dark side to reveal the truth to her, before his tainted soul subsumes him, bringing Slorioth to Earth. Secret Defenders #25 (Mar. 1995) sees the Living Tribunal dispatch Slorioth and seemingly Druid. After faking his death, Druid disappears into a mystic mirror, wondering if his new agendas will promote the cause for good or evil.
Warren Ellis definitely answers that question in the Druid limited series. Viscerally illustrated by Leonardo Manco, the book is the first time Anthony Druid’s real name is revealed as Ludgate.
Ludgate is believed to have been one of four original gates in the Roman London Wall. According to legend, Ludgate was named after the ancient British king, Lud, who some folklorists believe is the manifestation of the god, Nodens, a Celtic healing god worshipped in Ancient Britain. Some Druidic groups view London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral, situated in Ludgate Hill, as part of a larger network of ancient sacred sites that have been significant for centuries before Christianity.
Having some knowledge of Druidism, Ellis places Druid into a disturbing, English folklore horror tale. Druid #1 (May 1995) recounts Anthony Ludgate’s origin, with embellishments. Scholar Ludgate explores his Druidism roots by travelling to Tibet and meeting the Ancient One who looks into Ludgate’s mind, discovering his ancestral line traces back to the days of Lud’s Gate. In the present day, Ludgate lives a miserable existence in a New York penthouse, surrounded by fellow occultists. He is attacked by a vicious Daimon Hellstrom, who holds him in contempt. Ludgate evokes his ancestral line to become a true Druid and asserts his Ludgate surname.
This new version of Druid… sorry, Ludgate, is a total psychopath. He thinks nothing of spontaneously combusting a “loutish” cab driver, using his new elemental powers to horrific effect. He sends his servant, Hemingway, into London to seek out customers for his occult investigations business, and encounters Nekra, last seen in West Coast Avengers #65 (Dec. 1990). She tells Ludgate of a cannibalistic cult who devours the flesh of academics, magicians, and psychopaths: all perfect descriptions of Ludgate. The horrific saga builds to a final, deadly confrontation with Nekra and Hellstrom. Ellis, already smarting at the cancellation of his Hellstorm book, intended Druid to be a 12-issue series, but it was cut short at four. It is possible he took his frustration out on the title character and not only had Nekra shoot him, but in a final act of humiliation, Hellstrom burns Ludgate’s body in a garbage can.
Despite Ludgate’s demise, Roger Stern wasn’t giving up on Druid, joining artists Mike Manley, Brett Blevins, and Jason Armstrong for a 4-part saga beginning in Marvel Universe #4 (Sept. 1998). Set in Druid’s past, he joins a team of Monster Hunters, alongside Bloodstone and Zawadi of Wakanda. The team is united by the golden age hero, the Hurricane, who is really the Eternal, Makarri. Druid is reacquainted with, and befriends, Gorgilla from Weird Wonder Tales #21. The story also ties Druid into the origin of the Mole Man, who remains on Monster Island after the Hunters defeat the deviant Kro.
Druid literally resurfaces in Kurt Busiek and George Perez’s Avengers #10 (Nov. 1998). The Grim Reaper manifests his spirit, alongside those of dead Avengers Captain Marvel, Hellcat, Mockingbird, Swordsman, Thunderstrike, and Wonder Man. The Scarlet Witch frees the deceased heroes from the Reaper’s control, and they unwillingly sacrifice themselves to resurrect Simon Williams.
The Mighty Avengers #13 (May 2008) reveals Druid has a son, Sebastian, who joins Nick Fury’s Secret Warriors. The mother’s identity remains a mystery and father and son have yet to meet.
No stranger to team line-ups, both living and deceased, Druid next appears in Chaos War: Dead Avengers #1 (Nov. 2010), a three-issue series by Fred Van Lente and Tom Grummett. Druid is reunited with Captain Marvel and Swordsman, their undead teammates this time are the Vision, Deathcry, and Yellowjacket. Once again, the Grim Reaper cruelly resurrects these departed heroes, at the behest of the Chaos King. Druid comes face to face with the Reaper’s accomplice, Nekra. Ever complex in his attitude to women, Druid first seduces the woman who helped kill him, then attacks her. Grummett depicts Druid as the Anthony Ludgate of the Druid miniseries, dreaming of his sacrificial ascent to Druidism to the Triple Goddess. The heroes’ time on the mortal plain is fleeting, and they return to the afterlife by series end.
Druid’s actual resurrection occurs in Squadron Supreme #4 (Feb. 2016). Writer James Robinson isn’t interested in returning Druid to hero status, but continues his descent into true villainy, with artist Leonard Kirk reverting him to his original appearance, sans ponytail. Druid now rules Weirdworld, by means of a crystal amplifying his powers. He tells Nighthawk his spirit fled his burnt body, finding a new one on Weirdworld, where he can only exist as a corporal being. Hyperion and Arkon shatter the crystal, unwittingly freeing Druid to return to Earth.
James Monroe Iglehart and Ray Anthony Height bring Druid back to “half-life” on Earth in Marvel Comics Presents #3 (Mar. 2019). Doctor Voodoo swiftly deals with Druid who conjures a dream spell, forcing Spider-Man to wrestle with a possessed Crusher Hogan.
Druid, back using his Ludgate surname, reappears in Dr. Strange, Surgeon Supreme #2 (Jan. 2020) by Mark Waid and Kev Walker. He is the Dean of McCarthy Medical Center, claiming he cannot recall his resurrection, and while his arrogance remains, his dark side has abated. The climax of the series sees Strange and Ludgate confront Madame Masque over her theft of Strange’s mystical possessions. Ludgate addresses Strange’s suspicion of him with a curt, “Not everyone wants to be Stephen Strange.”
Anthony Ludgate Druid has seldom been a likeable or popular presence in his 65-year comic book career, but creators keep reviving him, and not solely to give him a hard time. Whether it’s because he can be an entertainingly haughty source of tension and conflict or used as a go-to mage when a certain Sorcerer Supreme is unavailable, this Machiavellian Master of the Unknown, who predates every other Marvel superhero, definitely brings a kind of magic to comics.

John Byrne and John Tartaglione’s new splash page for Weird Wonder Tales #22
TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

(left) The splash page for the first Doctor Droom story. Amazing Adventures #1 art  by Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. (right) John Tartaglione’s corrections to the splash page of Weird Wonder Tales #19. (bottom)  Jack Kirby and John Verpoorten put Doctor Druid on the cover of Weird Wonder Tales #19.
TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

(bottom) Ghost Rider #26 art by Don Perlin and Sam Grainger. Original art scan courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). (inset) Doctor Druid meets the Hulk in Hulk #210. Cover by Ernie Chan. The story was reprinted in (top left) Mighty World of Marvel #266 and (top right) #267. Covers by Pablo Marcos.
TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

(left) Doctor Druid broods on this page from Avengers #286, art by John Buscema and Tom Palmer. (right) Doctor Druid shows that he can do some heavy lifting. Avengers #296 art by John Buscema and Tom Palmer. Original art scan courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com).
TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

(left) Doctor Druid trimphant on the cover of Avengers #294. Art by John Buscema and Tom Palmer. (right) Doctor Druid could use an assist from the autopilot. Avengers #294, art by Buscema and Palmer. Original art scan courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com).
TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

(top) Ouch! Druid has a splitting headache on the cover of Avengers Spotlight #37. Art by Steve Lightle.(bottom) Druid and Stephen Strange cast an exposition spell in Doctor Strange Sorcerer Supreme #34. Art by Dan Lawlis, Jim Sanders III, and Chris Ivy.
TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

(left) Doctor Druid shows off his fancy new outfit in Secret Defenders #15. Art by Jarry DeCaire and Tony DeZuniga. (right) Doctor Druid gets his own miniseries. Druid #1, cover by Leonardo Manco.
TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Doctor Druid is resurrected in Dr. Strange: Surgeon Supreme #4. Cover by Phil Noto.
TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

After writing about Dinosaurs (BI #144), Divorcees (BI #166), and Dragons (BI #168), Paul Burns is happy to continue the trend with Druids. He would like to thank Roy Thomas for his help with this article.

