The Eye

Origin

His mother dead, honor student and football star Eric Drake is left in the care, if you can call it that, of his violent, alcoholic small-time hood father “Shady” Drake.

Lacking a good male role-model Eric looks up instead to Yorkton City’s long time resident costumed hero Captain Valiant.

In Eric’s senior year of high school however things change when first Captain Valiant announces his retirement, and in the ensuing vacuum his father drops his pretence of “going straight” and plans a big robbery with two other low-life’s.

Following his father in the hopes of talking him out of returning to crime Eric is just in time to see him gun down the guard of the business they were about to rob.

The guard however killing his two companions before dieing himself and Shady is pursued by police detective Vance Monroe.

Running into a sewer treatment plant Shady is followed by Monroe, and unknown to either them, Eric.

Wounded in the shoulder by Shady who is moving in for the kill things go from bad to worse for petty hood when the cat-walk he’s on collapses and he falls into the catch basin, seeing that the criminal is unable to swim Monroe dives in after him.

At that point a forth mysterious figure opens a valve turning the basin into a whirlpool.

Rushing in Eric is able to save only one person and he chooses Monroe, his father dead Detective Monroe becomes Eric’s guardian.

Eventually Eric also joins the police force and becomes an undercover cop.

Later during a secret meeting called by Jimjacko, the biggest gang leader in Yorkton City, Eric knocks out and takes the place of one of 5 masked men arriving for reasons unknown.

During the meeting the Boss reveals his master plan, deciding to make use of the retirement of Captain Valiant he is going to create a mystery-man of crime, doing so with the help of scientist Alexander Horton who has created a helmet shaped like a huge eye that confers on it’s user x-ray vision, fires fire and blinding beams of light, and has the ability to hypnotize anyone.

The five masked men are top hit men, one of whom will be picked to be Jimjacko’s inescapable assassin The Eye.

As luck would have it, the number of the man that Eric is impersonating is the one drawn from the hat and he is both given the helmet (which is put on in secret with only Horton present so not even the criminals know who he is) and a stolen early costume of Captain Valiant.

Eric is then told that his loyalty is insured by a needle of poison hidden in the helmet which Horton can activate if The Eye gets out of control, Eris is then given his first mission. Kill one of the gangsters gathered who has been stealing from Jimjacko.

Letting traitor get a head start, “so it will be more impressive which I chase him down and fry him,” Eric is able to fake killing his victim while really hypnotizing him to turn himself into the police.

At the celebratory party for the birth of the Ocular Operative Eric announces that he will not be under the control of Jimjacko but an independent operator.

At Jimjacko’s order Horton then activates the poison, but Eric remains alive, he having taken the opportunity while Horton was teaching him how to use the helmet to hypnotize him and get the antidote from him. He then take down the Jimjacko gang.

Eric then starts a career in which he is seen as a dangerous character somewhere between a vigilante and a mob hit man, no one is really sure.

In reality Eric is not killing the gangsters he goes after but hypnotizing them and leaving them at an up-state rest home.

Eventually Eric reveals to Vance Monroe, the man who raised him and who is now the Chief of Police, that he is The Eye and what he is really doing.

Knowing Eric needs help, and a base to work from, Monroe introduces Eric to millionaire Jubal White who reveals that he in fact had been the city’s former protector Captain Valiant.

Jubal agrees to finance Eric in his new career as The Eye, not only with money, but a secret set-up in an seemingly abandoned observatory, while supplying them with “The Eye Plane” and “The Eyeball” a maneuverable orb that can be used both for remote viewing and local transport.

Later Eric is joined in his crusade by his wife to be, and fellow undercover cop, Lynn O’Flynn.

Creation

The Eye was created by comic fan Richard “Grass” Green on November 4 1955, when as a high school comic fan he drew the first version of The Eye on a 3 inch by 5 inch index card and showed it to his friend Ronn Foss.

Eight years later Foss would become the editor of the comic fanzine Alter Ego (early fan version in the 60s, not the later one in the 90s) where, with the help of Biljo White, Grass’s hero would be brought before the public.

In the years that followed, while his stays in “Comic Book Limbo” would sometimes be lengthy, The Eye would continue to make appearances.