Story: "The Death's Gemini Commission" in The Scorpion #1 (February 1975)
Creative team: Howard Chaykin (with Annette Kawbecki on lettering)
Altas' analog for: None, but Chaykin would turn him into Dominic Fortune later.
Barely two years after his entry in the comics business, Howard Chaykin was one of the fresh new talent brought into Atlas. His creation: The 1930s pulp Noir adventurer known as the Scorpion, whose essential feel and look would be stamped on a lot of Chaykin's work to come. From the first page, we're told that he has remarkable longevity and that he's had many identities. Just how long-lived is hard to say, but he's been in the mix since the advent of photography (the American Civil War) and usually some kind of aviator.
An intriguing start! New York, the holiday season, a small cargo plane falls out of the sky and crashes into a tenement building. "Moro Frost" AKA the Scorpion and his Gal Friday Miss Bishop make their way to the crash site where they find out from first responders that the pilots were dead at the controls and never tried to bail out. The airline's owner has lost four planes in the same way. He hires the Scorpion on the spot to investigate... and our heroes-for-hire are off for a nightcap.
But this isn't a mystery series, as evidenced by our cutting to Upstate New York and the villains explaining their plan to themselves. They have their own plane and a lethal sonic gun they're using in service of a shipping magnate who wants to eliminate the competition. A few days later, the Scorpion is on the case, following a cargo flight to Toronto in his own custom plane. So he's there when the bad guys show up in a biplane. A dogfight ensues:
Meanwhile, Miss Bishop is trawling the dive bars on the West Side, fishing for information. She also knows how to take care of herself and trounces one goon before pulling the gun on another.
Even after she's disarmed and outnumbered, she still smiles. A hard dame! I bet she didn't really need the Scorpion to show up just then and use tranquilizer darts on them. He beats the last remaining goon into telling him who his boss is, confirming what Miss Bishop had already found out. But the shipping magnate is warned of the Scorpion's interference by his pilots who managed to bail out. He dismisses them, not wanting to play in the Scorpion's league, but they refuse. They want to finish the job AND the hero who got in their way. And many steal all their boss' cash.
They even find aircraft blueprints in the safe they want to sell to the Germans, so these guys are rotten through and through. Nazi-adjacent crooks, BANG BANG sound effects, a swashbuckling hero in tan, what's missing from the Chaykin formula? Oh yeah, the sexualized female form:
It's a trap. The crooks made the Scorpion's client call to set her up (and therefore her boss). And indeed, our hero follows her message to an empty airfield where she's been strapped to the a propeller engine.
It's on a timer, and when it starts to spin, no more Miss Bishop. Drop yer gun. They also drop theirs - sportsmen - and jump the Scorpion together, with axes! - not sportsmen. Our hero rolls up his leather vest and slaps them silly with it. It's lined with chain mail!
One of the crooks escapes with a plan to bomb the airfield and our hero, which leads to a motorcycle vs. airplane sequence... this thing is really action-packed and imaginative and the only rating I can give it is:
So how long did the series last? 3 issues, but arguably, that third issue is so wonking different, that's it can be considered a separate series.
How did it end? Chaykin was reportedly unhappy about his lack of control over his creation and quit after two issues. Issue 3 has a completely different, current-day Scorpion in superhero togs. He's got a different secret identity, but since the Scorpion is immortal(?), he might be the same guy.
Yeah, in this case, book unread, I'm going to drop the other possible score:
I'm sure I'm right.
As for Chaykin's Scorpion, he was brought to Marvel before the end of the year, reimagined as Dominic Fortune (and repurposing art for issue 3?) in Marvel Preview #2 and then, Marvel Super Action #1, before finding a birth in the Rampaging Hulk magazine. He outlived all the other Atlas characters, which seems appropriate.
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