Crash Comics #5
Strongman
Percy Van Norton is in the city of Polaria with his society friends. They are about to go in to see a show when Percy sees a parachute descending from the sky. Sending his friends ahead of him, Percy slips away to his car so he can change into the Strongman and investigate. Suspecting that these are Sixth Columnists attempting to invade the area the Strongman rushes to the field where even more parachutists are descending from the sky. Constructing a rope out of a number of discarded parachutes and a boomerang, the Strongman manages to snare the remaining parachutists. The captured soldiers confirm that they are attempting an invasion of Polaria and gloat that their forces are too large for any one person to stop.
Although he can easily hold his own against the invaders, the Strongman decides to run to get reinforcements. Attempting to stop the hero, the invaders fire a cement gun, that coats him with liquid concrete. When the Strongman breaks free they fire a massive shell at him. The Strongman leaps upon the shell and rides it into the nearby city, ripping the shell apart so it doesn’t harm anyone on impact. There the hero meets with the commanding officer of the local military to mobilize his armies. The Strongman joins them on the front line, deflecting the enemies attacks with his superhuman abilities. When the invaders try to use sleeping gas on the soldiers of Polaria, the Strongman uses his super-breath to blow it back at the enemy. He does the same thing when enemy planes try to drop bombs on the Polarian soldiers. With the tide of battle turned, the invaders then flee from Polaria.
Escorting the Polarian army back to base, the Strongman deflects another bomber attack and roots out enemy soldiers who are waiting to set off a TNT trap. With the soldiers returned safely to their headquarters, the Strongman rushes back to the theater and changes back into his civilian identity of Percy Van Norton, fully prepared for the bawling out he is going to get from his friends for missing the whole show.
Recurring Characters
Strongman
Continuity Notes
This is the last Golden Age appearance of the Strongman. Eventually, Holyoke Publishing’s copyrights expired and the Strongman character entered the public domain. This allowed Roy Thomas to include the character as part of Battle-Axis in Invaders (Vol. 2). There is no official word on if the character’s Holyoke appearances are considered cannon in the Marvel universe. There are a few issues which I address more thoroughly in the Primer for this series.
