Episode 16: Detective Comics #20

In this episode I discuss the debut, in Detective Comics #20 (on-sale date Sept. 7, 1938), of the Crimson Avenger. I place the Crimson Avenger in the chronological context of the comics in which he appeared. I discuss my definition of what a superhero is, describe the seventeen elements which can make up a superhero, and discuss the fuzzy logic and continuum approach I use when discussing who is and isn't a superhero. I discuss why the Crimson Avenger isn't so much a comic book superhero as he is a pulp superhero, putting him in the context of the many other pulp superheroes who preceded him. I talk about before the Crimson Avenger and after him, his hundred issue career in the Golden Age, and his surprising reappearances afterward, whether as an allusion or, ultimately, as "the first of our kind" and someone deserving of an almost religious worship.