Some Familiar Names That Were Nedor Comics Superheroes In The Golden Age

CBR

By Brian Cronin

Published May 13, 2020

Some of the Nedor Publishing superheroes from the Golden Age had some familiar names, like Doctor Strange and Wonder Man!

Knowledge Waits is a feature where I just share some bit of comic book history that interests me.

Recently, I did a collection of amazing Alex Schomburg covers and reader Gavin J. wrote in about one specific comic book that I shared that Schomburg did for Nestor Publishing (which put out comic books under different company names, including Standard Comics)

Gavin wanted to know what the deal was with Doc Strange and whether there were other examples of characters who had names that are now more familiar for other characters. Yep, and in fact, there are so many examples that I'm going to stick with just Nedor Publishing examples.

We'll kick off with the guy Gavin was particularly interested in, Richard E. Hughes and Alexander Kostuk's Doctor Strange, who they introduced in late 1939's Thrilling Comics #1. Superheroes were still so much in their infancy that a lot of Standard Comics/Nedor Publishing's early superheroes dressed more like pulp heroes, with Doctor Strange (who later took on the more pulp-y name, Doc Strange, a year into his comic book career)...

Strange then used a formula to give himself powers.

Amusingly enough, about a year after Doctor Strange debuted in Thrilling Comics, National Comics introduced Doctor Hugo Strange as a Batman villain in Detective Comics #36 (I've seen a number of references suggesting that the Nedor Doctor Strange was ALSO Hugo Strange, but I haven't seen that in a comic, at least not before the Batman villain debuted)...

And, of course, we all know the most famous Doctor Strange...

(And if you guessed that I really wanted to make a joke showing the obscure Iron Man villain, Doctor Strange, then you know me too well)

In Startling Comics #1, Leonard Sansone introduced Mystico, the Wonder Man...

And what's funny, Mystico died and came back to life, just like Marvel's Wonder Man!

Richard E. Hughes and Al Camy introduced the Nazi-killing superhero, The Grim Reaper, in Fighting Yank #7...

And Wonder Man's brother then became the villain known as the Grim Reaper...

Henry Kiefer introduced Oracle in Startling Comics #20, a non-costumed hero who gained the ability to see the future...

By the end of the story, though, he had his own superhero name...

DC, of course, later used the name for their computer hacking hero, Oracle...

Finally, this one just amused the heck out of me. In Startling Comics #3, Max Plaisted introduced the time-traveling hero, Ace Buckley, and his traveling companion...Toni Stark!