by Ed Catto

Readers in 1972 weren’t expecting—and probably weren’t ready for—one of the sneakiest comics ever. This was a series that adorned itself with familiar trappings borrowed from countless monster movies: vampires, mummies, Frankenstein’s monster, wide-eyed women in peril, and a ubiquitous horror host narrating the tales. The hero was a little bit of Sherlock Holmes and a little bit of Van Helsing. But with the first (official) issue, writer Don Glut and artist Jesse Santos—like clever magicians—pulled the most amazing switcheroos:
The unconventional hero would find goodness within the villain and help him find a better path!
The hero was just an ordinary man—no superpowers—who instead had a thirst for knowledge and a graduate degree.
While Marvel was building an elaborately interconnected universe, Doctor Spektor was worldbuilding one his own—a patchwork crazy quilt of original concepts and inter-company crossovers—all right under the nose of the editor.
The female lead, and the rich, nuanced supporting cast were fresh, fascinating, and ethnically diverse.
It’s high time for a look at the groundbreaking comic series that no one was ready for, or could fully appreciate, at the time: Don Glut’s and Jesse Santos’ The Occult Files of Doctor Spektor.
SOMETHING WICKEDLY GOOD THIS WAY COMES
It all seemed almost too “grown-up” for a horror comic. The hero was a snappy dresser, but he didn’t wear a superhero costume. He lived in a fancy mansion that had no secret cave. Dr. Spektor drove a Bentley, instead of a comic book Spektormobile. He eventually lived with his secretary girlfriend, Lakota Rainflower. And they politely socialize with another couple. There was a level of sophistication brought to the proceedings but make no mistake— each adventure was infused with excitement and suspense.
Dr. Spektor was created by Don Glut and Dan Speigle, although Jesse Santos quickly stepped in to draw the ongoing series.
Don Glut is a writer, musician, and film maker who was recently awarded the 2025 Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing. His writing is tight and clever. He comes across like a filmmaker with big ideas, but a modest budget, and somehow manages to exceed expectations, bringing it alive in a grand manner. And as readers soon found out, The Universal monster movies, and especially their crossovers, were a big influence on Don and his writing.
Jesse Santos, a Filippino artist, had solid skills but always surprised readers with his offbeat layouts, creative renderings, and unexpected illustrative choices. “Well, first of all, Jesse was basically a portrait artist,” Don Glut remembered in a recent conversation with BACK ISSUE. “That’s what he loved to do. He got all these expressions on people. Expressions they never saw in comic book art. And I asked him, ‘How do you get those realistic expressions?’ And he said, ‘I stand in front of a mirror. And I make those expressions, and then I copy them.’ I said, ‘What about the women?’ ‘Yeah, them too!’, he said.”
IT ALMOST DIDN’T GET PUBLISHED
Doctor Spektor was initially just another horror host narrating creepy stories from notes that he had ostensibly pulled out of his “files.” This harkens back to a grand tradition of so many radio dramas (Inner Sanctum, The Hermit’s Cave, etc.) and spooky comics (Tales from the Crypt, Haunt of Fear, etc.). His short stories first appeared in Gold Key’s Mystery Digest Comics. Soon, the green light was given to start his own comic series. It was supposed to be in the mold of this publisher’s other narrated short story comics like Boris Karloff Presents or The Twilight Zone (where Rod Serling supposedly introduced each story). Writer Don Glut had other ideas.
“When I did the first Doctor Spector book, it almost never got published,” said Glut. “What they thought I was bringing in was another book of him introducing the story as a host character. Instead, I brought in a 25-page story of him having an adventure as a character. And the editor looked at me like, ‘That’s not what we wanted, you know?’ And it almost didn’t get published. But since the work had been done, and the editor had to admit it was a good story, it was published.”
WORLD BUILDING AND A SHARED UNIVERSE
Back in the early ‘70s, Marvel was the publisher with tight continuity (we never used the term “shared universe” back then) and DC kind of did too. Every fan knew it. Doctor Spektor creator and writer Don Glut knew it too.
“I’ve always admired the continuity in the Edgar Rice Burroughs stories and the H.P. Lovecraft stories,” explained Glut. “They had a profound impact on me, and also the Marvel comics, and then later the DC comics. So, I started out with the attitude, or the intellectual conceit, whatever you want to call it, that all of my stories took place in the same universe. Regardless of what everybody else was doing with their characters, my characters all existed in the same universe, and over the decades.”
“The (Gold Key) editors were absolutely clueless as to what DC and Marvel were doing. I would come in there, and they would have a big stack of comics, because Marvel and DC would send them the books. They were just given to me without the editors ever looking at them. They had no idea what continuity meant. They didn’t know what a fanzine meant, they thought a fanzine was a fan. You know, like, somebody went to a convention was a fanzine.”
The subversive charm of The Occult Files of Doctor Spektor can be seen in how a credible world was built so quickly. The series is ostensibly about Doctor Spektor, an occultist, and his beautiful secretary/girlfriend, Lakota, as they investigate creepy mysteries and solve them all in one issue!
“They (Gold Key editors and management) didn’t know you could cross over characters. I would have loved to have brought in Turok or Magnus and figured out some way of doing that. But I stuck to characters that either I was dealing with in my own books, like Simbar, Durak, Dagar (from Tales of Sword and Sorcery Featuring Dagar the Invincible) and Tragg (from Tragg and the Sky Gods), or even from their Golden Age books. The Purple Zombie (from the Golden Age) for example, was one I brought into the Doctor Spektor series.”
Glut would stretch the boundaries even further by unofficially having characters like Jason Blood (secretly the Demon) and Captain America drift into the series. “If you read between the lines, this handsome, blonde-haired cop whose name was Steve was a part of the series. That was during the brief period where Cap became a cop.”
TRICK OR TREAT?
The Avengers, Batman, Thor, and even the Beast (in Amazing Adventures #16) all ventured to Rutland Vermont in the early ‘70s for spooky adventures at that city’s annual Halloween Parade. (BI covered these in “Rutland Memories” by Al Bradford in issue #60.)
Not to be left out to the fun, Doctor Spektor and Lakota, along with the doctor’s gorgeous British cousin, Anne, also made their way to Rutland for their own Halloween adventure in Doctor Spektor #18.
“I was really surprised that they let me get away with that,” said Glut. “You know, I did the Rutland, Vermont story. My editor didn’t know that that was kind of a tradition in Marvel and DC. I snuck in a lot of things because of their ignorance as to what was going on in the comic book business.”
ADULTING IN THE BRONZE AGE
Dr. Spector and Lakota clearly had a very adult relationship. It seemed like something you’d find on television in an NBC detective show from the early seventies.
Glut had to sneak this mature relationship past the editors and the censors. “To the day that book got canceled,” Glut reminisced, “the editor believed that she (Lakota Rainflower) came in for work every morning and left in the afternoon. But if you read between the lines, there’s scenes of her with her own dressing table, and her vanity mirror. I mean, she was obviously living there with him. But they were so oblivious to anything like that. Later, when he met the Chinese girl, Lu-Sai Tong, there’s a scene where she’s in a bikini, and going swimming at night in the swimming pool, and then Doctor Spektor is worried about something, and then we cut to a shot of just the exterior of the house. It was obviously what they were doing, but they never caught it. It was amazing.”
THE END OF THE FILES
For issue after issue, Doctor Spektor fought mummies, vampires, and sorcerers. He did it with a unique panache and flair. Don Glut always provided one surprise or another in each adventure, including breaking up the romantic lead couple, turning Doctor Spektor into a werewolf for three issues, and sneaking in a clandestine crossover with Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom.
The series’ popularity earned the doctor a second series, Dr. Spektor Presents Spine Tingling Tales. There was also a Doctor Spektor mini-comic that could be used by retailers (like shoe stores), in vending machines, or as Halloween Giveaways.
But it was over all too quickly. This clever series that broke the rules would end after 25 issues, plus the sundry extras. The relationship between Lakota and Dr. Spektor, having hit that rough patch, was never brought to a conclusion. Neither were the epic battles with the Dark Gods that Dr. Spektor would inevitably face. But the stories live on, waiting for new fans to discover the thrilling urgency of all it once more.

Doctor Spektor and Lakota are menaced by a vampire on the cover of the first issue. Art by George Wilson.
TM & © Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.

