THE BLACK COAT: REVOLUTIONARY WAR SUPERHERO

This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog looks at the independent comic book character the Black Coat, a masked hero in 1770s New York City.

This hero’s stories begin in March 1775, just a month before the Battles of Concord & Lexington will kick off America’s Revolutionary War. He has subsequent adventures set during the war itself.

The Black Coat is really Nathaniel Finch, brilliant young scientist and friend of Ben Franklin himself. Our costumed hero runs his own covert network of rebels called the Knights of Liberty, men and women who risk everything to fight against tyranny. His coal-black horse Phobos stands ever-ready as well.

Part Zorro, part Dr. Syn the Scarecrow and part Shadow, the Black Coat uses his sword, pistols and steampunk (well, actually sailpunk) inventions to preserve the emerging United States of America. His right-hand lady Ursula Morgan runs the covert outfit’s day to day operations, with the Black Coat going into action against Great Britain, Tory Loyalists and assorted products of Britain’s weird science & occult arts. 

THE BLACK COAT Vol 1 #1 (2006)

Title: A Call to Arms, Part One

Villains: General Savidge, the Butcher and the League

Synopsis: This tale gets off to an interesting start as the Black Coat and some of his Knights of Liberty pilot his submersible proto-submarine the Scylla in their raid of a secret British ship trying to assassinate Ben Franklin under the guise of a pirate attack. 

NOTE: It’s a nod to the real-life affair of the VERY primitive submarine the Turtle from the Revolutionary War. Except the Black Coat’s sub succeeds in its mission. 

The saved Franklin visits with our hero in his civilian Nathaniel Finch identity at the New York Sentinel, Finch’s patriot newspaper. Rumors of war breaking out at any moment are everywhere. British General Savidge has secretly allied himself with shadowy conspirators called the League – an evil version of the Founding Fathers’ Masonic Lodges.

Meanwhile, the Butcher (Wilhelm Krauss) – a massive, powerful serial killer who has been reanimated from the dead by his German mad scientist brother Frederick – needs to kill men and women in order to replace his own body parts & tissues as they decay. His latest victim is Josephine, a prostitute and one of the female members of the Knights of Liberty. 

The Black Coat battles the Butcher but finds he cannot be killed without immediately reanimating himself.

THE BLACK COAT Vol 1 #2 (2006)

Title: A Call to Arms, Part Two

Villains: General Savidge, the Butcher and the League 

Synopsis: Savidge’s troops step up their efforts to capture the Black Coat, resulting in multiple battles with him. The mysterious, bandaged leader of the League insists that the general use every means at his disposal to convince the public that the Black Coat is really the serial killer called the Butcher and therefore turn them against him.

When our hero tracks down the metalworker who crafted the odd, customized weapon that the Butcher uses, he arrives too late to stop the murderer from killing that man to prevent him from talking. Another battle ends with the Black Coat again thinking he’s destroyed the monstrous villain only for him to emerge alive from the resulting explosion.

THE BLACK COAT Vol 1 #3 (2006)

Title: A Call to Arms, Part Three

Villains: General Savidge, the Butcher and the League

Synopsis: With New York City in a panic over rumors of war and the real-life depredations of the Butcher, our hero’s nighttime heroics wind up greatly hindered.

Meanwhile, the mysterious bandaged leader of the League confirms to General Savidge that the Butcher and his brother are League operatives. That night, the Black Coat and the Knights of Liberty enact a plan to catch the Butcher, but General Savidge and his men interfere, resulting in the murderer escaping with Ursula Morgan as his prisoner.

THE BLACK COAT Vol 1 #4 (2006)

Title: A Call to Arms, Part Four

Villains: General Savidge, the Butcher and the League

Synopsis: Ursula is held in the Butcher’s nightmarish lair where his brother does his ghoulish experiments and replaces Wilhelm’s decaying body parts through his mad science.

His wild (but thankfully impotent, if you get my drift) infatuation with Ursula prompts the Butcher to become a loose cannon, disobeying the orders of his brother Frederick AND the League.

With all parties now scouring the city for the murderer, the Black Coat tracks down the Butcher via his brother. Everything culminates in a destructive battle at the docks during which Ursula is freed. In addition, our hero at last tries a tactic that lets him truly destroy the Butcher.

