The Green Hornet was clearly popular in 1938 — so much so that DC Comics offered two comic book pastiches of the radio superhero.
An urbanized, updated version of the Lone Ranger, the Green Hornet had debuted on WXYZ radio in Detroit in 1936. By the spring of 1938, the show was being heard nationally on the Mutual network.
And in Detective Comics 20 (Oct. 1938), the Crimson Avenger took a bow.
“The Crimson — as he was originally known… — was one of the earliest batch of costumed heroes to appear in comic books in the late ’30s, debuting in Detective Comics several issues before that guy in the bat suit,” noted comics historian Todd VerBeek.
“Whereas in reality the Hornet was Britt Reid, daring young publisher of the Daily Sentinel, the Crimson Avenger was Lee Travis, daring young publisher of the Globe Leader,” noted comics historian Ron Goulart. “The only person who knew the Hornet’s true identity was his faithful valet, Kato, and the Crimson Avenger’s secret was shared only by his Chinese servant, Wing.”
The Crimson started out wielding a pair of .45s, like the Shadow, but switched to less lethal armament. “Like the Green Hornet, the Crimson Avenger … preferred to put his adversaries to sleep with a blast from his gas gun,” Goulart noted. “He wore a dark blue slouch hat, a domino mask, and an Inverness-style cape of crimson hue.”
Elsewhere in Detective Comics 20, you could find a house ad for the More Fun Comics feature the Masked Ranger — DC’s version of the Green Hornet’s great-uncle, the Lone Ranger.
A little later, in Adventure Comics 40 (July 1939), DC provided readers with another masked, gas-gun-wielding man about town in a business suit. The Sandman added a cape to the ensemble.
“It’s anybody’s guess whether the Sandman was inspired by Superman or (like the Crimson Avenger) the Green Hornet,” observed comics historian Don Markstein.
Hornet or no Hornet, both the Crimson Avenger and the Sandman were examples of an evolution in melodrama already underway in comic books.
“Masks, hoods, and villains with colorful names were becoming the norm in the stories, even though many of them were still the evil Orientals at this stage,” noted comics historian Steve Thompson.
And Lee Falk’s Phantom had been haunting the funny pages since 1936.
“The Crimson Avenger was created, or at least cloned, by cartoonist Jim Chambers (who had credits at Fiction House, Dell, and elsewhere),” noted Markstein. “He appeared on the Detective Comics cover twice, 22 (December 1938) and 34 (December 1939). #34, by the way, was the last to feature any character but Batman.
“During the first couple of years of Crimson’s existence, superheroes pretty much took over comic books. In 44 (October, 1940), he became more of a superhero himself, by switching from his flowing cloak to red and yellow spandex.”
“In 1940, DC Comics launched the first superhero team, the Justice Society of America,” Markstein wrote. “The thinking seems to have been that if The Flash, Green Lantern, The Spectre et al. could sell comic books on their own, then putting them all in one story ought to sell even more comics.
“If that’s the case, it’s hard to guess what might have been on their minds a year later, when they launched the Seven Soldiers of Victory (a/k/a Law’s Legionnaires). Its members — the Crimson Avenger, the Star-Spangled Kid, Green Arrow, Vigilante, the Shining Knight, and their respective sidekicks — were far from the company’s headliners.”
We got another look at the Crimson Avenger in 1986.
“While Roy Thomas made every one of his Secret Origins stories special, issue 5 (Aug. 1986) was unique as it featured the Crimson Avenger, who never had an origin,” Philip Portelli noted.
“Freed from any plot constraints, Roy crafted a tale of a man who realizes that he was not as crusading as he thought and that there was more that he could do. And how a mask could both frighten and inspire.
“Tying in the origin with Orson Wells’ 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast was icing on the cake as it captured the fear of the times perfectly and stressed the need for heroes. It also made Wing ‘real’ to me. Always either an outdated sidekick or martyr, he was finally given a voice, and a powerful one.”
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