It seems standard now, but aside from Arkham (which may have been the first) most of the comics I remember reading as a kid showed supervillains in normal prison garb in normal prisons. I'm sure even Lex was in a normal prison in one story.
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I don't have any particular data to back it up, but I'm thinking it's likely to be Takron-Galtos, the prison planet from the 30th century.
I do presume you are referring to an actual state/federally/UP official penitentiary, and not just one of the gajillions of death trap type jails that have been around forever.
Yea, marvel has taken to shrinking the villains and DC has a few places and marvel for a time used Project Pegasus for holding and experimentation, but I was curious about the first US government prison designed and built to hold supervillain types. Was it marvel or DC or another company that came up with it first?
Thinking about it, wasn't the Phantom Zone developed to hold ordinary prisoners, and not those with extraordinary powers or abilities? If so, I would think it doesn't specifically qualify. I'm still betting I'm wrong about Takron-Galtos though...
Dave Elyea said:
The first one I know of is Arkham Asylum, which, if I recall correctly, first appeared in the late 1960s-early 1970s. It wasn't until the late 1980s-early 1990s, I think, before we saw Blackgate Prison. I expect somebody realized that not all of Gotham's criminals are nuts; some of them are just straight-up crooks, and there ought to be a separate place for them.
Over at Marvel, as it was set in New York, the real-world Riker's Island jail became the Marvel-Earth "Ryker's Island," I believe in the 1970s, but it grew into something bigger than a jail.
(Lesson from the copy editor: "jail" and "prison" are not interchangeable terms. "Jails" are city- and county-run facilities meant to hold people who are awaiting trial or who have been convicted and are serving relatively short sentences for misdemeanors, up to one year -- two years in places that have a severe crowding problem. "Prisons" are state or federal facilities meant to hold people who have been convicted of felonies and sentenced to serious time.) Then came "The Vault," but I don't know exactly when.
Project Pegasus was introduced in Marvel Two-In-One #42 (on sale May 1978), but I don't know when it was first depicted as holding super-criminals. If it wasn't before the storyline starting in #53 (on sale Apr. 1979) it loses out to Superman Island, a special prison for Superman villains introduced in Superman #331 (on sale Oct. 1978). Superman Island used the powers of the prisoners to power their cells. Luthor was one of the prisoners; I always wondered how his cell worked. The system's designer, who had issues relating to Superman and Lana Lang stemming from their childhoods, immediately became the villain the Master Jailer. Superman equipped the prison with anti-gravity so it floated in the air.
Takron-Galtos, introduced in Adventure Comics # 359 (Aug., 1967) was, like the Phantom Zone, designed to house ordinary prisoners. (One should infer that it had cells designed to deal with inmates that possessed special abilities of their planetary race, but it was not presented as a prison for super-villains, per se.) I believe that, sometime in post-Crisis history, Takron-Galtos was revised to be a instalation to hold super-villains, but that was not the case in its origination.
The only Silver-Age prison designed to hold super-villains that comes to my mind right now (meaning, I'll think of something else at two o'clock in the morning) was the island facility that the Challengers of the Unknown created to hold the League of Challenger-Haters---in Challengers # 42 (Feb.-Mar., 1965). It had individual cells specially designed to thwart the powers of their foes. But that wasn't a state-sponsored prison, which is what I think you're looking for, Mark.
As far as official government prisons go, I came across a few possibilities. Which one was first depends on your interpretation.
On the Marvel side, Project: P.E.G.A.S.U.S. was introduced in Marvel Two-in-One # 42 (Aug., 1978). The Project's primary purpose was to research possible alternative energies, including those manipulated by super-humans. At some point, it also acted as a containment facility for some super-villains, but I cannot remember if that was revealed in the same issue, or at some point later. And that makes a difference because . . . .
. . . DC introduced the Mount Olympus Correctional Facility a mere five months later, in Superman # 331 (Jan., 1979). Designed by master architect Carl Draper, it was stout enough to securely hold the likes of the Atomic Skull, Metallo, the Parasite, and Terra-Man. In that same issue, Superman contained the facility in a protective bubble, placed it on an anti-gravity platform, and suspended the place twenty thousand feet above the Earth. After that, the facility was officially renamed "Superman's Island".
Then, Marvel introduced its first honest-to-God, no-doubt-about-it super-villain prison, the Vault, in Avengers Annual # 15 (1986).
Hope this helps.
I was thinking about it when I was going through some old comics and found an issue of Dazzler where she was locked up in Ryker's after escaping from Project Pegasus. When she was grabbed and taken to Project Pegasus for study they had to trick her to stay, but they were already holding and experimenting on Klaw, yet later they seemed to abandon experimenting on her and were content to keep her in regular prison. Nitro as I recall in one issue was held in his gaseous form in two different containers (A Spiderman issue I think) and when his lawyer objected he was released and promptly blew up and escaped.
Looking back I remember that supervillains like Blizard and Electro were actually put into regular prison where they met and formed a brief alliance (marvel team up) and supervillains were always escaping so building a prison just for them would seem like a good idea.
The Sinister Six were also put in a regular jail, where they started yelling they wanted separate cells because they couldn't stand each other. The way Lex Luthor would escape and get sent back to jail so often that his prison uniform became his costume for a number of years, you'd think they would have made one for him in the 50s. Where did the Legion put the crooks they caught in the 60s? What about the Green Lantern Corps?
While they weren't exactly supervillains, some horror stories had planets to hold creatures of different worlds. Presumably at least some of them had weird powers. Xemnu the Living Hulk Titan escaped from one in Journey into Mystery#62 (November 1960.) Interestingly like Arkham many of the monsters (Taboo, Goom, Googam son of Goom) weren't criminals but escaped mental patients. I remember reading an Arkham Asylum story that said something like all crooks in Gotham went there, and wondering how they could say that all criminals should go to a mental hospital instead of jail. In the Batman tv show the guy in charge of the Gotham prison seemed to be constantly claiming he'd "cured" the Joker or the Penguin or whoever of their "wicked, wicked ways" then always being shocked when they went back to crime, convinced any crook would go honest if given the proper support and shown the error of his ways.
I remember a distinction being made between the criminally insane and the sane criminals. The Penguin as I recall was considered sane and, not having superpowers, just went to regular prison. The majority of Batman's rogues gallery were insane to one degree or the other.
At least the Batman rogues went through criminal justice system. Some of the prisons in DC and Marvel stories were apparently extralegal.
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