Charlton Comics had their own shameless knockoff of Mighty Mouse (Atomic Mouse), their own Lone Ranger (the Masked Raider), their own Dennis the Menace (L’il Genius), and even their own Casper the Friendly Ghost (Timmy the Timid Ghost).
So why not their own knockoff of the Mighty Thor?
In Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds 46 (May 1965), almost two years after the debut of Marvel’s Thor, Charlton introduced Son of Vulcan, a disabled man empowered to become a flying champion. This time, the Greek gods did the trick, instead of the Norse ones.
“The hero started out as Johnny Mann, a reporter for the Worldwide News Syndicate,” noted comics historian Don Markstein. “He got involved with Olympian gods while covering a civil war in Cyprete, an island in the Aegean or eastern Mediterranean that doesn’t seem to appear on real-world maps. He incurred the particular wrath of Mars because he disliked that deity’s work, war. (He had a wooden leg from his own earlier participation in it — and by an odd coincidence, Thor’s human aspect was also lame.)”
Clad in indestructible Roman armor, the Son of Vulcan could summon fire and magical weapons from his foster father’s forge. Granted superhuman strength by Venus, he could also fly. But Jupiter had decreed that Mann’s powers could be cancelled any time the gods deemed him unworthy of them, so Mars frequently plotted to make him look bad and thereby render him helpless.
“I like the basic look and concept of Son of Vulcan, but the execution leaves a bit to be desired,” wrote Edward Lee Love. “I am a bit surprised that DC has not seriously tried to do something with the character.”
“He cavorted a little while through a superhero landscape that also included the Blue Beetle and reprints of Captain Atom, then went away,” Markstein noted. “After three issues with him as the biggest thing in it, the title Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds was changed to Son of Vulcan. But two issues after that, it was changed again, taken over by a new superhero, Thunderbolt, and Son of Vulcan was gone.”
“One very big reason for the failure of the strip: Tony Tallarico’s art,” Ed Erkes said.
The character’s footnote in comics history came in his last issue, Son of Vulcan 50 (Jan. 1966), which marked the first professional sale of famed comics writer/editor Roy Thomas.
Another ancient-themed superhero with magical armor and weaponry, the Glowing Gladiator, made two appearances around the same time in Harvey Comics’ short-lived Double-Dare Adventures. This one was empowered not by Vulcan, but by the ghost of Hannibal.
“Way back in 1949, British comics publisher AP launched their own superhero Thunderbolt Jaxon, who gained his powers from discovering the belt of Thor,” recalled Philip Rushton. “He originally appeared in a comic book prepared for Australia but was subsequently spun off into various UK titles.”
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