He might have been Marvel’s first wall-crawler.
The postwar Captain America, out of the Army and working secretly as a teacher at the Lee School, battled the mysterious Human Fly in Captain America Comics 60 (Jan. 1947).
But the “human fly” was already a long-familiar figure in American popular culture. The name had been used by many performers who would grab headlines by scaling the exteriors of tall buildings.
Real-life “human flies” who’d caught the public eye before the Marvel comic appeared included Harry Gardiner (active 1905–1929), “Steeplejack” Charles Miller (active 1900-1910), George Polley (active 1910–1920), and Henry Roland (active in the 1920s and 1930s).
Their avocation has been described as “buildering,” a word meant to combine “building” with the term “bouldering” to describe the act of climbing on the outside of artificial structures.
The most famous human fly operating at the time Captain America was published would have been Brooklyn bricklayer John Ciampa. As a boy, he’d been entrancedby the idea of emulating the gravity-defying acrobatics of Douglas Fairbanks and Elmo Lincoln, the first screen Tarzan.
Tarzan’s New York Adventure, released in 1942, featured Johnny Weissmuller bounding up skyscrapers and the Brooklyn Bridge. The film prompted the 20-year-old Ciampa, billed as the “Brooklyn Tarzan,” to perform his feats for a Paramount newsreel. In 1947, Ciampa was arrested for climbing the exterior of the 11-story Astor Hotel as a publicity stunt for a circus.
In Cap’s exploit, a Human Fly circus performer named Mike Galen loses his nerve following a fall. Later, when Cap and Bucky tangle with a criminal Human Fly who’s climbing a skyscraper, they suspect Galen. But after Galen tells them one of his gimmick costumes has been stolen, the pair track down and unmask the new Human Fly, who is Hy Heale, president of the Hi-Low Window Washing Co.
Cap and Bucky weren’t alone in being plagued by criminal human flies during the 1940s. The month after Cap’s adventure, Green Arrow solved The Human Fly Crimes! in World’s Finest Comics 26 (Jan.-Feb. 1947). Star Spangled Kid tangled with The Human Fly! in Star Spangled Comics 81 (June 1948). Hawkman battled The Human Fly Bandits! in Flash Comics 100 (Oct. 1948). Superman ran into yet another Human Fly in The Super-Sideshow! (Action Comics 122, July 1948).
Marvel Comics would add two more Human Flies to its roster decades later, including a Spider-Man villain who was markedly similar to the Archie Comics’ superhero, the Fly.
The other, odder character blended fact and fiction in the way “human flies” frequently have in America.
In 1977, Marvel began publishing a new title called The Human Fly, “The Wildest Superhero Ever — Because He’s Real!”
The 19-issue series was inspired by the masked and costumed Canadian stuntman Rick Rojatt, who’d performed a wing-walking stunt atop a DC-8 airline flying at 250 miles per hour over the Mojave Desert in 1976.
In 1977, while using a hydrogen peroxide rocket-powered motorcycle to jump 27 buses during a Gloria Gaynor concert at the Montreal Olympic Stadium, Rojatt crashed and survived, but was injured. He subsequently retired from public life. No one ever heard from him again.
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