The Clock

NEEDS A CAREFUL EDIT

 

The Clock bears the distinction of having been the first masked hero created for a comic book. There are precedents in other media, but in comics, the Clock’s only contemporary was Dr. Occult, who’d been introduced a year before in National’s New Fun #6. Dr. Occult was not masked, but possessed mystical abilities.

The Clock debuted in Funny Pages vol. 1 #6 and Funny Picture Stories #1 (Nov. 1936), but both comics featured different stories. The stories in Funny Pages (“The Clock Strikes”) appear to have been penned first; the art is rougher, and each issue only printed two pages of the Clock. The last story (#11, June 1937) ended with no resolution. The two tales in Funny Picture Stories (“Alias, the Clock”) featured more pages, supporting characters, and a more well-rounded setting. These titles were published by William Cook and John Mahon for Comics Magazine Co., Inc. Busy Arnold helped these men on the printing side, and became good friends with George Brenner. When the Cook-Mahon enterprise went under, Arnold picked up the Clock for his own new company, Comic Favorites, Inc. (a.k.a. Quality).

With less than a year’s break, the Clock next appeared in Feature Funnies #3 (Dec. 1937). One issue before this, Brenner created another new hero called the Hawk. This feature bore the attribution “by Geo. E. Brenner, creator of The Clock.” The Hawk only appeared once. Like the Clock, he wore a suit and black silk mask.

Brenner’s features suffered from hurried artwork and an obvious lack of formal skills—sad when contrasted with the rising talent of other Quality artists. His writing was hit-and-miss. In both “The Clock” and his other long-lived feature, “Bozo,” adventures often made head-scratching twists and incredible plot leaps. Sometimes the result was a powerful, fast-paced story. Sometimes not.

Quality editor Gill Fox suggested that George Brenner might have owned the Clock. But Martin Filchock, a contemporary of Brenner’s at Cook-Mahon, dismissed that idea in Alter Ego #64 (Jan. 2007). He said, “In those days, nobody owned anything. I mean, the doggone magazine just paid you five bucks and they owned everything.” Even if Cook-Mahon owned “The Clock,” its move to Quality wasn’t strange to Filchock, who added, “if the other magazine wants your stuff… they didn’t care. They were out of the business.” Whatever the case, Brenner died in the 1950s and the Clock’s adventures are in the public domain. The Clock was revived by Malibu Comics along with other heroes from the Centaur family in 1992. 

Pre-Quality: Cook & Mahon's Comics Magazine Co.

The Clock began his adventures as an anonymous masked man in tuxedo and bow tie. His first case involved foiling a bank robbery.(Funny Pages v.1 #6) With two-fisted gumption, he made quick work of the gang. (#7) After calling the police he left his calling card which read, “The Clock Struck at…” with the symbol of a clock beneath. (#8)The Clock didn’t turn in all of the gang members. He took “Killer” Katz for a different kind of justice, turning Katz over to his victim’s brother. The next day, the newspaper told the story—an angry mob had killed Katz for his crimes. The Clock, meanwhile, relaxed at home. (#9) In his next case he foiled a diamond robbery (#10), but was in turn caught by the cops. (#11) The resolution of this story remained unknown, as Comics Magazine ceased operations.

Over in Cook and Mahon’s other title, the Clock was hunting another ring of jewel thieves. In the fight, he used a spring-loaded cane to fire its tip and knock one of them out. (Funny Picture Stories #1)  Note: This story was reprinted in Keen Detective Funnies v.1 #8 (July 1938), and the art was later rejiggered for Quality’s Feature Funnies #9 (June 1938). Its art appeared on both the cover and in an expanded story which appended the art and the wordy ending letter to the police was rewritten. 

