Summary
- Doctor Fate's half-helmet was introduced in More Fun Comics #72, making him look more like a traditional superhero rather than a magical one in the Golden Age.
- Roy Thomas later explained that Kent Nelson and his wife created the half-helmet as an attempt to cease the possession by the alien Nabu.
- Thomas cleverly tied this explanation into a dramatic character interaction, adding depth to the story and resolving the retcon in a satisfying way.
"Provide Some Answers," is a feature spotlighting when long unresolved plot points are eventually resolved. Today, we look at how Doctor Fate's strange half-helmet was explained away decades later.
Generally speaking, you all know what this feature is about. They are stories that were left unresolved for a long time, and then eventually a later writer, well, you know, resolved them. However, there are also occasionally examples of stories that weren't necessarily unresolved, per se, but rather unexplained. You know, just a weird plot point that wasn't explained for years (a good example would be how Wolverine changed his mask inGiant-Size X-Men #1 due toGil Kane deciding to add a cowl to his mask. It was purely an artistic decision, but decades later, Roy Thomasexplained away the mask change in an issue ofX-Men: Legends).
That's what we're looking at here today, where Doctor Fate changed his iconic helmet at one point in the Golden Age. Writer Gardner Fox was obviously just trying to get in on the trend of the time of more traditional superheroes, so there was never a real in-story reason for the change, but Roy Thomas (him again!) came up with an explanation years later anyway! Let's find out how he did it!
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How was Doctor Fate's half-helmet era different from his other comics?
In March 1940, Gardner Fox and Howard Shermanintroduced Doctor Fate in the pages ofMore Fun Comics #55. This was very early in the Golden Age of superheroes, and superheroes very often were introduced to features just sort of in media res, as Doctor Fate is already an established superhero with a love interest who needs saving and everything. However, one thing that is clear about Doctor Fate is that he DID have magical powers...
Right off the bat, Doctor Fate's golden helmet was a very distinctive element of the character, and it has probably remained the most noteworthy aspect of the character...
While it was Sherman who designed the helmet, it was Fox who said that Fate having a helmet was a key part of the character. It was just that Fox didn't get around to actually revealing WHY the helmet until over a year later, when, inMore Fun Comics #67, welearned Doctor Fate's origin. It turns out that an alien called Nabu taught Kent Nelson his magical abilities and gave him a costume, including the helmet.
InMore Fun Comics #72, though, the cover notes that Doctor Fate is now different, as he has a half-helmet now...
He still has magical powers, but his approach is very different...
Look at him just punching dudes out, so very different from the distant, magical superhero he had been before...
This was the case for the rest of Doctor Fate's comic book career in the Golden Age, and when he returned in the Silver Age, in 1965, when Fox and Murphy Anderson brought Doctor Fate back inShowcase #55, and suddenly, Doctor Fate was much more of a magic-based superhero again, and with a full helmet...
Okay, so what was the deal with the half-helmet?
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How did Roy Thomas explain away Doctor Fate's half-helmet years?
AsI wrote about recently, Martin Pasko and Walter Simonson did a revamp of Doctor Fate in the 1970s, and during that story, Pasko's big twist in Doctor Fate's setup is that he revealed that Nabu actually POSSESSED Kent Nelson.
In All-Star Squadron #23 (by Roy Thomas, Jerry Ordway and the late, great Mike Machlan), Thomas then tied that Pasko reveal into a reveal about the half-helmet. They revealed that Kent and his wife, Inza, realized the truth about what was going on with Nabu, and decided to try to stop it by ceasing to wear the helmet, and creating a half-helmet instead...
He still had a lot of the abilities that he learned from Nabu, though, so he was able to continue as a superhero, just without the full powers that he received from the Nabu possession. It also explains why he began to fight with more physicality, and why his attitude was suddenly more like a traditional superhero of the era (like the Atom or Wildcat), as Kent was now fully in control, and Nabu wasn't in control anymore (or an influence on Kent).
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It was very clever by Thomas, but what made the idea stand out more is that we see that Kent has to actually decide to give in to Nabu at the end of the issue, so he finally agrees to go back to the full helmet of Fate, thus explaining why Doctor Fate was back to using a full helmet when he returned in the Silver Age...
The other interesting thing about this retcon is that Thomas didn't just explain away a piece of comic book history that didn't necessarily make sense, but he did so in a way that was centered around a dramatic character interaction, seeing Inza deal with her husband going back on his decision, and taking on Nabu again. It's heartfelt, and works as a character moment forgetting the retcon aspect of the story. Then you add in the fact that it actually ties into a DIFFERENT retcon (the aforementioned Pasko retcon), so there is so much going on in this story by Thomas, and it works really, really well.
If anyone has a suggestion for a comic book plot that got resolved after a few years (I tend to use two years as the minimum, as otherwise, you're probably just in the middle of the actual initial reveal of the storyline, ya know? But I'll allow exceptions where a new writer takes over a storyline and has to resolve the previous writer's unresolved plots), drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!
