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| After Paul Gustavson's last two embarrassingly racist outings on Quicksilver I was quite relieved when Fred Guardineer took over the character, but after a few issues he's trying to turn the speedster into the Spirit - he gets a hideout under a cemetery, an ethnic kid companion, and a villainess who falls in love with him and pretends to shoot him so he can escape. Do the words "Too bad you've got a criminal mind" ring any bells? I hope no-one told Will Eisner! ;-) |
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| Quicksliver was a character that became a property of DC but by that time, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had snapped up the name. [They were very good at that]. The character, in basically the same costume, turned up in the 80s as Max Mercury a mentor to the teenager Impulse. Those were good comics. |
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| Sally O'Neil was good - Al Bryant's art spot-on for the time. |
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| I'd never come across Max Mercury tho' it's nice to see the character back in his "speedster" role after Guardineer turned him into a detective. I keep on seeing "Max" in brackets after Quicksilver's name on the Grand Comics Database, tho' I've never seen any suggestion in the strips that he had another name or a secret identity of any kind. Anyone care to solve that mystery?
Yes, Marvel was good at picking up names, I see CB+ features a Thor, at least one Dr. Strange, and several Dr. Dooms, plus somewhere in the Quarterly I'm pretty sure I saw Uncle Sam facing down an army of Ant-Men! |
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| Max Mercury was a name invented in the '90s, when the character was brought back in the Return Of Barry Allen storyline in the Flash #73-79, since Marvel had the more famous Quicksilver.
(Did Quicksilver appear in All-Star Squadron?) |
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| You are correct, 'Impulse #1 was April 1995. My bad.
Wikipedia gives Max Mercury's first appearance as May 1993 in Flash Vol #2 # 76.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Mercury
[He first appeared in Quality's National Comics #5, cover dated November 1940, as Quicksilver.[1] Comics historian Don Markstein calls Quicksilver "probably the first imitator of the Flash's super-speed schtick.[2]
Almost nothing was revealed about that character except that he possessed super-speed. On the identity 'Max' Wikipedia quotes [Koolman, Mike; Amash, Jim (2011). The Quality Companion. TwoMorrows Publishing. pp. 170–174] but incorrectly. This reference deals with Quality and also with later DC interpretations and revisions of the Quality characters. Koolman dates the name Max from the DC era. More interestingly, he credits the art to Nick Cardy [Viscardi] in nearly all the Quality Quicksilver stories. Some later ones are signed. This makes sense to me. |
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| Quicksilver was indeed very probably the first Flash imitator, just beating Johnny Quick in More Fun Comics by less than a year.
And again, there is a modern version of Johnny with Jesse Quick having the super speed formula.
There is a fan film of Jesse Quick on youtube:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eCv9wtRXqs |
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| @K1ngcat - The biggest problem is that he’s disorganized with his portrayals. Along with Kid Patrol, they seem to try to take after exaggerated, caricature-based comedy like the Three Stooges, the Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, and the Little Rascals, but those usually displayed caricature-based characters all across the board, including the white people being considerably funny and dumb. And because Gustavson made the black character very caricatured, but leaving Quicksilver as relatively normal-looking, it will inevitably draw accusations that Gustavson is being selective and mocking black people as if he has some racist-based grudge against them. That’s not to excuse any of this, but goes to show how differently the world has gone about presenting characters in caricature-based comedy media in more recent times, like with the Simpsons. |
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| Additional Information |
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| Publication | March 1943 | Price: 0.10 USD | Pages: 1 | Frequency: monthly |
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| Content | Genre: Superhero | Characters: Uncle Sam; Buddy Smith |
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| Comic Story | The Jail Bird (11 pages) |
| Content | Genre: Superhero | Characters: Uncle Sam; Buddy [Buddy Smith] |
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| Content | Genre: Humor |
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| Comic Story | Mass Murder! (8 pages) |
| Content | Genre: Detective-mystery | Characters: Sally O'Neil |
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| Content | Genre: Humor |
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| Synopsis | The Unknown succeeds in infiltrating the concentration camp at Dachau and freeing a train full of prisoners. |
| Content | Genre: War | Characters: The Unknown |
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| Comic Story | The Swami (5 pages) |
| Content | Genre: Sports | Characters: Kid Dixon [Danny Dixon] |
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| Comic Story | File No. 4: Case of the Cantow Poppy (9 pages) |
| Synopsis | In China, Captain Leash meets with undercover agent QX-4, a counterspy used to foil the Japanese and who sacrificed her life in taking them all out. |
| Content | Genre: Spy | Characters: G-2 [Captain Don Leash]; Cantow Poppy [Jean Carrol; aka QX-4] (counter spy, death); the Japanese (villains, all die) |
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| Content | Genre: Humor | Characters: Windy Breeze; Unk |
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| Synopsis | Quicksilver meets his romantic match in femme fatale Idaho, whose gang successfully captures him. She is given the "honor" of killing him, but she faked her shot and the gang instead killed her! |
| Content | Genre: Superhero | Characters: Quicksilver [Max]; Hoo Mee; Idaho [Baroness De Bofors] (villain, death) |
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| Content | Genre: Humor | Characters: Cyclone Cupid |
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| Text Story | Retribution! (2 pages) |
| Credits | Letters: typeset |
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| Comic Story | Flying Tiger (6 pages) |
| Content | Genre: Adventure; Humor; Children | Characters: Kid Patrol [Sunshine; Suzy; Teddy; Porky] |
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| Content | Genre: War | Characters: Lt. Commander Blake |
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| The data in the additional content section is courtesy of the Grand Comics Database under a
Creative Commons Attribution License.
More details about this comic may be available in their page here |