Brenner fancied himself a Conan Doyle for modern times, penning the “Hare and Hound” Captain Kane is hot to arrest the Clock left his calling card and would be at the residence of J. Perry Getmore. But when our hero was unmasked, O’Brien had disguised himself as Young Traymore. After he was released bail, the Clock returned to Getmore and stole from his riches, to pass on to the poor. (#2) Note: Repritned in Feature Funnies #7

After being framed for murder by boss Bowser. O’Brien went underground for information that led him to secure a confession from the true killers. (#5)

Detective Picture Stories #1 (Dec. 1936) featured a different feature by George Brenner called “The Phantom Killer.” It was the same type of story.

Quality Comics

 

Not much changed when the Clock moved to Quality Comics in Feature Funnies #3, in which Brenner introduced a new character called the Orchid. This mystery woman had supposedly met the Clock previously, and alerted him to a kidnapping plot. The Clock flew his plane to Detroit,  when attacked. she helped him by shooting their quarry, an extorionist. . The Orchid had eluded the Clock after their first meeting, so this time he gave her the slip. (Feature Funnies #3)

Early strips were sometimes painfully amateur imitations of pulp stories. Verbose introductions and word balloons liberally peppered with slang were par for the course.   The pictures were secondary to the text. Worse, the color of the Clock’s suit and that of his quarry might change color more than once per tale—this even while the Clock was only in plainclothes! The net result is total confusion for the reader. (Thank heavens: the panels were often numbered.) From within his plush home, the Clock took note of crimes against the poor, such as the victims of a ruthless loan shark. He captured the killer without ever donning his signature mask. (#4)

The Clock learned of the case form the papers. Velvet Marcon threatening a judge. The judge was thankful for the save, but still disapproves of the Clock’s methods. The Clock has the nerve to ask for a small charge for his services! but suggests that it ($20,000) go to an orphanage in need. (#5) Note: The Judge’s name in this story is “Justin Wright,” which Brenner repurposed for a new hero in

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took a gangster back to his hideout and threatened to put him in an iron maiden. As always, the Clock cleaned up, left a note for the police, and gave the leftover ransom money to the poor. (#6)

 

He encountered his first masked opponent, the Owl (Feature Funnies #7), Brian O’Brien’s father knew about his son’s extracurricular activities and begged him to give it up, but they were interrupted by a call — from Captain Kane! The police were finally asking for the Clock’s help. Brian called Kane to a special location where a wall of bulletproof glass kept the Clock removed from Kane help him get evidence on mob boss Maroni. He disguised himself and learned enough to weasel into their midst. The Clock ultimatley drove Maroni off a bridge, and earned the captain’s gratitude. (#8) 

The Clock maintained multiple sanctuaries in the city . happened upon gunfire and a crook who unmasked and recognized him as a member of high society. O’Brien saved himself with some quick talk and quicker reflexes. As he tried to get away, the crook fell to his death trying to leap to the top of another building.  (#10)

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nd had rigged his suit with tear gas. (#12) Finally, his secret identity—he was playboy and “ace criminologist” Brian O’Brien—was revealed during the case of a murdered mayor. Here he established a relationship with Captain Kane, who spoke to the Clock through a screened door that masked O’Brien’s face. (#14) Brenner did not invent the motif of playboy-turned adventurer. It was a pulp fiction convention seen in heroes like the Spider, and more contemporaneously with radio’s Green Hornet.

The Clock mostly fought pedestrian crooks until one, Boss Marco, got the drop and unmasked him. Marco threatened to reveal the Clock’s identity to the public, but when Marco and his gang left, their car exploded from a container of nitro glycerin. (#20)

In 1939, O’Brien visited the spectacular New York World’s Fair. Naturally, he ran into trouble but managed to stop the crooks without ever donning his black silk mask. (Feature Comics #21) As a playboy, O’Brien always tried to work his way onto Inspector Kane’s cases. But Kane considered O’Brien nothing more than a golf buddy, and Brian was left to his undercover devices as the Clock. Kane didn’t mind help. (#23) He confided to O’Brien that he actually preferred it when the Clock stepped in, because his own men were too well known by mobsters to do undercover work. (#25) This didn’t stop other policemen from fingering the Clock for other crimes, as when a crook framed the Clock for his own crimes. O’Brien laid a trap, and hypnotized the crook into confessing to his crimes. (#26)

