Darwin Jones

Darwin Jones
Darwin Jones, far right, from Strange Adventures #1, artist Paul Norris
Publication information
Publisher	DC Comics
First appearance	Strange Adventures #1, (August 1950)
Created by	David V. Reed (writer) Paul Norris (artist)
In-story information
Alter ego	Darwin Jones
Team affiliations	D.S.I.
Abilities	analytical mind, heightened deductive reasoning, polymath

Darwin Jones is a fictional scientist, a comic book character published by DC Comics. He first appeared in Strange Adventures #1 (August 1950), and was created by David V Reed and Paul Norris.

The first Darwin Jones story appeared in Strange Adventures #1 (August 1950), written by creator David V Reed, (better known for his war and fantasy stories), and drawn by artist Paul Norris and inker Bernard Sachs. This was a single appearance as opposed to the start of a series - there were no further stories until Strange Adventures #48 (September 1954). His further appearances in the 1950s were irregular - Strange Adventures #58 (1955), #66 and #70 (1956), #76, #77, #79 and #84 (1957), then #88 and #93 (1958), after which no Darwin Jones stories were published until he eventually re-appeared in Strange Adventures #149 (February 1963) and a last story in Strange Adventures #160 (January 1964). Although he utilised many of the classic National writers and artists of the day, Strange Adventures Editor Julius Schwartz made no attempt at continuity with the production team on the stories. In thirteen stories Darwin Jones was penned by no less than eight authors: his creator David V Reed, Gardner Fox, Sid Gerson, Bill Finger, Joe Samachson, Otto Binder, John Broome, and Ed Herron, and an equally large number of artists, including Carmine Infantino, Sy Barry, Gil Kane, John Giunta, Joe Giella and Murphy Anderson.

An oddity of the series is that none of the stories were actually headlined as Darwin Jones tales, and many do not even mention him until part way through the story.

Since then there have been no further Darwin Jones stories as such; he has only made a small number of minor appearances in other titles - Daring New Adventures of Supergirl #7 (May 1983), a cameo role in the DC Comics cross-over story Crisis on Infinite Earths #9 (1985), the out-of-continuity DC staff round robin adventure DC Challenge #4-6 (February 1986 - April 1986), Power of the Atom #15 (August 1989), Action Comics #683 (November 1992) and Underworld Unleashed: Patterns of Fear #1 (December 1995).