In his 1977 essay It’s Magic, Dick O’Donnell noted that, like the Spectre, “Dr. Fate also appeared in More Fun Comics (No. 55 through No. 98, May 1940 through January 1944).
“For the first dozen issues, he had no secret identity, and his origin was unknown. This was most effective. Doctor Fate was always in costume and dwelled in a doorless and windowless tower in ‘witch-haunted Salem,’ surrounded by musty tomes, weapons,s and devices both of advanced science and advanced necromancy. He exited his tower by walking through the walls or by using some arcane machine. He was a wizard of incredibly ancient origin and virtually unlimited powers…”
The Gardner Fox scripts suggested that he was familiar with the ominous cosmic mythology of H.P. Lovecraft.
Dr. Fate became less mysterious in More Fun 67 (May 1941), when he was retconned. Now he was Kent Nelson, a boy who’d been exploring Egypt with his archeologist father in 1920, and who became the protégé of a half-million-year-old being from the planet Cilia who called himself Nabu the Wise.
“Dr. Fate had achieved complete control of energy, and blows or bullets directed at him were turned into power for him,” O’Donnell noted. “He could emit rays of energy which were capable of knocking over buildings or thoroughly disposing of unsavory characters. He had a crystal ball and spells for all occasions at his command. He could fly, too.”
And that was too much, somebody decided.
In More Fun 72 (Oct. 1941), Dr. Fate’s beautiful gold full-face mask was reduced to a half-mask, and his powers were similarly halved to more standard superhero stuff. He took to slugging it out with thugs. Yawn.
When I met him crossing from a parallel world in Justice League of America 21 and 22 (1963), his vast original powers had been restored. Then he teamed up with his Justice Society comrade Hourman in Showcase 55 and 56 (1965). The beautiful blue and yellow costume, that mysterious helmet masking his features, those vast magical powers — evocative stuff that dreams are made of.
But that last point suggests a problem that Dr. Fate shares with Dr. Strange and other superhero magicians going back at least to Chandu on radio in 1931. Ill-defined powers can seem to be unlimited, and your story has no suspense if the hero can always pull some deus ex machina spell out of his ass to save the day.
Lee Falk’s superhero magician Mandrake had that problem when the newspaper comic strip began in 1934 — he could, with a gesture, teleport himself anywhere or halt a man plunging to his death.
But Falk spotted the problem and limited Mandrake’s powers to super-hypnotism. His gestures could now instantly control what people believed they saw, but not physical reality.
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