I made the mistake of deleting a post that was referred to later in the thread, by the Silver Age Fogey. I did so because I really hated the post when I reread it. In it I argued against the Commander's characterisation of the problem with magic vs magic stories on the grounds that "Dr Strange", in its Lee/Ditko period, made them interesting. I still think they can be made interesting, but that doesn't make the Commander wrong; they're often dull, too.
Dr. Fate in the forties worked well, mostly because the stories had a sense of style, up to the point he got the half-helmet.
Mark Merlin isn't really an argument against supernatural series given how much of his stories were SF, and his powers in many stories could have been just as easily duplicated by alien science (as practiced in comics). I agree with Eric that Julius Schwartz might have made him work--a supernatural detective in the Adam Strange mold with limited powers (counting Adam's ray gun as a power) and quick wits could have been cool.
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