Jim Taylor (Earth-616)

Taxi Taylor
Name	Jim "Taxi" Taylor
Current Alias	Taxi Taylor
Aliases	Master Mechanic
Affiliation and Relationships
Affiliation	Formerly Crazy S.U.E.S.
Relatives	Children: Taxi Taylor (daughter)
Physical Characteristics
Gender	Male
Height	5′9″ (1.75 m)
Weight	150 lbs (68.04 kg)
Eyes	Irises: Brown
Hair	Brown
Origin and Living Status
Origin	Human
Living Status	Alive
Reality	Earth-616
Place of Birth	Annapolis, Maryland
Personal Information
Identity	No Dual
Citizenship	American
Occupation	Adventurer, taxi driver, mechanic; Former soldier, inventor
Base of Operations	New York City, New York
Creators and Appearances
First	Mystic Comics #2 (February, 1940)
First	Mystic Comics #2 (February, 1940)

History

Preface

Taxi Taylor was just one of many costumed operatives active during World War II that were recruited into the United States military. The purpose was to enlist such individuals in order to publish propaganda in the form of comic books that were commissioned by the United States military and published by Timely Comics. These comics were used to convince Americans to support the war, and increase enlistment. Like many heroes recruited in this fashion, Taxi Taylor's fictional exploits were few. For most of these early heroes it was due to their deaths in combat.

Presumably, much like the Young Allies, the fictional exploits of Taxi Taylor may be based on actual events. For the sake of clarity, however, this article differentiates between the two.

Taxi Taylor's original Wonder Taxi

Origin

Not much is known about Jim "Taxi" Taylor prior to his recorded exploits, both real and those commissioned by the United States Military and published by Timely Comics. The only account of his origins were in one such published story. In that tale, Jim was depicted as a New York resident who was a brilliant mechanic by trade, who plied his skills to create the so-called "Wonder Car," a vehicle that could reconfigure itself for travel on land, sea, and air.

When Taylor finished building his Wonder Car, he attempted to turn his invention over to the United States Government to use in national defence. Taylor was dismissed, however, as a crackpot and was flatly turned down. Without government backing for his invention, Taylor instead decided to use the Wonder Car commercially, setting himself up as a taxi driver in the New York area. One day while picking up a pair of men, he learned that his passengers were spies from the nation of "Swastikaland", discussing a planned attack on American soil. After dropping his fares off, he used the Wonder Car's Super-Sensitive Shortwave Interceptor to scan the Washington, D.C. area for pirate radio signals. The Wonder Car's Radio-Graph then picked up a transmission from the Swastikan spies, learning that they were plotting to set up sea mines to destroy American ships in New York Harbour.

Deciding to act on this information, Taylor activated the sequence that transformed his Wonder Car into flight mode and begins searching for the Swastikan vessel, locating it using the Wonder Car's powerful headlights. Attempting to get rid of the magnetic mines, Taylor converted the Wonder Car into its submarine configuration and dived into the harbour. There using the Car's built in Contra-Magnetic Ray, the magnetic mines were rendered useless. By this point, Taylor was located and the Swastikans attempted to destroy the Wonder Car using depth charges, only causing minor damages. Taylor quickly repaired his Wonder Car, while simultaneously fighting off the Swastikans who attempted to eliminate him, apparently showing no issue with killing the spies by cutting off the life lines to their diving gear. With his Wonder Car repaired, Taylor then used its so-called "weapon of death" that used gas bubbles to pull the spy boat into the water, drowning the remaining spies.

Returning to the surface, Taxi Taylor drove his Wonder Car to the Swastikan's hideout to capture the rest of the spies. There he caught them trying to burn all the evidence of their activities. Converting the Wonder Car into a fire fighting vehicle, Taylor extended ladders into the burning building in order to try and recover any documents. Finding a safe, Taylor attempted to remove it, only to find that it had been rigged with a trap that used an electronic device to trap his hand on the dial. Taylor managed to avoid death thanks to the forethought of creating a belt with a timer that sent a signal to the Wonder Car to pull him out of the blazing inferno if he remained inside for more than two minutes. Pulled from the fire, Taylor freed his hand and then used the Wonder Car to put out the fire. Taylor then called the authorities to tip them off about the spy hideout, and apparently returned home to resume his career as a taxi driver.

Crazy S.U.E.S.

When the United States officially entered into World War II, Taxi Taylor was one of the many super-powered and costumed operatives drafted into the Specialized Unit, Enhanced Soldiers (or Crazy Sues) commanded by Captain America. With government resources Taxi Taylor developed a new high tech "taxi" ship for secret missions and began working on an android he called Transisto-Mech (or T-Mech for short). When the Crazy Sues' were deployed to Guadalcanal to battle the Imperial Japanese Army, Taxi Taylor and T-Mech flew recon over the area.

In June 1944, when his teammates the Invisible Man and Blue Diamond were captured by Nazi operatives for interrogation, Taxi Taylor and the Young Avenger came to their rescue.

By July of 1944, Taylor had earned the rank of Corporal. He was pulled from the Crazy Sues' operations in Northern France and brought to Utah by Colonel Ledford for intelligence gathering purposes. The full scope of Taylor's role and his subsequent fate are unrecorded.

Legacy

Taxi Taylor's legacy lives on in the modern age. At some point, he fathered a daughter who had the ability to travel to other realities. She Taxi Taylor joined up with Howard the Duck's Ducky Dozen to stop a zombie plague from spreading out of Earth-12591.

Attributes

Power Grid

Abilities

Taxi Taylor was a brilliant inventor who was far ahead of his time. His area of expertise was in vehicle design and robotics.

Paraphernalia

Equipment

Taxi carries a variety of screwdrivers, wrenches and other tools on his person.

Weapons

M-1 rifle, standard WWII issue weaponry.

Transportation

• Wonder Taxi: Taxi Taylor originally retrofitted his taxi cab with various modifications that allowed it to fly and travel on water and act as a submersible.

When in the military he developed a new all purpose vehicle, that could fly as well as burrow underground. It's full range of capabilities are unknown.

See Also

• 5 appearance(s) of Jim Taylor (Earth-616)
• 2 appearance(s) in handbook(s) of Jim Taylor (Earth-616)
• 2 image(s) of Jim Taylor (Earth-616)
• 1 item(s) used/owned by Jim Taylor (Earth-616)

Links and References

• Taxi Taylor at the Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe