Flash Comics #1 was an auspicious comic. Of course, it was the very first appearance of Jay Garrick as the Flash, but it was also the first appearance of Hawkman. That’s a heckuva comic right there: the Flash and Hawkman, both appearing for the first time. But wait! On top of that, it was also the first appearance of Johnny Thunder! That’s two major players and a classic second banana, all in one comic!
And then there’s the Whip.
The Whip is a working-class hero. No powers for this guy! Just his facility with a whip. Rodrigo “Rodney” Gaynor (no, really!) was a descendant of the very first Whip, a Mexican superhero of the 19th century who fought for right and protected the poor. Kind of like Zorro! But with a whip instead of a sword. Well, actually Zorro used a whip too sometimes. So basically think Zorro, but no sword.1
Anyway, Rodney used his, I dunno, one-sixteenth Mexican-ness (“just enough beaneater to use their traditional ethnic weapons, but not so much that you can’t take him home to Mother, girls!”) to master the whip and call himself The Whip, as his ancestor did before him. At some point you would think that he would come up with a better name, but no such luck. In a stunning development, he mostly fought… evil Mexicans. The symbolism of a white guy fighting Mexicans was apparently glossed over at the time.
Presumably at some point Rodney joined the All-Star Squadron, as did just about every other vigilante who ever existed. And that is more or less all there is to be said for the Whip. (Except that his granddaughter also became the Whip briefly before dying as one of the Seven Soldiers of Victory.) But that’s okay. Rodney is one of the rank and file. A spear-carrier. A red-shirt. He is there to fill in crowd scenes and show up as a fourth-tier guest star when another superhero visits 1940s Mexico, and that’s all we can expect of him, and that is fine. Not everybody has to be a Flash or a Hawkman.
The Whip did not ask for much from comics, and he mostly got it. And things could be worse. The fifth star of Flash Comics #1 was a guy named Cliff Cornwall. Who the fuck is Cliff Cornwall? Because I sure as hell don’t know.
Although it’s kind of a shame that there are numerous superheroes within the DCU that are more prominent and known for the expertise with the whip (Catwoman and Mr. America, to name two). I mean, he’s called the Whip. You’d think he would be like the Green Arrow of whips, or something.
Top comment: He’s a *millionaire* and he’s using his whip to “protect the poor from exploitation and injustice”?!?! Gosh, it’s a good think he didn’t waste his money on something completely ineffective in that regard, like going to law school. — robin
- Sidenote: does anybody remember a TV movie or something similar where Zorro was in jail or wounded or something, and his cousin took over, but his cousin was crap with a sword but great with a whip so he only used a whip, and called himself “the Red Zorro”? Did I just hallucinate that? [↩]
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“The Red Zorro” sounds like a monthly visitor that causes chaos in the household…
You may be thinking of the classic film ZORRO, THE GAY BLADE, featuring George Hamilton as both Zorro and his twin brother, who has cast aside the Zorro legacy and taken the name Bunny Wigglesworth. It manages to be both cringe-worthy and progressive, as Hamilton was swishing all over the place, but the character was never presented as weak. Stereotype he may be, Bunny Wigglesworth was still an action hero.
Plus, he had some fabulously-colored versions of Zorro’s costume, from red to green to purple to a gold lamé.
Have you ever noticed that, in all those DC crowd scenes, there’s only one guy with a sombrero? Only one. Ever.
But he’s always there.
I think they’re overlooking the superpower he has to levitate his hat. Either that, or his head is twice as tall as it appears in his mugshot.
You should bump him up another 2% just for exposing us all to the root of the word “castigate.”
Rod. Gaynor.
Just… wow.
I’d really like to see the math that goes into figuring piy the Rex Rating. Also, I would really like to apply for the position of Millionaire Socialite. That sounds like a much better occupation than the one I’ve got. If I were accepted for the position, *I* wuold not wear floods with my sombrero. I guess it is hard to gauge the water level of Seguro, huh, Rodney?
