Quality Comics
A Golden Age superhero who possesses the power of flight, the Black Condor was created by writer Will Eisner under the pseudonym Kenneth Lewis, and artist Lou Fine in Crack Comics #1 (cover-dated May 1940).[3] Initially alternating with the Clock as the cover-featured character, he became the solo cover feature from issues #20-26 (Jan.-Nov. 1942). Fine drew the first 24 stories,[4] and his feature continued to run through issue #31.[5]
As an infant traveling with his parents on an archaeological expedition thorough Outer Mongolia, Richard Grey Jr. survives after his family is killed by the bandit Gali Kan and his men. Rescued by a condor who raises him as her own, he learns to fly,[6] as the origin story states, by "studying the movement of wings, the body motions, air currents, balance and levitation" of his avian siblings. A mountain hermit, Father Pierre, eventually discovers and civilizes the feral child, and teaches him to speak English.[7] Richard tracks down and kills the Mongolian bandits who killed his parents and then departs for the United States where he uncovers a plot to kill United States Senator Thomas Wright. He is too late to save Wright from assassination, and so begins to use his identity.[8] He adopts the guise of Black Condor to fight crooked politicians, rum-running bootleggers, and racketeers.[9]
The strip was popular, and became Crack Comics' featured story starting in issue #3. In American Comic Book Chronicles: 1940-1944, Kurt Mitchell writes: "The Asian backdrop was deemphasized by the end of the year in favor of urban settings or ornately rendered lost cities, bandits and jewel thieves giving ground to mad scientists, living statues, and sentient weapons of mass destruction. Scene after scene of the Condor in flight, his lithe figure soaring across backgrounds seen from dizzying perspectives with a grace Joe Shuster's barrel-chested Superman could not hope to match, made the series irresistible".[6]
According to Jess Nevins' Encyclopedia of Golden Age Superheroes, "Black Condor fights femmes fatale, the Eagle Battalion, Yellow Perils, Kite-Men (Japanese agents on flying kites), a Chinese mad scientist, a golem, and killer robots known as the Spinning Deaths".[10]
DC Comics
In the DC Universe, his power was retconned to being caused by exposure to a radioactive meteor. Here he meets Uncle Sam and joins the latter's group, the Freedom Fighters, and later the All-Star Squadron.
He is among a group of Golden and Silver Age heroes who help the JLA repel an Appellaxian invasion in the JLA: Year One miniseries by Mark Waid. He appeared more recently as an ethereal "spirit guide" in Ryan Kendall's Black Condor series.
