Superhero concepts came along fast — and loose — in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
Take Hurricane, for example, a super-speedster who debuted in the top-selling Captain America Comics 1 (March 1941).
“He’s even more mythologically confused than Marvel Boy, because despite being ‘the last descendant of the Ancient Greek immortals,’ he’s also the son of Thor,” noted the Comics Archeology blog. “He’s on Earth looking for Pluto, because Mercury didn’t do enough of a good job dealing with him.”
An almost identical Jack Kirby character, then called Mercury, had appeared to battle the warmongering Pluto (disguised as “Rudolph Hendler, leader of Prussialand”) in the first and only issue of Red Raven Comics in May 1940. That was half a year after comics’ first speedster, the Flash, had debuted in November 1939.
“Mercury lasted only one issue and was the first character Jack Kirby drew for Marvel Comics,” noted comics historian Jeff Rovin. “Much of the character was recycled, however, as Hurricane.”
Variously posing as “Mike Cury,” “Michael Gray” or “Harry Kane,” Hurricane fought murderous gangsters, Brazilian head-shrinkers, subway and skyscraper saboteurs, 20th-century pirates, counterfeiters, a villain called the Menace, a protection racket, a carnival of crime and small-town racketeers.
Like his predecessor Mercury, Hurricane dressed simply, if not modestly, in a winged headband, swim trunks and winged boots. “Say! Dat guy must’ve lost his clothes,” exclaimed one thug. “An’ he’s peekin’ in da boss’ window!”
“Hurricane is not your regular speedster: he can also make cars go really, really fast! By detaching his wings and placing them on a taxi!!!” Comics Archaeology noted.
Hurricane could also project “powerful bolts of electrical force,” grow to “titanic proportions,” raise storms, enable others to fly by giving them magical wings, and “…whirl around so fast he almost becomes invisible.”
Hurricane’s final adventure appeared in Captain America Comics 11 (Feb. 1942).
During the 1960s, some short-lived 1940s concepts were revamped for Marvel’s western line. In Two-Gun Kid 70 (July 1964), outlaw Harry Kane imbibes a Native American shaman’s potion that had been charged by lightning, discovering that he is suddenly faster than a jackrabbit. Inspired by his nemesis Two-Gun Kid, he adopts the masked identity of Hurricane.
And, in Rawhide Kid 38 (Feb. 1964), bank robber “Red” Raven acquires a flying harness from his cellmate, a Navajo medicine man. His criminal career ends in an aerial showdown with the Rawhide Kid.
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