Tex Thomson

History

Harry “Tex” Thompson was a blonde-haired boy who struck it rich in the oil fields of Texas. Instead of a future as a rich oil baron, Thomson decided to seek a more adventurous lifestyle and traveled the world. During his travels, he often found himself solving mysteries. His adventures were usually accompanied by Gargantua T. Potts and Bob Daley. Eventually, Thomson and his friend Bob Daley worked in a major American city, on the staff of Special Prosecutor Mahoney, helping him fight organized crime.

Thomson later resigned this job to undertake a special war relief mission, and left for abroad on the S.S. Angelus, a mercy ship carrying supplies for the needy. He caught a saboteur working for a foreign power on board, but was unable to prevent the ship from being blown up. Thomson was believed dead. In actuality, he was found, more dead than alive, by a Portuguese fishing boat crew. Thomson vowed to wage a one-war against enemy spies, saboteurs, and fifth columnists. Donning a patriotic costume and dying his hair black, Thomson assumed the masked identity of Mister America. It wasn’t long before he captured Pratt, the leader of the saboteurs responsible for the Angelus’ destruction.

Tex Thomson and his friend Bob Daley discovered a place known as Sealed City, and met a villainous man there known as the Gorrah, who claimed to be the ruler of the city. Thomson and Daley crossed paths with the Gorrah several times. They defeated him the second time they met, prompting the one-eyed man to fake his own death. When Thomson became Mr. America, he fought the Gorrah again. Eventually the villain was caught in an explosion of one of his own grenades, and this time, he was truly dead.

As Mister America, Thomson saw himself fighting for the spirit of America. He whistled “Yankee Doodle” and left behind red, white and blue striped feathers as his trademarks. His friend, Bob Daley, teamed up with him as the comical costumed crimefighter Fatman. Mister America went on to join the wartime All-Star Squadron like many masked heroes of that era.

Thomson’s life became forever changed when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called upon him to undergo intensive training to become a special commando and secret agent behind enemy lines. For this special mission, President FDR renamed Mister America, “Americommando.” The Americommando was assigned to masquerade as Nazi officer, Herr Otto Riker. His mission was to learn all he could about Nazi aims and information, sabotage Axis projects and aid Axis victims. His most frequent adversaries during this time were Mister Ito, a German/Japanese diminutive assassin, and The Queen Bee. Thomson worked for the Americans for several years behind enemy lines. His close confidant, Fatman, was left behind to continue the fight on American soil. Americommando operated successfully in both Europe and the Pacific during the duration of the war.

In Thomson’s last appearance as The Americommando, he encountered Terry Sloan, Mr. Terrific during the bombing of Dresden, and the two teamed up to save innocent German civilian lives. After Thomson revealed to Mr. Terrific that there were no munitions factories in Germany for the Allies to bomb, Thomson rushed into a burning building to save a small girl. The building collapsed around him and he was never seen again.

Apparentely, Thomson once again escaped death. Is suspect then he set-up an agency called Hero Hotline under the guise of The Coordinator. As the Coordinator, Thomson only communicated with the agency as a shadowy figure on a communication screen. The agency was set up to take on smaller missions from the common man and occasionally fought an odd super-villain or two. These were some very odd super-villains indeed.

Present day, the first Mr. America is presumably deceased. How and if he died is still unknown.

The chronological naming of Harold “Tex” Thompson.

• Harold “Tex” Thomson: Action Comics #1 – #40.
• Harold “Tex” Thompson: Action Comics #41 – #74.
• Tex Thomson: Action Comics #1 – #32.
• Mr. America: Action Comics #33 – #52.
• Americommando: Action Comics #53 – #74.

However, several others people held the name of Mr. America, among them:

• The vigilante, known later as Bloodtype, from Vanity City.
• Trey Thompson, ex-FBI agent and grandson of Tex.
• Jeffrey Graves, also former FBI agent and previous partner of Trey.
• Karnevil infiltrated the JSA under the guise of All American Kid, suppously a sidekick to Tex Thompson, but such affirmations were false.

The “Americommando” moniker is another history.

Skills and Abilities

Mister America was a skilled hand-to-hand combatant with brilliant detective skills. He was excellent in the use of a whip, which he used as his primary weapon in crimefighting. At one point he had a magical cape that could somehow fly just by standing on it as if it were a flying carpet.

As Americommando, Thomson was given intensive training in every area of military operations, which included espionage, marksmanship, piloting an aircraft, and weightlifting. He was also a skilled actor, enabling him to pose as a Nazi officer.

Other Versions

JSA: The Golden Age

Tex Thompson played a central role in the The Golden Age mini-series. In this story, he was a crime-fighter who disappeared from the American eye in 1942 to fight the Nazi threat from within. He killed both the German superhero Parsifal and Adolf Hitler himself. He returned a hero and became a senator with presidential aspirations. He organized a program to defend the U.S. from the Soviet menace with a new group of superheroes. He rallied The Atom, Robotman, and Daniel Dunbar to his cause. He used a group of scientists to transform Dunbar into Dynaman, “a super-hero for the new age.” The heroes of the story then discovered that Tex Thompson had actually been killed in the war, and that the man who returned was really the Ultra-Humanite. The Ultra-Humanite had told Hitler that Thompson was a spy, so they killed Thompson and put Ultra’s brain into his body. The experiment which created Dynaman was in reality the Humanite putting Hitler’s brain into Dunbar’s body. The Ultra-Humanite was stopped by Paul Kirk, the Manhunter, who had witnessed the operation, but suffered from memory loss after hitting his head trying to escape.