(top) John Morrow, Don Glut, and Ed Catto. Photo by Ed Catto. (bottom) A Dan Spiegle Doctor Spektor story page from Mystery Comics Digest #11. Original art scan courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com).
TM & © Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.

A gorgeous Jesse Santos werewolf page from The Occult Files of Doctor Spektor #12. Original art scan courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com).
TM & © Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved.

(left) Jesse Santo’s cover for issue #14 includes Dr. Solar.
Original art scan courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). (right) Spektor doesn’t stand much of a chance against Solar. The Occult Files of Doctor Spektor #14 art by Jesse Santos.
TM & © Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved.

DOCTOR SPEKTOR’S DYNAMIC REBOOT

ED CATTO: Your knowledge of Silver and Bronze Age comics is extraordinary, but I seem to recall reading that you never read Doctor Spektor as a kid before getting this assignment.
MARK WAID: To be honest, I never read any of the Gold Key stuff when I was a kid— distribution was spotty in the Deep South, and even when I did get ahold of a Gold Key, they just looked “weird” to me without panel borders and with that distinctive lettering. Little did I know how much Russ Manning I was missing. So having no familiarity with Doctor Spektor, I was able to approach it with a completely new eye.
CATTO: What makes Doctor Spektor special?
WAID: A skilled supernatural investigator in a world where there really are supernatural things is a good trope, and Don Glut’s stories were always entertaining and rose above the shortcomings of the formula—but through no one’s fault, by the time I was asked to revive the character, the void left after the character first went away had been filled by seemingly tons of other comics characters, which is why I expanded the trope by making him a self-styled, self-made reality TV star. Same goals, same methods, but monetizing the process with the eyes of the world upon him.
CATTO: Can you tell us a little about your time writing the character? And I’d be especially interested in any feedback you got from longtime fans and from new fans.
WAID: I had a good time from start to finish and got no blowback from longtime fans, but the approach I took was actually my second shot. In my first pitch, the angle wasn’t reality TV—it was that his world was our world, where superheroes existed only in comic books. The “supernatural occurrence” Spektor was investigating this time around was that the Gold Key heroes were real and “bleeding into” his reality, comic book characters stranded in our dimension for reasons unknown. That was my big-swing idea for the whole Dynamite/Gold Key relaunch, but it was ultimately deemed too out there. In retrospect, I’m glad it was—the reality TV angle was better!

mark waid

ED CATTO is a business strategist, entrepreneur, and educator with a specialty in pop culture. He is an instructor at the Ithaca College’s School of Business and leads the Agendae agency. As an artist, Ed also provides illustrations for publishers including AHOY! Comics and Airship27.

(inset) The doctor even got a second series with Dr. Spektor Presents Spine- Tingling Tales. Cover by Jesse Santos. (left) Christian Ward’s cover to the trade paperback for the Dynamite issues.
TM & © Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved.

