Angel (human)

The Angel, born Thomas Halloway, is a vigilante superhero in New York City known for ruthlessly hunting down and killing criminals. It is said that his presence causes a cold chill in his prospective victims. He does not possess any superpowers, and his origin is unknown.

Biography

1939-1940

Angel had already developed a reputation as a dangerous vigilante when a racketeering family known as the Six Big Men began running roughshod. Angel took it upon himself to deal with them, stalking them one by one and killing each of them, or otherwise bringing about their deaths. It turned out that the leader of the Six Big Men, the Big Boss, and his associate Lil, were fully intending for Angel to do just that so that the two of them could get a larger share of the family's profits. Nonetheless, Angel was able to track the two of them down as well, bringing them to police custody.

Angel soon found himself in Hong Kong, ostensibly trailing scholar Jane Framan, who had been tasked by the Smithsonian Institute with finding the lost Temple of Alano. Angel had deduced that Lelong, who had been on a prior expedition for the temple, had been hiding out in Hong Kong as a man named "Sumner," looking to ambush whomever returned the map to Asia. Sumner indeed met Framan soon after her arrival and buttered her up, aiming to kill her and steal the map in private. But Angel was able to stop and apprehend him, returning the map to Framan. Around this time, Angel was also involved in one of the earliest conflicts of World War II, defending the Polish town of Grybow from Axis forces.

While patrolling the streets of New York, Angel witnessed a woman being abducted by a group of strangely garbed men. He trailed the men by car to a castle north of the city, and discovered that they aimed to sacrifice her to their "fire-god." Angel infiltrated the castle's sacrifice chamber and confronted their leader, a powerful hypnotist. Angel defeated him and saved the woman, leaving the man's hypnotized followers to roam the castle confusedly. Shortly afterward, a mobster known as Brink rose to power after introducing his colossal, monstrously powerful friend Butch into his gang. Using brute force and direct threats, Brink took over his crime family and began terrorizing the city in general. Angel confronted Butch; though unable to defeat him directly, he was able to use Butch's own momentum against him, sending him crashing through a wall several stories up into a subway underground. With Butch defeated, Brink was easily brought to justice. Not long afterward, Angel stopped an attempted kidnapping, using the bizarre tactic of overturning every car on the block to thwart the criminals' getaway.

Angel soon uncovered a kidnapping of his friend Mary Edwards at the hands of gangster Gabby Harris and his men. Harris was interested in Edwards' supposedly valuable necklace, but unbeknownst to him, it was a fake. Angel secretly met with Edwards and they decided to let Harris have the necklace. Angel tracked Harris' transaction to Nichol's jewelry store, and mounted sufficient evidence to inform the police and bring Nichol and Harris to justice. Shortly afterward, Angel also thwarted Emma Martin's attempted murders of her niece and brother, Betty and Henry. Emma sought to expedite her inheritance from her wealthy brother, but upon being found out walked into a group of trigger-ready police to her death. He then foiled a particularly devious kidnapping: one in which a wealthy businessman had hired a group of thugs to kidnap another businessman's daughter for ransom so that he would be forced to take out stock from his company, allowing the kidnapper to take control of it. Angel found the cabin where the girl was being held and freed her with little difficulty. Soon afterward, Angel traveled to the small village of Carlburg, supposedly terrorized by vampires. He traced the source of the hysteria to a mad scientist in a castle, who had been kidnapping young women to experiment on them. Angel brought down the scientist's operation and the castle along with it.

Angel became aware of a series of kidnappings in the Blue Ridge Mountains performed by strange, green, humanoid creatures known as ghouls living in underground caverns. He infiltrated their cave in an attempt to stop them, or at least buy time until an established hunting group could reach them, but wound up getting kidnapped himself. Angel was tied up with a group of kidnapped women to be sacrificed to the magma within the ghouls' realm, but a sudden series of volcanic rumblings frightened the ghouls and caused them to scatter deeper into the earth. The lava rose, killing all of the ghouls present, and the hunters arrived to rescue the women with a rope ladder. Angel tried to follow them, but the ladder failed and he fell, narrowly avoiding death by grabbing onto a ledge. Immediately after landing, Angel was confronted and captured by towering, purple, humanoid monsters, similar to the ghouls but much larger. He was taken to a colorful city comprised of outcroppings in the subterranean walls, where he was thrown into a dungeon with a woman speaking ancient Greek. Fortunately, Angel could converse with her. Somehow, the woman had been kept alive underground since the monsters' attack on her native land four thousand years ago—she explained that she would perish if she returned to the surface world. She gave Angel a cape that belonged to the god Mercury, granting him the power of flight. A small beam of sunlight reached the dungeon and touched the woman moments later, killing her instantly. Angel escaped and returned to the surface, fleeing the monsters in his wake. The resulting tumult destroyed the monsters' city and sent them tumbling into the abyss below.