Top 10 Underrated American Patriotic Super Heroes

3. Fighting American

In the ultimate case of lightning striking twice, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby devised the Fighting American after losing control of Captain America, and their new, creator-owned hero went on to eternal fame and glory.

Er, not quite. Fighting American started out as a product of his time, hunting down Communists in the 1905s. But Simon and Kirby switched gears and actually used him to poke fun at McCarthyism. Was his sidekick Speedboy the Wonder Kid part of the joke? That’s for you to decide.

And talk about your bizarre origin: Nelson Flagg helped write for his glamorous former athlete-turned-newsman older brother Johnny. After his brother is killed — by Commies, naturally — Nelson vows to bring his murderers to justice. Government scientists decide the best way to do that is to transfer his consciousness into his brother’s super-powered dead body, because why not?

You can just imagine the fun someone like Grant Morrison or Warren Ellis would have with this concept today. Actually, please don’t suggest that to either of them, because they’d probably come up with something that would give me nightmares. The rights to Fighting American have bounced around a bit in more recent times, and he even ended up with stories by the likes of Jeph Loeb, Ed McGuinness and Jim Starlin, so there’s a chance we’ve not seen the last of him.

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