Destruction and resurrection are a running theme in superhero stories. I think our unconscious minds are somehow satisfied by the idea that great gifts come only at the price of great pain and peril.
“In fact, examples drawn from the origin stories of several Silver Age characters (from Marvel as well as DC) reveal a landscape rife with marked, disabled bodies linked to the fabulous, unproblematic super-body of convention, with each ‘haunting’ the other,” observed University of Washington-Seattle Prof. José Alaniz.
One obscure example is Mark of the Sun, a feature appearing in Wham-O Giant Comics 1 (April 1967).
“When his retro-rockets fail to fire during a mission to Mercury, Col. Ray Starkey plunges into the sun,” explained comics historian Jeff Rovin. “But he doesn’t die. He is met by tall, orange-and-yellow-skinned beings who have a halo of flame. They temporarily turn him into a sun-being, pilot his ship to their spaceport on the metallic surface of the sun, and take the astounded astronaut to the Sun-King, who sits on a throne atop a great slight of steps.”
The solar ruler warns Starkey that the shape-shifting Kelp People are planning to conquer Earth, and gives him a weapon to use against them. The Sun Disk will fire laser-like destructive rays, once Starkey has charged it with sufficient heat energy, and can protect him against bullets by generating a force field of heat. He can also use it to contact the sun beings, who cannot themselves survive on Earth.
Starkey — who is of course called “Star Key” by the sun beings — has his work cut out for him.
“The Kelp People!” the Sun-King tells him. “People of darkness. Wetness. Damp. Cold. They swarmed onto the planet Venus, covered it with fog, and killed off the children of light!”
And now they intend to “kelp-aform” the Earth, melting the polar ice caps to drown humanity. They operate from their secret base in the ruins of ancient Atlantis, and can still function even when split apart.
The insidious Kelp People have installed a secret agent in a general’s office disguised as his beautiful secretary, Lucy Lake.
Starkey seemingly destroys it along with an invading force. But as the strip ends, the “Lucy Lake” shape-shifter gloats that Kelp People hard to kill, even as it transforms itself into a new form to continue its work as a spy and saboteur…
Star-Key is one of those superheroes who is barely saved from utter destruction, only to be transformed into something much more. Captain Atom, Dr. Solar, Nukla, the Spectre, and the Six Million Dollar Man were in the same tradition.
He’s also a special-purpose superhero intended to thwart an alien invasion, like Captain 3-D and Xal-Kor the Human Cat (who fought the Cat People and the Rat People, respectively). And, in being un-costumed and carrying a super-powered disk, he resembles ACG’s Magic Agent.
As an original variation on the Human Torch concept, Starkey might have had an interesting career. But Wham-O Giant Comics turned out to be only a one-shot oddity.
About Author
