Adventures of Rex the Wonder Dog #1 (1952)
by Robert Kanigher & Alex Toth
The original DC superhero dog is not the one you’re thiking of.
Meet Rex, the dog who can smell evil.
That scene happened BEFORE any crime actually happened, so…
Rex superpowers: 1 (olfactory clairvoyance)
An innocent man is blamed for it.
Rex shows up to help, but the criminals immediately identify him as a police dog (HOW???) and try to kill him, without success. Because Rex is faster than a car.
Rex superpowers: 2 (super-canine reflexes)
Not only the criminals escape, but the innocent is arrested because of Rex… and he’s the older brother of his owner! Not particularly wonderous, Rex.
Rex is actually a war veteran (!!!), reassigned as a police dog.
Thankfully, the criminal’s gimmick of carrying around a specific flower is the only clue Rex needs.
The fear helps too.
Rex superpowers: 3 (olfactory empathy)
You might think it’s silly of me to count Rex’s powers where he’s not supposed to have any, but how do you explain him being unharmed when taking a bullet at point blank range?
Rex superpowers: 4 (intangibility?)
All in a dog’s work!
You’d expect the book to be all about Rex, but the second story is about a guy fighting a bear.
But the THIRD story reveals that Rex has a poetic side.
Fun fact: dogs CAN see the stars. However, since they most likely see them more blurry than humans do, so…
Rex superpowers: 5 (super-canine vision)
After saving people from a forest fire, he becomes a honorary ranger.
Historical significance: 0/10
Even if Rex DOES have some significance, this first issue is easily forgotten.
Silver Age-ness: 0/10
Shockingly grounded.
Does it stand the test of time? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This is SO outside of my expertise that I don’t feel comfortable calling it… it’s just interchangeable with almost any story with a dog protagonist.
I have to commend the Toth’s pencils, though. They’re truly wonderful.
How close is this to the modern character? 8/10
Rex, or at least his name, was most likely inspired by a dog actor, also named “Rex the Wonder Dog” in the 20s.
The fact that the first issue is so pedestrian stands out when you see the rest of Rex’s series, which lasted 46 issues and was almost entirely written by Kanigher and John Broome.
A lot of them are quite straightforward… well, as much as Kanigher can get with war stories; they still include some weirdness.
Over the course of the series Rex fights what you’d expect: a gorilla, a bull, a snake, more bears, a tiger, a mountain lion, a crocodile, a horse…
…and stuff you DON’T expect like Nazis, tanks, Japanese soldiers, time-traveling dinosaurs, a tornado, some Aztecs, rodents of unusual size, giant rabbits, giant frogs…
…*deep breath* an unfrozen mammoth, medieval knights, a whale, sharks, alien telepaths, and he also goes to space.
Towards the end of the series, he also gets a new scientist master who discovers shrinking technology BEFORE the Silver Age Atom AND who discovers a Microverse.
Additional powers include: super-speed, super-canine intelligence and super-equilibrium.
Rex superpowers: 8
I wasn’t kidding on Rex’s reflexes and precognition, by the way.
And he can also drive a car, climb a chimney from the inside, and put on a show for the troops.
Despite all of his talents, Rex couldn’t hold his series past 1959.
He would completely disappear until 1977, where on Justice League of America #144 he’s included in a very long list of cameos of minor heroes.
His following appearance was in DC Comics Presents #35 in 1981, where we learn that both Rex and Detective Chimp (who was the backup feature for most of the Rex series) drank from the fountain of youth.
Rex superpowers: 9 (immortality)
In 1990, Secret Origins vol2 #48 gives him a brand new origin story.
By completely ripping off Captain America’s.
He then shows up in Flash vol2 #47 in 1991, keeping the new origin and revealing he can now talk with his mind.
Rex superpowers: 10 (telepathy)
He even defeats Gorilla Grodd in this!!!
A feat that he repeats in issue #70.
