Uh… the “All Winners Squad?”
Ahhh the All Winners were a terribly named squad, consisting of Captain America, teen bullet magnet Bucky, the original Human Torch & his cub scout Toro, angry tuna boy the Sub-Mariner, unstable bladdered but really fast the Whizzer, stock female Miss America, sex bomb of the 1940s the Blonde Phantom, and the non-superpowered vigilante The Angel.
Now the Angel is the interesting one for me. All these other folks seem to have some kind of superpower, sidekick job, or eye candy value. But instead of those “contributions” to the team, the Angel brings a lightweight name sure to strike fear into the hearts of maybe Corey Feldman at best, and a pencil thin moustache that would only inspire Jimmy Buffet.
Wow, this guy’s costume must have been stitched together from rejected Superman pajamas prototypes on the floor of DC’s marketing department.
I will say that the recent Marvels Project did a great job at reintroducing some relevance into this suave debonair bored doctor with pistolas, and I am curious to see if they inject any references to the Angel in the upcoming Captain America movie*. If you have not read the Marvels Project and would like a noir-tinged comic retelling of the original Marvel heroes, I highly recommend it. Issues are still easy to come by and a collected edition is also available.
(*Marvel loves Easter Eggs… here’s some homework: watch Iron Man 2, and check out the name of the other race car drivers, especially one of the Brits…)
One of the toughest things about collecting Golden Age comics is that these types of crazy pants vigilante superheroes like the Angel make for some of the most charming reading and most exciting collecting. The Angel appeared in all kinds of titles from the All Winners to Sub Mariner and others under the Timely banner, many of which are priced above my current investing scenario, but then you find something really unique at an affordable price:
This is the Timely Comics trademark application for the Angel, a small little plank in the foundation of comics history, but went for under $1000 at auction recently. Wow.
So maybe the lesson here is to think of these older heroes as the Expos of the world. Sure, they have terrible names, horrible uniforms, bad facial hair, and are no longer in play, but dang it, nothing’s cooler than having the confidence to rock the throwback once in a while.
See what I did there? Congrats to the Hawk on being inducted finally into the Hall of Fame… you’re still a Super Hero.
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