New Arrival Night Hawk

A Nineteenth-Century Superhero and the Dawn of American Mass Culture

Unmasks the long-forgotten story of how a flying, superhuman vigilante played a pivotal role in the founding of the American labor movement.

On July 5, 1828, more than a century before Superman arrived on Earth, a superhero took flight in Philadelphias night sky. Buried on page three of a small local newspaper, the announcement of his arrival appeared under the title The Night-Hawk, No. 1 with a cryptic epigraph from Romeo and Juliet: Ill be a candleholder and look on. Who and what was the Night Hawk? As Matthew Warner Osborn reveals, this was the sobriquet of a mysterious columnist for the weekly Mechanics Free Press, the first radical socialist newspaper in America. Dressed in a mysterious cloak, the Night Hawk soared over Philadelphia, revealing the evil crimes of prominent gentlemen, fighting murderous criminals, and calling out fraudulent