Pete Ross first met Clark Kent when he and his family moved to Smallville, while they were both young teenagers. Undoubtedly, the move was prompted due to that town's increasing prominence, as the home of Superboy, as it grew during the lad's time there. Immediately, the two became best friends, with Pete feeling protective of the weaker Clark, not knowing that Clark was secretly more powerful as the Boy of Steel. During a camping trip, Pete would accidentally learn of Clark's dual identity, and helped to protect it from time to time. This included on occasion masquerading as Superboy himself!
Tex Thomson and his family never moved to the Smallville of their Earth, as it only had a Clark Kent, no Superboy. Still, the two "Action Aces"... whose tales were chronicled in early Action Comics, would become acquaintence as adults.
Pete and Tex were adventurous blonde haired young men with noble streaks and loyalty to those weaker then they. For Pete, this was Clark, and for Tex, this would be in the good natured Bob Daley. Both men became wealthy... Pete as a geologist and Tex as an oil baron. How did Ross gain a fortune from his profession, and how did Thomson strike it rich finding oil fields? The logical answer is that they were both petroleum geologists, at least initially. Once succeeding in this, they used their intuitive nature in other endeavors.
Both Pete and Tex were mechanically gifted, capable of developing and utilizing advanced technology. Pete was inspired by his uncle, a Scotland Yard inspector, into detective work... this uncle very similar to a contemporary of Tex's in Europe, Inspector Erskine Hawkins, who tried to learn Superman's secret identity! Pete for a time had in his possession an anti-gravity belt enabling him to fly, Tex developed a mechanism within his cape allowing him to fly as well. Each had adventures both as inquisitive civilians and in their red caped aliases of "Superboy" and Mister America, they traded blonde for black hair... masters of disguise.
Their heroism was noticed and rewarded when they were invited into large organizations of powerful protectors, with Pete joining Superboy's team... the Legion of Super-Heroes as an honorary member, and Tex joined Superman's team, the All-Star Squadron. Yet while successful professionally, as well as superheroes inspired by the Supermen
When an alien armada kidnapped Pete's son Jonathan, who had some special intrinsic gifts that they... and the future Legion... knew was needed in space, Superman was convinced not to rescue the boy from his captors.
This led Pete to use a device created by Lex Luthor, transplanting his brain into the body of Superboy from over a decade earlier, bringing him to the future to fight his former friend. When Superman defeated this hybrid Superboy with help from his pet and his younger self in Pete’s body, he had Ross incarcerated in a mental institution until he could save Jonathan and reunite him with his father.
In one alternate future, Tex would likewise succumb to tragedy, when in one possible future timeline he was captured by Superman's arch-enemy the Ultra-Humanite, who then used Tex's body to contain his brain. When his latest scheme versus his adversary failed, Tex abandoned Thomson's body for that of others. In the timeline, Ultra-Tex used his political influence to become a leading senator of the United States, while in another timeline Pete was pushed by Luthor himself into becoming his Vice President of the United States. Neither political career lasted long.
Pete's son Jonathan was well known even before his alien abduction, as Superman confiding in the body with his secret identity in order to save his life. And Superman would eventually liberate Jonathan from his extraterrestrial captivity, returning him to Earth-One to reunite with his now sane father.
As Tex disappeared from the main timeline of Earth-Two during the mid-1940s, it is suspected that Ultra still had something to do with this. A few years later, another lad much like himself appeared, fatherless and with the same sense of adventure. This lad, also named Tex, would join the Boy Commandos in 1947 and have several adventures with them.
And so, Pete and Tex had various similarities beyond their appearance. Each was a contemporary from the early days of the Supermen, each were avid and rich scientists, each utilized artificial flight to adopt red-caped alter egos, each joined the same teams of which the Supermen were themselves members, each were tied in brain-exchange schemes to adversaries of the Supermen, each were brief nationally renowned politicians, and each had heirs who carried on their heroic spirit.
We rest our case.
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