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Amazing Man is a name used by several fictional characters, all of them superheroes.
The original Amazing-Man was a Golden Age of Comic Books creation of Bill Everett, better known for creating Timely Comics' Human Torch and Sub-Mariner. John Aman was a Westerner who, while in Tibet, was trained by benevolent monks to a superhuman degree of physical and mental ability, as well as gaining the ability to disappear into a cloud of green mist. His eponymous series, Amazing-Man, was published by Centaur Comics. Malibu Comics obtained ownership of the Centaur properties in the 1990s and used these characters, including Amazing-Man, as the roster of their own superhero team, The Protectors.
The second Amazing Man, better known today than the original, resides in the DC Comics universe. Although an 1980s creation of writer Roy Thomas, he was through a retcon placed in the 1940s as a contemporary of various Golden Age superheroes. The character was created by Thomas as a tribute to Bill Everett and his character, though Everett died before the character debuted.
Thomas's Amazing Man was Will Everett, a promising young African American Olympian who had competed in the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin but whose post-olympic career devolved into a janitorial profession. During an accident involving the explosion of some equipment he was connected to developed by the criminal mastermind the Ultra-Humanite, Everett quickly developed the ability to mimic whatever properties he touched (similar to Marvel Comics' Absorbing Man). If he touched wood, then he became wood, and so forth.
At first, he was employed by the Ultra-Humanite as a henchman along with Cyclotron and Deathbolt. However, his sympathies soon swayned towards the side of good after repeated exposure to the All-Star Squadron, a team comprised of both Golden Age characters and retroactive characters like himself, with whom he joined and helped defeat his former employer's machinations. He then served a lengthy stint as a member of this voluminous mystery man organization.
On a future case, Amazing Man's powers changed so that now he had mastery of magnetism while losing his ability to mimic nature. His post World War II career has been unchronicled; however it was later revealed that his grandson, Will Everett "Junior", also developed the same mimic attributes as his forebearer. This Amazing Man caried on his grandfather's tradition, joining the famed superhero team the Justice League after the elder Everett's death.
Eventually, this second Amazing Man also succumbed to a tragic end, as he was one of several heroes killed by the villian Eclipso while on the moon.
DC also published an unrelated offbeat superhero/humor title, 'Mazing Man, during the late 1980s.
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