Mop

Many superheroes are defined by their ability to adapt to and overcome circumstances that they may not have planned for. TNT Todd, for instance, chose to use his tragic accident involving TNT and Magnetic X-19 as an excuse to put on a funky costume and fight crime. The Stuntman's adaptation may not be the most interesting or notable, but it is certainly one of them (and you'll have to forgive me, I'm running out of interesting heroes to cover here).

The Stuntman was, as his name would suggest, a circus acrobat by the name of Fred Drake. Part of a trio in fact until, one day, the other two members got murdered. Naturally, he tried to solve their murders, but got sidetracked when Don Daring hired him to be his stunt double... but that's when he got an idea. What if he put on that costume Don gave him... and fought crime? Absurd, I know, but that's what he did.

Once he solved the murder of his friends, he went on to have a long crimefighting career of 9 issues, jumping between various comic lines like the acrobat he is (seriously, almost every appearance from him is a different comic line: 3 issues of his own self-titled series, Green Hornet Fights Crime #39, Black Cat #9, Thrills of Tomorrow #19-20, All-New Comics #13 and Joe Palooka Comics #9 - just pick a series!)

You can tell a lot about a character from what sort of people like them... I think. Sometimes the wrong people like certain characters, but it's not like their enjoyment of these characters comes from nothing. If a bunch of weird libertarians like The Punisher, then I can assume a sizeable portion of his comics agrees with their worldview. So, what am I supposed to feel knowing that Alan Moore is apparently a big fan of Herbie Popnecker (https://alanmooreworld.blogspot.com/2019/11/moore-on-jerusalem-eternalism-anarchy.html)?

So, you might look at this character along with his comic being named "Fat Fury" and understandably come to the conclusion that this character is a slightly mean-spirited joke. Indeed, he's quite the opposite of a superhero: short, out of shape, not particularly emotional, and his father absolutely hates him... but he's also basically a God. Satan cowers before him, World Leaders go to him for advice, and women find him absolutely irresistible!

Most of his powers came from magic lollipops procured from the Unknown, which enabled him to talk to animals, shoot beams of fire from his eyes, and whatever else the plot needed. They even help him Time Travel at one point, though there he also felt the need to sit down inside a Grandfather Clock.

I think that's why the character doesn't end up feeling too mean-spirited to me. He's fat, but it never bothers Herbie. To put it in his words, "So I'm fat. So what?". It's joked about, sure, but we also get jokes about how unphased he is by the goings on around him, or his dad getting furious at seeing his son winning, or various other gags that don't fit into these categories.

If you couldn't tell by Alan Moore being a fan, Herbie's had quite the legacy. He appeared in 29 comics (23 of which are his own self-titled series), has made many appearances in webcomics due to his accidental Public Domain-ness, and even has his own fansite (which I recommend checking out btw, it covers many topics I didn't have the time to go into https://herbiepopnecker.com/). Good on you, Herbie!

Not everyone’s fathers support their life choices. Perry Chase wanted nothing more than to be a reporter on serious, hard-hitting stories, but his father had one problem with this: Perry’s a wimp… or so he thinks. Unbeknownst to his father, Perry is actually the guardian of the Press known as The Falcon! Perry almost immediately abandoned this name in favour of the much more pretentious “The Press Guardian”, fighter of crime and protector of the first amendment (you just know Perry would have the worst Twitter account).

Now, one very inexplicable part of this character is that he’s bulletproof. No armour is mentioned, so it has to be assumed that he’s impervious to bullets, but nobody makes a big deal about that either, so… bit of an odd case.

Unfortunately for this guardian of the press, his legacy was more akin to a limited print run, with only eleven stories to his name.

They say "Never judge a book by its cover.", and with good reason: some interesting books have dull covers, dull books have interesting covers, and sometimes the cover may be entirely nonsensical. This can also apply to movies, where minor characters get prominently featured due to their actor getting very popular later on. How this applies to comic books however can be... well, we'll get to it.

Jetman was by day a... well, we don't know his backstory. By night, however, he was Jetman, a flying superhero dressed in red! In his adventures, he'd... well, okay, he didn't have any adventures. Yet he featured in nearly 30 issues of Jetman comics... sort of. You see, Jetman existed on the cover of this series and nowhere else.

You might think it's a bit odd for there to be a cover-only superhero since surely a comic would want to show off its own marketable heroes like... well, I don't know what heroes feature in these comics, which is part of the problem here. Apparently though it was surprisingly common for comics to be sold with heroes that only ever exist on the cover, never getting to be a part of the contents. Why, there's the Human Fly, Liberty Man, Green Light, Liberty Boy, Stellar Man, Miss Liberty, and how can we forget the villainous Skeleton Key (who dresses like the Blue Beetle and holds a key with a skull on it evilly)?

The most fortunate part of this, I suppose, is that there's no lore to be contradicted here. These cover-only characters can be made into whatever you want (which, granted, you could do that with public domain superheroes anyway, but still).