“You say Professor Garvey has been working on a new invention?” Shiera Sanders asked.
“Yes,” replied Carter Hall, at the wheel of his orange convertible. “He’s perfected a radical type of transportation and wants me to help him market his product. I — GREAT JUPITER, LOOK!”
What the couple saw was their friend, the professor, tied up inside a glass-domed, three-wheeled car that was about to crash into a brick wall. But instead, the car drove straight up the side of the building!
“The only way we can follow them is as Hawkman and Hawkgirl!” Shiera exclaimed.
Thus began one of those late 1940s comic book adventures that are so enjoyable to me. The writing, and particularly the art, had improved considerably in the decade since superheroes began to dominate the medium.
The 21-year-old Joe Kubert provided the increasingly polished art for The Human Fly Bandits (Flash Comics 1oo, Oct. 1948), with 35-year-old John Broome scripting.
The concept of spectacular vertical ascent was inherent in the Hawkman feature, and this tale was a clever variation on the theme.
The story saw “…Hawkman and Hawkgirl facing John Rotor and his henchmen (and having to fight their way out of a giant thermometer in a Batman-related twist, as it was Batman and Robin who were usually trapped in giant death-traps!),” comics historian Dave Marchand noted.
The Winged Wonders outsmarted the criminals, of course. Before he and Hawkgirl could be drowned in mercury, Hawkman used acid to explode the liquid metal.
“We were blown clear!” Hawkgirl exclaimed. “But I wouldn’t want to go through that again!”
I should imagine not.
After the superheroes disable the vertical vehicle, Prof. Garvey explains it: “The rotary action of a gyroscope overcomes the force of gravity! Gyroscopes, for instance, are used to fly planes and hold them on their course! I used the same principle — but with my own improvements — on the gyrocar!”
Whatever you say, professor.
These late Golden Age stories have a certain poignance for me because, in retrospect, you can hear the clock ticking behind them. Superheroes were on the way out, and Hawkman had only four adventures to go in the soon-to-be-defunct Flash Comics.
By the way, the nickname “human fly” dates from the late 19th century, referring to the daredevils who climbed skyscrapers with their bare hands.
Notable early “human flies” included George Polley, who climbed the Woolworth Building in 1920, and Harry Gardiner, who reportedly climbed more than 700 buildings in the U.S. and Europe between 1905 and 1929, wearing street clothes and employing no special equipment.
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