The Human Fly! He's Real! But Who Is He Really?

Marvel has used the name The Human Fly for 2 characters. One was a villain the other was a part time hero. This post is to discuss the hero. I say he was a part time hero as he was really an acrobat/daredevil stunt performer. He was badly injured in a car accident and had his life saved at the hospital by reconstructive surgery. His real name and face were never revealed. He did stunts at benefits to help children. Sometimes he caught the attention of supervillains and had to stop them. The selling point for the series was that Marvel said it was based on a real life daredevil who called himself the human fly. It is rumored to have been Rick Rojatt and they did have photos in the comic book showing Rojatt or someone else dressed as the Human Fly performing stunts.
Whether it was Rojatt or not who the book was based on I can’t say. It may have been based on an older Human Fly named Harry Gardiner. He was born in 1871 and started climbing buildings around the turn of the century. He was the first urban climber and climbed over 700 buildings in the world. Unlike his comic book namesake he did not wear red spandex. He just climbed wearing all white street clothes, tennis shoes and his rimless glasses. His most famous climbs were October 1916 for the Detroit News. They hired him to get attention to their ad department to climb their building. In 1918 he climbed the Bank of Hamilton to celebrate the end of World War I. It is said that while climbing the building he stopped inside one of the Banks windows and signed insurance papers. He did that because he was a high risk and not able to get insurance anywhere else. This gave the Bank of Hamilton a lot of attention. In 1919 he climbed the World Building where the Vancouver newspaper was published. It is not known if he was hired for the climb. The World Building is now known as the Sun Tower.
So the Human Fly was real. I just am not sure who it was based on. Marvel published a little over a dozen issues of the book between 1977 to 1979. The one thing I really remember is the wonderful art of Frank Robbins. At that time he was known for doing The Invaders. However, he did do work on Batman, Power Man, Captain America and others. He is no longer with us as he died sometime in the 1990’s but his art will live on for years to come.