Blue Bolt. Fred Parrish, a star football player at Harvard, is struck by lightning while practicing in a remote area. He climbs into a plane to fly for help but crashes the plane in a valley inside the earth. He is brought into a subterranean lab where Dr. Benton explains that he survived thanks to Benton's work (and some "radium deposits") and now has superpowers and that he needs to stop the invasion of the forces of the Green Sorceress. He does that and then returns to the surface to fight crime. He is partnered with Lois Blake, who has the same powers that Parrish does. After the war he becomes “ace pilot for Glimpses, the picture magazine,” and is parterned with daring photographer Snap Doodle. Blue Bolt is capable of lightning projection, and he uses a "lightning gun." The Blue Bolt’s arch-enemy is the Green Sorceress, who reforms toward the end of Blue Bolt’s appearances, but Blue Bolt also faces Nazis, Japanese Yellow Perils, a gang dressed as Revolutionary War-era colonists, natives in the Amazon, and German war criminals in the Andes and the pampas. Blue Bolt appears in stories with titles like “The Thing of Terror,” “The Lethal Bouquet,” and “The Human Lightning Streak.”

First Appearance: Blue Bolt Comics #1 (Novelty Press), June 1940. 100+ appearances, 1940-1953. Created by Joe Simon.

To the Introduction • To the Character List • To the Taxonomy • To the Creator List