Mike Maxwell

Mike Maxwell is B'wana Beast, a DC Silver Age hero who gained extraordinary powers — including the ability to telepathically command animals and merge two creatures into a single beast — after exposure to mystical vapors and a strange helmet discovered in an African cave.

Born in the pages of Blackhawk #228 in 1967, Mike Maxwell is a Silver Age DC creation from the pen of Bob Haney and pencils of Dick Dillin — a character whose debut alone carries collector weight. Though his catalog footprint is compact, he's rubbed shoulders with some of DC's heaviest hitters: Superman, Green Lantern, The Flash, Hawkman, and B'wana Beast have all shared his pages across titles like Batman: The Brave and the Bold and Animal Man. The fact that his presence stretches across nearly five decades of DC publishing — from the go-go Silver Age all the way to 2013 — speaks to a quiet staying power that rewards the curious reader hunting beyond the obvious. With two key issues to his name and connections to some of DC's most beloved eras, Mike Maxwell is exactly the kind of deep-cut discovery that makes longbox diving worthwhile.