Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Vintage Paper | Tagged: bill everett, Carl Burgos, centaur, Lloyd Jacquet, Tarpé Mills
Amazing-Man Comics #5 and Everett’s Search for a Superhero, at Auction
Amazing-Man Comics #5 features the debut of Bill Everett’s Amazing-Man, one of the comics industry’s early responses to Superman.
Article Summary
- Amazing-Man Comics #5 debuts Bill Everett’s Amazing Man, a 1939 Centaur superhero created as a Superman rival.
- Grace Everett’s 1939 letter ties Amazing Man’s creation to Lloyd Jacquet’s search for a new superhero concept.
- Amazing Man’s origin blends Tibetan training, psychic powers, and pulp chemistry into an unusual debut.
- Amazing-Man Comics #5 also features early Iron Skull, Cat Man, and Minimidget stories.
For a comic that seems to have begun with a request for a Superman competitor, Amazing-Man Comics #5 (#1) takes an unexpectedly strange route. The first issue of this Centaur series, cover-dated September 1939, introduces Bill Everett‘s hero with an origin that includes Tibetan training, a chemical treatment that turns him into green mist, and an investigation solved with psychic powers. A March 1, 1939 letter from Everett’s mother, Grace, describes the assignment from Lloyd Jacquet that led to this unusual and historically important debut.
Bill Everett’s Search for a Different Superhero
In Grace Everett’s March 1 letter, she explains that Centaur wanted Bill to take on a new strip while he was already busy with three others. Jacquet wanted a character to compete with Superman, and she and Bill had been trying to come up with one. Grace planned to spend the following day at the Public Library looking through old folktales, including foreign ones, for unusual ideas that could work in a modern story. Bill was busy finishing another strip and two covers, so she was going to help with the search. The timing and Centaur connection make the Amazing-Man connection obvious.
The story that Everett ultimately told in this issue begins with an orphan who has spent 25 years in Tibet under the Council of Seven. His training leads to tests of his physical abilities, intelligence, and moral character of the kind that are common in origin stories. But while six of the Council members intend to help him, one of them, the Great Question, wants to control him telepathically. The snake ordeal on Everett’s cover is part of the Council of Seven’s tests of Aman’s abilities.
The debut of the android the Iron Skull by Carl Burgos is noteworthy as well here, of course, but other supporting features in this issue are also historical stand-outs. In Tarpe Mills‘ Cat Man, former convict Barton Stone disguises himself as an elderly woman and takes revenge on three former associates with a cat whose treated claws kill them. This Cat Man is a revenge killer and has no connection to the Golden Age character best remembered in Cat-Man Comics. John F. Kolb‘s Minimidget story introduces Minimidget and Ritty as humans reduced to tiny size by the mad scientist Barmell. He controls Minimidget and sends him out to commit murders for an inheritance.
Those Minimidget and Cat Man stories both seem to be inspired by the film The Devil-Doll (1936). The film’s framed convict, three former partners, elderly-woman disguise, and ruined family parallel the revenge circumstances in Mills’ story, while its mentally controlled miniature people offer a closer match for Kolb’s Minimidget scenario. Mills uses a cat to carry out the killings, while Kolb’s miniature humans serve an inheritance scheme rather than the film’s revenge plot.
CGC’s census currently lists 21 Universal and 14 Restored copies. This issue has been considered historically important for decades, which makes the modest census numbers all the more interesting. An incredible hook into the early history of the Golden Age, there’s an Amazing-Man Comics #5 (#1) (Centaur, 1939) CGC Apparent FN 6.0 with Moderate (A-3) restoration and off-white pages up for auction at the November 5, 2026 Golden Age Century Comics Showcase Auction VI #40378.
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