Number 2297: Angel flying too close to the ground

Although his status was as a filler superhero, and never a star, going back to Marvel Comics #1 (1939), the Angel was featured in several Timely Comics of the 1940s. The character was created by Paul Gustavson, who went on to Quality Comics, and is considered one of the better comic book artists of that early period. At first the Angel had no secret identity, and nothing to identify why he was in such a gaudy costume.

From Don Markstein's Toonopedia:

“[The Angel] did have a secret identity, private detective Tom Halloway. A text page written by Ray Gill (who also has credits at Lev Gleason, Novelty Press and elsewhere) in Marvel Mystery Comics (as Marvel Comics had been re-titled with its second issue) #20 (June, 1941) gave his background. Halloway's mother had died in childbirth and his father, a prison warden, had raised him in the prison, isolated from outside human contact except for the experts the warden brought in to teach the boy everything there was to know — successfully, it appears, as his range of knowledge sometimes seems to have rivaled that of The Junior Woodchucks' Guide Book.”

I chose this particular story because it is more gruesome than usual (reflecting the kind of mood I am in as I write this). A man has a rare disease, needs constant blood supplies to keep him alive, so when the hospitals can’t help him anymore he kills people and takes their blood. (I have a question about blood types, which the story does not address.) In one panel we have a scene which would have been right at home a decade later in Dr Fredric Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent. Human corpses on meat hooks in a slaughter house! Yow.

From Marvel Mystery Comics #30 (1942). No writer or artist is listed by the Grand Comics Database.

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