The Sword, The Lancer and Merlin

This is from Super-Mystery Comics.  The Sword, I put up his origin in the magical superheros chat.  The Lancer is the Sword's sidekick and then two issues later, Merlin joins as a sidekick.  All three have Insta-Change powers.  Arthur has to pull Excalibur from the stone it is sheathed in to change into the Sword and simultaneously his friends turn into The Lancer and Merlin.  The boy who becomes Lancer has no control over when he changes but folks don't appear to realize that the two were the young boy and old man that was standing in the same place, because ... magic.

So the disads to Insta-Change are pretty high for the trio, higher for the two sidekicks.

Merlin is more of a comedy buffoon sidekick and due to him being able to control magic can also control his change a bit more than the two boys can.  But he also leaves the series about a year before Lancer does, and the series ends very shortly after that.  Poor artwork for the most part but interesting stories.

Another kid/cub reporter type who turns into an adult. Not sure how far he'd have to run to get back to the place where the sword is embedded in the rock, mind, and the power 'Cloak of Stupidity' must be rated as 10+ APs to affect the bad guys...

As for powers. 'Many times the speed of ten men' suggests maybe 8-10 APs. The Sword scything through steel and wood like butter must be 8-10APs as well. Being kyboshed with a single blow to the head doesn't bode well mind.

There seems to be a formula here. I think Captain Marvel/Shazam was the biggest selling comic of the day (by quite a margin apparently) so everyone else wanted to jump on that bandwagon. When it became obviously that unless it had the actual Cap marvel/Shazam character in it the comic wouldn't sell the character vanished. Am I sort of right?

I'd showcase some British superheroes but a) they weren't that many and b) most of them were crap. Characters like King Cobra (who I loved), Billy the Cat and Katie (oh dear), The Leopard of Lime Street (scouse spiderman rip off) Garth (max human type scantily clad women dangling off him) and probably a few more I can dredge up from memory. Dan Dare, Robot Archie, General Jumbo (see Frostbites' team mate Timmy Jones for our worlds equivalent), Warlord (a cad by day, secret agent by night) and Union Jack Jackson (kind of british Sgt Rock). Not forgetting Judge Dredd.

I think the stiff upper lip and raised eyebrow at foolishness means most Brits would never have admitted to liking costumed adventurers in the 60s, 70s and early 80s. The US had a far mor eprolific output though many of them seem cut from the same cloth, albeit with a few name changes to dodge lawsuits...

Well all comics have a level of disbelief built into them. Plus I think the magic that they use has a common hypnotic power that basically said "I'm not the hero that just appeared or disappeared in front of you." Also, wish fulfillment of a kid being a grown up when they want to be is pretty common but Billy Batson/Captain Marvel was the first or at least the most popular and he and Superman battled it out for best selling books with 22-25 million copies sold a month supposedly.

Heck, back in the 1970s, there was a story that explained why Clark Kent, who was working for WGBS at the time as a TV news anchor, was never considered to be Superman and it turned out that he was subconsciously using his Super Hypnotism that Clark Kent with his black plastic glasses wasn't Superman, just a very superficial in passing shared look. I remember reading that story when I was a kid.

I also think the Sword's sword was like the Shining Knight's Sword of Sharpness, also sometimes called Excalibur, in that it could be sharp enough to cut through what the hero wanted it to cut through or dull enough that you could hit a person and not cut them at all.

When you think about it all superheroes are wish fulfillment characters.

Wonder if the "Many times the speed of ten men" is hyperbole, like many of the characters who "are the strongest in the world". In one story they run from the East Coast out to the West, some 2000-2500 miles, in a day or two. That's the furtherest or fastest I've seen them run. The rest of the time? No faster than a car, so 6 APS of running. And yeah, that's the big disad for them, having to pull the sword out of the stone in order to change into superheroes. Usually, it was kept hidden in Arthur's basement but in one story, it was placed in the cargo bay of the plane he was flying.

I also think that superheroes are most common in the US because of the background or way our country is set up. That being, back then anyways, that you do for yourself and not rely on the government to do for you. Don't have lords you have to bow to, you are your own man, making your way as far as your talents and drive take you, including becoming one of the wealthiest people in the country. And the whole movement West and law being far away in many cases, so you had to defend yourself and yours and maybe had to take justice into your own hands. That's actually pretty unique as far as all other countries go.