Superman Analogue: Wonder Boy
36How close can a character get to the Man of Tomorrow without making you trapped in a Groundhog's Day scenario? Well, Case is here to talk about the Golden Age Wonder Boy, a character that was... well... super close to Superman.
Original Thread: https://twitter.com/CaseAiken/status/1077376694321926144
Original Text: Not going to lie, fam, today was rough. Normally I'd want to talk about an interesting reflection on heroic fantasy through the lens of Superman knock offs, but I'm exhausted so I'm just going to share the little I know about one of the more flagrant knock offs, Wonderboy.
Up front, I'm going to admit that I have never read any of his comics. I stumbled across the character when I was researching superheroes that had fallen into the public domain. Wonderboy caught my eye because he is so unapologetic in his emulation of Superman, but as a boy...
Now, this is a very old school golden age character, so I think this technically predates Superboy or Captain Marvel Jr., but his youth is the only original thing about him. Get this: He was the lone survivor of a dying world that came here on a meteor.
His powers were straight up just Superman's and his look was comically similar.
And I get it. This was an era where people were enraptured with the Superman idea and hadn't had a chance to think beyond the superficial components of the character when making their contributions to the burgeoning medium. It was like the 90s fixation on Wolverine knock offs.
So...yeah...I'm planning to spend more time on the various Superman analogues that I think really do something with the premise, but sometimes it's good to see just how shockingly similar a character can be.
I hope everyone is having a Happy Holiday and a wonderful season. See you tomorrow, when I can spend some time talking about a goddamn awesome Superman figure clad in Red and Green ;-)
Images: Y'all... I am afraid this might be a "Bob Kane" situation, made more complicated by pseudonyms being employed. Sources seem to list "Jerry Maxwell" as the creator, but also notes that was a pen name for Jerry Iger, but also those same sources credit Toni Blum and John Celardo as creators, and the run is so small but weirdly across multiple publishers that I have no idea who drew what, if it was even more than one person! I am so sorry. I am trying to credit everyone.
Music by Bret Eagleston - www.breteagleston.bandcamp.com
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