League of Extraordinary Oddballs: THE DART

The lead feature in Fox Feature Syndicate’s Weird Comics #5 (Aug. 1940) takes us back to the days of ancient Rome, when men and swords were made of sterner stuff. Here we meet one Caius Martius, the “terror of Roman racketeers” who can “fly though the air like a dart,” or so we’re told. Waylaid one day by his enemies, the unconscious Caius is placed before an evil wizard who dissolves him and his sword into a rock where he will be trapped for 2200 years, much to the dismay of Caius’ friends on Team Caesar. Curiously, the wizard is careful to dissolve Caius’ sword into the rock with him. Given what we’ll soon learn about this remarkable weapon, he may wish he’d just held onto it.

Flash forward to 1940 and Caius Martius re-materializes from the rock, which is now on display in a museum in the good old US of A. Wandering out into the bewildering world of the 20th century, he witnesses a drive-by shooting that results in the death of a pair of bystanders, orphaning their young son, Ace Barlow. Mistaking the murder car for a “monster,” Caius “slays” it with his sword and decides to adopt the orphan. Then like any responsible parent, he trains the traumatized lad for a dangerous crusade of vigilante justice.

Now you may well ask how an unmarried man with no proof of citizenship, no source of employment and no birth certificate is able to legally adopt a young boy. You may ask how Caius is able to speak Americanized English if he just got here from ancient Rome. You may even ask what a judo throw has to do with Roman wrestling. But if so, you ask too many questions and you may as well leave now, because things won’t be making any more sense later, either, in the amazing adventures of…The Dart!

The whole “parents shot down by criminals in front of their son” schtick may sound familiar, as may the “adult hero adopts a young ward and trains him to be his sidekick.” We can probably rule out coincidence given the splash page that introduces us to The Dart in the first place…

…which of course bears more than a passing resemblance to the cover of the previous year’s Detective Comics #27, introducing another famous crimefighter with a wing-like cape and a youthful orphan sidekick:

Admittedly, it’s kind of fun to see someone ripping off Bob Kane instead of the other way around, though in fairness it’s not like Kane didn’t swipe that Batman pose from Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon in the first place.

Anyway, for a guy from 2200 years ago, Caius Martius catches on fast to the 1940s fad of costumed crimefighting, adopting an obligatory secret identity as…um…Caius Martius Wheeler and a garishly colorful costume emblazoned with an arrow (dart?) pointing skyward at an angle to denote…um…an upward trend in truth and justice? An excess of maleness? Well, whatever. To protect their identities, Wheeler and Ace are careful to covertly enter and exit their well-hidden, secret headquarters with no one the wiser. Just kidding; they use the front door of their apartment building and announce their activities to anyone within earshot.

“The Dart” may not be the most intimidating nom de guerre for a superhero, but it’s better than what young Ace Barlow gets, which is nothing. He goes into action as…Ace Barlow, the Amazing Boy. To his credit, The Dart does at least teach Ace the secret of “darting through the air,” and here we’re not just talking about sudden, lunging leaps mere inches off the ground, but what looks like full-on, high-altitude flight over seriously long distances. Interestingly “darting” is presented not as a super-power but rather a very specialized athletic skill.

To pay the bills, our “Mr. Wheeler” secures a teaching job at the local school (despite that troubling two thousand year gap in his work history), lecturing on what he knows: the history of Ancient Rome. Frankly, however, his “lectures” sound a lot like plain old bragging.

With his nerdy spectacles and ubiquitous blue suit, Wheeler bears more than a passing resemblance to a certain mild-mannered reporter, and like that other guy, he can never seem to catch a break from his lovely coworker.

Although The Dart has no superpowers, the same may not be true for his 2200-year-old Roman short sword. There’s never a backstory to say that it’s made from a “miracle metal that fell to Earth” or that it’s been enchanted by a magic spell or anything like that, but we will soon learn the sword is basically able to cut through any material on Earth, starting with doors and plaster walls, which doesn’t seem all THAT unreasonable…

….but then moving on to stone walls, which strikes me as considerably less likely…

…and then to firearms and lead pipes, which it seems fair to term remarkable.

As the strip unfolds in subsequent issues of Weird Comics, the whole “darting through the air” gimmick is all but forgotten, with The Dart and Ace frequently dangling from great heights or taking perilous leaps across rooftops in scenes that are are a lot less suspenseful if you remember they can basically fly. Instead, The Dart relies on the sword to solve just about every problem that comes up, to the point where one wonders why he wasn’t just called “The Swordsman.”

You say some bad guys are escaping by car? No problem.

Evildoers are absconding via a cargo ship? Easy peasy.

With a miracle sword as a trusty deux ex machina, the only thing Caius Martius Wheeler needs less than superpowers is a kid sidekick, but poor little Ace does what he can to chip in. Sharp blades are a no-no for minors, however, so Ace has to settle for a Louisville Slugger.

Alas, the poor lad gets no respect and basically exists to be repeatedly kidnapped, beaten up, rendered unconscious by blows to the head and eventually rescued by his senior partner, who somehow manages to evade Child Protective Services for the duration of the strip.

Poor Ace; sometimes even The Dart piles on the insults.

Not to worry, though: The Dart always comes through when it counts, forever ready to rescue the young lad from harm, thanks to — you guessed it — his miraculous sword, as in this scene where villains have stuffed Ace into the back seat of their getaway car.

Umm…thanks?

Before the anti-violence crowd gets their knickers in a twist about a superhero who wields a sword, we should point out that The Dart only strikes opponents in a non-lethal manner.

Uh…I mean, I *think* all his uses of the sword are non-lethal.

No, no I’m sure of it. This is, after all, a book aimed at impressionable youngsters.

Never, ever would we violate the sacred trust placed in us by the parents of America to provide their sons and daughters with only the most wholesome entertainment, with a hero dedicated to clean living and the judicious and purely sportsmanlike use of force.

Um…right, so let’s move on, shall we? The Dart, as noted, has no superpowers and at one point confirms to an adversary that no, he is not bulletproof. However it doesn’t seem to matter as he is blessed with incredible good luck, somehow managing to evade bullets even at extreme close range.

Alas, young Ace is not always so fortunate, seeing as how he’s shot not once but twice in the course of the strip. In each case, we are temporarily led to believe his injuries are fatal, only to later learn that the game little trooper has sustained only a flesh wound.

What’s more, in each case he’s shot in the same shoulder, which evokes memories of Steve Martin in Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (“Damn it, that’s never gonna heal!”).

On the upside, teaming with The Dart means picking up some of his incredible good luck, which is helpful when people do things like blowing up your car with you in it.

Still, there’s only so much luck to go around, and when their airplane tragically crashes nose first into the ground and is reduced to a twisted pile of flaming wreckage, well that’s the end of our intrepid duo.

I’m just kidding, they’re fine.

And so it goes, month after month: Ace is knocked out by clubs, rocks, pistol handles and kicks to the head whenever he isn’t getting shot in the shoulder while The Dart is forever slicing tree trunks, asphalt roadways, passing aircraft and the sides of houses with his sword, and every six pages or so our heroes escape certain death in horribly crashed vehicles with nary a scratch. You know, the usual routine. And then suddenly in Issue 17 the formula gets a major jolt when, as Ace is heroically punching a thug out of a high window to his death, he loses that wonderful sword.

“Oh well, I might be able to get it back later,” he says, as if it’ll be lying there in the street next to that dead guy until whatever day he decides to come looking for it. But in fact, he never does get it back, nor is it ever even mentioned again. You’d think the guy would lose a little sleep over the idea that someone in the city — maybe a crook — could be walking around with a 2200-year old sword that can cut through any substance known to man, but nope.

The eagle-eyed reader may have noticed a change in art styles above that apparently involves tracing figures from Superman comics. From this point on The Dart takes on a strong resemblance to the Man of Steel as someone in the editorial offices no doubt said, “Hey, we named this guy The Dart because he could fly, and that other flying guy’s books are selling like crazy! We need less swordplay and more flying!”

Or maybe they just figured it was time to try something, anything to break up the routine. As it turned out, it was too little, too late. With this issue, The Dart surrenders his lead-feature status in Weird Comics to a star-spangled nimrod named The Eagle. Over the course of the next four issues, The Dart makes his way to the back of the book and finally out of it entirely. Having debuted by borrowing from Batman and evolved into a Superman wannabe, he finally fades away into obscurity with all the other also-rans in comics history. But hey, we can always hope that he’s enjoying a well-earned retirement teaching Roman history to school kids and finally making some progress in his love life.

Or not.