The Unfinished Origin of Captain Democracy

The Origin of Captain Democracy

Dan Swanson

Introduction

Not every origin is neat and tidy

Setting

Chicago, Illinois : October 1955

Bull Dozed

It had been a long, hard Monday for Barnabas Buchanan, his first day on a new job. The day had sucked, but it was almost over. He’d been looking for a new job for almost a month, and needed to pay the rent in a couple of days, and the pay was alright, so he had to hope the job would get better. At least he got to do something he was trained for - driving a bulldozer. Though he could have hoped for a canopy. Driving had an added benefit: didn’t have to interact with the other workers, most of whom he considered to be his social inferiors.


Barney, was hot, sweaty, caked in black, evil smelling soot, and and had started feeling sick about an hour ago. He was figuring that he could gut it out for the  rest of the day when something jammed the right tread of the heavy dozer. The big machine stuttered violently through a partial circle before Barney could throw it into neutral, almost tossing him off into the chemical waste pit he and his dozer were filling with tons of black, smelly, many-times-reused foundry sand. Something the size of a manhole cover had wedged between two of the pads on the tread. He was swearing loudly as he cautiously nudged the big machine into reverse, but the obstruction didn’t pop out or get sheared in half as he had hoped.

He reluctantly clambered off the big dozer. His discovered to his horror that he was even sicker than he’d realized when his knees collapsed as he hit the ground, and he sprawled face first into the filthy sand. He forced himself to his feet, struggled to open the tool box on the back of his beast and pulled out a crowbar, which he almost dropped. The obstruction turned out to be a disk, caked in this filthy black sand. Most of the sand was knocked loose as he battered it and pried at it with the bar, exposing a dull, silvery gray metal with a pebbled surface, neither dented or even creased by the powerful treads.

Finally, after tremendous exertion with his fading strength, and throwing his weight on the lever repeatedly, he worked the obstruction out of the tread. He was by now totally enraged, and he flung the damned thing away from him with anger-fueled strength. He was stunned at the weight, less than a basketball, and how far it flew, almost a hundred yards before it crashed into a hill of black sand and was buried in a minor avalanche.


Sick Day Surprises

It was almost noon when he was awakened the next day by knocking on his bedroom door. “Barney, are you OK?” It was Grant Gardner, who owned the house where Barney rented a room. “You looked awful last night when you came in. I can call Doctor Donovan and he can be here in 20 minutes.”

“Don’t call the Doctor, I’m OK,” Barney tried to yell back, but it came out as a squeak. He rolled his feet over the side of the bed and tried to stand up, but instead fell to the floor, knocking a lamp off the night table. At the crash, Gardner pushed into the room, and rushed to help his young boarder back into his bed.

“Can you call in sick for me?” Barney panted anxiously. “Second day on the job… they’ll fire me!”

Gardner hesitated, then, “Well, in fact, they called here early. The project you were hired for got canceled and they released you and all the other new hires… The secretary I talked to wasn’t allowed to say why, but I got the impression that they were worried 'cause all the workers were getting sick.”

“Goddam <derogation>. You can never trust ‘em!” Barney swore weakly, using a slang term for an ethnic group he associated with the name of the construction company.

“Look, son, you’re sick, so I’ll let that go this time, but I told you to keep talk like that outta my house. Next time you’ll be lookin for a new room somewhere else.” He shook his head sadly, then changed the subject. “So, should I call the doc or not?”

Barney sat up. He felt quite a bit better after that surge of anger. “Let’s hold off on the doc for now. “I’ll take it easy today, and tomorrow I’ll hit the streets and see if I can find another job.” After Gardner left, he opened a drawer, pulled out a small bottle, and poured out a single shot of whiskey. It felt like liquid fire going down, and he felt much better as he put the bottle away. ‘Better than a doc any day!’

More Surprises

Barney spent the next few hours reading Gardner’s collection of pre-World War II comic books. And he found something amazing and thrilling on page 111 of the February 1942 issue of “Marvelous Adventures”, the first issue after the bombing attack on Pearl harbor. The title of the story was “Bill Wright Goes to War” - and he’d seen the full page cover panel before! He jumped to his feet and rushed into the kitchen where Gardner was starting to make dinner. Well, maybe he forced himself to his feet and crept to the kitchen, but who was watching, anyway?

