You’ve heard me complain in the past about how much I hate “The Guy in the Chair“. That character that exists largely to give the hero someone to talk to. I wrote about this in a post called “The Man Alone”, which is my preferred formula. I love the hero who has no safety net, no cavalry to save him or her. I think this is often the greatest weakness of superheroes on television. When it is handled by someone who gets it, like Joss Whedon, shows like Agents of S. H. I. E. L. D. have their charms. Each character has a back-story and brings a dynamic to the mix. (Think of the best scene in Serenity, when River is left all alone with the Reavers at the climactic ending, dripping ax in hand. That’s a “Man Alone” scene (Yes, I know, Woman alone.) To get there, Whedon has to have a team.)
Sadly, many of the DC shows such as The Flash and Arrow, that start off alright, quickly become character heavy and I stop watching them. (By the end of just about every DC show, everybody is a superhero.) Again, Whedon showed us the error of this with his Buffy universe. Characters like Zander and Gunn were my favorite, because they were mere humans trying to survive in a world filled with super-monsters.
Anyway, all of this is just to ask the question: where did the Super-Team originate? Who had the first story structured on the team? There were groups but they were usually limited to three. Robert Sampson in his genre history, Yesterday’s Faces (1983) talks about how the standard Pulp set-up came from the Dime Novels:
Billy’s two intimate companions are Joe Scott and Buck Foster. Joe, a tanned young cattleman (cowboy is meant) with blue eyes and red-brown hair, is a cheerfully reckless type who has to be admonished to keep him from throwing his life away. Buck is older. Once a government scout, he is also an ex-miner and a full-time right-hand man at Billy’s ranch. He is iron-gray and has long, drooping mustaches, plus a hand-gun that is fast and accurate.
So the trio image rides on, new faces replacing old. But the figures are familiar and the relationships have not changed.
The Dime Novels liked to create an amazing hero (Nick Carter, Frank Reade, Buffalo Bill Cody, etc.) then partner him up with two friends, a young man who needs to learn from the main hero (and get rescued a lot) and the old veteran, who can give sage advice. There is a fourth, the beauty that the hero is in love with and must win with bravery and honesty. Sound familiar? I immediately think of Batman. Bruce Wayne is the hero, Robin the acolyte and Alfred the sage. But you will see it everywhere. Especially in the comics where every caped crusader has a sidekick. Catwoman is the gal but with a nice twist.
But the Super-Team is something else. The team has a central leader surrounded by many talented younger individuals. The team leader has an agenda, a mission, some central philosophy he tries to teach his followers. For DC it was The Legion of Superheroes, Super Friends, Justice League of America, Legends of Tomorrow, etc. At Marvel, there was The Fantastic Four, The X-Men, The Avengers, The Defenders, The Inhumans, etc. These were the comic books that inspired Joss Whedon.
But who was first? The answer lies in the Pulps: I think it was Doc Savage. Before Lester Dent created the amazing Clark Savage Jr, and his five amazing aids, Renny, Johnny, Ham, Monk and Long Tom, there really weren’t any Super-Teams. Some Dime Novels had a wide plethora of replaceable characters but the idea that the writer would give six characters distinguishing characters and roles started with Dent. Perhaps the only other publishing genre that may have used this was the English School Story, where a group of students rally like a team. The most obvious version of that today is the Harry Potter novels. But in adult fiction, there was Doc. (Again, I know, they wrote the Doc novels for that snot-nose ten year old kid on the subway!)
Doc Savage was created by Street & Smith as an attempt to re-create the fire that was The Shadow. The Shadow doesn’t work entirely alone but he is not a team player over-all. Lester Dent wanted a visible team where Walter B. Gibson did not. When S&S tried a third time with The Avenger, Paul Ernst borrowed more of the team approach from Dent, with Mac MacMurdle, Smitty Smith, Nellie Gray, Josh and Rosabel Newton and later Cole Wilson, forming an actual team.
Science Fiction tried it with Captain Future, with Kurt Newton, Grag the Robot, Ortho the Android and Simon Wright, the Brain. Edmond Hamilton wrote and created most of the series, using a blend between the old Dime Novel set-up and the Doc Savage team. Hamilton sets the pattern for the Space Opera version of this idea. Allen Steele is continuing it today.
The mold was set. Comic books had been producing individual characters for some time. The Pulp writers were all gravitating to comics as the Pulps waned. It was only a matter of time…
The very first Super-Hero team was the Justice Society of America in 1940 by editor, Sheldon Mayer and writer, Gardner F. Fox. The original line-up had Hawkman, the Flash, Doctor Fate, Hourman, the Spectre, Sandman, the Atom, and Green Lantern.
(1942) The Marvel Family – Otto Binder and Marc Swayze
(1958) Legion of Super-Heroes – Otto Binder.
(1960) Justice League of America – Gardner F. Fox.
(1961) The Fantastic Four – Jack Kirby and Stan Lee
(1963) The X-Men – Jack Kirby and Stan Lee
(1963) The Avengers – Jack Kirby and Stan Lee
(1963) The Doom Patrol – Arnold Drake, Bob Haney and Bruno Premani
(1964) The Teen Titans – Bob Haney and Bruno Premani
(1965) The Inhumans – Jack Kirby and Stan Lee
(1969) The Guardians of the Galaxy – Arnold Drake and Gene Colan
(1971) The Defenders – Roy Thomas
For the full list, go here.
Conclusion
We all have our favorites. I have a fondness for The X-Men and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I think we owe Lester Dent and all the other Kenneth Robeson ghosts for setting the pattern. Whether you are a fan of teams or not, I think we can all agree that when your latest super-group shows up on the movie or TV screen that some Pulp-style adventure is going to happen. Somebody is going to be captured and the others will have to go all out to save them. Lester Dent would have approved.
