Howdy! This post should properly be on my thread about writing my book, but I've spent 20 minutes looking and I can't find it. I spend a LOT of time looking for things these days, and I am (&(*$## tired of it.

Case in point: Captain Triumph.

According to 9 of the top 10 Google entries, Lance Gallant, who is the living part of the duo who form Captain Triumph, is a journalist. The only one that does not is the DC Wiki site, a crowd-sourced place, and its entry on Captain Triumph is so simplistic it borders on generic. Every other site says Captain Triumph is a journalist in his day job.

Well, I just skimmed the first half of the character's appearances, and not only did I not find a reference to Lance Gallant being a journalist, I didn't find any reference to the guy having a job at all.

And I tracked down every reference on the Wikipedia entry, only to find that none of that established anything of the sort. The only clue I had was a quote that didn't have an attribution on Wiki, and  I couldn't find in the comics.

So I posted the question on the "Comic Book Historians" Facebook group, and immediately got an answer. That quote, the guy said, was from Roy Thomas and could be found on page 79 of All-Star Comics Companion Volume Two from TwoMorrows. Eureka! I have that on my shelf!

Only it wasn't there. Or, after a quick skim, in any of the four volumes of All-Star Companion I have. (Which is all of them.)

So I'm stumped. I do believe the poster that Roy Thomas established long after the Golden Age that Captain Triumph was a journalist. But I can't find anything in the comics, then or now, to substantiate it. I've looked through all the Golden Age stuff. I've looked through the first three issues of James Robinson's The Golden Age. But I haven't gone through every bloody issue of All-Star Squadron, which is my obvious next stop. Then Infinity Inc. Then ...

Oh, screw it! Seriously! I've already spent TWO VACATION DAYS on this, and my deadline is August 12! (I will, obviously, not make that deadline.)

.So, my friends, I am pleading: Those of you who have knowledge of Captain Triumph, or have All-Star Squadron or Infinity Inc., or have All-Star Companion, or who know another place to look ... can you help me find an in-comics attribution for Lance Gallant's profession? So I can move on to Chapter 5?

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  • I can save you the trouble of looking through All Star Squadron and Young All Stars because Captain Triumph isn't in any issue of either series. He was on the cover of AStSq #1 but that's it!

    According to Jeff Rovin's Encyclopedia of Super-Heroes, the Bonded Brothers' occupation is listed as...none!

    Now I'll check Who's Who. Give me a few minutes!

  • Captain Triumph was added onto the last issue of Who's Who #26 (Ap'87) along side characters like Angel & the Ape, Guy Gardner and Neutron. While they list Michael Gallant's occupation as "pilot", Lance's is listed as...unknown.

    The last paragraph of his entry reads:

    "Captain Triumph was last heard of in 1949. His current whereabouts, if Lance Gallant is still alive, are unknown, as is any occupation he may have had. Perhaps he was independently wealthy. This was certainly so after Biff (a tough guy circus clown who became Captain Triumph's sidekick)  invested their money in a rich gold mine in 1946."

    I'm pretty sure if any sort of job that Lance had was ever mentioned, even if only once, they would have included it.

    Sorry, Captain!

  • Oops!  There goes my Golden-Age emergency signal!  I haven't heard that one in a long time.

    Per the entry on Captain Triumph in The Quality Companion by Mike Kooiman and Jim Amash (TwoMorrows Publishing, 2011):

    According to the character's first appearance and origin, in Crack Comics # 27 (Jan., 1943), Lance and Michael Gallant were twins, born in 1919, with identical birthmarks, shaped like a "T", on their left wrists.  When America entered World War II, Michael joined the Army Air Forces as a pilot, while Lance remained a civilian, working as a journalist.  There's your newsman reference.

    But I wanted to have more corroboration than just that.  So I searched for that origin story on line.  I found it here (about two-thirds down the page, with the second half printed before the first, and more important, half):  http://heroheroinehistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Captain%20Triumph

    I went through the entire story and, unfortunately, the only reference to Lance Gallant as a journalist appears in a lengthy caption on the splash page (boldface mine) , , , 

    [Lance and Michael Gallant] grew from boyhood to manhood---the world became their playground, danger their business.  Michael joined the U.S. Air Corps and Lance crusaded with his own weapons---the word and pen . . . 

    That suggests a reporter or newspaper columnist, but it's so vague that it could be construed that Lance authored novels.

    I was able to find a site on line that has the entire Captain Triumph run in Crack Comics available for viewing:  https://comicbookplus.com/?cid=883

    I reviewed the next five or six issues after Triumph's origin in issue # 28; then I checked three or four issues at random throughout the rest of the run.  In none of them did I find any further reference to Lance Gallant being a journalist.  From the second Captain Triumph story on, he's a gentleman adventurer of independent means, along the lines of Simon Templar, the Saint.  Lance, along with his aide, Biff, and Michael's fiancée, Kim Meredith, involve themselves in situations that call for wrongs to be righted---and those wrongs always call for Lance and Michael to merge into Captain Triumph.

    That's probably why you couldn't find anything more on Lance Gallant's newsman career, Cap.  Sorry I couldn't be of more help.

  • "This post should properly be on my thread about writing my book, but I've spent 20 minutes looking and I can't find it."

    I can at least help with thatThe Book!

  • Thanks a million, folks!

    I completely missed that first page in Crack Comics #27, Commander. Normally that wouldn't be a fatal error, if the information ever got repeated ... which it apparently never did.

    I've now gone through all the Crack Comics stories, and written by piece. Thanks again, everyone!

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