I don't know how long I'd been reading about Ultra Boy before I realized his name was Jo Nah and he'd gotten his powers from being swallowed by a space whale. I caught on to that more quickly than I realized why Matter-Eater Lad was from the planet Bismoll.
But today, copy editing a manuscript that mentioned the barren winters...I realized there'd be a pun in the name of the lead character of Night Force all along. Baron Winters -- 34 years since his introduction! I think that's a new record for me!
Any pun names in comics (or elsewhere) that you didn't catch onto until later?
Replies
Modesty Blaise. Her origin story says her mentor gave her the name Modesty (in a joking spirit, referring to her lack of physical modesty), and she took her surname from Merlin's tutor. I recently realised her surname is really a pun on "blaze".
Wikipedia argues Batroc's name derives from "batrachian".
In his recent review of Jack Kirby's Black Panther, Bob recently mentioned that Abner Little was a play on Li'l Abner. that hadn't occurred to me until he pointed it out. 41 years. Beat that!
Well, since I didn't know that until you just told me ...
Jeff of Earth-J said:
Nice! Though I don't know Kirby's Panther run, so he's an unfamiliar character to me.
Then there's "Giant-Size Man-Thing" ...
(ducks and runs)
During the---ugh!---New Blackhawk Era, when the team took on super-hero identities, Blackhawk assumed the code name of "the Big Eye".
The Big Eye = the Big Guy, i.e., the boss.
Oh, fer cryin' out loud -- that's another one I never got!
Commander Benson said:
Rainbow Raider is Roy G. Bivolo. This is from the mnemonic roygbiv. I had no idea until the Legionnaires explained this to me on the Captain's old board.
Werewolf by Night is Jack Russell. I can't remember when I worked that one out.
"Federal Men" was an early Siegel and Shuster feature. In the instalment in New Adventure Comics #12 the hero asks a scientist about what the police methods of the future will be like. His answer forms an SF story.
The officer in the story is named Jor-L. What's interesting about this is it suggests the El name was chosen as a homophone for L and comes from the SF tradition that in the future people will have letter or letter-number names/surnames (like Ralph 124C 41+ in Hugo Gernsback's novel, or the characters in the film Just Imagine). Likewise the surname of the Silver Age character Dev-Em is a homophone for M. The GCD attributes all his Silver Age appearances to Siegel.