The Whizzer (Robert Frank)

Robert L. Frank was born in St. Louis, Missouri. After the mobster Granno frames him and his father Emil for murder, they flee to Africa, where Robert develops a fever (originally, his was depicted as being bitten by a cobra). Emil saves him with a transfusion of mongoose blood (the same mongoose that killed the cobra in the initial story), but dies soon after from stress.[7][8][9] After developing superhuman speed from the transfusion and defeating Granno, Frank then decides to fight crime and eventually accepts the offer of Invaders member Bucky, who forms the superhero team the Liberty Legion to rescue the other Invaders from the Red Skull.[10] When the Liberty Legion and Invaders disband after World War II, the Whizzer joins the All-Winners Squad.[11][12] The Whizzer afterward spent some years battling alcoholism and depression and was, for some time, homeless in the Bowery section of Manhattan.[13] He also works as a nuclear laboratory technician. In 1942, the Whizzer acquired a new sidekick, a stereotyped African-American friend named Slow-Motion Jones.[14] Slow-Motion always had a phone in his hat available in order to contact The Whizzer immediately when there is trouble. Pre-dating modern cell phones by decades and looking just like a hand-held receiver, how it works goes unexplained. In the second of these stories, it is attached to a folding gadget inside his hat, but no obvious wire. The Whizzer also began using the alias "Jack Robinson," as in "faster than you can say Jack Robinson" and expanded the wings on his headdress to show a full bird rather than simply wings. He wrote about how he received his powers in his diary. Frank Rone, a burglar who robbed his safe was able to duplicate his powers and became a formidable for, but lacked Whizzer's experience.[15] In the modern age, the Whizzer reappears as an aging hero who had married fellow superhero Miss America. The Whizzer encounters and briefly serves with the Avengers, who aid him in controlling his son Nuklo. He is reunited with Nuklo, but suffers a heart attack. At the end of this adventure, the Whizzer erroneously believes himself to be the father of Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch.[16] The Whizzer was later duped by the Living Laser into battling the Avengers,[17] and suffers a second heart attack.[18] He then battled the Atlanteans and Namor alongside the Avengers.[19] After a humbling defeat at the hands of the supervillain Count Nefaria[20] the Whizzer retires.[21] He later returns to fight a final battle against his old enemy Isbisa. The Whizzer dies after suffering a fatal heart attack while fighting Isbisa, but his sacrifice enables Nuklo to be cured of his excessive radiation and begin a normal life.[22] Arnim Zola later creates a clone of Whizzer who is killed by Deadpool.[23]