TRULY GONE AND FORGOTTEN : ZIPPO

The Human Segway of Justice! 

Police detective Joe Blair is also an inventor of some note and manages to create a fantastic set of high-speed carbon steel wheels and a belt engine which turns him into the superheroic equivalent of Mom’s Taxi – ZIPPO!

Here lies Zippo, The First Guy Ever Buried In A Monkey Suit Like That

Lacking any other superpowers, Zippo luckily and routinely finds himself in situations where going very fast is the only solution – there’s a few car chases, a concave wall-crawling situation here or there when centrifugal force is the only answer, and of course using his wheels to saw through safe walls and such. Apparently his wheels can spin fast enough to drill through steel; I’m fairly sure that would inevitably end with Zippo’s broken ankles dragging an unconscious body through the streets at top speeds.

Although I’m only speculating, Zippo may be one of the very few superheroes whose cowl-fin actually serves a legitimate purpose, but I’m assuming he uses it like a rudder. Whadda I know, I’m no scientist/cop/weird roller skating superhero, maybe it’s only there so he can pick up AM radio.

Illustration by a four-year old Eliot R Brown.

What’s for certain, though, is that Zippo’s necessarily crouched and ready-for-speed pose combined with the twin exhaust fumes constantly sputtering from his belt-engine make him seem like the only superhero in history whose power appears to have something to do with terrible farts.

The end of Zippo.