Truly Gone & Forgotten : BANSHEE O'BRIEN (And Tommy)
Creator uncredited
Appears in All-Hero Comics vol.1 No.1 and Whiz Comics vol.1 No.46
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| Meet the hepcat Harry Potter. |
Chief among Fawcett’s semi-divine do-gooders – and the only member of this stylish set to star in his own book, as well as a lengthy run in Fawcett’s flagship title Whiz Comics – was Ibis the Invincible! Ancient adventurer Ibis is revived in the modern day alongside the equally eternal princess Taia, who acts as his partner-in-peril. The pair are committed to battling black magic in all of its forms, aided by Ibis’ incredible Ibistick, which can make even the most unlikely of the wondrous wizard’s wishes and commands come true!
With all of this power and authority behind Ibis, it comes as something of a surprise when he finds himself completely overpowered by a menace of the modern age – and gets shown up by a pint-size spellcaster!
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| She brushes her hair with a real je ne sais quoi… |
Confronted by a hideous hydra in All-Hero Comics vol.1 No.1 (March, 1943), Ibis finds that his wondrous weapon is powerless against the beast and its ability to induce madness upon those who set eyes upon it!
Faced with a flaccid Ibistick, the ancient wizard does what many older men do when their magic wands stop working — he puts the blame on modern society!
Rationalizing that his Ibistick is only effective against the evils of the ancient world, Ibis intuits that the hydra has sprouted from some sort of modern-day malaise. “The hydra is a thing newly born of the foulness and disease of modern great cities!” he announces, as though reading aloud from a typical Facebook account, “It feeds on the good in men’s souls … leaving only madness behind!”
Luckily for Ibis and the rest of town, salvation arrives wearing short-pants. Slipping past the police barrier is Banshee O’Brien, an adolescent Irish-immigrant enchanter with a Bowery Boy accent. “So you’re the hydra thing them papers was writing about,” he mouths off to the monster’s face, before scattering the monster with a shout of “You’re gonna regret this, pal … Abracadabra! Shomanx! Seethodargox! Heptomangox!”
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| Awwww Suffragette! |
A modern-day magician is exactly the advantage which Ibis is seeking, and Banshee is just the boy for the job! Excited at the opportunity to apprentice for the ancient Egyptian wizard, Banshee rattles off his own origin for Ibis and Taia’s benefit:
While relaxing at the beach, some five years previous, Banshee sees a troubled sailboat in the water. The ambitious eight year-old swims the remarkable distance to the tattered tub only to discover a middle-eastern mystic chained to the mast and dying of dehydration.
Although Banshee is able to steer the ship to shore, the strange visitor succumbs to what he describes as 180 days adrift at sea, the punishment of a jealous caliph. Before mortally expiring, however, he passes on a powerful symbol of gratitude to the young O’Brien. “Many moons ago,” he explains with his dying breaths, “I made a pact with the New Gods who taught me the New Magic!” Recovering a bound text from his robes, he adds “I give you the secrets of the new magic! You shall inherit them!” and then presumably perishes, off-panel.
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| That’s a terrible thing to have happen in the middle of a fella’s extra-special. |
Banshee is one of those rare characters in comics who comes armed with a double-barreled origin. In addition to his singular experience at the beach, it seems that Banshee himself also derives from a magical lineage. When the young O’Brien returns home from the shore to inform his aged mother of the day’s exciting new developments, she responds approvingly. “It’s right and fittin,” she chirps over a busy stewpot, “Ye’re descended from a long line of Irish mystics … hence your name!” That explanation may not quite line up, but it does go to show how moms are often ahead of the curve.
Later orphaned (off-panel, by unexplained circumstances), the ambitious adolescent opens a storefront sorcery shop as a “High Class Magician and Seer.” His operation largely consists of fixing sandlot baseball games and providing homework assistance with the aid of a crystal ball. It’s not elegant (or even ethical) but, as the young fellow himself finds an occasion to say: “A guy’s gotta live!”
Under Ibis’ guidance, the pint-size swami manages to put an end to the menace of the hideous hydra. Realizing that the burrowing beast is a creature of darkness, Banshee encourages Ibis to command the sun to rise several hours early, baffling day workers but also burning the hydra to ash. “Destroyed as the cleansing light of the good sun will destroy all evils of the world in time” announces Ibis, spuriously, and unconcerned with whatever cosmological chaos he has just unleashed. More to the point, however, Ibis and Banshee decide at this occasion to form a partnership, appearing again in Whiz Comics vol.1 No.46 (September, 1943) as Magic, Inc, whose first (and only) mission involves upending a spree of rampaging leprechauns, and concludes with Banshee in a dress.
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!
Tommy
Created by Bill Parker and Gus Ricca
Appears in Whiz Comics vol.1 No.7-11, 13, 16-18, 31
Banshee wasn’t the only orphaned boy taken on as a ward by Ibis and Taia, nor even the first!
That honor goes to Tommy (no last name), who first appeared in Whiz Comics vol.1 No.7 (August, 1940) and went on to appear another handful of times in subsequent issues. Unlike O’Brien, Tommy was the more conventional boy sidekick whose main contribution to the plot involved succumbing to the kind of menace that Ibis could heroically fix.
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| He is pretty mouthy. |
In fact, Ibis and Taia first encounter Tommy at a roadside carnival, where the young man has taken unadvisable employment as the terrified target of a drunken knife thrower!
Liberating the boy from his unhappy occupation, Ibis and Taia take him to Hollywood, where he ends up taken hostage by a power-hungry studio head who longs for the Ibistick itself. After that, Tommy is shuffled off to military school, which I’ve personally never taken as a good sign.
Even then, he still manages to find himself in frequent peril. At one point, he is tricked into believing that Ibis’ nemesis Trug is his true father, and on another occasion is turned into a tree.
Banshee has not popped his head above ground since DC acquired the Fawcett line of characters, regardless of the fully-coincidental but tempting reference to “New Gods” in the kid conjurer’s origin. Tommy has no such open invitation, but that’s probably for the best, the poor kid. He’d probably just get turned into a tree again.
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