If you asked the average man on the street who the first superhero was, they would say Captain Infinity. This isn't actually true. The first superhero of the twentieth century was actually Doctor Killdare, who made his crime busting debut nearly two years before the good Captain appeared. It was 1938 when Doctor Killdare started capturing the criminal element of New York City underneath his mask, but since he stayed in the shadows, few people learned about him. It wouldn't be until 1942 when he helped form the Order of Freedom and Liberty did the public learn about his existence. Doctor Killdare's career would last over 30 years, until 1972 when he officially retired at the age of 63. I visited Doctor Killdare at his home in Rochester, NY, where he now lives in a well kept manor that has been in his family for generations. Retired for 20 years from his medical career as well, Doctor Killdare, whose real name is Doctor Curtis Dare, keeps busy writing the occasional article for the New York Times and the Rochester Post, and acting as an advisor for younger medical doctors and superheroes.
Superhero Weekly: Let me start by asking you this question, wasn't using a superhero name that's so similar to your real name rather risky?
Doctor Killdare: Somehow no one ever made the connection. Hell, I managed to keep my wife from figuring it out during the first five years of our marriage. People were just more innocent back then, or dumber. I didn't go by that name much until I joined the Order.
SW: Did you use another identity?
DK: No. Actually I didn't have an alias during my first year. I just kept hidden. Most people thought I was the Shadow, that old pulp character. I did little to change that opinion. What happened is that some reporter, after about a year of crime fighting, managed to track me down and asked me my name. I made it up on the spot.
SW: So a reporter found you, but you got very little press, how did that happen.
DK: Until Captain Infinity showed up flying around the city in broad daylight, most people assumed that the superheroes were fantasy. So articles about me never got the first page, therefore no one read those articles.
SW: How does it feel that history has chosen Captain Infinity to be the first superhero instead of you even though you were actually on the scene first?
DK: It's a little annoying, even though I never cared for to much press when I was active. There were others before him besides me, Midnight was active only a few months after me, I know American Eagle was active before as well, so was Dan Dangerous and The Rock in their hometowns. But the Captain was the first to be really loud about the whole thing. Obnoxious A******.
SW: Please don't use fowl language, our publisher won't allow it in the magazine, but on that point, can you tell us more about how you feel about Captain Infinity?
DK: I never liked him much, he acted like he was to good for us normal folk. I think his powers went to his head a lot. Another mistake history makes, the Captain did not form the Order of Freedom and Liberty, Cosmic Man and me did. He did revive it in 1965, but he only worked with us once or twice back in the old days. The big thing he did with us was when he attacked with us during D-Day, but nearly every major hero was there to stop the Fuerer's supers. I thought he was an egocentric publicity hound.
SW: Let's talk about some of your other peers. How about I give you a name and you tell us your opinion?
DK: Okeey Dokeey.
SW: Cosmic Man?
DK: He was what, 18 years old when he started? LA's first superhero. His wisdom was far beyond his years. There never would have been an Order if it weren't for him. I had the contacts to form the group, but it was really his idea, and he managed to find me. It's a good thing he could fly, otherwise he would have never made it to meetings, and the rest of us were living in East Coast cities. He had spunk, that kid. And he turned it into one of the greatest crime fighting careers ever.
SW: Lady Liberty?
DK: Wonderful woman. She had class, not like some of today's female superheroes.
SW: Minuteman?
DK: He was the first person Cosmic and me asked to join the team. That man is a patriot. We haven't spoke in a number of years, he had a falling out with the Order back in 1970 when he wanted us to go into Vietnam to end it. On retrospect I think he might have been right, but there is no way to tell.
SW: Mr. Merlin?
DK: I'll miss him, but we were never really close. We worked together in the 40's and talked during reunions and such, mostly about old cases. But we never really had a relationship in our civilian identities. I don't know, I fought to many weird mystics in my career, so I have always been a little suspicious of those types, I think it kept me from becoming close to him. I wish we had a chance to connect before he died.
SW: American Eagle?
DK: Strong hero, nice guy. He's one of the few WWII heroes who are remembered who weren't part of the Order. Again history being lazy. He ran a team himself called the Star Spangled Society. They were formed before us actually. We worked a few times together. He saved my life once, and I'll always remember him for that.
SW: Hope?
DK: Ahhh, Hope. What a sweetheart. What a babe. If I had had a chance with her. Oh well. Nah, she was great. No powers, no special devices, only her own guts. Many people at that time thought superheroing wasn't for women. Lady Liberty was left alone because she had superpowers, but Hope was a normal, like Dan Dangerous and me. But that never held her back. Actually that was in her favor, since most villains underestimated her.
SW: Condor?
DK: Tragic. The first member of the Order to fall in combat. It was real rare for us to die back then. Some of us thought we were immortal. There were casualties, don't get me wrong, but it's the way he died. During D-Day, against Ubermensch. He should have known better, but Condor always had something to prove. He still kept Ubermensch from reaching the ships long enough for Captain Infinity to arrive, and that made all the difference.
SW: It's public record that was one of the two times Captain Infinity killed a man...
DK: Bulls***. Ubermensch ain't dead. Infinity failed to finish him off.
SW: I'm sorry, but what are you saying?
DK: Ubermensch ain't dead. He's alive today living in Argentina or Paraguay or one of those South American countries. Infinity only crippled him. He couldn't kill the sucker. I think he buried him or threw him into orbit, but the guy didn't die. He now runs a nazi terrorist group known as the Fourth Reich. I guess he ain't to physically active, but from what I understand, he just can't die.
