Top 10 Underrated American Patriotic Super Heroes

 9. The Shield

This is the guy who could have been Captain America, beating Joe Simon and Jack Kirby’s legendary hero to the newsstands by more than a year. He even had a pretty fair facsimile of Cap’s original, pointed shield built into the front of his costume. It’s not cool to accuse Simon and The King of lifting ideas from somewhere, but …

Alas, The Shield never caught on in a way that ensured he’s be remembered through the decades, which is a shame since he was a self-made man. Joe Higgins was a chemist who came up with a special formula that granted him enhanced strength if applied to six parts of the body that just happened to spell out the word “shield.” Convenient, that. He also had a young partner to help him fight crime and Nazis, which is something that you’ll see is a recurring theme on this list.

The Shield was apparently pretty popular in the early 1940s until he was gradually phased out in favor of another famous comics character you may have heard of: a young man named Archie Andrews. Still, losing out to Captain America and Archie is nothing to hang your head over.

DC licensed The Shield along with other former Archie Comics’ super heroes for the short-lived but fun Impact Comics line of the early 90s. They made another go of it in 2008 as the Red Circle line, though the rights eventually returned to Archie. This story has a happy ending, since you can find The Shield online and still kicking butt as the number one FBI agent reporting directly to J. Edgar Hoover. Wait, what?

Next: Better than the plain old Patriot