by Robert Jeschonek

Did you know Batman had another mother after the death of Martha Wayne? It only took until 1987 for her to appear on the scene in that role.
It’s true! In Detective Comics #574 (May 1987), we learned that a woman named Leslie Thompkins had once been Bruce Wayne’s foster mother. In that same story, titled “…My Beginning…and My Probable End,” writer Mike W. Barr revealed lots of other details about Leslie, establishing her as a vital character in the Batman mythos, one with inextricable ties to the Wayne family.
But that wasn’t the first time Leslie appeared in the pages of a Batman story. She’d gotten her start eleven years earlier, in a tale written by the legendary comics scribe Denny O’Neil.
THE MOTHER THERESA OF GOTHAM CITY
“I’m Leslie Thompkins. Come with me. I’ll…I’ll do what I can.”
Those words, spoken to young Bruce in the aftermath of his parents’ murders, were the start of a beautiful friendship. As Batman remembered years later, “…in all the world, there was nothing… nothing except the warmth of her arms and the comfort of her soothing words…”
This touching moment was captured by O’Neil in Leslie’s origin story, “There Is No Hope in Crime Alley!” in Detective Comics #457 (Mar. 1976). For the first time, readers learned that Batman paid annual visits to Leslie in Crime Alley—aka Park Row—on the anniversary of the deaths of his mother and father. He never explained this in full to Leslie, however, saying only that the visits were, “…a memorial…a reminder of who I am!... Of my beginning…and my probable end!”
Though Leslie remembered meeting Bruce as a child, she didn’t connect that memory to his presence as the adult Batman. The long-ago incident had as powerful an impact on her as it had on him, though. “I once saw a hideous thing—a child whose parents were murdered in front of his eyes! I’ve never forgotten the lad! I’ve devoted my life to doing what I can to prevent such tragedy!”
Given the history between them and the good Leslie did, Batman felt a deep affection and admiration for her…though the feeling wasn’t entirely mutual. In her origin story, Leslie ended up begging him to stop beating on a thug and said she lived for the time when he and his kind would be unnecessary.
Batman didn’t let the elderly Good Samaritan’s comments get in the way of his respect for her, though. “I’ve heard there’s no hope in Crime Alley, Miss Thompkins—that’s wrong! You…and those like you…you’re the hope of Crime Alley—maybe the only hope our tormented civilization has left.”
High praise, indeed, from a rage-driven vigilante on a never-ending campaign against crime. Leslie reminded him of a path not taken, a kinder, gentler response to tragedy than the ceaseless application of brutality against those who dare inflict it.
Instead of taking the law into her own hands and meting out justice with physical force, she had embraced the way of peace. She had become a kind of Mother Theresa of Crime Alley, fighting the darkness by exemplifying the light.
As much as her non-violent approach impressed Batman, however, and the memory of her comfort and care dulled the edge of the bleak anniversary of his parents’ deaths, Bruce wasn’t about to hang up his cape and cowl. He kept up his crimefighting ways…and eventually, Leslie got sucked into the chaos that swirled around him and nearly died in the process.
Which would have been a terrible thing, considering she had not yet gotten the new backstory that would make her not only Batman’s foster mother but a full-fledged medical doctor and butt-kicking pacifist. Barr’s reinvention of Leslie was yet to come.
Assuming she survived the menace of Batman’s opposite number, The Wrath.
VICTIMIZED BUT NOT WRATHFUL
When a saintly old woman who lived a life dedicated to peace and good works had a gun pointed at her head by a maniac, would it change her point of view?
In the case of Leslie Thompkins, the answer was a resounding cry of disapproval. “More violence! Won’t there ever be an end to it?”
Years after her first appearance and years before her reboot by Barr, Leslie was taken hostage by The Wrath in Batman Special #1 (1984). Though this tale, “…The Player on the Other Side,” was also written by Barr, he portrayed Leslie as O’Neil had intended—as elderly, good-hearted resident of Crime Alley, dedicated to helping others.
“I liked the Leslie Thompkins character from her original appearance in Detective Comics, and I thought the character could be used in other stories,” Barr tells BACK ISSUE. He chose not to update her, though, because at the time, he was only thinking about the needs of that one story and didn’t know he’d be writing the character again in the future.
Barr didn’t let that stop him from putting Leslie through her paces, though. He placed her in extreme jeopardy as The Wrath used her to draw Batman and Commissioner Gordon into the line of fire, seeking revenge for the death of his criminal parents (on the same night, coincidentally, when Bruce Wayne’s family was killed). In the end, The Wrath was defeated and literally went up in flames, ensuring Leslie’s survival…though this demonstration of might making right didn’t change her convictions one iota. “I live for the time when no one will die from crime or injustice…when you and your kind are unnecessary,” she told Batman.
After which, she set about comforting The Wrath’s shell-shocked girlfriend just as she had once comforted young Bruce Wayne, almost word for word.  “That’s right, dear, let it out…I’m Leslie Thompkins. Please, come with me…I’ll do what I can.”
Once again, the frail old woman—who’d been a victim of violence herself in the hands of The Wrath—had made a difference in the life of someone victimized by an abuser. She followed a pattern laid down in her first appearance by O’Neil…but that pattern was going to change.
In a few short years, Leslie would reappear brandishing a baseball bat while charging after the perpetrator of a break-in at the medical clinic she directed (a perpetrator who turned out to be Batman, who was bringing in the badly injured Robin, Jason Todd).
So much for the withered pacifist in her shabby dress, old-fashioned hat, and shawl.
PAGING DOCTOR THOMPKINS
With one pivotal comic—the aforementioned Detective Comics #574 (May 1987)—Leslie Thompkins changed dramatically. In just 22 pages, her character took on surprising new layers, all while preserving the philosophical core that had defined her for so long.
Reconsidering Leslie for that story, Barr realized the original character had limited dramatic possibilities. “I decided to change the character because I believed she could better serve the role of a supporting character in Batman stories if she had a well-established history within Bruce Wayne’s and Batman’s storyline.”
Suddenly, Leslie was a physician running a medical clinic—the Thomas Wayne Memorial Clinic on Park Row/Crime Alley—and multiple social programs also funded by the Wayne family fortune.
“I wanted Batman to have a medical contact and give him somewhere to go when he was injured—which happens quite often,” explains Barr. “Frank Miller had designated Alfred in the role of medical provider to Batman. I never thought that Alfred was a good fit for this.”
Leslie’s overall physical condition and wardrobe were also major changes to the character. She was in good enough shape to wield a baseball bat in threatening fashion, and more likely to rock a lab smock or surgical scrubs than a moth-eaten dress, hat, and shawl.
The updated Leslie knew that Batman and Bruce Wayne were one and the same person (though the story behind this discovery would wait for a later tale, also written by Barr). “Leslie’s knowing that Bruce was the Batman made the relationship between them much deeper. It also made her a more sympathetic character,” said Barr.
In another major change, Barr established that Leslie had served as Bruce’s foster mother after the deaths of his parents. Talk about adding a major new detail to the Batman mythos!
“Making Leslie Bruce’s foster mother seemed to work dramatically,” recalls Barr. “Denny O’Neil (Batman group editor at the time) was very much in favor of the change.”
About the only thing that remained from her previous portrayal was her gray hair…and her resistance to Batman’s methods. Even that was tempered, as she told him, “I don’t deny that I pray for the day when no one will die from crime or injustice…when you and your kind are unnecessary…but until then, there is a need for you—and I’m glad you’re here to fill it.”
The new Leslie Thompkins fueled the powerful conflict at the heart of this tale. As she fought to save Jason’s life, she criticized Bruce for getting him involved in his dangerous lifestyle. Bruce’s self-doubt over his violent mission flared up, leading him to declare, “Maybe you’re right, Leslie…Maybe there’s no more need for me…” In the end, though, Jason recovered, and Bruce stepped back from the abyss to fight another day, inspired in part by Leslie’s eventual encouragement.
Readers had not seen the end of their battle for the soul of Batman, however…though the next memorable round would occur not in the present day, but years earlier.
Barr had set the stage for “Batman: Year Two,” a twisty, fateful epic in which Leslie’s influence made Bruce question his personal crusade…even as that crusade spun wildly out of control.
THE MOTHER OF ALL WARS
What if Batman resorted to the use of firearms to conduct his war on crime? That fundamental question lay at the heart of “Year Two,” and it was played out in two key ways that drove the high-stakes, bullet-riddled action of the four-part series-within-a-series.
For one thing, the central villain of the tale, The Reaper, showed the kind of vigilante Batman could become if he were more willing to use lethal force against the criminal element. On his rampage through Gotham City, The Reaper attacked his enemies with gauntlets that incorporated razor-sharp scythes, spiked maces, and guns. As he slashed, bashed, and shot his way through those on his hit list, he evoked a possible direction Batman might take in his already-violent campaign…a direction in which his pursuit of the nigh-unstoppable Reaper began to propel him.
Just as The Reaper showed what an unleashed Batman could be like, Batman himself became so obsessed with taking him down that he became more like him. Not only did Batman start carrying the handgun used to murder his parents—a weapon he’d secretly retrieved from the scene of the crime—but he actually partnered with Joe Chill, the man who’d gunned down Thomas and Martha Wayne in Crime Alley.
Throughout this very dark turn of events, Leslie kept up the pressure to dissuade Bruce from becoming an irredeemable murderer. “Do you ever stop to think what your father would say if he knew?” she asked, referring to his use of a gun, in Chapter Three, “Deadly Allies,” in Detective Comics #577 (Aug. 1987).
In that same chapter, when she learned Batman had started working with Chill, she confronted him at the grave of his parents. “I knew you’d be here, among the dead,” she said. “It’s where you belong…if you ally yourself with criminals and murderers…with the man who killed your parents.”
She didn’t break through his obsession, though. “If joining forces with the underworld is what it takes to defeat The Reaper, then I will,” he told her. “He’s killing as many police and citizens as he is criminals. If I have to become one of them to defeat him, I will.”
By the end of the story, though, Bruce did finally see the light. When he got his chance to kill The Reaper, he offered to rescue him instead. The Reaper chose to end his own life, but not before telling Batman, “I didn’t think you were a killer…I see now I was wrong…but now I know…you will make a fine replacement for me.” That was enough to make Bruce give up the gun and bury it forever, resuming his non-lethal methods… methods Leslie did not entirely approve of, though she did see Batman’s work as necessary.
Her view of Bruce’s violent work may have given Bruce food for thought, but ultimately, her influence didn’t shake his own deeply held convictions. “Leslie Thompkins held a different perspective compared to Bruce/Batman,” said Barr. “This served as a contrast in the narrative. However, it failed to serve as a counterbalance in Bruce/Batman’s mind. Batman disapproves of his own methods, yet he acknowledges their necessity and effectiveness.”
When the dust settled after his war with The Reaper, Batman did make amends with Leslie…and took steps to help her fulfill her own personal mission. He had a new medical clinic built, dedicated to his late father, and appointed Leslie as the clinic’s director. He called it, “…A place for you to do your work, while I’m out doing mine.” She thanked him with a kiss on the cheek.
“Bruce/Batman gave Leslie the clinic as he saw it fulfilling an important need in the community. He also saw it as a possible source of crime-fighting leads,” explains Barr.
With the clinic in place under Leslie’s management, the groundwork was laid for the character’s future importance in the Batman’s world…but Barr wasn’t done with her past just yet. He was still burning to tell one more story of the circumstances that had shaped her relationship with Bruce/Batman as portrayed in “Year Two.”
Specifically, he wanted to reveal how she had learned Batman’s most closely guarded secret—that it had been Bruce, her foster son, under the mask all along.
MAKE WAY FOR THE BAT-MEN
In the three-part story “Faith” in Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #21-23 (Sept. 1991), a violent street gang nearly took out Batman permanently…a gang inspired by the Dark Knight himself.
Sometime before the events of “Year Two,” this particular gang set out to follow Batman’s example and battle crime on the streets of Gotham City. The misguided “Bat-Men” got carried away with meting out their own brand of justice, and Batman had to intervene to try to stop them. He ended up gunned down by Ackers, the Bat-Men’s leader, while trying to question one of their victims in a Gotham hospital.
Fortunately, Leslie was the attending physician and rushed to help Batman, in the process getting a peek beneath his cowl…and a revelation she’d never expected. “You’ve been hiding this all these years, haven’t you?” she told him. “Whenever we talked about the Batman, and how I hated him, you knew—”
“If you’re not with me, you’re against me,” replied Bruce. “Help me or get out of my way…”
As shocked and conflicted as she felt, Leslie let nothing get in the way of saving Bruce’s life, enabling him to get back on the street and stop the Bat-Men before they could do even worse in his name.
In the end, Bruce and Leslie came to an understanding. She apologized for not raising him properly, and he assured her she bore none of the blame for him becoming the Batman. “What I am, I am of my own choice,” he told her. “I don’t know if I’m happy…but I’m content.”
They would still clash in years to come, as shown in “Year Two” and Detective Comics #574, but their bond would survive those struggles.
At least until Leslie turned killer.
LESLIE THOMPKINS: MURDERER?
Can you imagine Batman hunting down Leslie for the murder of one of his fellow crime fighters? It hardly seems possible…and yet, that unbelievable manhunt did indeed take place.
And he caught her.
But first, the two of them lived through the nightmare scenario of Gotham City being cut off from civilization by earthquake damage in the “No Man’s Land” saga. For multiple issues across the Batman line of comics (1999-2000), Gotham became a hellish disaster zone in which villains ran rampant and chaos reigned. As Batman battled to keep everything from completely falling apart, Leslie served anyone in need of medical attention at her clinic, regardless of affiliation. In spite of all the lawlessness in Gotham at the time, she even managed to keep the clinic violence-free, earning the respect and cooperation of even the most ruthless hardcase criminals.
If Leslie’s performance in “No Man’s Land” was her shining hour, her darkest moments came years later, when she confessed to a terrible crime. It started during the “War Games” storyline, when Batman’s ally, Stephanie Brown—aka Spoiler—was horribly injured by the villainous Black Mask. She was taken to Leslie’s clinic, only to die from her injuries.
Only later, in the “War Crimes” saga, did Batman discover the truth behind Stephanie’s death. In “Judgment at Gotham” in Batman #644 (Oct. 2005), he learned that Leslie had let Stephanie die to teach him a lesson about endangering young sidekicks on the field of battle.
Bruce/Batman tracked Leslie down at a refugee camp in the heart of Africa, and she confessed to the murder. “Truth is I wanted to end it all— all the secret warriors in hoods and capes. The endless violence. I could no longer be a party to such madness. Best to sacrifice one to caution others from putting on those stupid masks.”
Bruce argued that Leslie had been wrong to end Stephanie’s life, but Leslie disagreed. “A life of continuing to be the creature you and your kind turned her into,” she said. “I know what you are and what I’ve become. We’re both monsters now. I watched you spend a lifetime making yourself into one, but I guess I had to outdo you. I managed to do it in one horrible moment that erased everything I’ve ever stood for.”
In the end, Bruce condemned her as “…just another soulless killer—one more name to be added to my criminal database.” He didn’t take her in himself, though he did give the authorities all the evidence of her crime and assured her they’d be coming for her. He also told her never to contact him again, that she would have to work out her damnation on her own.
It was a tragic scene that destroyed the relationship between them and forever tarnished Leslie’s peace-loving, self-sacrificing character. The Mother Theresa of Crime Alley could never be redeemed.
At least until her supposed victim, Stephanie, turned up alive again in Gotham City.
NOT SO BAD AFTER ALL
Leslie Thompkins, a cold-blooded murderer? Not really, as it turned out.
Maybe Batman should have given his foster mother the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he should have known better than to accept her tearful confession.
Because lo and behold, supposedly dead Stephanie showed up in her guise as The Spoiler without missing a beat. In “The Three” in Robin #174 (July 2008), Stephanie returned to Gotham with a bang, blowing Robin’s mind…but barely getting a rise out of Batman. He claimed he’d suspected all along that she wasn’t dead, that Leslie had faked the murder (though he’d seemed pretty convinced when he’d read her the riot act back in Africa). According to Stephanie, Leslie had lied about her death to protect her by getting her away “from all of this.”
One hasty explanation later, and Leslie’s good name was cleared. She was free to return to her work at the clinic in Gotham, which she eventually did, resuming the role of the do-gooder bringing hope to Crime Alley and beyond.
Her world, which had been flipped upside-down during her time as a “murderer” on the run, was right side up again. She was back to being herself, the good-hearted character created by O’Neil and enhanced by Barr and others.
Though, really, she’d never stopped being that person. She was always, on some level, recognizable as the Angel of Crime Alley.
At least until she appeared as a very different character in a live-action TV series.
LESLIE THE SPACE ESCORT?
When Leslie became a regular character in season 2 of the Gotham prequel series on the Fox Network (after spending season 1 as a recurring character), she cut quite a different figure than the one for which she was known in comics. Not only was she often referred to as “Lee” (short for “Leslie”) and dramatically different in age and physical appearance, but the changes she went through on the show were what you might charitably call bonkers.
Physically, TV’s Leslie/Lee bore no resemblance to any of her comic incarnations. For one thing, she was much younger…which made sense, since Gotham was set long ago continuity- wise, years before Bruce became Batman. Casting Morena Baccarin as Leslie was a bit of a stretch, though; watching a hot Leslie played by the actress who played space “escort” Inara Serra in the sci-fi TV series Firefly took some getting used to.
Even with that physical reinvention as a baseline, the bonkers changes she endured were beyond anything the comic book Leslie ever experienced. For one thing, she became romantically involved with Detective James Gordon of the Gotham City Police Department, moved in with him, got pregnant by him…then instead married Mario Calvi, son of mob boss Carmine Falcone (after losing Gordon’s child). Next, she became the villainous “Queen of the Narrows” after injecting herself with Jervis Tetch’s “Alice” virus, with Edward “The Riddler” Nygma as her ally. Cured by Gordon, she opened a clinic in the Narrows to make up for her wicked deeds under the influence of the virus…only to get mixed up with a fight club owned by a promoter named Cherry. After Cherry was gunned down, Leslie got revenge by shooting her killer in the head (not exactly a typical Leslie move). Eventually, she went on to marry Gordon and give birth to baby Batgirl, Barbara Gordon.
Let’s face it, that was a lot for anyone to go through, especially someone supposedly modeled after the comics’ Leslie Thompkins. Ultimately, she didn’t have much in common at all with the original character or any of her reinventions.
At least she talked a good game about helping victims, avoiding violence, and bringing hope to the hopeless of Gotham. And she kept the name alive (more or less, given the widespread use of her “Lee” nickname) and made the character interesting for a new generation of fans. Even warped nearly beyond recognition by the needs of episodic television, she kept the core idea of peace-loving Leslie going and perhaps made viewers seek out the source material in the comics or at least consider that there might be a better way of helping the world than beating the crap out of bad guys.
Barr thinks this is a tribute to the strength of the character’s portrayal by him and artist Alan Davis in their work in the Batman line of comics. “I believe that TV shows like Gotham demonstrated that the Barr/Davis version of Leslie Thompkins is the character that people remembered and identified with.”
LESLIE’S LEGACY
Since her first appearance decades ago, Leslie has shown true staying power as a character, returning again and again to the adventures of Batman and his allies. Something about the idea of a nonviolent influence to balance the brutality of Bruce/ Batman adds dramatic heft to stories of his never-ending war on crime. The notion of an angelic figure bringing hope to the twisted chaos of Gotham City appeals to readers, perhaps by suggesting there is hope in their own troubled world as well.
Barr, who did so much to make Leslie the person she became, agrees wholeheartedly. “I am proud of the character,” he says. “I think there’s still a place for characters like her in the Batman stories. In storytelling, there is always a need to contrast negative characters with positive ones.”
Given the opportunity, he would gladly work with Leslie again. There are always more stories that could be told with her character, he says.
Much like the child she comforted on that long-ago night and the darkest of knights he became.

