Though not armed to the teeth, the Human Tank prided himself on being as tough as teeth.
In Wonder Woman 63 (Jan. 1954), the Amazing Amazon found herself up against one of those reverse mirror image enemies — a male opponent as physically formidable as she was.
The super-villain’s chemically treated skin rendered him bulletproof, giving him the strength to tear through walls.
“Wonder Woman — beautiful as Aphrodite, wise as Athena, swifter than Mercury and stronger than Hercules — has battled against many strange villains in her adventure-studded career!” notes Robert Kanigher’s breathless copy. “From undersea men to walking brains of other planets — all have bowed before her indomitable courage in her battle for democracy and justice! But now, for the first time, she meets a master criminal against whom every weapon fails — the Human Tank!”
Despite all the build-up, the Human Tank didn’t give Wonder Woman much trouble.
“Apprehended by Wonder Woman as he flees the scene of a brazen jewel robbery, the Human Tank soon escapes from custody by smashing through a prison wall, but Wonder Woman eventually defeats the villain by blasting him with ‘constant jets of air pressure’ and thereby wearing away the layers of chemically treated skin that render him virtually invulnerable to capture and imprisonment,” noted comics historian Michael L. Fleisher.
“Owww!” cried the criminal. “The enamel compound formula I covered my skin with — to make it tough, the same kind of coating on the teeth — is wearing away!”
Kanigher had started writing Wonder Woman stories eight years earlier and was now the title’s editor. The tale was illustrated in the idiosyncratic storybook style of H. G. Peter, Wonder Woman’s co-creator, who was 73 years old when he drew The Human Tank.
Peter “…had a long career in newspapers and magazines, notably his editorial cartoons for Judge in the 1910s publicizing and supporting the suffragette movement,” noted Kurt F. Mitchell in American Comic Book Chronicles. “Much of the iconography of the (Wonder Woman) series derived from those cartoons of three decades past, which frequently depicted women bursting the chains of patriarchy. Peter’s art for Wonder Woman recalled the drawings on ancient Greek pottery, providing a conceptual unity of word and picture to a strip with one foot in classical mythology and the other in the headlines.”
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