Yeah, Jared is right — you’re flashing back to Zorro, the Gay Blade. An intensely weird movie. Well worth a watch, though uneven as hell. A few of its jokes are downright killer. To echo Jared again, the portrayal of “Bunny” is unexpected. He’s cartoonishly swishy (made so by his long stint in the British Navy), but he’s also a fearless ass-kicking hero, and I don’t recall the movie suggesting that those parts of him were incompatible.
The Whip is kinda cool. It takes a brave motherfucker to be a superhero when all you have is a bullwhip and the name “Rodney.”
“Green Arrow of whips”
This sounds like a great idea to me. A hero who runs around with a variety of whips that can do three or four different functions depending on which button he touches in the handle. I might have to use this idea.
ps238principal: Yeah, the way the hat is positioned in the picture is driving me nuts. I mean if you wanted us to see his face then the artist should have angled the image head on or from an upward angle. Not to say that a hovering hat wouldn’t be useful. You wouldn’t need a hat rack for one.
I quite liked how Morrison used the Whip’s grand-daughter not only as a satire against writers taking old Silver Age concepts and attempting to make them serious and conflicted (Shelly spends her one story frustrated over her terrible social and sex life due to her being a super-hero), but also as a jab at the terrible sexual element of that era. Look at the original Whip, thrusting his groin at us in that picture. How could you not take up that mantle decades later without resorting to some absurd leather fetishery?
I’m not sure I’d call The Gay Blade a *classic* since it was a 1981 film. (Classics were made before I was born, dagnabbit!)
But I agree with Jared and Brad Reed about Bunny’s portrayal in the movie, and there are also some fun quotes. Definitely worth watching.
“Two bits, four bits, six bits, a peso;
All those for Zorro, stand up and say so!”
And hey, whip use wasn’t The Whip’s only power. Money has a power all its own (and a million was worth more in the 1940s). Plus it says right under Powers & Weapons that he was a “fine” hand-to-hand fighter, and “a superb horseman.”
A clever, creative writer (like MGK) could make something of him. (But I’d rather see the Dr. Strange books first!)
I’d prefer the name to go back to El Castigo, though — it just sounds cooler, and “castigate” is an aggressive-sounding verb that they could work into the dialogue once in a while.
El Castigo is Spansih for The Punishment, to say whip, we say El Látigo. He reminds of the second El Diablo The Devil, who was a Mexican-American that used a whip to fught crime in Texas.
Now, I have nothing against canucks, but if you don’t remove the word beaneater, I will be very mad, seriously, noe of us have called you maplesuckers or something like that.
If The Whip is the second or third best whip user in the DC Universe, doesn’t that make him the Green Arrow of whips? I think it’s been suggested that Roy is better with a bow, and Merlyn might be.
Stig: “How could you not take up that mantle decades later without resorting to some absurd leather fetishery?”
Easy, you don’t have a writer who gets off on the idea of superheroes with blatant sexual fetishes. I mean look what they did to the Marvel character Whiplash. He went from a guy is a silly purple costume to running around in bondage gear. I don’t care if there’s a correlation between using a whip and being into S&M, it doesn’t belong in a non-MAX comic. If Ennis wants to do that in The Boys then I would assume it’s a blatant satire, but to put it an any old Iron Man comic reeks of bad taste. it might make Whiplash more frightening to a non-superhero, but not because they’re thinking “Oh my God. This guys gonna kill me!”, but “Oh my God. This guys gonna rape me!”
The first time I saw it I thought it was a Mel Brooks picture. “TWOOOOOO FRUITS, OOOOONE VEGETABLE, OOOOOONE FLOWER!!”
I think it’s held up surprisingly well, considering how over-the-top Bunny Wigglesworth is and how over the top Zorro’s accent is; but then it seems like a lot of people have never heard about this movie. It comes on TV sometimes, at least in the US… sadly, I don’t know which channel, because I mostly try and avoid television.
He’s a master with a whip, and he rides the Mississip’…
Now see, my mind went straight to and SNL skit with Steve Martin playing The Whipmaster.
