If you send me something for the LOL page, or any of the others, please mention the screen name you use here (or if you don’t want your name posted at all, let me know that as well).
You would think after all these years I’d be able to remember what screen name goes with what real-world name, especially when some of you have sent me countless comics, but you’d be wrong. I am just really, really bad with names. Always have been.
Yet if you ask me the secret identities of obscure 1940s super heroes, I will astound you. Go figure.
Comics I Don't Understand 
“Yet if you ask me the secret identities of obscure 1940s super heroes”
Okay, I will.
The Gay Ghost and Wildcat? Those are pretty obscure.
I can just about picture the Gay Ghost in my mind, but I must confess his secret identity is too esoteric for me.
I’m pretty sure he was first seen in the same comic as Ted Grant.
Wildcat isn’t as obscure as you think, since he appeared in both live-action AND animated DC universe TV shows.
He had multiple appearances in Batman: The Brave and the Bold animated series, and had a brief character arc on Arrow… although substantially re-imagined.
Wildcat has also appeared in a lot of more recent DC comics, especially JUSTICE SOCIETY. (I tend to buy and read comics of the last thirty years or so only when I run across them cheap at library sales and such, so I don’t know if he’s still active or semi-active thus, or indeed if he’s still “alive” — not that being dead is usually anything other than a temporary inconvenience for costumed heroes, of course.
So I knew his civilian identity, but I’ll admit I don’t know that of The Gay Ghost (who, if he’s also still kicking around on Earth-2 or whatever, presumably has changed his name to The Gay Not That There’s Anything Wrong With That and Anyway I’m Working with a Different and Older Definition of the Adjective Ghost).
I suppose it makes sense that Ted Grant’s had a lot of lives.
Well, the GRAY ghost was Adam West.
(Batman, the animated series, episode “Beware the Gray Ghost”)
Curiously, when I read “Wildcat,” it didn’t ring any bells for me, but I instantly recognized “Ted Grant” as the human name of some superhero. I’m not sure why this is – I think maybe he was in Injustice, but mostly referred to by his human name? (It could be from the Arrow TV show, where I think he was rarely called “Wildcat,” if at all, but I don’t think so, as my memory of that part of the show is pretty hazy.)
Wildcat was a fringe member of the (Golden Age) Justice Society of America in ALL-STAR COMICS; I think he appeared in only two stories back in the day (though he had his own strip elsewhere).
As Ted Grant, he was (or maybe only “once had been”) a heavyweight boxing champion. As Wildcat, he had no super-powers (but was a good brawler), but wore a rather black panther (?) suit (perky cat ears included).
After the classic Silver Age “Flash of Two Worlds” story opened up the DC megaverse, all of the old JSA members started showing up in contemporary comics, either Earth-2 or Earth-1 based. Generally the JSA characters were depicted as twenty or more years older than their JLA associates (and in some cases counterparts), and over the years a number of the increasingly geriatric heroes were killed off (heroically). As far as I know, Wildcat is still “alive,”
though logically he’d have to be a hundred or so by now.
But anyway, as noted, in comics There Are Ways Around Mere Death. Even collapsing entire dimensions into each other to “simplify” continuity never manages to kill any hero (or any dimension) off for long.
” Even collapsing entire dimensions into each other to “simplify” continuity never manages to kill any hero (or any dimension) off for long.”
Tell that to Thomas Wayne. Oh, wait, you can’t… he’s been dead for 75 years.
Or chew on this. The entire planet of Krypton, despite the fact that it’s been established that yellow-sun-exposed Kryptonians can travel in time, none of them goes back to warn the planet. Not one.
Here is just about the most obscure 1940’s super hero that I ever owned a comic of (actually a 1964 reprint): Lieutenant Hercules. He was prone to say, as he flew through the air, “Goodness! I can’t get over what a wonderful method of travel this is!”
His secret identity was W—– K—-.
I’m pretty sure they’ve tried a few times during the Silver Age. The one that comes first to mind is in Superman 141, from 1960 (http://www.mediafire.com/file/p78pjk3nzca1agb/SM141.cbr). And yes, I had to search for the issue number.