Monarchs of Motion vs Doctors of Darkness

Flash encountered a variety of colorful crooks. However, among the most deadly was the Duke of Darkness, the master villain known as Eclipso. Secretly the split personality of Doctor Bruce Gordon, a renowned solar scientist, Eclipso used his ebony gem to case shadows wherever he gazed through its prism. For several years, Eclipso wages a relentless war against his arch-enemy Gordon, very nearly defeating him scores of times. Instead, the duo kept tormenting one another, with neither finding lasting victory nor peace of mind knowing the other was ever present. Eventually, the villain's notoriety captured the attention of Flash's Justice League teammate, the Batman. During one battle between the two Dark Knights, Eclipso's fabricated body dematerialized and phased through Batman's physical form. This led to Batman capturing some of the essence of Eclipso himself, which would later link him across the Multiverse with Doctor Gordon's counterpart, Doctor Charles McNider

Doctor Mid-Nite, the heroic alter ego of Doctor McNider, did not have a fractured mind like his doppelgänger. Rather, he was a mentally well-adjusted individual, who aspired to help the helpless despite having a heinous handicap. Having been blinded in the prime of his career as a physician, McNider learned that his eyes were attuned to the darkness, allowing him to see in shadows while developing infrared goggles to see during daylight. He ended up a teammate of his Justice Society allies, the Flash and Batman. However, on one occasion, one his crimefighting partners turned him against the other in the heat of battle!

While Eclipso sought world dominating, leading his foes in pitched battle against the Justice League, Doctor Mid-Nite was manipulated with some of his teammates into attempting to subdue active members of the Justice Society. While Earth-One Batman tipped off his fellow Leaguers to their foe's modus operandi, the Earth-Two Batman in his Commissioner Bruce Wayne identity spurred his colleagues on into a conflict that sought to fracture the Society from within.

In each situation, a Scarlet Speedster opposed a Dark Doctor with varied results. Earth-One Flash was able to circumvent the darkness cast by Eclipso and contained him within a super-fast vortex. Earth-Two Flash was caught flat-footed when Doctor Mid-Nite caused him to make a tactical mistake, and slammed into the Batmobile. Eventually. Eclipso was captured and Bruce Gordon was freed of worry for one more day... while Doctor Mid-Nite, the Flash and their fellow heroes made peace with one another at the end of the day.

Fiancées - Friends - Fiends of Strange Superhumans

Industrialists Simon Stagg and Herman Darling were about as amoral as one could get, which led to their continual conflict with superheroes in their lives. Simon founded Stagg Enterprises researching various cutting edge technologies, while Darling had other affluent business interests. While Stagg kept on the legal side, his business practices indicated underlying sinister motivations. Darling was more an overall grump and curmudgeon, especially around his daughter's dimwitted boyfriend. Stagg used the glowing Orb of Ra to eliminate his daughter Sapphire's boyfriend and his mercenary employee Rex Mason,  with the unexpected resulted being Mason's transformation into Metamorpho the Element Man of Earth-One. Darling soon discovered that Daisy's boyfriend Johnny Thunder of Earth-Two possessed an all-powerful living Thunderbolt who fulfilled his literal wishes.

Scientist Bruce Gordon found solace in the support system of his fiancée Mona Bennett and her father Professor Bennett, just as senator Thomas Wright found comfort in the extended family of his fiancée Wendy Foster and her father Doctor Foster. While Professor Bennet assisted Gordon in discovering the secrets of the shadow-casting black diamond which transformed Bruce into the evil Eclipso, Doctor Foster perhaps aided Thomas as Black Condor into refining his black light gun. Both sets of father-daughters aided the ladies' lads in their various adventures throughout the years, although Gordon's criminal career of alter ego and Wright's caped crusade as Black Condor meant that they never ended up settling down with their one-time true loves. 

Simon’s daughter Sapphire eventually got her wedding with Rex when her father finally gave them their blessing after years of enmity between the two men. This took place shortly after Rex joined Batman's Outsiders team and gained increased notoriety for himself. Herman's daughter Daisy eventually grew tired of Johnny antics and misadventures with his Thunderbolt servant, and eventually grew apart from him when Thunder adopted young Peachy Pet. Although Daisy attempted to become a surrogate older sister and prospective future mother-in-law for the girl, she soon made the decision to end her relationship with Johnny.

