Manhattan Natural : wartime Gotham's un-super heroes ...

At a time (WWII) when comic book superheroes , usually operating in a make-believe Manhattan, were saving the world every day and enthralling North American children and youth , lesser known but equally larger-than-life actual heroics were taking place in a real Manhattan.

But these valiants bringing natural penicillin lifesaving to the world against government blowback were hardly Superman or indeed any sort of superheroes .

If by the term 'superhero' we mean someone strong in body as well as mind.

They were un-super heroes if ever than phrase had meaning.

They were more like a badly aged Clark Kent , still mild and meek  but now weak and crippled .

They never numbered more than a handful :  misfits , unfits and just plain rebels.

They were aptly described by the official historian of their arch enemy  , Vannevar Bush's OSRD , as "4Fs, women and the Grace of God".

Henry and Marjorie Dawson, Floyd Odlum, Dante Colitti, Thomas Hunter, Charlie and Miss H --- they hardly had more than a handful of really good limbs between the seven of them.

'Unfits' the whole lot of them - the very 4Fs of the 4Fs - yet real life heroes despite all that .

Perhaps we could still make use of their story - as a sort of role model - by making a series of comic books or graphic novels about their wartime exploits ...

"Triumph of the Unfit" : a WWII book whose heroes are women, Jews, blacks, cripples and immigrants

There are plenty of WWII books and sometimes even documentaries about the WWII experiences of minorities and the unfit.

Just not popular ones - not the ones promoted by the Big Six , Five , Four book publishers and the Big Six, Five, Four, Three TV networks with lots of gloss and big bucks for publicity.

The biggest readers of the glossy books and high-budget TV shows about WWII (War porn) are basically the same people who are big viewers of Fox News and big listeners of Talk Radio and big supporters of the Tea Party.

You know who I mean : all those middle aged, middle class, white men who can't get enough of the last period in history (Modernity) when their kind ruled the roost unchallenged.

If any of them chance to fall upon my book about the heroic unfits whose efforts have helped saved their lives, or the lives of someone they know with cheap abundant antibiotics - I sure hope the shock doesn't kill them ....

"Unfit valour" : They defied Allied & Axis eugenics (and their own physical failings) to bring us "Penicillin-for-All"

What would penicillin look like today if Hitler, Stalin or Churchill had delivered it - instead of Dawson ?

In 1943 , Hitler, Stalin or Anglo-American Big Pharma could have delivered penicillin to us - delivered us penicillin either as expensive as Avastin or only to be given to the truly deserving Proletarian or Aryan.

But against the eugenic-mad world of 1943 , perhaps only a bunch of misfits and unfits could have delivered us inexpensive, abundant ,un-patented, un-encumbered Penicillin-for-All...