The Phantom Eagle

There have actually been two different Phantom Eagles, who lived in two different comic book universes. The tales of the first Phantom Eagle were published by Fawcett Comics in the 1940s. This was a teenager who flew into combat against the Axis while using a secret identity, as he was too young to otherwise serve.

In 1968, Marvel Comics created their own Phantom Eagle. Repeating the name as a nigh-forgotten character from the 40s may very well have been a coincidence. It is, after all, an inherently cool name.

Marvel's Phantom Eagle flew in the First World War. Created by Marvel's go-to guy for war stories--writer Gary Friedrich--and with art by Herb Trimpe, this particular Eagle debuted in Marvel Super-Heroes #16 (September 1968).

The Eagle is a first-generation American named Karl Kaufman, whose parents still live in Germany. Though Karl is patriotic and a skilled pilot, he consistently refuses to join the fledging Army Air Corps. He knows that the U.S. will eventually have to fight Germany and he doesn't want to invite reprisals against his parents. Publically maintaining a stuck-up "I won't fight unless you pay me a fortune" attitude, he privately arranges for a skilled mechanic to maintain a fighter plane at a secret airfield. He then adapts the masked identity of the Phantom Eagle.

He finds action sooner than he thinks when he's jumped by German Fokkers while on patrol over the east coast of the United States. He soon discovers that the Germans are attacking via a giant zeppelin that doubles as an aircraft carrier. They are pulling a Pearl Harbor a quarter-century before Pearl Harbor happens, with a plan to level the Wall Street area of New York and plunge the nation into chaos.

Karl lands and calls an old flying buddy (and boyhood friend) named Rex. Rex is in the military, though he's permanently grounded because of an injury. Altered to the attacking Germans, he asks Karl to lead his inexperienced pilots into combat. But Karl, still worried about his parents, declines. So Rex takes to the air himself.

Herb Trimpe's visual portrayal of the ensuing combat is magnificent. The idea of the giant zeppelin aircraft carrier is something that already runs on pure Rule of Cool. Trimpe adds to the Cool Factor with a generous use of half-page and full-page panels, giving the action a truly epic feel.

The American pilots manage to hold their own for a time, but in the end are being overwhelmed by the Germans. Karl, still in disguise as the Phantom Eagle, joins the fight, saves Rex and then comes up with the idea of landing on top of the zeppelin and planting a bomb he conveniently carries with him.

The zeppelin is destroyed, but Rex's plane is damaged and, though Karl desperately tries to save his friend, Rex plummets to his death. Karl is wracked with guilt, knowing that if he had agreed to lead the squadron, Rex wouldn't have been in the air at all.

The presense of a super-zeppelin and Trimpe's art work come together to make this an enormously entertaining tale. The Eagle's origin, though, does come across as a little contrived. Concern about his parents preventing him from enlisting is a great idea. In a Comic Book Universe, this is a legitmate reason for adopting a secret identity. But there really isn't any need to take on the persona of a greedy jerk. Why not just tell Rex and others why he can't enlist, then serve secretly as the Eagle anyways?  His guilt over Rex's death (an effective character motivation in of itself) would still have been there regardless of why he refused to lead the American squadron.

Well, the Eagle is a still a sound concept for a character. He never really caught on, though. He appeared in a time-travel story with the Hulk a few years later and popped up in a few other places, but he's pretty much disappeared into Comic Book Limbo after that. That's too bad. Though his origin is arguably flawed in terms of good storytelling, the world can never have enough heroes who fly World War I biplanes and fight zeppelins. That sort of thing never gets old.

Next week, we'll stick around in the Marvel Universe as Captain America fights a former advertising executive turned super villain.