When Bernard Baily, golden age comic book artist, got the prime assignment of drawing Jerry 'Superman' Siegel's new superhero The Spectre in late 1939, he had to bring his seafaring adventure The Buccaneer to a close to make room for it. The rather unexcitingly-named hero Dennis Stone abruptly retired from the sea to marry his love interest, the beautiful Regina Rashin.
Being in on the ground floor of the new boom in superhero comics was no doubt a great thing for Bernard, but perhaps his wife Regina (nee Rachinsky) missed seeing her namesake in the comics. The Spectre's girlfriend was called Clarice. But it was all right, because as I documented a while ago, Baily's next superhero Hourman soon acquired a love interest called Regina too.
That Regina's surname is Paige in one story and Bannerman in another, but then Bernard Baily had started out with the name Bailynson until he adopted the more catchy pen-name (apparently mainly in order to make his name twelve letters long and replace each number on his Mickey Mouse watch with a letter - one of the best reasons for changing your name I've ever heard!) The Bailynson name was of recent vintage anyway - Bernard's father was Gershon Beilinsohn until he emigrated to America and found himself transformed into Harry Bailynson, six years before Bernard was born.
There's no particular moral to this story, but I think it's rather nice that Regina Rachinsky-Baily/Bailynson was immortalised in the earliest days of superhero comics as Regina Rashin/Paige/Bannerman.
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