Dial E For Eternity--The Weirdest Origin Story Ever?

OK, maybe not really the weirdest...

...but Hit Comics #25 (1942) is a very odd story for a Golden Age comic.

Now, I've read an awful lot of Golden Age origin stories, and the general operating procedure is usually get the origin--the gaining of powers or adopting the identity--over as quickly as possible and get on to the fighting bad guys. There are exceptions, of course. But with the limited space in anthology titles, and the low likelihood that any one character would become a hit, why waste time world-building? Wait until they become popular, then expand the origin and backstory!!

Not Kid Eternity, though. This first story is almost nothing except world building!

Apologies for the poor quality of some of the panels to follow. You work with what you've got...

We begin with a Criswell-type challenge:

OK, sure. Why not?

This is all in service of...KID ETERNITY!!

It's 1942, and it's a tough time to be a merchant ship in the Atlantic!

A youngster spies a German sub...

...the ship tries to defend itself...

Oops.

The Nazi torpedoes don't miss...

Death ensues...

This is probably a good time to remind you that in 1991, Grant Morrison retconned it so this wasn't actually the Kid's Gran'Pa, but a sexual predator who took young children out to sea to abuse them. So, fuck you, Grant Morrison.

The ship sinks...

...and the vicious Nazis make sure there are no survivors.

Well, that's the end of the story, right? Nope, because an American destroyer arrives, and:

But they were to late to save Kid!

Now, let me point out that we are at the end of page six, and our hero still doesn't have powers. That's pretty leisurely for a Golden Age book.

Also, note that the villains have already been beaten, by other folks. In the typical book, the hero would gain powers, and then go stomp the villains himself.

Not Kid Eternity, though. Now settle in for nine pages of crackpot theology!!

We end up in what looks like a pretty standard version of heaven:

Ah, but there's a wrinkle:

Please note that, until DC retconned him from Earth-X to Earth-S in the 70s, Kid had no name. None that we ever learned (or he ever remembered). Just Kid.

Anyway...

Now, this was late 1942. 1941 was the release of the critical and popular success, Here Comes Mr. Jordan, which operated on the exact same premise: a man looked like he was going to die, the angel took him "before his time," and they had to rectify the error. So, you know, totally ripped off. Ahh, but who would pay attention to a 10¢ comic book?

We can also ask exactly what shape the Kid would have been in if he we was supposed to have survived, bullet-ridden and half drowned. There's a What If for someone...

OK, look, however old you may believe the Earth is, there's no way Mr. Keeper was fetching souls for two million years. Unless he was fetching animal souls...or alien souls. Maybe he was engaged in some other service for 1,981,467 years before humans emerged?

Anyway, we have a remedy for the Kid:

In Mr. Jordan, the guy's body was cremated before they got him back to Earth, so they had to find another recently deceased corpse for him to inhabit. I know, ewww. Here, though, Keeper puts Kid back into his original body--filled with lead and no doubt nibbled on by fish...but hey, there's no place like home, right?

And like Green Lantern, Kid gets his own oath:

The oath is swiftly forgotten--I don't think it's ever used again--but here we see the similarity to the Marvel Family: a magic word & lightning!

Mr. Keeper takes Kid on a tour of heaven Eternity!

We're 11 pages in--11!--and we still don't have any powers, or a purpose for the Kid. But by all means, continue your tour of Eternity!

So, wait...heaven has "recorded" all of the "greatest deeds of history and mythology"? Why? Is that, like, heavenly Netflix?!?

Also...

They've also recorded metaphors and symbolic representations!

Yes, Keeper, isn't it about time you broke the news to the Kid about how you frakked up?

OK, now throw in the reward, so he won't blame you!

Wait--you accidentally ended my life 75 years early--and now it MY responsibility to fight evil?!?

Now, note, in the earliest appearances, the Kid didn't just summon heroes of the past--he literally became them!! So, again, like Billy Batson becoming Captain Marvel, with attributes of gods and legends. But also like Dial H For Hero, he can be a different hero every time!

Yeah, and there's other perks of the job:

So, what the hell do we have here? A premise borrowed from an Oscar-winning movie of the previous year, in a comic story in which the hero doesn't even use his main power once in the story. The villains are rousted by outside hands, and the Kid never gives them a second thought. We start with a WWII story which suddenly takes a nine-page detour into heaven, establishing a very, very weird afterlife.

Goddamn I love this comic book.

So, surprisingly enough, after our first story, our list of whom Kid Eternity has summoned--the purported reason for this feature--is:

Nobody 1.

It won't remain that way for long...