For the longest time, I thought this picture showed Fire-Eater spitting flames at cops. |
Say what you will about combustible crimefighter Fire-Eater,
but he does exactly what’s advertised on the tin. Who eats fire? Fire-Eater
eats fire! Thank you for attending my TED Talk, show’s over, go home.
A good capsule? That shit is GREAT! |
The bare-chested, bare-legged Fire-Eater – secretly Mike
O’Malley, “a lusty Yankee whose amazing conquest of flames keeps audiences
gasping … and criminals cringing at his name” – is part of a proud legacy of
sideshow and theatre performers who take their specialized skills on the road
in order to battle bad guys. For O’Malley’s part, his “record-breaking” antics
can only be extrapolated by the readers from how he uses his powers in his
battle against crime. Otherwise, all we ever see him do on a stage is leave it.
In action, however, Fire-Eater appears to be in possession
of special capsules – either his own invention or someone else’s, it’s left
unexplained – which grant him the ability to expulse fire from his mouth at
sufficient temperatures to melt steel, burn wood, and disintegrate bullets in
mid-air. In the course of his two adventures in Choice Comics, O’Malley’s
butane breath burns through a lock, detonates a can of naphtha from a distance
of forty feet, turns an axe handle to cinders, slags a periscope, and puts an
end to a mess of Nazi saboteurs by igniting the grenades they carry in their
hands. At no point does he simply burn a foe to death, but he sure makes it a
point to blow on things that will kill them in the long run.
"His work will look great on the walls of my 1980s nail salon!" |
The secret of O’Malley’s capsules are briefly touched upon
in a single caption – they’re sodium! This welcomes Fire-Eater into another
crimefighter fraternity – the masked heroes whose science-based powers would
surely kill them in agony on first use.
Whether through familiarity or some other, unspoken
scientific advancement, Fire-Eater is also practically immune to flame and
great heat. There’s no explanation given as to how he keeps his shirtless
collar affixed to his neck at all times, but that was the number one question
plaguing my mind.
Fire-Eater doesn’t fight crime alone, assisted by his best
girl Louise Peters, self-described “head nurse at state hospital.” Which is a
job title that certainly doesn’t sound made up. I mean, if she weren’t actually
head nurse at “state hospital,” why would she always be running around in a
nurse’s uniform? QED, gentlemen, QED.
The creative team on Fire-Eater is largely unknown (although
pencils are generally attributed to Art Saaf), but that’s beside the
point. The final group to which
Fire-Eater belongs is that of superheroes whose creators had tongues firmly
planted in cheek when choosing their pen names; Fire-Eater was the product of
“Wood Byrns.” I hope Wood hangs out with the Red Bee’s “B.H.Apiary” some time,
I bet they’d get on like a house afire.
"And also we're dying from the incredible heat but it seemed rude to mention that!" |
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