It's been too long since I've indulged in a
Golden Age Idol--the process by which I try to find some long lost
Golden Age character to revive for modern comic audiences (bonus points, of course, if the hero is public domain now, so I can get
rich!!)
So let's leap right in with one of the most fascinating guys you've never heard of--
The Marksman!!
I know, I know, I can hear you out there going, "
Not another damn archer!!" And you're right--but the bowman business is the
least important part of the Marksman's story. Take his origin:
That's right...we not only have a secret identity, we have
TWO secret identities!! Polish patriot
Baron Povalsky has taken on the role of Nazi
Major Hurtz (major hurtz...
huh huh, huh uh...), infiltrating the leadership of the German occupation of Poland. Simultaneously, he strikes terror into the Axis forces as the dreaded Marksman!!
Now, you have to acknowledge, that's a
pretty cool premise. Granted, being as this was the Golden Age, they weren't too hung up on actual
details: how did Povalsky infiltrate German ranks? Was Major Hurtz a real person whose identity he assumed, or a complete fabrication that somehow was accepted? How did Povalsky become such a proficient archer? Given that as the Marksman he doesn't disguise his appearance at all, and as Major Hurtz his entire disguise is a mustache and a Nazi uniform, how does Povalsky get away with the double charade? Did Povalsky have a
first name?
But still, it's an idea with
tons of potential--posing as the enemy, getting information from the inside, and then acting on it as the (not particularly costumed) hero. So we got a lot of fun stuff like Polvasky's "disguise"...
...his frequent assignments to hunt down...
himself...
...and the doubtlessly
pleasurable moments of abusing lower-ranked Nazis:
Of course, the era being what is was, Hurtz was never ordered to do anything terribly evil, so we can't be sure how he would have dealt with that kind of dilemma...
As the Marksman, his look changed a couple of times over his two year run. He started out in
this getup:
Changed to a basically ridiculous super-hero look:
And then settled into his "
classic" jodhpurs, white T-Shirt and red cape look.
He didn't really go in much for trick arrows--plain ones were good enough for killing Nazis--but he wasn't above a flaming arrow or tying some dynamite onto his shafts. He was so good with this, he could derail trains...
and take down airplanes!
Povalsky/Hurtz/Marksman was also one damned
cold son of a bitch:
Killing a man just to leave a message in his back?
Damn...
In the story I referenced
yesterday, he actually went directly against
effeminate Hitler!!
And just when you thought they were going to pull a
Tarantino...
"
Oops"? "
Oops"?!?!?!? You're about to kill Hitler, you let him slip away, and all you've got is "
Oops"??
Damn those convenient autogyros!!
About halfway through the series, the creators either got bored with Nazis, or, like many other war-time series as the outcome in Europe seemed more and more inevitable, shifted the series' focus:
Yup, after a little field trip to Mexico, they took the Marksman away from his mission of liberating Poland,
AND abandoned the key concept of his infiltrating the Nazis as a high-ranking officer!
It obviously wasn't
quite the same series after that. But they sure found a way to keep things lively--by going
freaking nuts. They replaced Povalsky's elderly Polish aide Vorka with a
hot blond girlfriend, Ann; they shifted from Nazis as the main villains to the Japanese; and set the series entirely in exotic Central and South America!!
How exotic? How about--
and I'm not making this up--a bunch of Nazis posing as Mayan priests, trying to
resurrect human sacrifice to appeal to the "dim brains" of the Mayans' descendants, in order to make them obedient servants of the Germans:
Or how about--
and I am not making this up--the Japanese launching a
stealth blimp from the
Machu Piccu in order to bomb the Panama Canal (fortunately, the Marksman was able to shoot it down...apparently, the Japanese hadn't learned about the dangers of hydrogen from the
Hindenburg...):
Or how about--
and I am not making this up--the Japanese discovering
the lost valley of dinosaurs, and using the "taboo" spot to set up a camp to manufacture poison gas (yes, the marksman kills a dinosaur with an arrow):
Or how about the Japanese forcing Amazonian tribes to mass produce
curare so they can coat their bullets with it, and...well, you get the idea. Craziness, Latin American style!
After
Smash Comics #58, though, the Marksman was never heard from again. And even though
DC owns the
Quality heroes, there's been
no post WWII appearance of the noble Baron Povalsky, the Polish aristocrat with
two secret identities who fought the Axis (and dinosaurs!!) on 3 continents while posing as a Nazi major. He swung from war stories to insanity, from deep-behind-enemy-lines espionage type stuff to exotic superheroics.
Hey, DC, if you can give even
Magog his own book, where's the love for this guy?? At least a guest shot in the new
Freedom Fighters ongoing?!?!