Doc Strong

Origin

It’s 2041 and the war that started in Europe in 1939 has never ended, civilization has been reduced to just a small group of people who seem to be doomed to be overrun and destroyed by a barbaric Mongolian horde lead by Lord High Kahn of the Entire Earth, Gustave Ritter.

Civilization’s last hope is Jack “Doc” Strong who has gathered the last few cultured people including atomic chemist Alice Rayburn, electrical engineer Professor Harrison, super-strong Swede Sampson Smith, Dr. Henry Davidge MD, mechanical engineer Walter Parker, coward and sometimes traitor geologist Edward Stuyvesant and comedy relief stogy chomping con-man Stinky and taken them to an island in the Pacific which they name the Isle of Right.

There they comprise the last best hope to save civilization, their greatest aid being the vast intelligence of the seemingly superhuman Doc Strong and his greatest invention the Shadow Gun which has the power to make shadows solid holding those touching them immobile until Doc reverses the polarity of the gun “disintegrating the shadow.”

Creators

Created by artist Sam Cooper, and who knows what writer, this forgotten comic character, that seems to be a mix of Doc Savage and Buck Rogers is, by modern standards, one the more offensively racist strips of the Golden-Age, and that’s saying something.

Add to all that mix the Shadow Gun, giant robots and even Martians and this is one odd-ball Golden-Age feature.