5. Phantom Eagle
Marvel ComicsKarl Kaufman was an ace pilot, born in Germany but fighting on the side of the US during the first World War. To protect himself from reprisals from his parents, Kaufman devised his Phantom Eagle alter ego to conceal his identity and still fight for his adopted homeland. Using the skills he'd developed as stunt pilot and co-owner of a flying circus he brought down a record number of enemy bombers during his time in the military. Eventually he joined the Freedom's Five, an international crack team of army operatives looking to bring down the Axis powers. The Phantom Eagle was something of a throwback for Marvel, introduced during the late sixties but with more in common with the war comics the publisher had published in the forties when they were still called Timely (because in that case, they very much were). He was introduced in Marvel Super-Heroes #16 and appeared in a crossover with the Incredible Hulk, when the angry brute was sent back in time by Kang the Conqueror to stop the Eagle destroying a Nazi super weapon. Despite what sounds like a bunch of friggin' awesome stories, the Phantom's time on Earth-616 was to be tragically cut short. The series never really took off - boom boom - and so in a story set towards the war's end, Kaufman returned to Germany with his parents in order to fight his countrymen under his own name, meaning he could give up all this Phantom business. Except when they rolled up German pilot. Hermann von Reitberger was waiting, and he gunned all three of them down. Since then the Eagle has returned a couple of times as an actual phantom, helped by Ghost Rider to get revenge on von Reitberger. An ace pilot who's also a ghost? How is that not the latest hit book and film?