Golden Age Idol--The Bouncer!!

There's a new Fantagraphics collection, focusing on the early days of superheroes (and you can read a groovy review of it here). Those were heady days, back in the Golden Age, when everybody and anybody with access to a printing press were churning out superheroes as fast as they could, hoping to find something that stuck, that at least partially replicated the success of Superman or Batman.

These Ur-heroes have been getting a lot of attention lately. Aside from Supermen!, we've seen Marvel's The Twelve, Dynamite's Project Superpowers, and Alan Moore's Terra Obscura a few years back. In a sort of slow-motion, less frenzied replay of the Golden Age, everyone is dipping their toes into the now-public-domain superhero pool.

But so far, few of the new old heroes have seemed to really captured the comic public's imagination. The good news is, the pile of old-timers has barely been scratched.

So here at Slay Monstrobot, we've decided to start a series of occasional auditions to find the next big hero from the past, the breakout guy the Big Companies can have for free (with, hopefully, a finder's fee for me). Will we find the next Carrie Underwood, or the next William Hung? Let's find out, as we begin round 1 of Golden Age Idol!!!

So who's first up? Who's going to take the comics world by storm?

Uhhh...A guy in a dress?? Do we have a better picture??

Oh, much better...a man in a dress with a foppish artist companion. What the hell is this Bouncer?!?

Created by Bob Kanigher and Louis Ferstadt for Fox Comics, The Bouncer ran from issue #10-14 in 1944-45 (yes, 10-14...that's how they rolled in the Golden Age).

So what, pray tell, is our premise?!?




OK. Let's look at the pros and cons here.

Pro: Based on a Greek myth...that's kind of cool.

Con: They get the myth wrong. Antaeus was a right murdering bastard, and Hercules killed him in that little fight. Plus, they spelled his name wrong.

Pro: Uhhh...it could use that one song by Chumbawumba for a soundtrack?

Con: There's a reason why Bouncing Boy never had his own comic.

Con: Seriously...the adventures of a foppish artist and his come-to-life statue, who gain their power from falling down?!?

OK, it's not looking good for our heroes. Let's take a closer look at their adventures. Not surprisingly, when you've got heroes whose powers depend on being thrown to the ground, you're going to get an awful lot of this:


Now, despite the fact that the series tells us that Anteas (sic) Jr. (sic) is way famous for his adventures, villains never seem to realize that dropping him to his death just isn't an option...

...nor do they seem to realize his statue is going to come to life once danger beckons:

Did I mention that Anteas (sic) Jr. (sic) is foppish? He wears the same get-up every issue!

However, you do have to like they way they travel across the big city.

As I said, Bouncing Boy never carried a series, and Speedball didn't last long, either...anyhoo, every set of villains they face are extremely, impossibly dumb, putting our heroes into a death trap that involves them falling to the ground:

There was one more interesting aspect of the Bouncer:

What's this? Comic Hall of Fame? Nan and Jessie Douglas of 71-05 37th Avenue Jackson Heights? What's up with that? Let's let the clumsy exposition help us out here:

Ahhh...in an early precursor of sorts to Dial H For Hero, the Bouncer had solicitations in every issue for kids who wanted to appear in a future issue:


The kids actually got involved in the adventures, too.They were endangered in every issue, held hostage and put into death traps by the villains, and had a rollicking good time hanging with their heroes.

Hmmm...having children send you their pictures and addresses, and then publishing their addresses in a national magazine...somehow, I don't think that would fly today.

Simon's final verdict:

All panels from Bouncer #11 (1944).