TRULY GONE AND FORGOTTEN : YANK AND DOODLE

This happen next season on Downton Abbey. Spoilers.

Among the roster of patriotic avengers who've adorned comics since the inception of the super-hero, surely there have never been two more obnoxious dicks than Yank and Doodle, the chest-bumping bro-hams of the spandex circle. Their modern-day equivalents would almost certainly use homophobic slurs over Xbox Live and reek of Axe.

The wartime teenaged duo was, when unmasked, the wealthy and athletic twins Rick and Dick Walters – yes, Rick and Dick, I do not know how that works since they’re both short for “Richard”. Perhaps they’re Rickard and Richard, or Ricardo and Richard, or Dichard and Richard, or Richard 1 and Richard 2, or some other indicator of remarkably lazy parentage. Here’s another; while other superheroes hid their alter-ego’s derring-do behind acts of timidity, meek manners and physical awkwardness, such was not a reality for young athletes Rick and Dick – so they hid behind a disguise of being horrible entitled jackasses.

Our heroes.

When not shoving around youngsters at summer camp, the unaccountably wealthy jagoffs were busy tormenting their butler and his innocent son. In this typical adventure, for instance, Rick and Dick (who am I kidding, they’re both dicks) unleash abuse both verbal and physical in nature upon their aged butler, secure in the knowledge that he’s bound by threat of reprisal to accept their beating, mockery an belittling willingly, if begrudgingly. But wait, they've abused the butler so badly that he’s sent his own son away, because they've also been abusing him! Then they put on costumes and fight “bad guys”, which by all rights should be a mirror.

Yank and Doodle were most likely emotionally stunted owing to the trauma of losing their mother in childbirth, and emboldened by the fact that they somehow developed unbeatable super-strength when in one another’s presence. Keep in mind that they never restricted the use of their super-strength to their costumed identities – they happily used it to bolster their own athletic careers. Born on third and swearing they hit a triple, it’s Yank and Doodle!

A fine cherry on top of their loathsome sundae, Yank and Doodle also have the honor of inadvertently naming the once-and-only assemblage of Prize Comics heroes. In Prize Comics #24, Yank and Doodle joined sub-zero superhero Doctor Frost, nighttime avenger Black Owl, comedic characters The General and The Corporal and mystic Green Lama in battling the Frankenstein Monster, a menace (up to that point) who’d had his own feature in the book for some time. Having defeated the monsters, Doodle dubs the group “I guess we’re just … an invincible bunch of guys!” It looks terrific on the letterhead.

They weren't.