Now here's something you don't see every day:
That cover is by
Mort Leav.
Yeah, I had never heard of this
Mad Hatter guy, either. That's what happens when you try to introduce a new super-hero in
1946, I guess.
So who is this guy, aside from his
gorgeous togs?
"
The Plunderworld." Gotta love it!!.
Grant Richmond had no powers whatsoever, and no real origin. He was just a junior partner at a law firm who decided to put on a (
fabulous) costume and fight crime, because comics.
He had some kind of "Mad Hatter signal" he liked to flash before busting up thugs:
And he liked to talk in rhyme, decades before anyone dreamed of making
Etrigan a "
Rhymer."
Ugh.
He also liked to leave nonsense notes at crime scenes, because
gimmick:
Mad Hatter lasted a whole
2 issues before vanishing into the land of forgotten heroes. He contributed nothing to the medium, really, except:
That one time Mad Hatter caught a crime kingpin who was then tried and executed, but a mad scientist experimented on the corpse and transmitted the crook's mind into a gorilla's body, and he LIVED, and he put on a rubber mask so people would think he was human, and he became a surprisingly strong and agile crime lord called The Gargoyle, and ultimately we had Mad Hatter and an intelligent crime gorilla locked in a death duel on a moving roller coaster, and
GODDAMN I LOVE COMICS!!
Ahem.