And what kind of eccentric would O’Brien be if he couldn’t fly a plane? He demonstrated his prowess in the air while pursuing thieves who’d stolen a secret military gas formula. He even took a death defying leap from his own plane and landed on another below! And when a secret gas was dispersed, the Clock was unaffected by it. He theorized that his mask must have been wet and prevented the gas from penetrating. (#31)

Time for Sidekicks

In 1940 O’Brien met Pat “Pug” Brady, a down-on-his-luck former heavyweight boxing champ and all-American fullback who tried to steal Brian’s watch. Pug had survived a murder trial (a case of self defense), but he’d fallen on hard times. Brady followed the Clock and freed him when he was captured, but wound up killing the Clock’s attacker. O’Brien helped him cover up the death, then disguised himself as the dead man and infiltrated his gang. The gang’s boss, Big Shot, wore a white hood over his head and was unmasked as the mayor himself. Afterwards, O’Brien noticed that he and Pug looked rather alike. Pug owed everything to the Clock, and so pledged his loyalty to him and his crime fighting endeavors. (Crack #1) When Pug went with the Clock into the field he wore a simpler white face mask of his own.  

The guys were always a step behind another crime fighter, the mysterious woman known only as the Orchid. The Orchid asked for the Clock’s help by sending notes to O’Brien (so she knew his secret identity). Brian said he’d met her twice before. (#2) Brenner didn’t get around to developing the Orchid as a character. She appeared only once more, in person but shadowed, in Crack #27. In that case, the Orchid summoned the Clock to the countryside to investigate strange happenings at Morgan Manor. She came to him, partially hidden in the shadows, wearing a green hat and dress. The usual suspects in stories like this would have been a girlfriend or recurring character, but the Clock had no lady guest-stars, so readers never learned her backstory.

Pug dressed as the Clock when O’Brien was framed and arrested. Their spitting images came in quite handy as O’Brien and the Clock were able to appear side-by-side and fool the authorities. (#3) 

His rogues gallery included a wanton killer called the Asp, who left a calling card after he committed his crimes. (#4) The masked, gravity-defying criminal called the Jay Bird swooped down on the Clock from the sky. Upon closer observation, he found that the crook was attached to a cable that came out of a plane. Brian and Pug took to the skies and trounced the Jay Bird. Pug wore a mask on this case. (#5) 

Several other gang leaders wore hooded masks. These included the leaders of the Skull Gang (#6) and the Screw Gang. (#9) The Devil added horns to his green hood. His “robbers from Hades” injected victims with a treatment that generated unbearable heat. The Devil kidnapped O’Brien, too, and Pug helped his boss synthesize an antidote and narrowly escape death. (#7) Mr. Terror wore a red skullcap type of mask. (#18)

Among his unmasked foes were the so-called Stuporman, a super-strong and impervious pinheaded monster from Mongolia. (#8) Prescott Taunton was the Werewolf, but it was unclear whether he was a supernatural character or a normal human. (#15)

Butch, Sidekick #2

By late 1941, the industry’s most popular heroes like Batman and Captain America had kid sidekicks. George Brenner jumped on this bandwagon. In Crack #21, he dumped Pug without explanation and introduced a new kid sidekick. On the waterfront, the Clock had done battle with the Mouse, and was riddled with bullets. The hero managed to stumble into a nearby home where he was taken in by a young girl named Butch. Over the course of months, she nursed him to health. When it finally came time to leave, Brian found it not so easy to leave Butch behind. She was fearless: a trash talking, red-headed street urchin who weaseled her way into O’Brien’s life. When she took him in, she’d mistaken the Clock for a gangster, and she fantasized about becoming his “moll.” Her crush on him intensified when the Clock then saved her from death at the hands of a mobster. (#21)