Eclipso's Earth-Two counterpart Doctor Charles "Doctor Midnight" McNider had as his romantic interest his nurse and personal assistant Myra Mason, with Myra's Earth-One counterpart as the personal assistant of Rick "Space Ranger" Starr in the future. The Earth-One Johnny Thunder never had time to have a romantic relationship, as he concentrated his time and energies into his criminal career leading his Lawless League gang (and twice usurping the control of the Thunderbolt from his doppelgänger). Black Condor's Earth-One counterpart Black Rock and Rex Mason's Earth-Two counterpart Joe Morgan were likewise preoccupied by their professional careers to find time for personal relationships with the opposite sex.

The most famous father-daughter duo on each Earth were undoubtedly Gotham City's Police Commissioners and their superheroine offspring. On Earth-One, this was James Gordon and his daughter Barbara "Batgirl" Gordon... and on Earth-Two, this was Bruce "Batman" Wayne and his daughter Helena "Huntress" Wayne. Unlike the aforementioned "damsels in distress" above, these two young women could easily take care of themselves and protect their cities from various threats.

Determined Doctors Devise Dangerous Devices

Doctor Bruce Gordon and Doctor Charles McNider were innovative inventors, each developing gadgets and weaponry which they used in their costumed careers as Eclipso of Earth-One and Doctor Mid-Nite of Earth-Two. Primarily, Eclipso used his black diamond which projected darkness from his right-side eclipsed eye and destructive beams of energy from his left-side normal eye... while Doctor Mid-Nite used his black-out bombs to project darkness while utilizing his infra-red goggles allowing him see in daylight.

Just as McNider focused on one end of the electromagnetic spectrum with his infra-red eyewear to aid him in his crimefighting career, Gordon employed various ultra-violet projectors based on the other end of the electromagnetic spectrum to attempt purging his antagonistic alias. While Bruce met failure despite his multiple attempts at overcoming his opponent, Charles proved successful with his alter ego's adventures.

Eclipso's equipment varied depending on his various schemes, although a common feature with many of these devices was to split either himself or others into positive and negative versions of themselves. He was able to successfully able to accomplish this when battling Hal "Green" Lantern" Jordan while employing his "Murder Moon", allowing Eclipso to perpetually exist in a constant eclipse... until Jordan reintegrated himself and isolated the villain from his Gordon persona, exiling him in space.

Doctor Mid-Nite's Cryotuber had various functions, such as a liquid nitrogen freeze function, a tight laser beam and a setting which attacks his opponent's nervous system causing temporary paralysis. However, McNider utilized this device only on a few occasions in the 1960s before retiring it. 

Interestingly, just as Eclipso was able to merge and separate energized versions of himself using his and Gordon's technologies, so too McNider was able to develop a device which did something similar...only not on his world! When Dr. McNider used an experimental healing ray of his own desire to aid in the recovery of the Jimmy Olsen of Earth-Two, he then shared this technology with a visiting Superman of Earth-One, who brought the device back to his world. However, instead of just healing a test subject whom Dr. Phineas Potter had projected it rays upon, it transformed her into an energy being whom Lois Lane and the amateur superhero Human Cannonball had to corral and convert back to normal. 

It seems that some technology on Earth-Two which internalized power onto an individual does the reverse on Earth-One, amplifying that energy outside a resident of that world. So too the twin natures of Eclipso and Doctor Mid-Nite... just as Eclipso was a separate individual from McNider, Doctor Mid-Nite himelf gained a second life when he was revived from a death-like state by Wonder Woman's own purple healing ray and then transforming back into a boy after exposure to his foe Doctor Zodiac's elixir of youth.

Hawkmen and Darkness Doctors of Two Worlds

Katar and Shayera Hol were originally police officers from the planet of Thanagar, who had been tasked with journeying to Earth-One and learn the law enforcement techniques of that world. Soon after starting their dual careers as masked superheroes as well as a museum curator and his assistant, the pair as Carter and Shiera Hall established a solid reputation as the crime-fighting duo of Hawkman and Hawkgirl. This led to Katar being invited to join the Justice League of America, with his wife joining years later. 

