I first read about Captain Midnight in Jim Steranko’s The Steranko History of Comics, where it
was revealed to me that in a team-up between the Captain and Spy Smasher,
Captain Midnight got the better end of the deal. But for decades, I was unable
to learn more about the character. As the years passed, I discovered the radio
show on vinyl albums, comics, then the Dark Horse comic series, but at the time
there was little to quench the thirst of my curiosity.
A bit later, I read Richard Lupoff’s classic history of the
comics, All in Color for a Dime, which
had a nice chapter about Captain Midnight and the numerous comic/radio show spinoffs
of the era, but still offered none of what I wanted, which was the stories. So,
still in my youth, I held out for one hope. Lupoff’s book had mentioned that
there was a Captain Midnight TV series, and if I was up late enough, it might
come on TV in reruns sometime.
It never happened, and I forgot all about it, until years later
when YouTube appeared on this thing we didn’t used to have called “the net.” So,
one day, I see Captain Midnight in my feed, and I was pumped.
“After all these years! Finally, here it is, Captain
Midnight! Oh, what sort of horrible world did we live in where these adventures
had been kept from me? Seriously, I had been looking out for forty years, and
had never seen an adventure. Why, oh why, had they had they kept me away from
Captain Midnight? Surely, there was nothing there that could be bad for a boy,
why would parents and teachers try to keep my away from Captain Midnight?"
Then
I saw this episode:
Even by the seventies we knew nuclear waste was bad.
And, yes, I think if we had come home to watch our heroes standing in
nuclear fallout, we might have freaked out a little.
