Doctor Mid-Nite

Doctor Mid-Nite (also Doctor Midnight) is a fictional superhero physician in DC Comics. The figure has been represented in the comics by three different individuals, Charles McNider, Beth Chapel and Pieter Anton Cross. Dr. Mid-Nite was originally created by writer Charles Reizenstein and artist Stanley Josephs Aschmeier in 1941. The hero, represented first by Charles McNider, appeared for the first time in All-American Comics #25 (April 1941).

The character typically appears in stories of teamwork. Like many Golden Age heroic characters, the original Doctor Mid-Nite appeared as a member of DC's Justice Society of America. His two successors were also represented as members of the group or an offshoot. Doctor Mid-Nite has never appeared the solo protagonist of a regular title magazine, but the figure has been the subject of an anthology and a mini-series (see below).

All three characters who have represented the heroic Doctor in the DC Universe have exhibited the same basic features: a cowled costume featuring a crescent moon symbol, keen ability to see in the darkness at the cost of near or total blindness in sunlight, and the use of special visors and “blackout” smoke bombs to gain tactical advantage in combat. All three have been physicians who see not only to the needs of normal human beings but also to the needs of DC's "metahumans" (superheroes). All are skilled in martial arts. Two of the doctors have been accompanied by sidekick owls.

Doctor Mid-Nite is widely regarded as the first superhero in comics to exhibit a physical impairment (blindness). (The figure pre-dates by over twenty years the arrival of Daredevil, also a blind character, in Marvel Comics.)