A rare cover appearance by Leslie Thompkins. Detective Comics #791 cover art by Tim Sale.
TM & © DC Comics.

Leslie Thompkins debuts in Detective Comics #457. Those thugs picked the wrong person the rob. Art by Dick Giordano.
TM & © DC Comics.

Batman and Leslie Thompkins discuss their mutual past. Art by Alan Davis and Paul Neary. Original art scan courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com).
TM & © DC Comics.

(left) Leslie wields a mean bat in Detective Comics #574. Art by Alan Davis and Paul Neary. (right)
Leslie Thompkins meets The Wrath in Batman Special #1. Art by Michael Golden and Dan DeCarlo.
TM & © DC Comics.

mike w. barr

(top) Leslie Thompkins confronts Bruce Wayne in Detective Comics #576. Art by Todd McFarlane and Alfredo Alcala. Original art scan courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). (bottom) Bruce surprises Leslie with a place to do her work in Detective Comics #578. Art by Todd McFarlane.
TM & © DC Comics.

(top) Bruce and Leslie meet in a more relaxed atmosphere in Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #21. (middle) Leslie’s views on Batman are firm, to say the least. (bottom) Leslie Thompkins learns a horrible truth. B:LDK #22 art by Bart Sears and Randy Elliott.
TM & © DC Comics.

(left) Leslie Thompkins, murderer? Batman #644 art by Giuseppe Camuncoli and Sandra Hope. (right) Leslie’s name is cleared in Robin #174. Art by Chris Batista, Cam Smith, and Rick Ketcham.
TM & © DC Comics.

