Star Spangled Comics #1 (1941)
by Jerry Siegel & Hal Sherman
I get that he’s going for the patriotic theme, but “Star-Spangled Kid” is an unwieldy name. Why not go for something easier like “Star Kid”?
Jerry Siegel is already famous enough as the co-creator of Superman to get advertised as such, but artist Hal Sherman has no such luck.
Star-Spangled Kid is pretty much his only claim to fame in superhero comics, he’s mostly a gag cartoonist.
Which might explain why the action scenes are quite underwhelming.
Star-Spangled Kid’s… you know what, let’s just call him SSK for simplicity… SSK’s claim to fame is that he’s the only kid superhero who gets an adult sidekick, instead of the other way around.
That would be Stripesy, whose superpower is being so ugly that he distracts people.
Well okay that’s not true: he only distracts ME.
Not the best first impression, Stripesy.
In fact, in the first fight we see… against racketeers, what are the odds… SSK is perfectly fine on his own.
The artwork is just atrocious in this.
Stripesy is SUPPOSED to be a regular guy, but you cannot convince me he doesn’t have super-strength.
Either both him and SSK have super-strength, or this IS just a gag comic.
The so the racketeers are defeated, courtesy of your friendly neighborhood Star-Spangled Kid.
As mentioned, the adversaries are the oldest kind from the Golden Age: racketeers.
Take a wild guess where they’re hiding!
Where did the racketeers find a freaking castle in America???
And then the racketeers unleash THE WHEEL.
Sure glad we brought Stripesy along.
SSK is able to get inside The Wheel, which houses an entire control room.
And then he pilots it straight back into the castle!
I must once again stress that THIS IS ABOUT RACKETEERS.
But SSK gets out of the trap easily, and Stripesy even manages to help a bit!
What do you know, it’s a Nazi racketeer! Peak Golden Age right there.
And then the Nazi pulls a lever that basically self-destructs the castle.
But of course the heroes are fine, jumping into the nearest river for safety.
This is where we learn their origins: Stripesy is SSK’s chauffeur…
…and their car is a freaking Transformer!!!
SSK joins the grand tradition if superheroes who are just rich millionaires who pretend to be insufferable in their secret identity.
He’s a bit TOO good at acting insufferable: even his father can’t stand him!
That’s an interesting way to infiltrate a criminal base: just get kidnapped!
Not really sure how he’s supposed to keep his secret identity after this, though it’s probably the usual “my good friend superhero dropped by” excuse.
Okay so they’re Nazis, racketeers AND saboteurs? Ladies and gentlemen, we have finally achieved the Golden Age trifecta!
This leads into, of course, a big dumb fight.
The leader then escapes into an underground cave, because of course his headquarters (which is NOT the castle from before) has one.
In a nice reversal, this time SSK is the clumsy one and Stripes is the one saving him.
As mentioned this is still before the war (by just a few months), so they don’t kill the Nazis.
All in a night’s work for the kid.
Historical significance: 3 / 
Star-Spangled Kid as a surprising legacy, but basically nothing introduced in THIS story sticks to that.
Silver Age-ness: 10 /
Seriously, where IS that castle supposed to be???
Does it stand the test of time? 4 /
It has the advantage of a surprising length for a Golden Age story: with 21 pages, it has time to breathe and develop. Unfortunately it doesn’t USE that time: both characters stay flat and the action is underwhelming, definitely not helped by the artwork.
But on the upside SSK and Stripesy do have good chemistry, and even with all the limitations Siegel is still enough of a good writer to deliver a competent story.
If it had better artwork it would be a couple of points higher.
How close is this to the modern character? What modern character?
SSK has a very respectable Golden Age career: he’s the star (pun intended) of Star Spangled Comics until 1948, with #84 being his last issue.
Brief tangent here.
You can really see what’s popular in comics by the covers of the series: SSK is on the cover only up to #6, losing the spotlight to the Newsboy Legion and Guardian.
(which yes, I will cover)
The Newsboy Legion and Guardian get all the covers until #64 (!!!), after which Robin gets all the covers until #95.
By which point it’s 1949 and superheroes are no longer the best selling genre, so Tomahawk gets the cover all the way up to #121 in 1951.
The series have a few generic horror covers until #131, which completely drops the connection to the earlier issues renaming the series Star Spangled War Stories. It lasts an impressive amount of time, until #204 in 1977.
But even THAT is not the end of it! The series continues its numbering, being renamed Unknown Soldier from #205 all the way up to 1982.
Tangent’s over, let’s go back to Star-Spangled Kid.
Who didn’t appear just on Star Spangled Comics: in 1941 he joined the OTHER Golden Age superhero team from DC, the Seven Soldiers Of Victory.
That’s probably the team that incorporates the most sidekicks, since both Stripesy and Speedy are counted among its members… although Crimson Avenger often brings his own sidekick Wing, who unlike the others is NOT counted among the Seven.
