Parade costume design, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1873.

A long tribute to the Doctor Fate title from the Golden Age era of comic books (it’s the DC equivalent of Marvel’s Doctor Strange title)…

“For the first 135 pages, Doctor Fate Archives [printed volume collects More Fun Comics #55-98] features some of the wildest, eeriest and most entertaining stuff the era has to offer as far as mainstream comics go. […] While Doctor Fate is generally characterized as a sorcerer hero in modern comics, he’s actually presented here as a scientist who has discovered a way to manipulate his atomic structure and the atomic structure of other things as well, thus making it appear that he can do magic. The man who gives Fate his powers is not a sorcerer, but an alien who was worshipped as a god (just like Lovecraft’s great old ones). Fate even denies the existence of vampires and werewolves in one story, just as how Lovecraft often showed contempt for such “traditional” horrors and hardly ever used them. We also have a “witch haunted Salem”, characters who speak in odd, stilted dialogue with truly bizarre tense, hidden races, abandoned megaliths, as well as half man and half fish creatures that clearly were inspired by Lovecraft’s Deep Ones. Doctor Fate may well be the first Lovecraft pastiche in mainstream entertainment.” [my emphasis]