A hero dressed in a blue business suit, wearing a fedora and a domino mask... sounds like The Spirit? Well... no, it was Midnight!

The character first appeared in Smash Comics #18 (dated January 1941), published by Quality Comics, who would start reprints of The Spirit in the pages of their Police Comics over a year later!

(An early adventure by Jack Cole)

The publisher of Quality Comics - Everett "Busy" Arnold had worked with Eisner in selling The Spirit for the Comic Book Section to the newspaper syndicate and worked as manager for the strip during the pre-War and War years. The main writer and artist was Jack Cole on the early years of Midnight - he would also work on The Spirit as well as his famous creation for Police Comics... Plastic Man.

As Eisner commented years later:"Arnold got the idea that since the war was coming and I was going to be drafted ... he wanted to have somebody, in case I got killed, to replace the Spirit. Because I owned the Spirit and he knew if anything happened to me he couldn't continue it."

The alterego of Midnight was Dave Clark, a radio announcer who unlike The Spirit would use a gun when required on many of his adventures. Further information about the character can be found on Mikel Midnight's excellent Midnight page, which can be found here (this page is associated with the roleplaying All-Star MUSH and contains information related only to the game).

After a couple of years Midnight became the cover feature on Smash Comics (from #28 on), and lasted in the title until the comic was cancelled with #85 (dated October 1949).

The character became part of the DC Comics' empire when Quality ceased in 1956, although Midnight had to wait until 1984 before reappearing, this time in Roy Thomas' All-Star Squandron series. The character would get his own 19 page story retelling his origin in Secret Origins #28 published in 1988 (which featured some good Gil Kane artwork). Unfortunately, since then the character seems to have disappeared and very little of the stories have been reprinted.