When the Clock returned to the streets, he sported a new domino mask (looking very much like the Spirit). With Butch in tow, the Clock’s adventures took a decidedly different tone, but the tension between the two did elevate the interest level of the feature. The more O’Brien tried to exclude Butch from his escapades, the more she got under his skin. On their first case together, Brian acquiesced only so that he could keep an eye on her. She’d wanted a gun but settled for using razor blades, which she embedded in a potato to use as a throwing weapon. (#22)

Butch usually carried her own weight, even using rat traps as weapons. Despite her bravado, she became paralyzed at the prospect of firing a real gun when it fell into her hands. (#23) Her history came in handy when locating gang members like the “knife throwing gang.” (#24) She witnessed the killing of a D.A. by the Head, whose visage floated in space much like the Wizard of Oz. When the Head was poised to unmask the Clock, Butch “helped” him out by beating the Clock about the head so much that his features were unidentifiable! (#26) Brenner’s stories also addressed (if humorously) the dangerous “reality” of having a child sidekick.

By Crack Comics #34 (June 1944), Brenner’s art was markedly different—looser and more cartoony. This was either in response to prevailing trends, or Brenner had someone else ghosting on the feature. The Clock series went out with a whimper in a throwaway tale involving “the little man who wasn’t there”—the inventor of an invisibility gas. (#35) Time had run out for the Clock and the series was replaced by humor feature “Floogy.” 

Modern References

The Clock has never made any DC Comics appearances, per se. He has, however, turned up in fictional 1940s journal entries written by the vigilante known as the Shade. The Shade refers once to a misreporting of the Clock’s death circa 1944 (when the character’s series ended). A man named Hubert Mason reported having killed the Clock, believing that the hero was an agent of Satan. (Starman v.2 #19) But the Shade later remarked that the Clock was still alive, operating out of Chicago as “a barely adequate protector of the innocent.” (#78) Perhaps it was O’Brian’s body double, poor Pug, who bit the dust while disguised as the Clock instead.

In Malibu Comics—The Protectors

In 1992, Malibu Comics launched a modern revival of Golden Age Centaur Comics heroes. Malibu made the character their own and created something totally new, based on the original. In The Protectors, Brian O’Brien had been the Clock in the 1940s, then he went into the army, and was ultimately elected President of the United States. All the characters in this title were killed in Protectors #20 (May 1994). “The Clock” never appeared on Malibu’s covers.

Masks (Dynamite Comics)

In Masks, Dynamite teams history's earliest super heroes, most of whom were originally invented for pulp fiction and the radio.

In 1938, New York state is taken over by the Justice Party, a front for a totalitarian organization bent on solving society's problems with an iron hand. The party quickly implemented sweeping new powers and created a Black Legion police force. Tony Quinn, who succeeded O'Brien's as District Attorney recalled that Brian had found the law too limiting, which is why he chose to operate outside of it as the Clock. (Masks #3) Quinn soon lost his sight and also became a masked adventurer, the Black Bat.

When the heroes closed in on the mastermind behind the Justice Party, this master killed his underling, the mayor, with poison gas issued from a wall clock. (#4) The heroes eventually tracked down the master to the Empire State Building, where Brian O'Brien had surrounded himself with clock symbols. He now wore all white (#5) and boasted to them about how easy it was to assume control of government. (#6) He intended to take over the whole country. When the Shadow engaged O'Brien, his face was revealed to Quinn, who recognized him immediately. (#7)

O'Brien's appearance in this series borrows some things from the Clock's Quality Comics adventures. His rather KKK-like white hood is exactly like that of his white-hooded foe, Big Shot, from Crack Comics #1 (1940). In that story, the hooded figure turned out to be the city mayor.

Writer Chris Roberson talked about the Clock's inclusion at CBR. Also according to Roberson, this entire story was inspired by a pulp-era Spider tale by Norvell Page. The Black Legion was inspired by the actual historical Black Legion, a splinter group of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1930s. (The Black Legion was also the name of a group fought by Uncle Sam.)