(top) Morena Baccarin as Leslie Thompkins in Gotham. (bottom) Batman visits Leslie Thompkins in Batman: The Animated Series. Original art scan courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com).
Leslie Thompkins TM & © DC Comics.

ROBERT JESCHONEK is a USA Today-bestselling author based in Steve Ditko’s hometown of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. He has scripted comics for DC and AHOY and edits the Legends of Indie Comics: Words Only series of prose fiction anthologies featuring classic indie comics characters (including Concrete, Nexus, Cerebus, Grimjack, and Flaming Carrot) as written by their creators. He has also written official Star Trek and Doctor Who fiction. Visit him online at www.bobscribe.com.

There’s an old saying in comics: A hero is only as good as his or her villains. The biggest of the biggies— Batman or Spider-Man, for example—have foes so memorable, like Venom or The Joker, they can support their own comics and even movies.
So where does that leave a relatively ordinary hero like, say, Howard the Duck? For the first 14 issues of his classic 1970s series, Howard battled one-off villains like the Space Turnip, Le Beaver, and Winky Man, scourge of the downtown New York art scene. One might even say that Howard’s real nemeses in these issues were the kind we learned about in high school English class, because the conflicts in those tales and beyond stemmed as much from society and himself as from the lightweight costumed heavies he encountered.
That all changed with Howard the Duck #15 and the introduction of Dr. Bong, Howard’s greatest, and most persistent, foe.
As writer Steve Gerber, Howard’s co-creator, told The Comics Journal in 1978, Dr. Bong was the result of “an attempt to create a villain for Howard of the stature of Dr. Doom or the Red Skull, someone we could bring back periodically.”
Klaus Janson, who joined the creative team on Howard the Duck with issue #15 as inker, said, “I thought Dr. Bong was just crazy! Steve would often write things that would poke fun at Marvel, and Dr. Bong was part of that, I think. Steve was cut from the same cloth as Bill Mantlo or Keith Giffen. He had the ability to look at a subject from outside and understand it and satirize it.”
Dr. Bong was a blend of absurd elements from comics and elsewhere. As Gerber explained in that same 1978 interview, the name came from a fan letter sent to Kiss frontman Gene Simmons, which invited the demonic bass player to “come over to the house. We’ll have some good music, some good wine and some bonging.” Gerber, who had just written Kiss into Howard the Duck #12–13 (in which the band materialized from the mind of a possessed Winda Wester), happened to see that letter at Simmons’ apartment, where they had been planning the upcoming Marvel Super Special #1 (Sept. 1977), in which Kiss would face off against Dr. Doom.
Gerber and Simmons undoubtedly had a pretty good idea what “bonging” might mean—this was the 1970s, after all—and the word stuck in Gerber’s mind. Meanwhile, in July 1977, a new movie adaptation of the H.G. Wells science fiction novel The Island of Dr. Moreau starring Burt Lancaster and Michael York hit theaters, with Marvel publishing an official comics adaptation by writer Doug Moench and artists Larry Hama and Jess Jodloman. Seeing that comic in progress in the Marvel offices might have reminded Gerber of Marvel’s own answer to Dr. Moreau: the High Evolutionary, who first appeared in The Mighty Thor #133 (Nov. 1966). Gerber took this idea-in-progress to Marvel staff artist Marie Severin, who sketched out a villain with a bell-shaped helmet, a clapper for a hand, buccaneer boots, and a flowing cape.
Dr. Bong made his debut in Howard the Duck #15 (Aug. 1977) in a story that directly spins out of Howard the Duck Annual #1 (Jun. 1977), in which Howard, his companion Beverly Switzler, and their friends Winda Wester and Paul Same embarked on a cruise home from the Middle Eastern nation of Bagmom on the S.S. Damned. After several strange onboard events, Howard and Beverly were whisked away by a concrete swan, only to be deposited on the shores of a mysterious island where they were greeted by the equally mysterious Dr. Bong.
Sharp-eyed readers might have noticed that something was up with this so-called Dr. Bong. On the final page of HTD #15 he greets Beverly by name, hinting at a prior acquaintance with her.
After the unexpected interlude of Howard the Duck #16 (Sept. 1977)—the infamous “all essay” issue, still arguably the strangest comic ever published by Marvel—the tale of Dr. Bong continued in issue #17, as Howard refused to engage with this new foe. This gave Dr. Bong the opportunity to demonstrate his power: By ringing his own helmet he froze Howard in his tracks. With Howard knocked unconscious, Dr. Bong gave Beverly a tour of his castle, with the clear intent of impressing her.
As Dr. Bong explained, he was born Lester Verde, physically inept and bullied by others— until he discovered that his skill as a writer could help him wreak vengeance on those who wronged him. A college journalism class taught him that innuendo was more powerful than facts; a life-drawing class where Beverly was the model resulted in her rejecting his clumsy advances and souring him on women and his peer group. Not long after that, Lester lost his left hand in an on-stage accident during a rock concert that included a working guillotine, which seemingly started his transformation to outright villainy. (His origin story abruptly ended there, never to be revisited.)
Gerber drew on another source as the inspiration for Dr. Bong’s condescending personality. As he told The Comics Journal in 1978, a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times had written “an incredibly vitriolic article about our Kiss book—prior to its publication, with no solid, factual basis for the criticism except his own negative attitude toward the group.” Gerber decided that Dr. Bong would ratchet up that know-it-all attitude. Simply put, Dr. Bong considered himself superior to everyone.
Dr. Bong was more than an ordinary villain in Howard the Duck—he was also a plot device serving the greater good of story- telling, as well as relieving some legal pressures. The price the not-so-good doctor demanded of Howard in return for his freedom was to transform our feathered hero into a human being… disheveled and disoriented, but human, nonetheless. This new Howard escaped the island of Dr. Bong with the help of Fifi, one of Bong’s semi-human assistants. After an issue titled “Howard the Human” (#19, Dec. 1977), the effects of Dr. Bong’s treatments wore off, and Howard reverted to duckdom. One big difference between the old and the new Howard? His blue eyes were now brown, a change necessitated by a request from the Walt Disney Company, which had noted Howard’s resemblance to Donald Duck. Howard also took to wearing pants around that time, at least occasionally.
At the same time, with Beverly now betrothed to Dr. Bong and still a virtual prisoner in that remote castle, the duo of Howard and Beverly lost touch with each other. This separation would allow Howard to meet some new cast members, including Winda Wester’s uncle Lee, a short-order cook, as well as reuniting (not so happily) with Dakimh the Sorcerer, the Man-Thing, Korrek the Barbarian, and Jennifer Kale, last seen in the duck’s company in Man-Thing #1 in 1974.
Meanwhile, after a failed attempt to recapture Howard in issue #20 (Jan. 1978), Dr. Bong disappeared for a bit, only to resurface in Howard the Duck #27 (Sept. 1978), the last issue of the original series written by Steve Gerber. As we returned to the castle, we learn—shock!—that Beverly and Dr. Bong seemed to be happily married, at least until he revealed to her that he still intended to kill Howard and conquer the world. Unfortunately, that storyline was cut off by Gerber’s departure from the series and from Marvel, making it another unfinished Gerber storyline, joining the likes of the elf with a gun in The Defenders and, well, everything in Omega the Unknown. Dr. Bong returned just a few months later in Howard the Duck #30-31 (Mar.-May 1979), written by Bill Mantlo with artwork by Gene Colan and Al Milgrom.
With the arrival of a new writer came a change in the tone of the series, with more structured plots and more jokes. Dr. Bong arrived out of nowhere (apparently, ringing his helmet allowed him to teleport wherever he wanted to go) to challenge Howard to battle for the affection of Beverly, because he blamed Howard for her inability to devote all her attention to him. Howard’s reaction was uncharacteristically lacking in cynicism, as he was primarily relieved to learn that Beverly did indeed care about him. Howard soon geared up for battle, donning a red-and-gold armored suit made for him by one Claude Starkowski (he preferred just Stark), who claimed to have designed Iron Man’s own armor. Issue #31, the finale of the original HTD series, was a straight-up battle royal between Howard and Dr. Bong in the villain’s castle—but with Howard all but defeated, Beverly stepped in and threatened to reveal some of her husband’s unsavory habits to the world unless he let her and Howard go. Dr. Bong agreed, leaving him with an armful of cloned baby Bongs to raise. The two-part epic felt like an effort to rein in and wrap up Gerber’s meandering plotline, but it did not fill in the missing pieces of Dr. Bong’s origin.
Ten years passed before Dr. Bong’s return, when he would at last meet a non-feathered foe in Sensational She-Hulk #5 (Sept. 1989), written and penciled by John Byrne with inks by Bob Wiacek. In this story, She-Hulk found herself drawn into a variety of Saturday morning cartoons after using her TV’s remote and hearing a strange “bong” sound. Halfway through the story, She-Hulk encountered Dr. Bong, who called himself “the genius who invented Bongvision,” which turned out to be his attempt to improve television for his tube-addicted baby Bongs. (Those baby Bongs were never to be seen again after this.)
Another ten years went by before Dr. Bong popped up again, this time in Deadpool #27 (April 1999), written by Joe Kelly with art by Scott McDaniel and Whitney McFarland. Surprisingly, the doctor was neither a biochemist nor a television programmer this time. Instead, he served as therapist to Deadpool, helping him analyze his weird dreams of bunnies and scantily clad women. The doctor proclaimed that to solve his problems, “a hero must die!” This led to an all-out battle of healing factors as Deadpool met Wolverine, with Dr. Bong on the sidelines providing color commentary. Dr. Bong would continue as Deadpool’s therapist in a handful of stories beyond this one.
In 2002, the unexpected occurred when Steve Gerber returned to Marvel for a new Howard the Duck miniseries, illustrated by artist Phil Winslade (issues #1-2 and #4-5) and Glenn Fabry (filling in on issue #3) as part of Marvel’s Max Comics line for mature readers. The series found Beverly and Howard living together in a rundown shack, with Beverly about to start a new job at an institute for genetic research run by—gasp!—Dr. Bong. He, of course, wanted to reunite with his estranged wife and eliminate Howard, but his own efforts and those of an army of killers failed, leaving him to contemplate how to go on living without the revenge he plotted for so long.
This miniseries is mostly remembered as the one in which Howard appears as a mouse. As editor Stuart Moore remembered, “The team was restricted in how they could portray Howard visually, and we were trying to find a way around it. Bill Jemas, who was president of Marvel, came up with the idea of Howard on the cover as a mouse with the caption, ‘Don’t ask.’ The idea was that Howard’s gone through this transformation courtesy of Dr. Bong, who always did that kind of thing in the original series, with his creatures and his bio- experimentation.” Recasting the duck as a mouse may even have been a dig at Disney on Marvel’s part.
Dr. Bong turned up again in Daughters of the Dragon #3 (May 2006), a miniseries written by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti with art by Khari Evans. It’s barely more than a cameo appearance as Misty Knight and Colleen Wing whup Dr. Bong’s butt to get some information out of him. As Palmiotti explained, “Marvel offered Justin and me Daughters of the Dragon, and we said, ‘Can we use this villain?,’ and they said no. ‘Can we use that villain?’ No. So Justin said we’ve got to dig deep, and I remembered that Howard the Duck had some great villains. We gave Marvel a new list of villains, including Dr. Bong, and they said, ‘Who?’ Nobody knew anything about him, so we could do what we wanted.” Other questionable villains who appeared in this miniseries included the Rhino, Razorfist, Orka, Whirlwind, Trapster, and Eight-Ball.
Jimmy had been a fan of Howard from the beginning, starting with his appearance in Man-Thing #1. “Those Howard the Duck books by Steve Gerber were brilliant. He created his own micro- universe of characters. They all had fleshed-out stories. Steve knew everything about the background of the characters.”
One odd thing about that Daughters of the Dragon appearance: Readers got a glimpse of Dr. Bong’s face under the mask, and it was horribly scarred. As Jimmy recalled, “That was something we just stuck in there. We figured, if that bell was hitting his head all the time, his face would be messed up. Nobody knew who he was, but his face rings a bell!”
This would be the first of several quickie appearances for Dr. B., including: asking a question in a single panel in Amazing Spider-Man #552 (Apr. 2008), trying to tie his shoes in X-Men: To Protect and Serve #4 (Apr. 2011), and attending a meeting of Super Villains Anonymous in The Superior Foes of Spider-Man #11 (May 2011). In the eight-page story “The Quiet Room,” from Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1 (2014), Dr. Bong led a team of villains (all previously written by Steve Gerber, including Daredevil antagonist Angar the Screamer and Defenders’ foes the Headmen) on a mission to break into the Beyond Corporation. Their goal was to help Dr. Bong steal the technology that would allow him to ascend to godhood, although even Bong’s high-powered henchmen weren’t sure that was such a good idea.
These stories all pointed out the same thing: In a world of goofy villains, Dr. Bong was one of the goofiest, especially when he was so far removed from the context of the 1970s drug jokes and satire of Howard the Duck.
The insanity was back with Dr. Bong’s next appearance, in Deadpool the Duck #5 (May 2017), written by Stuart Moore with art by Jacopo Camagni. Through some craziness involving Rocket Raccoon and a mysterious disease known as “space rabies,” Deadpool merged with Howard the Duck—and if there was any villain interested in gene splicing and DNA manipulation, it had to be Dr. Bong. The lovelorn doctor, who long ago moved on from his infatuation with Beverly Switzler, sprung not one but two out-of-the-blue marriage proposals on unexpecting women in this issue, only to be shot down both times. (The fact that they were mother and daughter didn’t help.) His quest to capture Deadpool the Duck didn’t turn out so well, either.
“We needed a mastermind, someone behind the big plot, and the biochemical nature of the whole thing suggested Dr. Bong,” said Moore. “One of the things I love about Dr. Bong is his origin. He’s the kid who’s bullied at school and goes crying home to his mother, and his mother says, ‘You’re so creative—express yourself.’ So, he turns to this creativity as a solace but he winds up using it in the most vile way possible. He becomes a muckraker who deliberately destroys people’s lives to sell a story. You can tell in the original comics that Steve Gerber is thinking about things from his own life and asking himself, ‘How strong is that urge for revenge?’.”
For Dr. Bong, revenge truly is the great motivator, whether it’s against the peers who ignored him or the world that never recognized his genius. If only he had adopted a more impressive evil-doer identity, we might be tuning in to watch his schemes in a new streaming series or watching him battle heroes in the latest Marvel movie. Until then, let’s remember: Ask not for whom the bell tolls…It tolls for Dr. Bong.

