Golden Oldie

(Golden Age)

Born 1885 in Golden Fork, Nevada Jack McCoy graduated from the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard with a degree in engineering in 1906. He worked as a mine engineer for the Ash Valley Mining Company until 1914 and the opening of hostilities for the First World War. Feeling there was more he could do than simply read reports of atrocities in the paper and pray Jack was among the sixty-eight American volunteers, including Alan Seeger, who assembled in the Place du Palais Royal in Paris on the morning of August 25, 1914, to join the French Foreign Legion.

After the capitulation of the Central Powers in 1918 Jack returned to Golden Fork where he again took up a position with Ash Valley, and in time wooed and married Cleo Insburg, daughter of mine owner Guillaume “Willy” Insburg. By the fall of 1919 they had a son, Yates McCoy.

By 1940 Jack was mine inspection chief and Yates had graduated high school and joined the navy. While Yates was in Hawaii for training Cleo became sick with a fever and in July of 1941 finally succumbed. When Yates died in the attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941 Jack was inconsolable, and with nothing left tried to join the army. He was, at this point 56 years old, and while in rather good shape for a man his age decades of working in and around gold mines had taken a toll. Jack was declared 4-F and no amount of protestations, appeals, or favours from old war buddies could get him in.

Soon after, while inspecting a mine outside of Golden Fork, a cave-in caused a pocket of weird gas to escape into the tunnels. Jack got everyone else out, but was caught in an aftershock and buried alive. The weird gas combined with the gold dust and permeated McCoy's body giving him an unheard of strength that allowed him to dig his way to the surface. McCoy discovered the combination of the gas and the gold dust had caused a remarkable transformation and his body was now at the peak of human potential, beyond even what he had been in his prime. His skin has changed to an organic golden metal, and his strength and vigor were more than human.

When he again tried to join the war effort McCoy was this time accepted with open arms and given special commission under Captain Elias Murdoch of the Army Air Corps as a 'free operator' for the course of the war. Also under Murdoch, by special detachment, were Brit Calvin Benton III and intelligence analyst Simon Edwards who had both been Mystery Men before the war and brought their 'particular skills' to bear for the War Department. The three, McCoy Benton and Edwards, frequently found themselves working with war correspondent and photojournalist Jane Janton who with her magic camera was very much an operational asset.

By the end of the war the four had decided to continue their association as the Adventurers and would spend the next decade fighting criminal masterminds and mad scientists while solving weird mysteries all over the world.