Odd that such a red-baiting character would dress all in red.
A sort of anticommunist Batman, the Avenger was an athletic super-scientist who outfitted himself with anti-gravity and utility belts, a truth gas, a dissolver gun, “flying saucer” spy drones, and a personal VTOL plane powered by an inexhaustible atomic motor, the Starjet.
Published by Magazine Enterprises from February to March 1955, the Avenger was born into the McCarthy era’s “There’s a Red under your bed!” hysteria.
“And if the fires of hysteria did not burn as brightly as they had during the Red Scare of the 1920s, they were fanned periodically by ambitious politicians who understood that virulent anti-communism was a good platform from which to publicize themselves,” observed William W. Savage Jr. in Comic Books and America: 1945-1954.
“What Texas congressman Martin Dies had begun with the House Committee on Un-American Activities in the 1930s emerged full-blown (if not grown) in the 1950s as the national spotlight focused on the likes of Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy and Californian Richard Nixon, soon to be the general’s vice president. It was a time of seemingly rampant anti-intellectualism — perfectly suited, the cynic might say, to the expounding of comic book philosophies.”
In an origin story written by Gardner Fox and drawn by Dick Ayers, military scientist Roger Wright adopts a costumed identity because he’s been inspired by a child’s mask he happened to see, one celebrating another Magazine Enterprises superhero, the Ghost Rider (that rayon crepe scarf was available from the publisher for a dollar). But Wright’s costumed heroics fail to save his brother, who’d been kidnapped by Russian agents. His motive for fighting communists thus became personal as well as political.
But the Avenger — newly constrained by the Comics Code Authority — does not kill the Russian general who’d murdered his brother and sister-in-law. Instead, knowing that the Kremlin will execute the general for failure, the Avenger pauses to lecture him.
“You poor deluded fool,” the Avenger says. “When will you people learn that it is the individual man and not the state, that is most important? If only you used your energy and brains for a better cause, what a fine world this would be.”
“American comic books have always had their superheroes. They were at the top of the heap during the early 1940s, and at the top of the heap again in the ’60s,” noted comics historian Don Markstein.
“And even during the in-between years, there were sporadic attempts to bring the genre back to life. The Black Cobra (Ajax Publications, 1954) … Fighting American (Prize Comics, 1955) … Nature Boy (Charlton Comics, 1956) … There must have been a dozen or more ’50s heroes, including this one — The Avenger, who debuted from Magazine Enterprises (publisher of Strong Man, another 1950s costumed crime fighter; a lot of westerns such as Tim Holt; and lots more) with a cover date of Feb-March 1955.”
“It may be that publisher Vincent Sullivan (who, incidentally, years earlier, had drawn the cover of the first issue of Detective Comics, the title where Batman was introduced) was responding to the success of the Superman TV show, which had begun in 1953,” Markstein said. “Or maybe he simply thought the time was ripe for the genre to make a comeback.
“He was a little bit ahead of the times — even though several superheroes were introduced in 1954 and ’55 (Captain Flash; J’onn J’onzz, Manhunter from Mars; a brief revival of Phantom Lady, to name but a few), it remained for DC’s 1956 introduction of the Flash to spark renewed interest in the long underwear guys.”
The Avenger’s adventures continued for a brief four issues. He resembled another masked, gadget-laden scientist-aviator created by Gardner Fox — Columbia Comics’ Skyman, who debuted in 1940 flying his super-plane, the Wing. And of course, Fox also wrote the early Batman adventures that introduced his utility belt, his Batgyro, and his trusty Batarang.
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