Just a few months prior to this, a renowned physicist in the field of light studies named Doctor Bruce Gordon while on the island of Diablo during a solar eclipse, encountered a local self-made "seer" named Mophir. This madman attacked Doctor Gordon, scratching him with a black diamond, before plunging off a cliff. The lasting effects of this on Bruce was an infection, caused by this alien meteorite fragment, which unleashed an evil version of himself that took control during any eclipse. As the supervillian known as Eclipso, Gordon's malevolent alter ego tried several times to unleash sinister schemes upon humanity. Yet each time, Bruce along with his girlfriend Mona and her father Professor Simon Bennett, thwarted the plans of Eclipso time and again. 

After several attempts to purge himself once and for all of the corrupted version of himself, Doctor Gordon along with lab assistant John "Red Tornado" Smith, used a machine that seemingly accomplished this. In fact, it unleashed three temporary clones of Eclipso which would cause irreputable harm upon Earth-One if left unchecked. Red Tornado brought Bruce to the JLA Satellite to enlist the aid of the android's Justice League companions, including Hawkman... who himself was about to resign from the League and return with Shayera to Thanagar. On this occasion, Katar met Bruce, not knowing that this man.. designer of the Solar City... could have been his son!  Thankfully, the League destroyed this incarnation of Eclipso.

On Earth-Two, Doctor Charles McNider was both blessed and cursed by tragic circumstances into gaining the ability to see in perfect darkness while experiencing blindness in the light. Adopting the alias of Doctor Mid-Nite, McNider built a heroic costumed career for himself, both in his solo adventures as well as a member of the Justice Society of America after it was founded.

Throughout the years, Mid-Nite built a friendship with the Society's chairman Carter "Hawkman" Hall, as they two served for decades together on this team. Even when the team disbanded in 1951 due to government pressure, the pair supported one another as collegial colleagues through good times and bad.

However, when Green Lantern along with the Flash were mentally manipulated by the Psycho-Pirate, with the former causing destruction both at GBC-TV studios as well as Gotham City Airport, a fracture developed between the two men. Motivated by Police Commissioner Bruce Wayne, who as Batman was a fellow member of the team before his retirement, Doctor Mid-Nite and other inactive members attacked the active roster seeing them now as a threat. When Mid-Nite and his confederates discovered that the Pirate also emotionally influenced Wayne himself in to causing this conflict, the Doctor and Hawkman along with the rest of the Justice Society mended their relationships from then on. 

Still later, under the influence of Koehaha aka the River of Ruthlessness, Hawkman and four other Society members were under the water's evil influence thanks to Ultra-Humanite's malevolent machinations. Mid-Nite helped to spearhead behind the scenes the counterattack against the rogue heroes, as their children of Infinity, Inc. were sent to subdue their parents and former guardians until the river's influence subsided with Hawkman and the others returning to normal.

Midnight Marauders: Doctor Gordon Meet Doctor McNider

Two doctors scarred by tragedy, claimed by the night, casting long shadows of legacy. Doctor Bruce Gordon and Doctor Charles McNider were geniuses in the field of light, mastering it despite being impaced by disabilities that led to their costumed careers. One was a craven criminal, the other a courageous crimefighter.

Doctor Bruce Gordon was infected while visiting a South Pacific Diablo Island. There he confronted a misguided local priest named Mophir, who cut the doctor's flesh with a black diamond before perishing to his death. This infection caused Gordon to transfer him into an evil persona of himself named Eclipso during each eclipse, whether a natural or an artificial one. This led to a new supervillain who terrorized the world, opposed by his alter ego.

Doctor Charles McNider sustained permanent injury to his optical nerves following an explosion during a surgical procedure he was performing. After this, he learned that he had the ability to see in darkness when an owl crashed through his home's window. Devising infra-red goggles allowing him to see in daylight, while his own vision adapted to grant him sight in total darkness, Charles developed weaponry for his costumed career as Doctor Mid-Nite. 

Utilzing the black diamond as a weapon, Eclipso could cast frezzing darkness when positioning the dimaond in front of his eclipsed left-side eye, while emit devastating beams of light when cast over his normal right-side eye. To combat his adversarial alias, Bruce equipped his friend (and later himself when he and Eclipso separated into two individuals for brief periods) used light flash grenades and ulta-violet weapons to revert the villain back to his domant state within Gordon's body.

In addition to the Doctor's grenades which caused the blackout mist, he later devised a cryotuber that shot devastating laser beams, freeze rays and paralysis fields. This device was instrumental in some of his adventures during the 1960s, although he later retired his cryotuber for some unknown reason.

