Steve Rude delivers a nicely designed splash page for the one-shot Dollar Bill comic from the Before Watchmen series. Len Wein wrote the issue, and Steve penciled, inked and hand-lettered the entire issue himself, a definite rarity. It’s one of the better-looking Before Watchmen comics.
As Watchmen fans know, Dollar Bill is a member of the Golden Age Minutemen — tragically gunned down when his cape gets caught in a revolving door, as described/depicted in the comic book, film and television series.
His role in the series is pretty much limited to that one tragic moment, so this one-shot gives the creative team a nearly blank slate to flesh out his character.
Definitely a unique creation, he is sponsored and employed by a bank as an actor, and pressured by his employer to work with the Minutemen as an actual costumed crimefighter. Any derivation from an existing character would be in design only — and his costume is in fact similar to Archie’s (MLJ’s) Golden Age Captain Flag.
And Flag did reappear in the Archie superhero revival (Mighty Crusaders #4 and #5) in the 1960s, so Moore would have definitely seen him since he has already discussed his interest in those characters.
Not that aren’t enough patriotic-themed red and blue costumed superheroes to go around.
The published splash page flanked by the Rude painted cover and by a variant cover by the late, great Darwyn Cooke.
Captain Flag in three different incarnations: Golden Age introduction, Silver Age introduction, and in an ironic Modern Age introduction he stands front and center. Why ironic you ask? This 1989 version of the MLJ/Archie superheroes, despite the ad, never actually appeared. Archie’s management got cold feet over the potential mature themes conflicting with the company’s wholesome image and pulled the plug. .
Continuing our series on the roots of the Watchmen characters.
Alan Moore, on his original idea for Watchmen:
“I wanted more average super-heroes, like the Mighty Crusaders line … [the] original idea had started off with the dead body of the Shield being pulled out of a river somewhere.”
Although the Watchmen eventually morphed out of Charlton heroes instead, elements of the Crusaders and the other MLJ/Archie Superheroes found their way into Watchmen lore. Perhaps most notable is the Hangman, a Golden age Archie character who along with Black Hood, becomes the obvious inspiration for Hooded Justice, a member of the original Golden Age Minutemen in the Watchmen series. (And has a critical role in the Watchmen HBO show.)
Also notable is the Mothman, an obvious derivation of Archie’s (Simon and Kirby’s) Fly / Flyman.
The original MLJ superheroes disappeared into the mists after World War 2, which didn’t impact Archie financially as the title character and his teenage friends transformed the company, including the published actual name which changed from MLJ to Archie in 1946.
But Archie’s management seeing the giant superhero success down the road at DC and Marvel took another stab starting in 1959 with the Shield and the Fly. Ultimately, many of the golden age characters reappeared, forming a team, the Mighty Crusaders.
Superhero artist Mike Sekowsky was first a Timely (nee Marvel) staffer and then a long-time DC mainstay. He is perhaps best known for his work on Justice League of America, where he could draw almost any character.
So he is well suited to tackle the Mighty Crusaders, a team-up book developed to compete with Justice League and other superhero team books of the day.
But Jerry Siegel’s (yep, Superman’s creator) writing style had most definitely not kept up with the style of the day, and the book was cancelled after seven issues. In fact, the entire Archie superhero experiment fizzled out by late 1967.
But… not before they managed to bring together nearly all the dusty MLJ heroes and put them in one comic book. Issue #4 of Mighty Crusaders, is a goofy favorite, entitled “Too Many Heroes.”
Too many, perhaps, but certainly enough to reach into for character ideas twenty years later.
Issue #4 of the Mighty Crusaders is a… gas. Pretty much every MLJ/Archie hero (as seen twenty years later in this house ad) mysteriously reappears to apply for membership into the Crusaders. The Crusaders themselves disappear after a short-lived series in 1966, but re-emerge multiple times starting in the 80s.
The classic Minutemen team shot as drawn by Dave Gibbons and recreated by the late Darwyn Cooke 25 years later, and the nearly identical PR photos from the 2009 film and 2019 television series.
Final Scorecard — Minutemen and their original counterparts:
Silhouette = Completely unique. (Maybe an amalgam of Black Canary, Black Cat and a female version of the Fox if you want to stretch out the derivations…)
Mothman = Flyman
Dollar Bill = Captain Flag
Nite Owl 1 = Blue Beetle 1 (Dan Garrett)
Captain Metropolis = Shield (with some Steel Sterling thrown in)
Silk Spectre 1 = Phantom Lady (with some Black Canary thrown in)
Hooded Justice = Hangman (with some Black Hood thrown in)
Comedian = Peacemaker (with some Shield thrown in)