THE BLACK COAT (2008)

Title: Heart of Ice

Villains: Constable Starrett, the Chenoo and the North Woman

Synopsis: This is a prequel story. The Black Coat is already in action and clashing with British troops when he can, while Ursula runs a gun smuggling ring for the Knights of Liberty.

Meanwhile, a Chenoo (Native American were-beast) has been hunting the forests to the north of New York City. 

British Constable Starrett tamps down the monster rumors by scapegoating the Native Americans in the woods. The Black Coat tries to find evidence to clear the Native Americans, only for them to misunderstand his intentions and attack him. 

Our hero winds up battling the Chenoo, who is really a cursed white man turned monster named Ambrose Hood, as well as a witch from the far north who wants to use a Twin Peaks style portal in the forest to unleash even more monsters on the land.

THE BLACK COAT (2008) 

Title: First Blood

NOTE: The first Black Coat story with interior color art.

Villains: British soldiers and the Shoney

Synopsis: Another prequel story, this one set in January.

This was the most awkward blending of the supernatural aspects with the more straightforward adventure elements.

As the tale opens the Black Coat outfights several Redcoats when they try to take down a crude rebel flag mounted on a pole in the middle of New York City. It turns out the Viking ship from which the wood for the flagpole was taken contained a dragon (sigh). The dragon returns and begins preying on New Yorkers.

Ursula Morgan learns from the Freemasons about the dragon, called the Shoney. Our hero uses one of his gadgets to ride along with the dragon when it strikes again, then blows it up. The Black Coat survives the fall from mid-air by use of an experimental parachute type of device for a nice touch.   

THE BLACK COAT (2009)

Title: … Or Give Me Death, Part One

Villains: Lord Morrow, General Savidge, stone gargoyles and the League

Synopsis: Finally, a story set after the events of A Call to Arms. It is now April of 1775. Lexington and Concord are mere days away, but no one knows it.

Ursula Morgan commands the crew of our hero’s submersible craft the Scylla and sees action as they defeat a detachment of Redcoat soldiers. With the Black Coat seemingly drowned, Ursula makes the decision to use some of the Krauss brothers’ serum to restore life to the masked man.

Lord Morrow, the bandaged leader of the League from our first story, sends three stone gargoyles from their New York City perches after Frederick Krauss to see if he can make more of the family serum.

The Black Coat fights one of the gargoyles when they both find Frederick at the same time. Our hero survives his seeming death at the gargoyle’s hands thanks to the serum, but it flew off with Krauss.

THE BLACK COAT (2009)

Title: … Or Give Me Death, Part Two

Villains: Lord Morrow, General Savidge, Gargouille and the League  

Synopsis: Lord Morrow is forcing Frederick Krauss to make more of the family’s serum or be killed. Morrow has Gargouille guard Krauss so that the Black Coat can’t abduct him for his own purposes.

The Black Coat devises rooftop traps for his Knights to catch the smaller gargoyles subordinate to Gargouille and comes up with a way to kill the beast. Ursula infiltrates a formal party held by General Savidge and while the Black Coat breaks in to battle the Redcoats and Savidge himself, Ursula and other Knights of Liberty free Frederick from downstairs, then take him to their headquarters.

The Black Coat kills Gargouille, but the Krauss Serum causes him to have a bout of madness similar to the ones that afflicted the Butcher.

THE BLACK COAT (2009) 

Title: … Or Give Me Death, Part Three

Villains: General Savidge, Lord Morrow and the Gypsy  

Synopsis: The crazed Black Coat is confined while Ursula and the Knights of Liberty try to find a cure with the help of Nathaniel’s old Chenoo friend Ambrose Hood. Meanwhile, Lord Morrow shows off his power to incinerate people with green flames at his slightest touch to intimidate Gen. Savidge into staying allied to the League. 

Morrow sends the League’s latest agent, a female Gypsy assassin with glowing eyes (see cover) to kill the Black Coat. Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, the British plan to march on Lexington and Concord. 

The calmed Black Coat deduces the final ingredient for the serum but is nearly killed by the Gypsy assassin, who frees Frederick Krauss and then blows up the Knights of Liberty’s headquarters.