Interestingly, during a teamup between the Justice League and Justice Society, an alien entity known as Creator2 led his minions into battle versus the Society in order to obtain Earth-Two. This malefactor's plan was to destroy that world, paving the way for another to replace it. As each of his henchmen attacked individual members of the Society, one cornered and captured Doctor Mid-Nite in a specialized immobilization net. As had happened with the Doctor's teammates Superman and the Flash, who likewise were captured which inadvertently caused their Earth-One doppelgängers to also be paralyzed in their own universe, a similar thing happened with the Doctor. However, in this instance, it was Mid-Nite's "closest Earth-One equivalent" the Batman who felt the effects. Why not Eclipso?

In an earlier tale, Batman confronted Eclipso several stories above ground outside a skyscraper. However, a flash light grenade employed by Bruce Gordon below the two men caused Eclipso to revert into his phantom form, which passed downward through Batman’s body below him, before reentering Gordon's body. This caused a portion of Eclipso's aura to surround Batman, in place of the aura the Batman possessed which was brought it to life to combat Doctor Double X (after this battle, the aura ceased to exist). 

Simultaneous to Creator2's invasion occuring on Earth-Two months later, Doctor Gordon had sent Eclipso and himself into another dimension outside of Earth-One's universe, ridding his world of his alter ego. Hence, Doctor Gordon was not on Earth-One when Doctor McNider on Earth-Two was immobilized by Creator2’s minion… resulting in Batman at that moment being the closest counterpart to Mid-Nite instead of Eclipso!

The counterpart of Doctor McNider's nurse and girlfriend Myra Mason was a future Myra Mason who assisted industrialist Rick Starr in both his business and costumed identities. This Myra was aware of Starr's alter ego as Space Ranger while they shared various adventures in the 22nd century of Earth-One. Myra Mason of Earth-Two never seemed aware that her boss and his masked manhunter alter ego were the same man, even when she played the role of a female Doctor Mid-Nite alongside other girlfriends of Mid-Nite's Justice Society of America.

* Apparently, Wonder Woman’s purple ray also gave Doctor Mid-Nite extended youth and longevity matching that of his Justice Society  teammates, who had their own lives extended by exposure to Ian Karkull’s radiation years earlier.

** Since the aura-duplicate of Batman self-destructed following his victory over Doctor Double X, this left a void around Batman later filled by the energy entity that was Bruce Gordon’s Eclipso.

Fawcett's Finest: Midnight Men

Mystery Men of Midnight. A noted physician and a famous aviator, motivated to assume a costumed mantle during a period when the world needs such heroes.

We introduce for your kindly consumption Doctor Charles McNider and Captain Jim Albright also known as Doctor Mid-Nite and Captain Midnight. Both of this goggle wearing gladiators were protectors of the night, whether in mid-flight or in ailing their common man's plight. Using a variety of devices and their innate skills and strategy, this pair were preeminent protectors in worlds were superhumans were fighting alongside them.

Coupled with that, Albright and McNider's counterpart on Earth-One was Doctor Bruce Gordon aka Eclipso. While Doctor Gordon’s alter ego was adversarial and evil, due to being infected with radiation within the black diamond scrapped across his flesh, Bruce’s heroic demeanor counteracting Eclipso’s menacing manipulations. And on occasion, Gordon himself donned Eclipso’s uniform as a champion for good when his problematic persona was submerged within his psyche.

While Albright's supporting cast such as Chuck and Joyce Ramsey as well as mechanic Icaabod Mudd were background players on Earth-S, their dopplegangers on Earth-Two of Hop and Gerry Harrigan and mechanic Tank Tinker had their own adventures apart from the good Doctor. Still, beyond just their aliases, much more binds the ties between these Midnight mavericks on Earths Two and S:

• Along with their physical attributes, they were brilliant inventors
• As such, they developed specialized googles and black-out bombs
• Also used was Mid-Nites Cryotuber and Cap's Doom-Beam torch
• They joined the Justice Society/Batallion and Secret Squadron
• Mid-Nite's winged Hooty flew as fast as Cap in his gliderchute
• Formed partnerships with masked men Sandman and Spy Smasher

* The Earth-Four counterpart to Captain Midnight/Doctor Mid-Nite/Eclipso was the international explorer Professor Cyrus Coffin, known as the Midnight Philosopher. With his Arachne, he traveled the world investigating various unique cases.