Followers of this blog are well aware of my deep and abiding love for hobos in comics.
So why not go full-on crazy and have a hobo
hero?
No, it's not
Namor (although we can always hope for a crossover).
No, this is the one, the only
Chauncy Throttlebottom III!
But we'll just call him...
The Vagabond!!
Oh, man, that hits the spot.
So, who is the Vagabond? That's a very good question, actually, because for reasons unbeknownst to modern readers, they played ridiculously
coy with his secret identity.
We start in the well-known town of
Middleton, where
Pat Murphy, a police officer working for the District Attorney's office, is trying to find the lowdown on some gangs...
In the very next panel, we meet:
The curious thing is, in
all his appearances in
USA Comics, the costume change was always made off-screen, and
without explicitly confirming that Murphy was the Vagabond.
And at the end of an adventure, it's another clandestine change, taking care not to reveal his identity!
Why? Did the creators want to sew confusion about his identity for some particular reason? This they have some big twist reveal that maybe the Vagabond was actually someone besides Murphy?
No one can say at this point. Many sources were confused by this approach, though, resulting in their suggesting that maybe the Vagabond was really FBI agent
Walter Carstairs, even though he was killed prior to the start of the first story.
Stan Lee himself let the cat out of the bag in a text piece in
USA Comics #2 (1941), where all of the heroes starring in that comic met up and swapped tales of their adventures:
Assuming that Stan knew, that's pretty definite.
Anyway, the Vagabond dressed like a clown tramp, but spoke extremely eruditely. He was the
Sideshow Bob of his day!!
Well, he spoke like Sideshow Bob, but fought like Captain America!
He even explicitly hat-tips fellow
Timely hero
Captain America:
Early product placement!!
Any, that was the the Vagabond's entire shtick--talk fancy, beat up thugs.
Vagabond's run lasted a mere three issues in USA Comics. And in the very next issue, the
Fighting Hobo (no relation) debuted, creating even
more confusion!! Clearly, the early 1940s were the
zenith of heroic hobos!!
A few months later, a Vagabond story turned up in
Young Allies #4 (1942). They had pretty much abandoned Middleton and any pretense of a secret identity--he was now just a wandering tramp who stumbled into crime and beat up the criminals. He did fight a villain named
Egg-Head, so excellent tie-in possibilities exist!
Next he showed up in
Comedy Comics #11 (1942), and he was pretty much transformed into a humor character.
That was it for the Vagabond, until the
2008 Avengers/Invaders mini-series. With a number of other obscure Timely heroes, he was slaughtered by the
Red Skull in 1943, only to be resurrected later, because
Cosmic Cube. Then, again with a gaggle of Timely co-stars, he turned up in the never-finished
All-Winners Squad: Band of Heroes (2011).
Eisenhower put together a team of Timely men called the
Crazy SUES, who fought in various
WWII theaters. In this tale, the Vagabond was
killed in an Axis ambush in 1944, because modern comic readers aren't allowed to have nice, fun characters.
Still, it shows that some folks at
Marvel are aware of the character, and there's no reason he can't be revived. How about it, guys?
From USA Comics #2-4 (1941-1942)