The Eye

The Eye was a “character” that appeared in the pages of Keen Detective Funnies and it’s own two issue comic during the Golden Age in a series called “The Eye Sees.” The Eye was the creation of Golden Age artist Frank Thomas (who also created the equally obscure Golden Age hero The Fantom Of The Fair) for the early comic book publisher Centaur Publications. No records seem to exist to clarify whether The Eye was entirely created by Thomas or was co-created in tandem with some obscure comic-writing hack, but Thomas dutifully signed each “Eye” melodrama, and while the character –if that word can suffice for a floating disembodied giant body part with no distinct personality beyond a fervent desire for funnybook-style Justice– was well-received enough to rate cover appearance on Centaur’s Keen Detective Funnies, Centaur obviously had no idea just how wonderfully bizarre The Eye actually was, in those bygone halcyon days before the whole “Superhero” thing had settled, finally, into its tight-fitting longjohns.

The Eye was one of the odd-ball characters that turned up before the concept of the superhero had become fixed.

It’s origin never explained, the Eye was a huge floating eye that sometimes appeared wreathed in flame, at other times it was invisible to everyone but the person it had chosen to aid and/or harass into doing the work of justice.

The Eye also liked to speak to evil doers making pronouncements about their doom.

While in one instance shown on the cover of Keen Detective Funnies blasting aliens invading via parachute, in the stories the Eye was mostly content to just spy invisibly on evil doers (and at least one nightgown clad woman every other story) and either inform on them to the physical hero of that story, while also encouraging them to do the right thing for the sake of justice, or just appearing to scare the bad guys into rash action.

It was never revealed who or what The Eye was or why it was so concerned with justice, however the opening text of the stories at times hinted that it might just be the wrathful Eye of God, or something very like it.

Gone from the comic after 1940, Malibu comics revived many of the Centaur charactersthat were by 1992 in the public domain, one of which was The Eye, who they turned into a conventional muscle bound superhero of the 90’s, so much like dozens of others around at the time that to detail his differences is pointless.