The cracky saga of Doctor Hormone

[alicemacher]

Good-hearted but methodologically problematic Doctor Hormone, American, uses his scientific genius to protect vulnerable nations from invasion by barely-veiled Soviet and Nazi German analogues. How? Why, with hormones of course. Also with the help of his annoying but loyal granddaughter, the "shouldn't she be in school"-aged Jane. Created by artist (and writer?) Robert Bugg, Doctor Hormone appeared in Popular Comics Issues 54 through 60 (1940-41), and has never been seen since. Now in the public domain (scans courtesy of ComicBookPlus.com), here's the first of the Doc's bizarre adventures, from Issue 54 (Aug 1940).



















At this point I think it appropriate to quote from Jon Morris's new book (out next week), The League of Regrettable Superheroes: Half-Baked Heroes from Comic Book History (Quirk Books, 2015):

"It's actually sort of horrifying how Doctor Hormone plays fast and loose with the lives of children and babies. How many other heroes would be proudly celebrated by a caption describing how he 'experiments on a dying infant'?"

Watch for my next post, in which Doctor Hormone, not satisfied with playing God on young ones, flies passengers in a war plane without any training whatsoever!

Comments

[crinos]

So, basically Hormones were to the Golden Age what Radiation was to the Silver Age, and what hacking was to the 90's.

[captainbellman]

And what GMO was to the 00s!

[icon_uk]

I'd have thought that was more nanobots than GMO, but....

[captainbellman]

I s'pose I more meant the Ultimate Universe. It's been awhile, but I can recall pretty much the majority of their super beings having an origin involving "something something DNA something upgrades something genome."

[lilacsigil]

This is so very, very bizarre and kind of fascinating. They're turning all the children into soldiers!

[crinos]

I know right? In the real world that guy would be in jail so fast.

Did unfortunate implications just not exist in the Golden Age? I know it was a "More innocent time" (using the largest quotes possible), but you can't tell me that not a single person looked at that page and went "huh, if you stop and think about it, this is really fucking horrible."

[alicemacher]

Sadly, in the real world, back then, basic human rights did often take a back seat to "scientific progress," and not just in Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia. In the U.S., the Tuskegee syphilis experiment is the most notorious example, but there were a number of others that wouldn't be tolerated today.

[drtechnobabel]

Well, that gives a whole new meaning to the term 'child soldiers'.

[drtechnobabel]

Rassinoff gets horribly mutated by a foreign scientist, and all his superior officer does is laugh and call him degrading names, then gives the guy who mutated him a pat on the back and a cushy job. No wonder he's a Soviet spy.

Not that his plan was very smart to begin with, seeing as it would have been way easier to not steal the trunk, let the doctor come to the castle, then kidnap him in the dead of night or something.

[q99]

I know, right? It seems like he was already a traitor, but if not, defection would make way too much sense.

[fredneil.livejournal.com]

The first two weren't that bad. Once you've got a diagnosis of "dying," an experimental medical treatment isn't going to make it worse. But I'm sure a few of those boys that were aged into men eventually thought "This immortality thing is nice and all, but it would have been nice to have a childhood, too."

[althechi]

The eeevvviilll "Eurasians" led by a pipe-smoking dictator with a yardbrush moustache sitting in the "Krimlen", you say? Subtle.