'The Shield' was a patriotic comic book superhero created by "MLJ" (now "Archie Comics"), appearing as a star-spangled superhero more than a year before Marvel's 'Captain America'.
The Shield property and other MLJ characters are now being published again under Archie's "Dark Circle Comics" imprint, giving some competition to Marvel's 'Steve Rogers':
The Shield debuted in MLJ's "Pep Comics" #1 (Jan. 1940), created by writer Harry Shorten and illustrator Irv Novick, debuting as the comic book industry's first patriotically themed hero.
"He was soon followed by three other patriotic comic characters, "Minute-Man" (Feb. 1941), "Captain America" (March 1941), and "Captain Battle" (May 1941).
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The Shield is chemist 'Joe Higgins', son of 'Lieutenant Tom Higgins' who was slain in an explosion orchestrated by Third Reich saboteur 'Hans Fritz', while Tom was working on a chemical formula for super-strength.
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Joe finally figured out the solution, by applying chemicals to parts of his anatomy including 'Sacrum', 'Heart', 'Innervation', 'Eyes', 'Lungs' and 'Derma', also using x-rays to give him super strength. The initials also gave him his name.
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