“Hey, Grant, I thought you told me that all your art is original!” he demanded. Gardner owned Gardner Art Studio. “But that old picture on the back wall of your gallery is just a copy of this!”

Gardner smiled broadly when he saw the panel. A male figure, in a red, white and blue skin-tight outfit, was throwing a star covered shield at a giant Neanderthal, clad in an animal skin which was covered with swastikas, fasces, and sunbursts, on a battle field littered with wrecked armored vehicles and crashed fighter planes. The cover proclaimed ”Captain Democracy Battles the Axis Goliath!”

“Hold on a second, Barney.” He opened the junk drawer in the kitchen, scrabbled around for a few seconds, and handed Barney a magnifying glass. “Right here…” He pointed at a scribble near the bottom of the dramatic full page frame that had caught Barney’s attention. Under the magnifying glass, Barney could see that it said Grant G. Gardner, 1938.

“You were the artist for the “Bill Wright of the Secret Service” stories? And Captain Democracy?” Barney demanded.

“Writer, artist, and inker, from the first story in 1938 through the last one, the one you’re looking at,” Grant replied, sounding a little sad. “Before I could write the next story, the War Department called me back to active duty to join the General Staff in DC. Didn’t have time to keep up with Bill Wright after that. Wouldn’t have mattered, though, that’s when Sturdiman started to be really popular, and they dropped most of their other characters anyway. Funny, I had totally forgotten about Bill Wright and Captain Democracy for years!” He shook his head, as he thought back on that series. “Now I remember why I always thought you looked so familiar to me.” Barney looked puzzled. “Guess you haven’t read the story yet?” When his young friend shook his head, Grant smiled again. “Read it - you’ll see!”

Bill Wright of the Secret Service

Barney sat down at the table and started reading. Bill Wright was a Secret Service agent with fairly minor super powers, at least compared to Studiman, who fought the enemies of America as a Secret Service Agent by day, and as the red, white and blue clad, shield slinging mystery hero Captain Democracy by night.

After Pearl Harbor, the Secret Service set up a cover identity for Bill as an Army private, and he was sent overseas to continue his fight against the enemies of America. Shortly before his troop ship was scheduled to sail for Europe, an Axis spy cell had tried to eliminate Bill Wright. A civilian couple had blundered on the plot and been murdered, and their 12 year old son was gravely wounded, trying to save his parents. Captain Democracy managed to trick them into their own death trap, and get the kid to a hospital, where he’d received a transfusion from the his rescuer.

The kid had healed almost overnight, developed super powers similar to those of Captain Democracy, and had stowed away on the troop ship. Halfway across the Atlantic, he’d revealed himself to Bill Wright, proved that he knew Wright’s secret identity, demonstrated his own powers, and demanded to be Wright’s partner. Wright felt he had no choice, and that the kid deserved a chance to get revenge for the murder of his parents. In the last panel, the kid revealed his name, Ronnie Hammond, and Captain Democracy gave him a costume and suggested that his code name would be Patriot First Class, or PFC.

“PFC looks just like me!” Barney yelled when he read the last panel. “It’s not possible! And why didn’t you tell me before?” He thought about if for an instant. “Are you a friend of my parents that I don’t remember?” Barney had lost his parents early in World War II; his father had died when his troop ship, heading to Europe, had come under a strafing attack, and his mother had died of grief not long after.

“I wrote that story in 1942 and painted the picture in 1946, Barney. Honestly, I barely remembered it until you reminded me just now,” Gardner replied defensively. “Sure enough, though, I never met your parents. You told me they always lived in Chicago and I lived in New York between the wars. Ronnie just happened to look just like you.” Gardner had a theory that the patriotic heroes he painted were real people, from somewhere far away.

Barney had always thought Grant was a little nuts, but he instantly felt a strong connection with Ronnie Hammond, and he somehow know that Ronnie was really his alter ego, somewhere else, wherever it was that Ronnie existed.

“So did you ever write more stories about Captain Democracy and PFC?” he asked eagerly.



This made Barney kind of sad as well, and they changed the subject. But after he went back to bed to recover some more, Barney searched through Grant’s collection and found all the Marvelous Adventures comics with Bill Wright stories, and he read them over and over again.

In the News

From the business section of the Chicago Daily Journal the day after Barney was sick