SW: So after all this time, he could come back and finish the job that Hitler started.
DK: Yup, a depressing thought ain't it. He's one of those guys that super heroes have to be ever active against.
SW: To change topics back to what I was going to discuss originally, what's your opinion on killing?
DK: I ain't going to pretend that I never killed anyone. I had to. It's known I carried a gun, and used real bullets until the Order made me change them to rubber bullets. It was necessary. I didn't kill often, and I never got a liking for it, not like these vigilantes that run around today killing every jaywalker they run across. When there was no other way out I killed. If it was the villain or an innocent I killed. There was only one time I killed someone in cold blood, and that was the Maniac. He had already killed nearly 100 people, and he wasn't likely to stop. So even though I had him captured, I shot him anyway. He had escaped prison to many times before. But that was the exception, not the rule.
SW: Let's talk more about your enemies. What were they like?
DK: Early on my enemies fell into two categories, mobsters and murderers. My first case, the reason I started fighting crime was because of a serial murderer that was a fellow doctor. It went from there. At the beginning few had fancy names or super powers or anything like that. They were all just plain killers. I'd say in my first few years my biggest enemy was mob boss Oscar "The Knife" Benetelli. After a while some regulars started popping up. First and foremost was the Maniac, which I mentioned already. He was sick weirdo, he liked to come up with new ways to kill people. With him there were a number of times he died and would come back. That's another reason I shot him, so I knew he would be dead.
SW: Who were some of the others?
DK: There was the Crooked Man, who I fought alone and with the Order. He was an ordinary sicko the first time we fought. Later on he became super powered. He came back recently. There was the Mad Monk, Rasputin, yeah the Russian. He never actually died in Russia. There was some creature that called itself the Crimson Claw. He's the main reason I never liked the magic types, used it a lot to summon demons and the like. Another mystical freak was the Gargoyle. There was Whisper. Never really understood what he was up to. Also there was Lord Dark, he was a vampire. Staked him good. There was Raven. She was some weird bondage freak. Oh yeah, there was Morgana, Mistress of Evil. Actually she was more of a confused kid then anything else. The Mad Slasher, the Cutthroat, the Butcher, and Blood Simple, all of them your typical murderers. There was also Rawhead and Bloody Bones, a pair of real monsters.
SW: Who were the top three? The ones you fought the most and left the biggest impression?
DK: The first is the Maniac. The second was Sapphire, she was a jewel thief, and sometimes crime lord. She and I fought a number of times over the years, until 1955 when she finally had enough of the game. The third was Doctor Damnation. Remember how I mentioned my first case? That was him. We fought against each other for a long, long time. Nearly until 1967, when he had a stroke during one of our duels. He stopped after that.
SW: What were your enemies like with the Order and after the war?
DK: Well, when I was with the Order we usually fought Nazi threats. Sometimes other stuff. But it was rarely the same type of evil that I fought by myself. I spent more time in daylight with the Order, then I ever did by myself, to give you an idea how different it was. Things after the war were normal for a while, then in the fifties things got really weird. The villains stopped being dark and started being stupid. The villains were the Roly-Poly Man, the Platypus, the Sneaker, Mr. Sports, and the Conundrum. They all liked using really big props. I got attacked by giant scissors, giant knifes, giant quarters, giant baseballs, giant birds, you name it. It was stupid. The fifties were stupid. I understand why most of the heroes retired during that time.
SW: Let's go to another topic. Your sidekick Target Boy. Isn't that a rather risky name, and a terrible choice for a costume, with the bulls' eye on his chest?
DK: Not when you consider the original Target Boy was a stuffed doll. It was 1941 and a number of heroes were running around with sidekicks. Minuteman had Scooter. American Eagle had Winger. The Rock had the pebble or something like that. It was a weird trend. I thought it was stupid, who brings a fourteen year old boy into combat? So as a joke I took a stuffed mannequin, put it into a costume and threw it into combat ahead of me. It worked well so I kept the dumb thing with me.
SW: But didn't someone actually become Target Boy later on?
DK: Yeah, this kid who found out my secret identity and then followed me around as Target Boy for a while. His name was Andy West. Smart kid, I let him be a sidekick for a number of years. He grew out of it after a while and went his own way in life. We kept in contact until he passed away about five years back. I'm like a grandfather to his family, which is nice since me and my wife never had kids.
SW: What are your feelings about your replacement?
DK: He is a dummy. I trained him shortly after my retirement, but I regret my choice. He started too soon. He purposely chose someone to be Target Boy. That was a disaster. First that kid gets another super teen pregnant, then he gets killed by Idiot King. The second Doctor Killdare and I weren't on speaking terms this last decade or so. In truth I really didn't consider the current Order to be our replacements or our successors.
SW: Who would be your successors?
DK: I would choose the Guardians of Justice. It was ran by an actual original Order of Freedom and Liberty member, Conquest. Kid Cosmic, Cosmic Man's son, is on the team. And I generally respect them more. Void's a real spitfire. I like Daemon, and Chuck is a good card player.
SW: Well that's all the time I have, thank you very much for your time.
DK: Your welcome.
—Dennis Carter
WRITE TO US
what do you think?
Do you have what it takes to be a superhero?
Copyright © 2000 Adam Fisher.
