Curiously Familiar #6: The Scorpion and Dominic Fortune

And we're back for another week of "Curiously Familiar," a series of posts where I'm examining various comic book characters who turned up at at least two different publishers, but wore a different name at each one. This is not the same as characters who were created in homage - in this instances, the two characters were actually intended to be the same entities. What a concept!

When you need a man of action, look to that jack-of-all-trades Moro Frost, the Scorpion! This gun for hire has roved his way through episodes of daring-do throughout the 1930s!

When you need a man of action, look to that jack-of-all-trades Dominic Fortune! This gun for hire has roved his way through episodes of daring-do throughout the 1930s!

The Story Behind the Story: Howard Victor Chaykin was still young and promising when he launched the Scorpion for Atlas Comics in 1975. Unfortunately, he didn't hit it off well with the Atlas people and quickly exited, renaming his character Dominic Fortune (with only a minor change of costume and no real change of concept) and bringing him to Marvel Comics that same year. Atlas tried their best to imitate Marvel - what a blow to lose of their original properties and the fresh new creator who conceived them to the very entity they were in combat with! Dominic Fortune went on to become a memorable (albeit minor) part of the Marvel Universe while Chaykin moved onward and upward to greater things. The Scorpion had a promising start, but lost it all in the stretch.