Is it because Wing was Asian? It WAS during the war.
SSK would lose his spot in Star Spangled Comics to his adopted sister Merry, who debuts in #81 as a civilian…
…but she later becomes a hero as “Merry, Girl of 1000 Gimmicks”, taking his place from #84 to #90.
Post-Crisis, Star-Spangled Kid ends up joining the Justice Society. He uses Starman’s Cosmic Rod for a while, before coming up with its superior replacement: the Cosmic Converter Belt™.
He would later use his wealth to fund the team Infinity Inc, which was mostly composed by the descendants of Golden Age superheroes.
By which point he realized he was a little too old to still be called Star-Spangled Kid, changing his name to Skyman in 1986.
Which IS a better name, sure, and he expressily didn’t want to be the new Starman… but completely dropping the star motif from the name is weird.
That wouldn’t last, because he’s killed off in 1988.
You’d think that would be the end of his legacy, and it ALMOST was.
Until Stripesy’s step-daughter Courtney picked up the Star-Spangled Kid in 1999, with Stripesy once again playing the part of the adult sidekick.
This time by piloting the mecha S.T.R.I.P.E. armor, short for Special Tactics Robotic Integrated Power Enhancer”.
Courtney would change her codename to Stargirl in 2003, becoming both the heir to Star-Spangled Kid AND to Starman.
She’s indisputably more popular than the original SSK ever was, and thanks to time travel shenanigans we know he approves.
What else was in Star-Spangled Comics #1?
We have the war comic Captain X, set in Britain, in a story that is definitely not spangled with stars.
We have the first story of Tarantula. Who, in addition to having a striking lack of stars, is not really notable enough to warrant his own review.
Exactly like Spider Queen, he also has his own version of the Web-Shooters. Although this is much closer to the weapon of the pulp hero The Spider (who Stan Lee admitted was an inspiration for Spider-Man).
Tarantula was actually THIS CLOSE to being named Spider-Man!!!
It should also be noted that his first costume is IDENTICAL to what Sandman wore after ditching his original gas mask look. But eventually Tarantula received a pretty cool costume of his own.
Going back to the Golden Age, there’s also the war series “Armstrong of the Army”.
I guess we could consider that star-spangled in the sense that it’s patriotically themed.
But then there’s a SECOND Star-Spangled Kid story!!!
Okay the villain of the first time was a Nazi racketeering saboteur.
What’s left for the second one?
A GIANT ROBOT.
I guess that’s to be expected when you run around in a Transformer.
Since I mostly cover the Golden Age just for historically significant moments, you might get the idea that it’s not as crazy as the Silver Age.
And while there’s definitely a different feeling, make no mistake: THEY’RE BOTH INSANE.
My problem with SSK in these initial stories is that we’re constantly TOLD he’s a genius, but until he builds the Cosmic Converter Belt™ there’s nothing to prove that: even the transforming car was made by Stripesy!
(also, if you’re trying to make these professors sound very smart, at least spell “Britannica” right)
In addition to the giant robot, this story features the closest thing SSK had as a nemesis: Dr. Weerd.
Because I guess Mr. Hyde Your Ripoff was too long.
But even then, he has less than a dozen appearances.
Stargirl was so popular that she even got a three-season TV series which was pretty darned good. In the TV show, Sylvester Pemberton had been Starman (not Star-Spangled Kid) and was deceased at the hands of the Injustice Society, whereupon he left the cosmic rod (as opposed to the belt, in the comic) with Stripesy, whose stepdaugher discovered it. Ted Knight is mentioned as the rod’s inventor. It’s a well-done variation on a modern JSA/Infinity Inc.
Actually Star Spangled Kid joined the Justice Society Pre-Crisis in the 70s revival of All Star Comics. Also he and the other Seven Soldiers were brought back in the JLA/JSA team up in Justice League of America #s 100-102.
I had to Google- apparently incongua actually *is* a kind of moth, but I get nothing for spyzotia.
Of course it was a Nazi racketeer; who else would have a prototype War Wheel at hand?
Too bad we don’t see Meredith in these early issues. She is an interesting sidenote to the Kid.
I just noticed that SSK may be a contender for team memberships among Golden Age characters. The original SSV, All-Star Squadron, and later Justice Society and Infinity Inc. Even the brief 1970s “Super-Squad” if you want to count them as a team of its own.
There is an issue of James Robinson’s Starman that explains that the “Skyman” name was suggested by Jack Knight; Sylvester apparently agreed out of respect for Jack’s father, Ted Knight, the first DC Comics Starman.
Nazi racketeer saboteurs that seem to be evil scientists (based on the giant spiked wheel and the castle’s traps) living in a castle and fighting a superhero who’s able to easily defeat crowds of opponents despite having no superpowers. And the superhero is a rich person in their secret identity. If this issue had a Golden Age-ness scale, it would be a 10/10.
Or higher, since most Golden Age stories are not even THAT Golden Age.