Today, we discover who the first teen superhero was in comic book history.
In "When We First Met", we spotlight the various characters, phrases, objects or events that eventually became notable parts of comic lore, like the first time someone said, "Avengers Assemble!" or the first appearance of Batman's giant penny or the first appearance of Alfred Pennyworth or the first time Spider-Man's face was shown half-Spidey/half-Peter. Stuff like that.
My buddy Fraser Sherman wrote to me about a question that he had when talking about Captain America's age in a recent blog post. His question sent me on a brief tangent about how Cap's age and general experience as a superhero never made any sense in the Silver Age Avengers comic books.
But central to Fraser's original question was, "Was Steve Rogers a teenager when he became Captain America?"
As I noted in the earlier piece, it is next to impossible to know for sure how old that Joe Simon and Jack Kirby intended for Steve Rogers to be in Captain America Comics #1 when he first transforms into the Super Solider known as Captain America...
That said, while the comic book is quiet on exactly how old Steve Rogers is, he sure as heck looks like a teenager, doesn't he? 18 would be when you could enlist in the Army, so I think 19 would be a very reasonable age for him to be when he gained his powers. Fraser noted to me that Steve Englehart later specifically established that Steve was 19. So therefore, Captain America would technically be a teenager superhero, right?
And that's really what Fraser wanted to know. If we were to assume that Captain America was, in fact, a teenaged superhero, would he be the FIRST teenaged superhero that wasn't a sidekick like Robin the Boy Wonder? Great question, Fraser, so let's take a look!
WAS NAMOR THE FIRST TEEN SUPERHERO?
As Fraser, of course, knows, almost every early superhero was the same vague late 20s age that most comic STRIP heroes were also at. Everyone was basically late 20s, old enough to be a clear adult but young enough to be not OLD old. Basically the prime years of a professional baseball player was the prime year for a superhero. That 27-29 time frame seemed to be the case for Superman, Batman and more.
The first superhero who could realistically be considered a teenager was also not introduced AS a superhero. In 1939's Marvel Comics #1, Bill Everett introduced us to Namor the Sub-Mariner as an underwater being who just slaughters a bunch of human sailors. When Namor asks his mother why their people all hate the humans, she tells a story about falling in love with a human in 1920...
She then mentions that it has taken them 20 years to get ready to take on the humanrace, which suggests that the year is 1940 and not 1939. So what is Namor's age? Is he 19 or is it later in 1940 and thus he is 20?
I think it's tricky one way or the other (although obviously you would have to think that 19 is the more likely choice), made even trickier by the fact that obviously as he is first shown, Namor sure wasn't a superHERO. Dude just murders a bunch of innocent divers as part of his war on mankind. Eventually, though, Namor becomes a hero, but it wasn't really evident early on (anti-hero at BEST), so maybe he doesn't apply for THAT reason?
Later in 1939, Toni Blum and her father, Alex Blum, gave us the superhero known as Samson, who was basically the Biblical Samson...
Samson soon got his own comic and the origin was written by the younger Blum with artist Louis Cazeneuve and we see that Samson's adventures start as soon as he graduates college...
Presumably that makes him 21/22 years old, but hey, maybe he graduated early!
Jay Garrick debuted a month or so later (the last couple months of 1939 and the first few months of 1940 saw a deluge of new superheroes) in Flash Comics #1 by Gardner Fox and Harry Lampert and Jay Garrick gains his powers through both an insane chain of events (essentially just inhaling vapor after taking a cigarette break in the middle of all of his chemicals!)...
Jay has been working on the project for at least three years, though, making him a college junior at best, and thus almost assuredly 20 or 21 years old. So he's out.
I have no idea what you do with Billy Batson/Captain Marvel, who debuted together in Whiz Comics #2 (by Bill Parker and C.C. Beck). Is Billy even a teenager?
And while Billy is clearly the main character of the Captain Marvel stories, he isn't technically Captain Marvel, right?
So I think that Billy does not count as a teen superhero even if he were, in fact, a teen (and I'm unsure on that point, as well).
Ken Fitch and Bernard Baily are vague as to how old Rex Tyler is when he became Hourman in Adventure Comics #48, just that he's a "young chemist," but I imagine the implication is that he's older than 20...
WHAT MARVEL SUPERHERO WAS THE CLEAR ANSWER AS TO THE FIRST TEEN SUPERHERO?
So the real answer is a whole OTHER Simon and Kirby creation, Marvel Boy, who debuted in Daring Mystery Comics #6 in the spring of 1940. Marvel Boy was a child born with the soul of Hercules and on his 14th birthday...
He learns the truth and learns that he really is Marvel Boy and he is on Earth to fight crime and Nazis...
He even has a special costume for the occasion...
So yeah, at 14 years old, it is clear that Marvel Boy was the first non-sidekick teenaged superhero. So even if Cap counts as a teenager, he was beaten to the gun by almost a full year!
Thanks for the question, Fraser! If anyone else wants to know about an interesting comic book first, just drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!