by Adam Philips

steve gerber

John Tighe.

Howard battles Dr. Bong in the final issue of his first series. Cover by Gene Colan and Al Milgrom.
TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

(top left) Dr. Bong’s first appearance echoes a possible inspiration. Art by Gene Colan and Tom Palmer. (top right) Could Dr. Moreau have inspired Dr. Bong? Art by Gil Kane. (bottom) An interior page from Howard the Duck #15 introducing the resounding Dr. Bong.
TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. The Island of Dr. Moreau
© American International Pictures, Inc. All rights reserved.

gene colan

(left) Howard becomes a human at the hands of Dr. Bong. Art by Gene Colan, Tom Palmer, and Joe Rubinstein. (right) Lester loses a hand and is on his way to becoming Dr. Bong. Howard the Duck #17 art by Gene Colan and Klaus Janson.
TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

klaus janson

Howard and Beverly commission by Gene Colan and Klaus Janson. Courtesy of Jimmy Palmiotti.
TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

(left) Dr. Bong by John Byrne and Bob Wiacek from Sensational She-Hulk #5. (right) Dr. Bong, therapist. Deadpool #27 art by Walter McDaniel and Whitney McFarland.
TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Steve Gerber returns to Dr. Bong in 2002’s Howard the Duck #1. Art by Phil Winslade.
TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

stuart moore

jimmy palmiotti

Courtesy Jimmy Palmiotti.

Adam Philips is a long-time comics marketing professional who worked for decades at DC Comics. He also has worked for Marvel Comics, Dynamite Entertainment, the Baltimore Comic-Con, and AWA Studios, among others, and has written for Marvel Comics, Archie Comics, Topps, and Entertainment Weekly. He currently provides marketing consultation to several publishers. He still regrets not buying Howard the Duck #1 when he saw it on the newsstand in 1976.

