Every Thursday, mightygodking.com returns to the pages of Who’s Who, the classic 1980s DC comic book encyclopedia of their characters. Every week, a character shall be judged on the only scale scientific enough that matters: the Rex The Wonder Dog scale of fantasticosity.
Comics are weird in that every so often, a writer can knock a character concept right out of the park and the vast majority of fans simply won’t notice. We recently saw this in The Order, where Matt Fraction put together at least half a dozen stellar character concepts and wrote them all brilliantly and so of course the series got cancelled in ten issues. It happened with Skrull Kill Krew, probably the only superhero team to plausibly have an English racist skinhead as a member. And it happened in Young All-Stars, with Flying Fox.
Flying Fox is a fantastic superhero. His powers are ill-defined, yes, but they’re ill-defined that way because, having read the series, I can explain what Roy Thomas was trying to do: create a golden-age equivalent of Batman for the All-Star Squadron. Young All-Stars existed in part because, after Crisis On Infinite Earths, the All-Star Squadron didn’t have access to Batman, Superman or Wonder Woman – hence, Flying Fox, “Iron” Munro and the golden age Fury all got pressed into service as replacements. And where Batman had a utility belt, Fox had “Indian magic,” but the concept remained the same – he was the “thinker” of the team.
And he worked. (Fury didn’t. “Iron” Munro kind of did, but not as well as was needed, unfortunately.) There are characters who just have it, the magical quality of cool. Flying Fox is cool, seriously cool. He has a good costume, a good but not overly strong power set, got a lot of good lines (not bad for a native son only recently introduced to the modern world, really), and most importantly hit that exact point on the Batman Scale in between “brilliant, monomaniacal asshole” and “clubby, chummy super-dork” where you get the perfect superteam “thinking badass.”
He’s due for a reintroduction, frankly. I mean, no reason one of his “Indian magic” powers can’t be longevity.
Would have gone slightly higher, but the tufted crests on his mask are a bit too owly to be foxish.
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That is probably the single ugliest costume I’ve ever seen described as good.
I note that he’s a Canadian.
A Native American from Canada fighting Nazis, that alone is worth 20 points.
There is another cool aspect. Flying Fox is a member of the fictional tribe of the Quontaukas and therefore may be a descendant of Arak, Son of Thunder, the best heroic fantasy character ever.
Huh. Just read through his little background. When I first read his name, I thought, “Wow, this must be some kind of Batman knock off,” since a flying fox is a nickname for a breed of large bat. But upon reading his history, turns out he’s supposed to look like an actual fox…that flies. And yet, as you point out, he’s very much like Batman… I just thought that was interesting…
Too bad PetaGirl would kick the shit out of him for wearing all that fur.
For the last damned time, Fraction himself stopped”The Order” because it had a beginning, middle and end and primarily was a prologue for his Iron Man book. There was no cancellation.
Salieri: Sorry, but that’s the bullshit Fraction is saying after the fact to cover both his ass and Marvel’s. The book was launched and didn’t sell enough to justify keeping Barry Kitson on the title (understandable – he’s a popular artist), and Fraction decided he didn’t want to do the book without Kitson.
But just saying that sounds petulant (even if it’s perfectly reasonable – the replacement art on the last issue was weak at best). So instead he says “oh, this was just a prologue to my Iron Man series, because the first villain for the Iron Man series shows up in issue #8.”
Which is pretty unbelievable, all things considered. It helps everybody save face, which is the important thing, and it’s not like it hurts anybody. But if you seriously think Marvel launched a new title just as a prologue for an Iron Man title, yeah, I got this bridge I’d like to sell you.
Remember, this is the company which turned a Hulk title into a Hercules title without telling anybody in advance. (And DC is just as bad, so it’s not a Marvel thing per se.) Comic companies will bullshit you to the moon if you let them.
Fans still found bullshit reasons to shit all over it. People actually said they weren’t going to support the book because “The Order” sounded tyrannical. Or because it was part of the Initiative. Or because the team being portrayed in a positive light was a “Tony was right!” message.
Flying Fox was the best thing in Young All-Stars (except maybe the VD story and the Tigress/Huntress thing) and by far the best character actually created by Roy Thomas as he petered out post-Crisis. Sad, because I loved All-Star Squadron, and I felt like Roy gave up after Crisis spayed and neutered his Earth-2. FF should make a comeback, like, soon.
According to his profile, Flying Fox was 5’10″ and 128 lbs. That is a skinny, skinny man. Why the hell not, I say.
That’s interesting. He didn’t seem to really “pop” from his character profile, and I was expecting some good old-fashioned withering scorn, but it shouldn’t surprise me that he comes off a lot better on the page than he does in a ‘Who’s Who’ entry. After all, he’s a Roy Thomas creation, and Roy Thomas is a walking legend in the industry. (If Stan Lee and Jack Kirby are God, Roy Thomas is Jesus.)
Now I want to do an Iron Fist/Killraven crossover, just because they’re both Roy Thomas creations too…
Not that I’m saying yer wrong, MGK, but do you have a cite for your version of why The Order went down? Bad sales sounds plausible. Again, not saying your wrong, because comic companies will BS you, I’m just curious. Also, Iron Munro is awesome. He needs to show up in Checkmate. As for FF, how much would it suck to have a fox-head permanently painted onto your chest? So much for secret identity.
Fraction did stop The Order. He stopped it at 10, when Marvel would have cancelled it at 12. THe reason is he would have had to have a different artist for the last two.
Not that I’m saying yer wrong, MGK, but do you have a cite for your version of why The Order went down?
I don’t need a cite. Here’s a simple explanation as to why Matt Fraction is trying to spin a silk purse out of a sow’s ear as regards claiming The Order was cancelled on purpose:
If it was only supposed to be ten (or twelve) issues long, it would have been solicited as a miniseries.
What really happened: Fraction saw the sales numbers and the associated writing on the wall, shifted tracks to compensate (you can tell – issues six through eight speed up the pace dramatically and change plot direction at the same time) and made the best out of a bad situation.
Can we have ONE Native American character in comics who hasn’t used “native magics” at some point? I mean, this guy sounds like he has another aspect to him that makes him more than “generic magical Indian,” but Jesus Christ, people.
I would have given him extra points for looking like Die Fledermaus.
Huh, I’d actually reverse your evaluations and say Fury worked, while Flying Fox mostly didn’t. (Or at least she mostly worked – it kinda irked me that Roy Thomas seemed to forget she was from rural Greece after a couple issues, writing her pretty indistinguishably from an American girl.)
Remember, this is the company which turned a Hulk title into a Hercules title without telling anybody in advance.
Which was fantastic and I’ll fight any man says otherwise.
JustinCognito: I agree, this is an annoying stereotype. I would have suggested Forge, but he was all magic too after a while. Scalphunter didn’t though.
I read the first issue of The Order and thought that it was competent enough, but I got such a strong “I liked this book better when it was called Strikeforce: Morituri” vibe off it that it made me all sad inside. I’m sorry that a book you like got canceled, though.
[...] RELATED FUN FACT: Arak, Son of Thunder is the ancestor of Flying Fox, whose magic cloak was a legacy left behind by Arak. Nifty. Tell The World: These icons link to [...]
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