8) THE RED BEE
Lots of shade is thrown at Rick Raleigh’s gimmick of “trained bees”, but there are a couple of mitigating factors in play here: First, he debuted in 1940, at the very dawn of the Golden Age, when it wasn’t yet clear what would succeed with comic-book audiences in the long term. The striped pants that get so much derision were phased out by the art team (which, it must be noted, was AMAZING) and Raleigh’s adventures played the concept entirely straight in his few 40s adventures. In retrospect, it’s hard to fault The Red Bee’s creators in a world where The Blue Beetle and the Green Hornet were hits, and confronting mobsters and criminals with only your two good fists speaks well of Raleigh’s courage.
