There is a story here, but I’ll be damned if I can tell you what it is.

I can tell you that it seems to involve a bomb and a Golden Age superhero team that has been revived by DC Comics. Back when I was a kid, I encountered the Star Spangled Kid and Stripesy in a back-up feature in Adventure Comics – I believe the run that had the cool Aquaman stories in the 1970s – as part of a Seven Soldiers of Victory comic serial. As I recall, it was an unrealized script written in the ’40s and then drawn in the ’70s. That was my major intro to the team and speaks to one of my fascinations back then. I used to scour the two-volume History of Comics – Jim Steranko’s version, which was filled with old covers and descriptions of long-forgotten Golden Age heroes – and I ‘d lift names and even powers for my own use in my own comics – so it’s no wonder what happened here.

Observation – the scene where Stripesy gets his costume is sort of like a weird seduction scene, isn’t it? Like the Star Spangled Kid is going to say “Hey, baby” after Stripesy does exactly what he says. The first openly gay comic heroes of my universe? Who knows.