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Dynamite  published Masks in 2013, a series that teamed together heroes who (mostly) got their start in mediums other than comic books. It included the Shadow, Zorro, the Green Hornet, the Green Lama, and the Spider—all of whom originated on the radio or in pulp books. Most of these characters were eventually developed for Golden Age comic book features as well.

The third issue features an unexpected cameo by the Clock (the first masked hero created for a comic book), is a flashback, not a true apperance. In the story, former District Attorney Tony Quinn recalls the Clock as a fellow D.A. who took an alternate route to fighting crime. Quinn goes on to become the Black Bat in this story (yet another pulp character).   

Masks departs from its pulp-only formula in order to include one comic book hero: the Black Terror, a popular public domain hero who first appeared in Exciting Comics #9 (Jan. 1941). Also on parade is Miss Fury (aka Black Fury), who ran as a Sunday newspaper feature beginning April 6, 1941.

In 1938, New York state is taken over by the Justice Party, a front for a totalitarian organization bent on solving society’s problems with an iron hand. The party quickly implemented sweeping new powers and created a Black Legion police force. Tony Quinn, who succeeded  O’Brien’s as District Attorney, recalled that Brian had found the law too limiting, which is why he chose to operate outside of it as the Clock. In Masks, Quinn loses his sight and also becomes a masked adventurer, the Black Bat. (Masks #3)

When the heroes closed in on the mastermind behind the Justice Party, this master killed his underling, the mayor, with poison gas issued from a wall clock. (#4) The heroes eventually tracked down the master to the Empire State Building, where O’Brien had surrounded himself with clock symbols. He now wore all white (#5) and boasted to them about how easy it was to assume control of government. (#6) He intended to take over the whole country. When the Shadow engaged O’Brien, his face was revealed to Quinn, who recognized him immediately. (#7)

O’Brien’s appearance in this series borrows some things from the Clock’s Quality Comics adventures. His rather Klan-like white hood is exactly like that of his white-hooded foe, Big Shot, from Crack Comics #1 (1940). In that story, the hooded figure turned out to be the city mayor.

Writer Chris Roberson talks about the Clock’s inclusion at CBR. Also according to Roberson, this entire story was inspired by a pulp-era Spider tale by Norvell Page. The Black Legion was inspired by the actual historical Black Legion, a splinter group of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1930s. 

Notes

Brenner’s friendship with Busy Arnold was referenced in Crack Comics #5, where the Clock refers to his pal Pug as “Busy.”

The Clock was featured on the covers of Feature #25, 28 and 29, until the Doll Man began to grow in popularity. In Crack Comics, he alternated cover appearances with Black Condor, nabbing all odd issues through #19.

The Clock was the inspiration for the character of the same name in John Arcudi’s 2002 Elseworlds series, JLA: Destiny.

Powers

The Clock had no super-powers but wasn’t afraid to use his fists, or a gun, or a “paralyzing” gun. He once also used a cane with a spring-loaded tip which could fire the knob as a projectile. His hat was made of sponge rubber to absorb impact. Among his other talents: ventriloquism, a “neuroparalysis” pinch, a “hypnotic stare” from his “piercing eyes,” chemistry, and impersonation.

Appearances + References

» FEATURED APPEARANCES:  

Comics Magazine Co.:

• Funny Picture Stories #1–2 (Nov. 1936–Dec. 1936)
• Detective Picture Stories #2, 5 (Jan.–Apr. 1937)
• Keen Detective Funnies #8 (July 1938, reprint)

» SERIES:

Comics Magazine Co.:

• Funny Pages v.1 #6–11 (November 1936–June 1937)

Quality Comics:

• Feature Funnies #3–20 (December 1937–May 1939), becomes…
• Feature Comics #21–31 (June 1939–April 1940)
• Crack Comics #1–35 (May 1940–Autumn 1944)

» SEE ALSO:

• Toonopedia: The Clock
• Chris Roberson Sheds "Masks" For "The Shadow" (27 May 2013)