It’s been a while, so let’s do an easy one. Let’s just go back to war times and see Superman versus some Nazi agent.

“The Blaze”

Superman comic strip, Sunday strips #152-162, 1942

SUMMARY

Our story opens with a steamship, the Angelus, coming from Europe and arriving in Metropolis. It’s full of diplomats and former prisoners of war, returning to the safety of American soil. But before the ship can dock, one of the ship’s officers notices that a fire has started, only to be attacked by what appear to be hands of flame. The burning ship is going down and that, of course, is a job for Superman.

Superman manages to put out the fire and save the people on the ship, though that one officer is hospitalized. In the process Clark meets a man who introduces himself as Hal R. Kennedy, a famous war correspondent, who was among those Superman rescued.

Later, at the office of a fifth columnist named Dr. Wilhelm, a betrenchcoated figure arrives and reveals himself to be a Nazi agent from Europe. He shows off a fancy suit he designed that keeps him safe and allows him to breathe while engulfing him in flames. The plan is to sabotage America’s lumber industry, but not before Wilhelm must die before being disloyal to the Reich.

The murderer then decides to cover his tracks and starts a fire in the hospital where the Angelus officer is recovering. Though Superman arrives in time to save some firefighters, the smoke kills the officer, leaving no witnesses to this fiery Nazi’s arrival in America.

Weeks later, Lois and Clark are investigating a recent spate of forest fires. They visit the head of the U.S. Forest Service who gives a speech about the importance of the lumber industry to the war effort, and who also informs them that people have been seeing a fiery figure they call the Blaze within these recent fires. Our intrepid reporters head to a lumber camp owned by John Gregg, a friend of Perry White. After Superman saves Gregg from a fire, they run into Hal Kennedy again, who explains that he is there because he’s infatuated with Lois and since he knew she was in the area, he came along.

Lois apparently doesn’t find this to be a red flag, because she agrees to go on a horse ride with Hal. But I guess, she was right to, he turns out to actually NOT be a stalker. That said, it does turn out that he isn’t really Hal Kennedy at all, he’s a Nazi agent who happened to look like Kennedy and was sent to America to sabotage, and he was using the ol’ stalker excuse to explain why he happened to be there. Yes, Lois is now alone with the Blaze! And to make matters worse, Superman is busy saving Gregg again! Oh no!

And then the Blaze steps in a bear trap and is stuck there until Superman shows up.

The Blaze, with his suit compromised, is killed by the very fire he began. How ironic.

Lois gets the story and Superman breaks the fourth wall not to wink at us, but to say that he caught the fire Nazi, but we need to handle the fires caused by our incompetence because Uncle Sam is hungry for lumber.

SUPERMAN VS. BIGOTS?

This is one of those stories I tried to avoid during the early days of this column, the stories where the Nazis are the villains more because they are the enemies of America than any specific reason relating to their actual beliefs. The Blaze never even makes any comments about “the Master Race” or anything. He’s just your average Nazi designer of a flame suit who happens to look exactly like an American war correspondent.

The Blaze isn’t the only Nazi in the story though. There’s also Dr. Wilhelm the “notorious U.S. Fifth Columnist” who is embezzling from his Nazi masters. Realistically this is just to give the Blaze a chance to get an early kill in, showing how threatening he is, but I guess it also depicts Nazis as schemers and how their whole organization will fall apart. I dunno, I guess.

In any case, the story doesn’t give me much to sink my teeth into, but if nothing else a story using a villain from a real-world enemy nation is another data point proving that superhero comics have always been political, if anyone on the Internet is still arguing against it.

STRAY THOUGHTS

• At no point in this story does Superman fight the Blaze while he’s actually in his fire suit and doing his saboteur stuff. Clark is always too busy rescuing people and putting out fires while the Blaze is working for them to schedule a slugfest. That means the only instance of Superman punching this foe occurred while he was rescuing him from drowning, as seen above. After this, “Hal” apologizes to Superman for fighting him while Superman was trying to rescue him, to which Superman replies that drowning people often struggle against rescuers, but none of that struggle is seen in those two panels there.
• I get it, but the constant reminder that we need to save forests for the war effort, and not because forests are themselves worth saving, kind of rankles.
• I’ll note that the image of ship’s officer being attacked by the Blaze seems to show three fiery hands. Is that poetic licence? Some normal fire that happens to look hand-like? Or, could the Blaze have had some ally as yet unrevealed with a similar suit? Surely now is the time revive the continuity of these old strips and deal with this.
• The establishing shot with the steamer Angelus arriving in Metropolis is one of many occasions in which the Statue of Liberty is seen in Metropolis across Superman media across the years.
• Superman would go on to get another foe named Blaze (without the definite article), who was a demon lady of some kind. Purely coincidental, there’s no connection. It’s just a pretty generic name is all.