Barry O'Neill

All but forgotten today, Barry O’Neill, written and drawn by Lawrence Lariar, was National Periodical Publications (DC) comic’s first modern action hero. (there other hero in New Comics was a cowboy named Jack Wood.)

Appearing in their first comic, New Fun Comics, he was carried over when that became More Fun Comics, but did not last very long after that.

Barry O’Neill and his side-kick Legrande and their adversary Fang Gow, a Chinese mastermind out for world conquest, where characters lifted from the then popular novels of Sax Rohmer about Fu Manchu.

Consisting of only 2 page installments in imitation of the Sunday pages found in the newspapers, each month Barry and Legrande escaped from, or foiled yet another plot of Fang Gow.

However once a month instead of once a week was apparently not often enough to generate interest in the adventures in the strong-jawed and quick fisted, but otherwise unremarkable Mr. O’Neill, and these characters soon disappeared from the pages of More Fun.

However the first 12 chapters of their adventures did reappear in 1946 in the first issue of the short lived Atomic Comics from Green Publications.