Amazing Man: Encyclopedia - Amazing Man

Amazing Man

Amazing Man is a name used by several fictional characters, all of them superheroes.

Amazing Man - Centaur Comics

The original Amazing-Man was a Golden Age of Comic Books creation of Bill Everett, best known for creating Timely Comics' Sub-Mariner. John Aman was a Westerner who, while in Tibet, was trained by benevolent monks to a superhuman degree of physical and mental ability, as well as gaining the ability to disappear into a cloud of green mist. Centaur Publishing produced his eponymous series, Amazing-Man.

Malibu Comics obtained ownership of the Centaur properties in the 1990s and used these characters, including Amazing-Man, as the roster of their own superhero team, The Protectors.

Amazing Man - DC Comics

AMAZING MAN I

The second Amazing Man, better known today than the original, resides in the DC Comics universe. Although a 1980s creation of writer Roy Thomas, he was, through retcon, placed in the 1940s as a contemporary of various Golden Age superheroes. The character was created by Thomas as a tribute to Bill Everett and his character, though Everett died before the character debuted.

Thomas's Amazing Man was Will Everett, a promising young African-American Olympian who had competed in the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin but whose post-olympic career devolved into a janitorial profession. During an accident involving the explosion of some equipment he was connected to developed by the criminal mastermind the Ultra-Humanite, Everett quickly developed the ability to mimic whatever properties he touched (similar to Marvel Comics' Absorbing Man). If he touched wood, then he became wood, and so forth.

At first, he was employed by the Ultra-Humanite as a henchman along with Cyclotron and Deathbolt. However, his sympathies soon swayed towards the side of good after repeated exposure to the All-Star Squadron, a team comprised of both Golden Age characters and retroactive characters like himself, whom he joined and helped defeat his former employer's machinations. He then served a lengthy stint as a member of this voluminous mystery man organization.

AMAZING MAN II

On a future case, Amazing Man's powers changed so that now he had mastery of magnetism while losing his ability to mimic nature. His post-World War II career has been unchronicled; however it was later revealed that his grandson, Will Everett "Junior", also developed the same mimic attributes as his forebearer. This Amazing Man caried on his grandfather's tradition, joining the famed superhero team the Justice League after the elder Everett's death. Later, he joined the short-lived Justice League offshoot known as Extreme Justice.

Eventually, this second Amazing Man also succumbed to a tragic end, as he was killed by the daughter of Starman's old enemy, the Mist (who took over the name from her father upon his death), alongside several other minor JLA members such as Blue Devil and Crimson Fox. In Amazing Man's case, she tricked him into mimicking glass and shattered him. Given the nature of his abilities, it is possible that he could still be alive. As of late, he has yet to resurface.

DC also published an unrelated offbeat superhero/humor title, 'Mazing Man, during the late 1980s.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Amazing Man", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki