Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio.  This week, Bennett talks about a DC character with a literary connection that deserves a revival.

As previously established, there are weeks where I literally have to search for something to write about.  I usually begin by working my way through all of the "comic book stories" available at The Usual Suspect news sites (Google, Yahoo, Bing) until I find something of interest.  This being one of those weeks, I searched and found via the Philly.com website, a piece by staff writer Kristen E. Holmes titled "Pearl Buck gave us 'The Good Earth'--and a superhero comic book."

It concerned the new exhibit at Pearl S. Buck International, a nonprofit organization devoted to preserving the legacy of the author of the 1932 novel The Good Earth, "Comic Books Unmasked: A Look at Race"   For those who only know of Buck through having to read her best-known book back in high school, she was a member of the DC Comics editorial advisory board, composed of a prestigious group of well-known professionals who advised DC on the content of their comics.

Race and tolerance were regular themes in Buck's writing and at DC that message found its way into educational stories she wrote for Real Facts Comics and the character she helped create in collaboration with DC Comics and Buck’s East and West Association, Johnny Everyman.  Not to contradict the piece's title, Johnny was in no way a costumed superhero but rather "a civil engineer by day and night" who "fights for ethnic and racial justice using only his powers of persuasion."

To quote directly from the piece:

Billed as the "friend of the people of many lands," Everyman was the Nobel Prize-winning writer's effort to spread a message of acceptance and cross-cultural understanding in the 1940s when the world was at war and prejudice and xenophobia were widespread.

"This is [the time of] the rise of Hitler, the internment of Japanese Americans, and two decades before the Voting Rights Act," said James Braxton Peterson, director of Africana Studies at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, who is a comic book collector. "In that context, a white male who advocated for equality is a pretty extraordinary thing."

Johnny must have been the world’s most famous civil engineer because he was instantly recognized and respected everywhere he went around the world.  Like Bill Murray, he could spontaneously show up anywhere at any time, though in Johnny’s case it was invariably to teach someone a valuable lesson about justice, tolerance, and understanding.

Between 1944 and 1947, 19 Johnny Everyman stories were produced for World’s Finest Comics and Comic Cavalcade, for the most part written by Jack Schiff (who later went on to write a lot of DC's public service pages in the 1960s) and drawn by John Daly.  These stories definitely deserve to be collected and, more importantly, DC should begin discussions with Pearl S. Buck International about reviving the character.  Preferably for their younger readers, a demographic that really needs to get Buck’s message.  Because all you have to do is look at today's headlines to see that a "dynamic battler against the primitive forces of ignorance" is still desperately needed.

I was always fairly confident that we'd never see a revival of the character, considering how "silly" his name is.  But for the record, there was another, more recent DC character who used the "Everyman" name, though it’s understandable if you missed him -- I certainly did.  Created by Grant Morrison, Geoff Johns, Greg Rucka, Mark Waid, Keith Giffen and Joe Bennett for the 52 series in 2006, naturally this Everyman was a gruesome, murderous shapechanger.  He’s made precious few comic book appearances since then, but he's actually appeared under his civilian name "Hannibal Bates" in two episodes of The Flash  TV series, "Who Is Harrison Wells?" and "The Trap."

The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.