Zorro: The Gay Blade, was just about the best movie ever. The mute sidekick reading Zorro his mail, in a long game of charades was … well … slightly painful to watch.
I remember my mother forbidding me at the age of 8 from seeing the movie because it had the word, gay, in it. I distinctly remember not knowing or caring what the word meant till she freaked out.
The Gay Blade is on Netflix Instant Streaming, by the by, for those cool peeps out there who have that sort of newfangled technology.
I’d like to think that in the DCU, this guy was one of the inspirations for Devo.
You do know about my Golden Age Heroes Directory, right?
’cause I have an entry on Cliff Cornwall: “Cornwall is a special agent for the FBI. He takes on various tasks, most of them counter-espionage- and sabotage-related. He is helped by Lys Valliere, his girlfriend and a good pilot and fighter. Cliff has no superpowers but is a good all-around agent, pilot, and fighter.”
@ Zenrage:
That was Bill Murray, not Steve Martin.
Oh, my bad.. I was heading out to a job interview and didn’t have time to check my facts.
Sweet zombie Jesus other people who know about Zorro the Gay Blade! Bunny Wigglesworth- I’m quite skilled with a whip. Just classic.
There’s not that many whippers:
The Whip
Mr. America
Catwoman
El Hombre
Whiplash
Any more?
Oh and he ought to fight Lord Shilling in a death match, with the prize being an extra 3% of Rex-ness.
Sofa King, what about..
Indiana Jones & Whip Wilson
Don’t forget about Oklahoma Bones and Whipley (believe it or not)!
Even the Nazis didn’t respect the Whip. At least, according to Mayfair’s DC Heroes RPG, they didn’t. In The World At War sourcebook, the writeups for the various masked heroes of the WWII era had, in addition to their game stats, also had comments by none other than Captain Nazi. Some get his respect; for example, in reference to the Flash, CN comments “The Flash is by far one of the most dangerous of all Allied operatives. You simply cannot crush what you cannot see.” Others are dismissed due to CN’s overconfidence: “The Sandman is a rich, pompous fool.” However, when it comes to the Whip, CN’s sole comment is, “The what?” Even compared to all the other non-powered heroes in the All-Star Squadron (and there were a lot of them), the Whip got rated pretty darned low on the totem pole.
I suppose I should be glad there wasn’t a Cliff Doverwhite. :/
I now expect to see this gentleman in an intercompany crossover with Ghost Rider.
“Aaah! You have a whip? hy do you have a whip?”
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/5/24/
Yeah, that’s Buckley.
There was a 1944 Republic serial called “Zorro’s Black Whip,” featuring a female character who went by the name “The Black Whip,” dressed like Zorro, and fought with a whip. Aside from the title, Zorro didn’t figure into it at all; wasn’t even mentioned, in fact.
She fought, according to Wikipedia (my offhand memory of the few episodes I’ve seen didn’t contain this fact) to advance Idaho’s statehood.
Actually, there’s a genuinely interesting satirical idea at the core of ZORRO THE GAY BLADE: Zorro’s OTHER son- the one who tries to follow in his dad’s footsteps by being a “traditional” Zorro- fails because the bad guys are familiar with Original Zorro’s tactics; everyone’s seen that before. CRAZY GAY ZORRO, on the other hand, well nobody can predict what THAT guy’s gonna do. (A potential lesson for all writers working on ageing franchises, I think…)
He’s a *millionaire* and he’s using his whip to “protect the poor from exploitation and injustice”?!?! Gosh, it’s a good think he didn’t waste his money on something completely ineffective in that regard, like going to law school.
…Wow, and all I can even remotely think about is El Hombre from Astro City, who I am now positive was created with this specific character as inspiration.
Also, yeah, Whiplash got the short end of the costume stick no matter what, although which one is dumber, I don’t reall know. What I DO know is that if I fight Iron Man, I make sure I’m wearing a freaking shirt. Just saying.
…I seriously thought the first guy just made up Zorro: The Gay Blade and everyone else was jumping on the pulling-legs bandwagon until I looked it up on Wikipedia.
I may never know what’s real and what’s a joke again!