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| Riding on the shoulders of a bronze man, there's no greater way to travel. |
Major Randy Ronald, American Ace, endures more misfortune than a man with a name like the world’s most hilarious porn star deserves. Shot down over Germany during World War II and presumed dead, the Major was actually captured by those nasty Nazis and made the victim of disfiguring torture! Oooohhhh, those rotten Krauts! ::shakes fist::
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| Well, up yours too, kid. |
Returning to America incognito, Randy Ronald surreptitiously checks in on the surviving members of his squadron, trusting that they’d not recognize his recently mutilated features or the fact that his name sounds like a character in a particularly salty Match Game question. Naturally, his former compatriots – staunch bastions of American values, the lot of them – are under assault by fifth columnists and homegrown criminals. Luckily for his former bunkmates, Major Randy Ronald also dons a lifelike bronze mask, jodhpurs and a red Henley shirt to become The Bronze Man, the only hero whose face is the heaviest part of his costume.
Although not boasting any particular superpowers at first, the Bronze Man is nonetheless capable of astounding feats of physicality, including struggling up the edge of a raging waterfall, leaping from second-story windows and brushing off a high-speed impact from an onrushing sedan. In order to save his former wingman from a hidden bomb, the Bronze Man easily tucks a lifesize bronze likeness of his alter ego –Randy Ronald is a popular guy, evidently – under one arm and leaps with it into a nearby river. In his second appearance, he apparently picks up the power of flight and enough super-human strength to lift the Liberty Bell with one hand, although it almost seems unnecessary at this point. I mean, the guy swam up a waterfall, now he’s gotta top that?
The Bronze Man never quite catches up with the entirety of his old gang, since he only manages to eke out a pair of appearances before he fades away. More impressively, though, is that he manages to keep his true features hidden from the reader through the clever techniques of keeping his back to the audience and only turning around when something blocked the view at face height.
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| "...obscured by a windowframe!" |
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3 comments:
Wow! Yet another character I never even heard of---you are seriously fucking with my self-esteem. I feel like a circus strongman passing through Metropolis in 1938. As for the Bronze Man, he seems to have done pretty well for himself after moving next door to Tim Allen.
Oooooh, Doc Savage is about the last specifically-bred-for-genetic-superiority ubermensch you want to piss off this side of Frank Miller's Batman, Randy. But you probably found that out pretty quickly.
Even when I was a wee child, and would have thought nothing of Hawkman climbing up the side of a giant beanstalk alongside the rest of the Super Friends, I still would have been pissed about a super hero who gave no explanation for his super powers. How are you supposed to get super powers yourself without examples to follow? If getting tortured by Nazis is enough, then just say so ... though I might have a couple of follow-up questions ...
On a semi-related note, apparently they're remaking The Blob again, and this time they're giving it an origin story. I'm betting it got bitten by a radioactive blob, thus gaining the proportional strength and speed of a blob.
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