Was recently reminded of that "William Hell" creep, and was wondering, could we do a deep dive into villains passing themselves off as heroes?
It's an important question but you just had to ask me about the biggest bastard to ever do it, huh? Well I suppose we'll use it as a case study. I will place a trigger warning RIGHT HERE. We are going to be discussing bigotry in the abstract and white supremacy in specific. The man we are talking about is a sack of human garbage and even his supervillain name and motif are a widely recognized hate symbol. If you don't wanna hear it, duck out now and no one is allowed to judge you. Now let's talk about the White Dragon.
(A news photo of Heller as The White Dragon. If you have to guess which network, you haven't been paying attention) The White Dragon actually refers to two men, Danial William Ducannon and William Heller although the broadest outlines of their stories are the same. We'll talk about William Heller first because his story is shorter and he's dead, even though he actually appeared second. Heller was born to a wealthy patrician family but without very many social connections, home schooled in his parents' very conservative mindset he most likely always would have turned out as a problem for society until his parents took one wrong turn into an out of control race riot that had been sparked by police brutality in an overcrowded minority neighborhood. No one knows the details specifically but both of Heller's parents ended up dead. Heller was then taken in by his grandfather, a member of the American Nazi Party and the German American Bund. Trained (groomed more like) by his grandfather into an even more extreme point of view he was made independently wealthy by his grandfather's eventual death.
Founding the hate group known as the Aryan Empire he created his original nom de guerre William Hell, a play of famous marksman William Tell. Ingraining himself as a vigilante he gained positive media attention, arresting criminals of color but secretly releasing white criminals to join the Aryan Empire. At the height of his personal popularity he was undercut and unmasked by the villain turned government agent Deadshot and arrested.
It's here where his story intersects with the original White Dragon, Daniel William Ducannon. Ducannon was not born into wealth but WAS a metahuman when the idea of the metagene was still cutting edge science. In the months after the Dominator invasion his pyrokinetic abilities were awakened and he was supplied with a suit of high tech battle armor by the MetaTech Corporation (A whole other kettle of fish who got shut down specifically BECAUSE they were doing things like handing out super tech to untested metahumans).
Ducannon operated as a vigilante in his native Chicago and also gained a large amount of personal popularity, being careful to avoid overt acts of racism and operating under a well doctored public persona that allowed him to sneak racism and sexist messages into his public appearances. He was, however, eventually called on it by Hawkwoman who confronted him in public over the intention of his words and used connections in law enforcement to open an investigation into his deeds.
He managed to go on a public crusade against the Hawks for a little while but when he unleashed his actual plan, attempting to set a firestorm within Chicago's low income minority neighborhoods he was confronted and defeated by the Hawks and their Golden Age counterparts.
When Ducannon and Heller met, both serving sentences in Belle Reeve Penitentiary they bonded and agreed to share the identity of the White Dragon. Once they escaped they both joined with the Neo-Nazi organization called the 4th Reich in the plot to destroy the Justice Society and its legacy. Ducannon was present at the now infamous Heywood massacre where the family of All Star Squadron founder Commander Steel were killed nearly to a man save for Nathan Heywood who survived the attack and now operates with the Justice Society as Citizen Steel.
Heller was killed at some point by the villainess known as Plastique but Ducannon is still active more or less both as a member of the 4th Reich and a superhuman enforcer of the remaining Klan.
The reality is that superheroes don't come with background checks ahead of time. When you drill right down to it a newly appearing superhero is a vigilante, someone who has been pushed by some personal agenda to take justice into their own hands. We can't know ahead of time whether a hero is on the up and up, we can only wait, and see, and take comfort in the fact that eventually the truth will come to light.
The superhero community is very tight knit and very self policing. Once either White Dragon appeared they were under the scrutiny of heroes near then whether they knew it or not. It doesn't take long for a new hero to begin racking up team ups and recommendations from their fellow heroes, or, if their have ill intentions for those heroes to start looking into what doesn't add up.
The most important thing to remember about the White Dragon is that Hawkman and Hawkwoman were there to stop him when he attempted to leverage his false persona to do harm and that will ALWAYS be the deciding factor between who is a real hero and who is taking the public for a ride.
