Team-Up Tuesdays: High Camp Heroes

Both Mighty and Charlton were prone towards a bit of camp humour, popular at the time, especially when introducing their heroic teams. While Mighty took the concept farther into a continuing series, Charlton was hesitant in teaming up all their big guns at one time and show them (sort of) only once).

Allow us to introduce the Mighty Crusaders in their debut appearence in Adventures of the Fly #31:

Next we present to you the "Mightiest Armada of Enemies of Evil" in Charlton Premier #3:

The members of the Mighty Crusaders were Fly, Comet, Shield and the Black Hood...brought together by the Fly's arch-foe Spider-Spry. Fly-Girl joined later. Others attempted to join the foray, including Captain Flag:

Meanwhile, the "Mightest Armada" included heroes we've already covered, including Peacemaker and Blue Beetle, as well as a more obscure trio: Superguy, Captain USA, and the Green Spider:

While Superguy filled the niche for the goofiest of the caped set, the honor among Archie/Mighty characters fell to Captain Sprocket who had once mixed up his dry cleaning with a few of the Crusaders!  Aside from a cameo with Fly, Comet, Black Hood and Shield, he mostly kept to himself. Then there were the Captains, Flag and USA. Finally there was the fairly useless Green Spider, more of a hinderance then a help as seen in the accompanying panels, and the aforementioned rogue Spider-Spry, a criminal genius whose intellect was matched only by his ineptitude.

While Captain Flag had a short but memorable career in the 1940's. any exploits of Captain USA beyond this issue were left unchronicled (although we here suspect he may have moonlighted in the 1940's as Captain V, a backup feature in Blue Beetle's comic, as the two are very similar), as were those of Superguy and Green Spider. The villain of the piece Sinestro seemed to know of them, so they had some notoriety.

And each team had inventive adversaries to bedevil them such Boy Fiend, Sinestro, and alien scientist, Inferno the Destroyer.

Alas such heroic teams from our two aspiring comic publishers were short lived and would take years before they reappeared. Still, there are tales to tell of heroic pairings in the silver age of comics, which we'll next consider.