I have to thank Humphrey Bogart for helping me find out about another working class superhero. Here's Bogey reading a copy of Blue Circle Comics #3, published in the Summer of 1944. It is cover dated September and has a great image of the mermaid superhero Aquamarie punching an octopus who looks like Hitler.
At the time, Bogey had just met Lauren Bacall on the set of To Have and Have Not and was starting his whirlwind affair with her. The movie came out in October 1944 and Bogey & Bacall were married in the Spring of '45. I'm assuming the photo was taken sometime around then, but I haven't been able to find a source or date for it.
It's a great comic, published by one of the smaller comics publishers of the time, and only lasting for a handful of issues. The main draw for me today is a strip by HC Kiefer featuring The Steel Fist, a crime-fighting factory worker . His secret origin is that Nazis try to blow up the steel plant where he works and when he gets in their way, they stick his hand in a vat of molten slag. The spirit of Justice appears (she looks like the Statue of Liberty) and magically makes his steel hand fully useable. Naturally, he puts on a dumb costume and goes around smashing spy rings and beating up saboteurs, and in this issue he gets a taxi driver side-kick who hits people with a thermos.
As I've discussed before, actual working class superheroes are pretty rare. Most superheroes are millionaires or royalty or work for the government. But not Tim Slade, the Steel Fist! Thanks Bogey!
Read the whole comic Bogart is reading here.
Read The Steel Fist's origin here.
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