Golden Age Idol--The Vagabond!!

Followers of this blog are well aware of my deep and abiding love for hobos in comics.

So why not go full-on crazy and have a hobo hero?

No, it's not Namor (although we can always hope for a crossover).

No, this is the one, the only Chauncy Throttlebottom III!

But we'll just call him...The Vagabond!!

Oh, man, that hits the spot.

So, who is the Vagabond? That's a very good question, actually, because for reasons unbeknownst to modern readers, they played ridiculously coy with his secret identity.

We start in the well-known town of Middleton, where Pat Murphy, a police officer working for the District Attorney's office, is trying to find the lowdown on some gangs...

In the very next panel, we meet:

The curious thing is, in all his appearances in USA Comics, the costume change was always made off-screen, and without explicitly confirming that Murphy was the Vagabond.

And at the end of an adventure, it's another clandestine change, taking care not to reveal his identity!

Why? Did the creators want to sew confusion about his identity for some particular reason? This they have some big twist reveal that maybe the Vagabond was actually someone besides Murphy?

No one can say at this point. Many sources were confused by this approach, though, resulting in their suggesting that maybe the Vagabond was really FBI agent Walter Carstairs, even though he was killed prior to the start of the first story.

Stan Lee himself let the cat out of the bag in a text piece in USA Comics #2 (1941), where all of the heroes starring in that comic met up and swapped tales of their adventures:

Assuming that Stan knew, that's pretty definite.

Anyway, the Vagabond dressed like a clown tramp, but spoke extremely eruditely. He was the Sideshow Bob of his day!!

Well, he spoke like Sideshow Bob, but fought like Captain America!

He even explicitly hat-tips fellow Timely hero Captain America:

Early product placement!!

Any, that was the the Vagabond's entire shtick--talk fancy, beat up thugs.

Vagabond's run lasted a mere three issues in USA Comics. And in the very next issue, the Fighting Hobo (no relation) debuted, creating even more confusion!! Clearly, the early 1940s were the zenith of heroic hobos!!

A few months later, a Vagabond story turned up in Young Allies #4 (1942). They had pretty much abandoned Middleton and any pretense of a secret identity--he was now just a wandering tramp who stumbled into crime and beat up the criminals. He did fight a villain named Egg-Head, so excellent tie-in possibilities exist!

Next he showed up in Comedy Comics #11 (1942), and he was pretty much transformed into a humor character.

That was it for the Vagabond, until the 2008 Avengers/Invaders mini-series. With a number of other obscure Timely heroes, he was slaughtered by the Red Skull in 1943, only to be resurrected later, because Cosmic Cube. Then, again with a gaggle of Timely co-stars, he turned up in the never-finished All-Winners Squad: Band of Heroes (2011). Eisenhower put together a team of Timely men called the Crazy SUES, who fought in various WWII theaters. In this tale, the Vagabond was killed in an Axis ambush in 1944, because modern comic readers aren't allowed to have nice, fun characters.

Still, it shows that some folks at Marvel are aware of the character, and there's no reason he can't be revived. How about it, guys?

From USA Comics #2-4 (1941-1942)