Mexican Imitators
Hombres Intrépidos presentan el Hombre Mosca #1: April 1960
el Hombre Mosca had a certain degree of insect powers, but he was apparently always very small while he was in costume, which is enough of a difference to remove him from the Crusaders camp and avoid copyright infringement.
Rik:
Hi! This is Uriel Duran writing. About your questions ,El Hombre Mosca was a character from the ’60s but had no relation with the Archie Comics superhero created by Simon and Kirby.
El Hombre Mosca was a shrinking hero, more or less like the Wasp from Marvel Comics. The Fly, the MLJ/Archie character, couldn’t shrink as far as I know but had many insect-like powers. He could fly, glow like a firefly, command bees, and many more things like those.
The main difference between them was that El Hombre Mosca used a blue suit, and The Fly’s was green.
Their adventures were different too. The Fly had typical Silver-Age stories with space invaders, giant monsters, supervillains, etc. El Hombre Mosca was a bit more pulp-like, with gags of common delinquents and sometimes mad scientists. In fact, the main influence for El Hombre Mosca and many of the Mexican superheroes from the ’60s and ’70s, were newspapers strips like Flash Gordon, The Phantom, Mandrake, and Tarzan, so their stories had a very similar taste like those ones. More adventure driven than super-power driven.
El Hombre Mosca wasn’t very popular, so it’s almost impossible to get a picture to scan. But you can check out a picture of Hombre Mosca at this website:
http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/mexico.htm
just scroll down and click the thumbnail. By the way, there’s some info and a picture of other Mexican superheroes with fly powers: Zooman.
Even more, at the very same website there’s a pic of The Fly (and some other MLJ/Archie heroes) here:
http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/archiecom.htm
There –hope this info was of service.
Regards,
Uriel Duran