Who's Air Wave?

Who's This? The original, Golden Age Air Wave shared page 6 of Who's Who's first issue, but he's otherwise been forgotten by today's readers. Let's fix that.

The facts: Air Wave was really Larry Jordan, D.A. and he fought crime with his radio-related arsenal from Detective Comics #60 right on up to #137 (a solid 6 years between 1942 and 1948) in 6 or 7 page adventures.
How you could have heard of him: His son Harold (Hal) Jordan (no, not THAT Hal Jordan, but they ARE cousins) became the Bronze Age Air Wave who eventually became Maser in the pages of Firestorm. Air Wave the Elder also appeared in DC Comics Presents as a guest-star and in a "Whatever Happened to..." features, as well as some random issues of All-Star Squadron and Young All-Stars.
Example story: "Underworld Jam Session!" (with a title like that, how could I resist?) in Detective Comics #88 (June, 1944), reprinted in World's Finest Comics #212 (June 1972)

In this simple story, "reformed" criminal "Snake Eyes" Bentley is paroled, but he wants to use the electronic skills he learned in jail to get revenge on the superhero that caught him, and the D.A. that got him convicted. He doesn't realize they're one and the same! Bentley has a thing for complicated death traps which may be the end of him though. He gets the better of Jordan, but straps him to a bomb that will go off as soon as the phone rings. Well, maybe he should have called before Jordan could do this:

No, I don't know where his mustache goes when he turns into a superhero.

Using radio jammers, Bentley disrupts Air Wave's ability to "tune in on [his] gun" (say whaa?). Air Wave triangulates Bentley's position using the jamming signal instead. Speeding to the hide-out with his telephone-line skates, he has a little bad luck.

So Bentley's goons catch him and what do they do? They set him up to be murdered by a passing trolley. By tying him to the track? Why, no.

The idea is that the trolley's wheels will cut the ropes, he'll drop down the bridge and into the water and drown. That seems like just one step too many. As it the fates would have it, it allows Air Wave to use his skates to magnetically stick to the bridge's girders and escape. He catches up with the hoods, and we find out his real power is laying in some wicked puns.

That, and annoying the hell out of the criminals he catches by projecting his voice radiophonically (because Golden Age, live with it) and gloating.

No wonder they want to kill him when they come out!!

Most of the Air Wave strips were drawn by George Roussos who started at DC (then National) inking Batman, and who would eventually go on to ink Jack Kirby's Fantastic Four as George Bell. I really like his noir stylings and use of shadows in this story. He also handled colors, so those oppressive washes are his as well. And the lettering; I immensely enjoy his use of cursive every time the name Air Wave is used, like a tiny logo, though there are some spelling errors ("tacticts"?). The writer's identity is, as is the case for many Golden Age stories, unknown. Harris Levy took over the script with Detective #113 and his work is clearly more primitive. Not the same at all.

Who else?
Who's Who #1 had some other obscure characters like Aegeus and Angle Man, but I didn't want to start the series with a lame Wonder Woman villain. Maybe on the next pass. The Atomic Knight was new to me at the time, but it's my understanding that the series he appeared in, Hercules Unbound, is a lot better remembered than I ever gave it credit for, and the character later joined the Outsiders and took part in the Battle for Blüdhaven (not that anyone admits to reading any of this). Still, the original strips in Strange Adventures do intrigue me. Animal Man was obscure at the time, but would soon not be. And then there was Auron, but then I didn't know ANY of the Omega Men at the time.