THE BLACK COAT (2009)

Title: … Or Give Me Death, Part Four

Villains: General Savidge, Lord Morrow and the Gypsy

Synopsis: The Black Coat and the Gypsy continue fighting amid the chaos and destruction at the Knights’ lair, with him still surviving all the fatal wounds he gets thanks to the serum. At length they are separated by the raging fire that followed the explosion.

Ursula and the Knights save as many of their secret papers as they can from the fire while the Black Coat tries to find our villains. Meanwhile, Paul Revere’s midnight ride is taking place in Massachusetts. 

Our hero attacks Lord Morrow, the Gypsy and Gen. Savidge in their hideout. Morrow has produced an antidote to the Krauss serum to take away the instant healing and reanimation powers of those who have used it. This will help him control the undead army of zombified Redcoats that he has spawned with the serum.

Amid a chaotic battle, Krauss is killed, the Black Coat neutralizes the Gypsy and, now robbed of his healing ability, seems doomed to die at the hands of Lord Morrow and his undead Redcoats. Gen. Savidge, angered by Morrow’s Villain Rant in which he revealed that the League plan to use the imminent war to take over the American Continent themselves, kills the villain from behind, thus destroying the zombie army as well. 

The Black Coat and Savidge call a temporary truce for the night, but they remind each other that in the now unavoidable war for independence one of them might still kill the other.

THE BLACK COAT (2009)

Title: Blood for Water

Villains: Captain Blithe and his pirate crew

Synopsis: We get another prequel story here, set even earlier than the others. 

It features the Black Coat & Ursula’s very first encounter with Captain Blithe, the pirate the British hired to assassinate Ben Franklin in the very first issue of The Black Coat. 

This was an unimaginative imitation of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, with readers being shown that Ursula and her late father had been pirates years earlier. She and the Black Coat prevent Blithe and his men from looting a ship carrying the last barrels containing water from the now-dry Fountain of Youth.

The action is set off the coast of St. Augustine, FL which the British would use as a privateer base and military location during the Revolutionary War, so that part’s fun. However, it’s not an origin story nor even a tale of the first meeting between our hero and Ursula, so it’s not a milestone.

THE BLACK COAT (2013)

Title: The Blackest Dye

Villains: The Druid, Feral and the League

Synopsis: We now jump forward to July, 1776 AFTER General George Washington in New York City has had a freshly arrived copy of the Declaration of Independence read aloud to all his troops. The Gypsy finally gets a name for us readers – Nadia – and she has been working for the Knights of Liberty since Concord & Lexington. Lord Morrow was forcing her to work for him against her will. 

Rather than be serialized like A Call to Arms and … Or Give Me Death, this story was presented in one big graphic novel that was as lengthy as any three parts of those two previous adventures. We are told the Black Coat, Ursula and the others have been maintaining their covert actions against the British all the while.

The Black Coat and Nadia save General George Washington from assassination by a sniper at the tale’s beginning. They also learn that the League have resurfaced for the first time since April of the previous year. A cowled and skull-masked Druid is working for the League alongside Feral, a human-sized wingless bat-thing who is called a vampire in the story.

Amid the historic battles that took place in and around New York during that period, the Black Coat, Ursula and the Knights of Liberty clash repeatedly with these new agents of the League as well as the Brits. The vampire Feral is killed off by the Black Coat partway through the story, and Nadia dies at the hands of the Druid, whose mere touch causes people to turn to ashes.

Mystical weaponry is what the League is after this time, but naturally our hero and Ursula thwart their plans again. Unfortunately, it turns out the Druid is really Ursula’s long-lost and presumed dead husband Josiah.

*** Sadly, there have been no additional Black Coat adventures. I wish they had adjusted the circumstances in Heart of Ice, First Blood and Blood for Water to fit them into the months AFTER April 1775 but before the events of The Blackest Dye. After all, battles were being waged from April 1775 all the way through July of 1776. It’s not like the war didn’t start until July 4th.   

        Anyway, always remember the secret sign and countersign for agents of the Knights of Liberty: Liberty is our guiding light/ In darkness we wage the fight.