Top-Notch Comics #1 - pt. 1

We're now up to the third of the MLJ titles and still about two years away from their superhero zenith.

Here we get the first of their superheroes, The Wizard. He's not a magic-user wizard, but a hi-tech wizard. We'll observe him carefully and see what class he best fits shortly.

First a historical note -- there was no historical General Steven Whitney in the Revolutionary War. The actual Chief of the Naval Intelligence Service in late 1939 was Vice-Admiral John Godfrey, not Grover Whitney.

Telephone scrambling was already in development in 1939, but was not practical until 1943.

Somewhat famously, Pearl Harbor would be later attacked almost exactly as it's laid out in this issue.

The Wizard is one of the earliest characters we can pin down to an exact age, having been born in 1904. It was certainly not uncommon for comic book heroes to be grown men in their 30s.

The phone scrambling computer must be a trophy item, but we can't be as sure about this steel-burning chemical. Hi-tech potion -- or wrecking things power?

Woodrow Wilson is the first historically real character in this story, as well as this being the first time President Wilson had ever appeared in a comic book.

That's some mystery chemical -- even in 2017 we don't have a chemical that will burn 1,000 times hotter than acetylene.

In 1939, the land speed record was 369 MPH; it would not exceed 500 MPH until 1964.

The Wizard's invisible car, occurring in flashback, makes it chronologically older than the Ultra-Humanite's invisible car in Action Comics #13. An invisibility field generator that can fit in a car was a trophy item since first edition.

That The Wizard's prop plane can go from New York to Los Angeles in 2 hours and 45 minutes is suspicious -- even today the flight takes almost twice that long. Despite appearing to be a prop plane, it must be a jet.

Now here's where we start to get into guessing what class The Wizard is. First, he appears to be using magic -- maybe some powerful divination spell -- to figure out both what his objective is and where to find it. Then he dresses like a Mysteryman. Then he tears fish nets apart with his bare hands -- strong, but not quite wrecking things strong; a Mysteryman could accomplish this with a stunt.

"Jatsonian" must mean Japanese.

But, here, we see The Wizard using Leap, he leaps unharmed through gunfire as if buffed with Nigh-Invulnerable Skin, and it sure looks like he's using wrecking things on that submarine portal. Further, his high velocity propulsion pistol could be another hi-tech trophy item, or it could be flavor text for one of the Blast powers.

It's also curious just what a high velocity propulsion pistol is. Just about any gun works by propelling ammunition at high velocity. If there is no ammunition, it sounds like an air gun.

Here, again, is the Wizard wrecking his way through that door or using an actual vial of some sort of super-acid?

So, in just his first story, we've already seen what appears to be three different classes represented -- basically, all the core classes other than Fighter (unless the 3rd panel of that previous page counts as that too!).

I'm wondering if I should develop a sort of "bard" class for H&H...a jack of all trades class that can switch back and forth between classes, possibly from turn to turn...

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)