A
comic book character who, back in the
1940s, had an awful lot of
job changes. Created by
newspaper cartoonist Bernard Dibble in
1940, Vic started out as a
dying amnesiac injected with a
strange serum by
Professor Carvel. The
injection saved Vic's life and also gave him
superpowers. After a few issues of defeating
criminals as a
superhero, Vic tried out for a
big league baseball team called the
Panthers. He makes the
team, and that was the last time the comic book mentioned
superheroes again. Then in
1942, Vic gave up
baseball to enlist in the
Marine Corps, where he fought the
Nazis. After
World War II, he returned to the
baseball diamond before the book was
cancelled.
Apparently, Dibble had been instructed by his
publisher to create a superhero comic, which he did. However, Dibble, a former
minor league player, got tired of
superheroics and decided that he'd enjoy making a comic about a
baseball player more...
Research from "The Comic Book Reader's Companion" by Ron Goulart, copyright 1993, published by Harper Perennial, pp. 90-91.