Golden Age Black Condor (Richard Grey Jr. / Thomas Wright ) appreciation thread

[WonderScott]

Probably the craziest homage to Tarzan, Mowgli, and Rima the Jungle Girl of them all.

[MajorHoy]

You have to love the absolute Golden Age insanity of his origin:
- Orphan raised by condors, so of course he eventually learns how to fly. It's science!

Well, to be fair, when Bob Frank was a child, he was bitten by a cobra while in Africa with his father. Thanks to a transfusion of mongoose blood, he survived the cobra bite and gained super speed!
(He also chose a questionable superhero name: The Whizzer!)



And even in the Silver Age, Peter Parker is bitten by a radioactive spider while with his high school class, and he winds up gaining various spider-like powers!

[ducklord]

Well, to be fair, when Bob Frank was a child, he was bitten by a cobra while in Africa with his father. Thanks to a transfusion of mongoose blood, he survived the cobra bite and gained super speed!
(He also chose a questionable superhero name: The Whizzer!)



And even in the Silver Age, Peter Parker is bitten by a radioactive spider while with his high school class, and he winds up gaining various spider-like powers!

Yeah, but in both of those cases the heroes were actually bitten, and in Parker's case it was radioactive, which excuses a lot of hand-waving.

In Black Condor's case it was just "raised by animal X, can do everything that animal X does, even if it's aerodynamically impossible." You kind of wonder if he ever told that story out loud to the rest of the Freedom Fighters, only to have them laugh in his face.

[MajorHoy]

From Crack Comics #4 (August 1940)
cover by Gill Fox / pencil art by Lou Fine (per GCD entry):

(You'll find out what's happening here, too, in a future post . . . )

[MajorHoy]

More from Crack Comics #4 (August 1940):

4 more pages of this tale yet to come!