I was gonna tell some stories from my childhood, but while going through our profile pages on the Wiki, I remembered that my page mentions Zom of the Zodiac, a comic book character of almost no repute. There's not much that's known about him, but I'm pulling information about him from this page, as well as Denis Gifford's fantastic Super Duper Supermen! which also apparently reprints Zom's first and only appearance (in Big Win Comics from 1948), written by S.K. Perkins. In the course of the two-page story, Zom bestows strength on Timpkins, "a meek and underpaid clerk", which is robbed of a satchel which is apparently significant to an appearance made by actress Rita Hayden. Timpkins wishes to be "a big he-man", and Zom appears to transform him into such. He goes on to save Hayden from being mobbed by fans, and she offers him a role in her next film. Timpkins is overjoyed and manifests his happiness by beating up his boss--whom Zom also appears to, granting him strength in turn so he can defeat Timpkins. Zom didn't appear any further past this, except as a member of Mina Murray's superhero team in Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: 1969, and the original story doesn't even contain a teaser at the end promising a continuation. So Zom remains a mystery both in-story and out of it. Which is why I love him.
You gotta admit: it's hard to hate a character who seemingly just wanders around the darkness of the London alleys just waiting for crimes to happen, not so he can stop them, but so he can turn other people into supermen to stop them for him. I wish that there was another story featuring him out there, but then, the existence of such is seemingly likelier than the release of The Life of Mocata Volume V...
Anyway. Make what you will of Zom's story. I suppose I'm being a bit of a hipster by loving who is probably the most obscure superhero in existence, but he is pretty hilarious and original. A lot of older superheroes are being revived by indie companies. Maybe Zom and Timpkins will ride again.
An image of Zom, provided by International Heroes:
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