First appearing in Big Shot Comics # 14 (but also around the same time in a newspaper strip) Sparky Watts was making his way though college selling magazines when he knocked on the door of Doctor Static who agreed to by all of his magazines if he would be the subject of his cosmic ray experiment.
Agreeing Sparky was turned by the rays into the world’s strongest man, as well as being made incredibly fast and tough (artillery shells bounce off his head and he has to use a blowtorch to shave.)
After this he uses his new abilities to fight villains, Nazi and monsters, mostly however he finds himself in odd adventures due to the latest experiment of Doc Sparks.
Watts and Sparks (and the Doc’s dog Goober, sort of the Doc Brown and Einstein of the Golden-Age) are soon joined by other characters such as Watts’ side-kick Slap Happy, a bald-headed tough with feet larger than his torso, Yoo Hoo, a small boy from China, and Hattie, a man (???) who seems to only be a large top hat with a pair of legs and feet sticking out from under it.
While basically a superhero to whom both citizens and the government show up looking for his help, Sparky never wears a costume or hides his identity.
Sparky Watts is of note not only because of the art work and writing of Boody Rogers, but in that he may be the first parody of a superhero, appearing just a few months before Ma Hinkle at the Red Tornado at DC or Super Snipe at Street & Smith.
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