Number 1087


The non-PC Nazi


Doll Man helps an escapee from the Nazis who is being pursued by a Nazi in a purple hood who wears a corrective shoe. Huh. That sounds like making light of a physical problem, but it's fairly well solved in the story by never showing the villain, "Wobble-Foot," actually walking or dragging his foot. We see the corrective shoe only in the splash panel. The writer decided it would be more suspenseful if the victim heard the sound of the foot dragging. It didn't have anything to do with being politically correct; it wasn't uncommon for comic books to have villains with deformities.

Doll Man had a fairly long career for a superhero in the comics. I've said before I thought Doll Man was a bad name for a comic book hero, and it would scare boys away from the comic. I'm wrong. His comic book was still being published years after many of DC's heroes, including Flash and Green Lantern, had been canceled. Doll Man had a simple power: he could get really small, yet retain his punching power. DC used that as the basis for the powers of their revival of the Atom.

This story is from Doll Man #6 (1943), drawn by Al Bryant.