Not Yeti Friday - The Avenger

There's a lot of talk these days about the The Avengers. I'm sure you're familiar with that colorful  group of do-gooders. The team-up of Hulkman, Norseman, Bowman, Widowman, and Captain Avenger... right now they're all the rage (no pun intended, Hulkman).

And you're probably aware of another eponymous heroic collective,  The Avengers, of the 1960s British tv show which predates the comic book characters by a couple of years.  But did you know there was a heroic person in the popular culture named The Avenger that predates both spy-fi and superhero ones?

Forget Captain America, the "First Avenger" was The Avenger, star of pulp stories beginning way back in 1939.

When both wife and child get killed in a plane crash, adventuring philanthropist Richard Henry Benson suddenly gets a weird paralyzed face, malleable clay-like body, and bleached white skin and hair.  Benson doesn't let a crazy thing like a new clay-corpse look cramp his style. Ever the pragmatist, he takes fate's lemons and turns them into flimsy justification for crime-fighting and vengeance!

Let's take a look at some depictions...

Note the villain of the piece above. Before there was Luke Skywalker, there was The Sky Walker, the "deadliest man alive". And the Avenger fought him. With a gun.

The Avenger would fights lots of bad guys - but mostly with a knife, I am led to belief. 

He was known to jump head first out of bi-planes. With knife. Mostly.

Here he is in toy form. With a gun.

And the inevitable custom.  Note the 2006 for no reason.

Hurzzorrh!