Smashing himself in the head for years hasn’t done a thing for Dr. Bong’s looks. Daughters of the Dragon #3 art by Khari Evans and Jimmy Palmiotti.
TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

IN MEMORIAM
Gerry Conway
(1952–2026)

by Doug Zawisza

Gerard Francis—Gerry—Conway started working on comics when he was 16 years old, and, like the legendary comic book creators who inspired him, his influence will never stop.
“I like creating characters. Let’s put that out there,” Conway shared during what would be his last interview with BACK ISSUE in March 2026. His interviews and quotes throughout the span of BI’s publishing history might rival his prolific contributions to comics at large.
Most prominently known among comic book fans for co-creating the Punisher and writing the death of Gwen Stacy in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man during his legendary run as that title’s writer, Conway added more heroes, villains, and in-betweens to the pantheons of characters at both DC Comics and Marvel in his decades of comic book creation.
Like Conway himself, many of the characters he had a hand in creating have sprung from printed page to silver screen, including the Weasel and Count Vertigo who starred in The Suicide Squad (2021) movie (and even Killer Croc who was featured in the first Suicide Squad film) to Tarantula and Tombstone featured in Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026). Others, like Killer Frost and Hammerhead, have yet to make it to a feature film but have gained popularity in adventures on television. Conway had success in all of those realms—film, television, and, of course, comics.
In addition to his time on Amazing Spider-Man, one of Conway’s more prolific writing stints was on Justice League of America for eight years. That run included a swelling of the roster, an invasion from Mars, and the destruction of the satellite from geosynchronous orbit, and the formation of the Detroit-based Justice League,  which included members Vixen, Vibe, Steel, and Gypsy – all of whom Conway co-created.
In an editorial capacity, Conway guided the return of the Justice Society of America – and the introduction of Power Girl – as well logging time as Marvel’s Editor-in-Chief between Marv Wolfman and Archie Goodwin.
As evidenced throughout his work with Spider-Man, Gerry Conway filled characters with humanity. His characters lived in universes filled with action and also found time to have conversations and concerns, to grieve, to celebrate, to truly live as characters. Conway didn’t reserve that approach for Spider-Man only, bringing humanity to every character he wrote. Undoubtedly, this is what makes Gerry Conway a fan-favorite creator, with every comic book reader to this day somehow enjoying the impact of Conway’s creativity.
Conway’s comic creator legacy is evident both off the page and within the pages. Conway introduced Carol Danvers (co-created by Roy Thomas and Gene Colan) as the eponymous character in Ms. Marvel #1 (Jan. 1977). Danvers would eventually assume the mantle, fame, and recognition of Captain Marvel while also spinning off a legacy of the Ms. Marvel name for other characters to make their own, including Sharon Ventura and Kamala Khan.
Over at DC, Conway co-created Firestorm in Firestorm #1 (March 1978). An amalgamation of physicist Professor Martin Stein and high school student Ronnie Raymond, the flame-tressed Nuclear Man has spun a legacy of his own over his time, from becoming the at-the-time youngest member of the Justice League of America (written by Conway) to becoming an elemental matrix that absorbed more characters as its fundamental building blocks.
Gerry Conway also penned the first official crossover between Marvel and DC in the treasury edition Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man in 1979. Nominated for the gig by fellow creators, he was joined by artist Ross Andru on that historic comic. The success of that book led to many other crossovers that Conway did not directly write but undeniably influenced. Also, spinning out of that was more treasury- sized work for Conway, including All-New Collector’s Edition Superman vs. Wonder Woman (Jan. 1978) and Superman vs. Shazam (May 1978).
It is certainly fitting, albeit coincidental like a comic book plotline, that as Conway passed from this world to what waits beyond, Marvel and DC recently once more celebrated the expanded story potential of teaming up characters from both companies, including two crossovers featuring Spider-Man and Superman.
Writer, editor, inspiration, and legend. Gerry Conway added light, hope, and humanity to comics and, indeed, to the world. The joy from Conway’s legacy is to be celebrated, as it surely will be, for generations to come.

Punisher and Spider-Man TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Firestorm TM & © DC Comics.

WILL COMICS EVER LEARN?
Nice Byrne/Austin cover!
What I most appreciated about your “Partner-Up” issue (#166) was the variety. A partner could be romantic (Lois), a vital assistant (Alfred), or both (Mockingbird). Plus, you covered two series I’d heard of (Love and Rockets and Brat Pack) but never explored.
In eighty-eight years, obviously, things can and do change. In the case of Superman and Lois, that’s a good thing. I thought, initially, as introduced, Lois, a potential love interest, came across as decidedly self-important and hostile. That’s fine, dramatically, as a starting point. But not as a way of life. No one, much less our lead character, needs to pine for someone outright derisive or dismissive. If she’s doing Clark a big favor simply being with him, he should look elsewhere or reconsider the advantages of being alone. No one, super or not, needs affirmation, much less grudging dates, with someone hypercritical who only brings him down.
Wasn’t wild, either, about the wilier Lois, looking to discover Superman’s secrets, by any means, and marry him.
The article hit on the big problem with the relationship through the ‘60s: it was more a sitcom. Either the story was imaginary or it didn’t move things forward.
A nicer Lois Lane, as in the revamped Superman titles of the ‘80s and ‘90s, finally made more sense.
Part of the problem is that few knew it would last so long or, when it hit big, wanted to tinker with what seemed a winning formula.
When characters are regularly published for close to a century, by dozens of talents, it’s hard to keep it sensible and improving. The goal might be to shake things up or do something shocking, which leads to gimmicks and radical character inconsistency, all in the name of continued interest.
It was also revealing that, even back in the ‘90s, the comics had to be aware and work around other media adaptations, such as the TV wedding. Now, the comics clearly follow the lead of the movies and trail along in their wake.
The Alfred article was interesting and amusing. Laughed aloud that his father was named Jarvis. By chance, did he work for Tony Stark, too?
Yes, Batman is seen as a resourceful individual. Yet is he? Along with Robin, he has Alfred, Commissioner Gordon, and Superman, plus the JLA, Outsiders, and team-up partners from The Brave and the Bold. Some moody loner.
Alfred at least makes sense. He’s an advisor, confident, and must do virtually all the behind-the-scenes work that Batman doesn’t have time for.
He also demonstrated the lack of sense in killing a long-time supporting player. They had to bring him back later in a highly implausible manner. Yet, the practice hasn’t ceased. Comics are infamous for making the same glaring error innumerable times. Better just to write someone out, send them elsewhere, or have them missing. Then no convoluted explanations are required, such as him being the villainous Outsider.
Also, Robin proved himself smarter than Batman in wondering if a butler, at Wayne Manor, would imperil their identities. Of course it would. That Alfred was sympathetic and could keep a secret was the unexpected part.
Amusingly, the one thing I wondered about here wasn’t clearly spelled out. With Alfred back, when did Bruce and Dick get to jettison Aunt Harriet?
In the Brat Pack coverage, I was taken with the philosophy behind it. It’s that comics should, ideally, be a reading experience rather than simply being viewed as a collectible. In an era of reduced circulation figures and variant covers, it’s a message worth repeating.
As a kid, it was the riveting nature of the then-current issues that pre-sold the next ones to me, not some come-on or gimmick.
–Joe Frank
I’m glad you enjoyed the variety, Joe! This was definitely a fun issue to put together and the variety of stories was a large part of the reason.
Next issue: Celebrate Jim Shooter’s years at Marvel with a look at “The Shooter Era”! We examine Shooter as writer on such titles as Secret Wars, Avengers, and Star Brand. We also look at comics that were created during his time as Marvel’s editor in chief, such as Moonshadow, the death of Phoenix, and Roger Stern’s run on Spider-Man. Featuring the work of JIM SHOOTER, MIKE ZECK, JOHN BEATTY, J.M. DEMATTEIS, JON J. MUTH, CHRIS CLAREMONT, JOHN BYRNE, JOHN ROMITA JR., and others. With a Secret Wars cover by ZECK and BEATTY.
Don’t ask, just BI it! See you next time!

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TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. BACK ISSUE TM & © TwoMorrows.

We gave some serious consideration to writing an Aunt Harriet article for Back Issue #166. Nope, that is a bald-faced lie. Sorry.
TM & © DC Comics.