Regrettable? Well, maybe Doctor Vampire, a confusingly named
full-time vampire killer and part-time racist, was a bit regrettable. But what
about Amazing Man, the near-naked marauder known to bite snakes to death and
beat up “green Nazi gorillas”; Bozo the Iron Man, a super murder-bot who bashes
sharks against walls; or Captain Tootsie, who teaches kids to operate assault
rifles while buzzed on a diet of Tootsie Rolls ©? What’s regrettable about that
lot? Or how about their super nemeses? What about Mr. Lucifer, a circus clown
with delusions of demonic grandeur; Rossinoff, a donkey man his enemies call
“Assinoff”; Dress Suit, an unoccupied yet deadly jacket and tie combo; and an
undefined menace named Johnny Boom Boom? Those guys warrant a similar volume of
their own!
I firmly believe that each and every one of these heroes and
villains were worthy of careers as long and fruitful as those of Superman and
Wonder Woman and the rest. Sadly, a lot of these failed superheroes were forced
to put their capes in mothballs not because of their inherent jack-assedness
but because their publishers simply went out of business. Perhaps if Harry “A”
Chesler Publishing hadn’t gone belly up, The Black Dwarf would still be offering
criminals “a bite of knuckle pie” today. In the bizarro world of my dreams, he
is.
