Check out the Mighty Atom: the strangest old-school strongman

[dnealy]

Originally published at: Check out the Mighty Atom: the strangest old-school strongman | Boing Boing

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[gracchus]

Also an anti-fascist hero. He literally punched Nazis (13 of them) after the cowards ganged up on him for ripping down one of their banners outside the Bund’s pro-Hitler rally at Madison Square Garden in 1939.

When Nazis Took Manhattan

[Brainspore]

@dnealy

The reason Superman’s red underwear is so jarring to modern sensibilities is because of how atavistic they are, harkening back to the circus strongman the character’s design is supposed to reference.

Tangentially related: in the fantastic Michael Chabon novel The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay (largely set around the first decades of the comic book industry) the father of one of the main characters was a thinly veiled version of Joe Greenstein who went by the stage name “The Mighty Molecule.”