This was ignored in 1997’s “Superboy and the Ravers” series, where Rex is a supporting character and is back to just being a smart dog.
In 2004’s “Day of Vengeance #4”, the fountain of youth is mentioned again and is directly linked to Rex and Detective Chimp’s telepathy.
This might mean that the Captain America origin has been retconned.
Speaking of Detective Chimp, who debuted in “Rex The Wonder Dog #4”: in the long run the HE was breakout star of Rex’s book.
He’s still around and surprisingly popular, showing up all over the place in DC Comics.
I don’t have much to say about him, but let me know if you’re interested in a proper review for him.
But thanks to the Detective Chimp connection, Rex has made a few appearances in the Shadowpact series where his old friend is a regular member of the cast.
Which means that Rex now hangs around DC’s magic users.
Then in a Starman/Congorilla team-up special (of all things!!!) in 2011, he lost the ability to speak. Or so he wants us to believe.
As minor as he is, Rex is STILL relevant enough to be mentioned in “New History of the DC Universe” in 2025.
It puts the Captain America origin back in continuity, making Rex the brother of Pooch, a dog in Kanigher’s WWII stories (who debuts in 1959, after Rex).
It seems like it would be easy enough to reconcile both versions of Rex’s origin (if they haven’t already) – the WW2 era experiment gives him his basic superpowers, then later he and Detective Chimp drink from the Fountain of Youth, which gives Rex immortality and his affinity for magic.
Making Rex and Pooch brothers is an unnecessary but fun little retcon – given that Pooch was also exceptionally gifted and on at least one occasion used a machine gun, it makes sense that both good boys came from the same canine genetic stock.
Didn’t the Golden Age Green Lantern have an intelligent dog that ended up taking over his series? For some reason, I thought they were one and the same dog.
That was Streak the Wonder Dog; I mention him in the GL review.
While he does pre-date Rex by 4 years, I don’t think Streak can be classified as a superhero.
If none of the latter day appearances are by British creators, Rex would seem overdue.
I don’t get it.
I’m not sure myself, but it could be a claim in jest that it is expected that minor DC characters will at some point be rediscovered and reinvented by British writers such as Alan Moore and Grant Morrison to great critical aclaim.
It _has_ happened before.
For some reason that makes me think of Tomahawk. Now, that would be quite the creative challenge. Maybe Little Boy Blue? Red, White and Blue? Could Sandra of the Secret Service be far behind?
“I don’t have much to say about him, but let me know if you’re interested in a proper review for him.”
I’m interested. 😉
Me too – his origin involves aliens!
The Super Friends Wonder Dog may be a nod for Rex.
Detective Chimp has certainly become important enough in recent years. I would welcome an article about him.
Rex the Wonder Dog probably takes some inspiration from famous dog actor Rin Tin Tin. He and other German Shepherds going by the same screen name starred in various feature movies and two radio shows in the 1930s, and for the first few months the first radio show was even named “The Wonder Dog”. According to the Wikipedia article, Rin Tin Tin even had unlikely adventures in radio, up to protecting astronauts from giant Martians.
The various Rin Tin Tins were probably the most famous animal actors before Lassie became more of a household name. There was a ressurgence of popularity in Rin Tin Tin in the mid-1950s, but that was after the debut of Rex.
The artist who drew the “Trail of the Flower of Evil” was Alex Toth, not “Thoth”.
Oops. Fixed, thanks!
Only a dog as good as Rex would rate an artist with as high a pedigree as Alex Toth. 🙂
Just a bit of trivia: Robert Kanigher wrote another canine Rex into Sensation Comics #53 a few years earlier. It is a different dog (brown fur instead of white) but it does tick many of the same boxes and may well be a precursor of sorts to the Wonder Dog.
This was an awesome review! I loved the running tally of all of Rex’s superpowers that he shouldn’t have. Nice stuff.
So, apparently Rex did not have a cameo in Crisis? That would seem to make him, Krypto and Hal Jordan the only three leads that seem to have not made it to that series.