American Comic Book Chronicles: 1940-1944 by TwoMorrows Publishing

THE

1940-1944

B y K U R T F. M I T C H E L L w i t h R OY T H O M A S

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THE

1940-1944

B y K U R T F. M I T C H E L L w i t h R OY T H O M A S

Dedication To Mitch and Dee, My First Heroes Writer: Consultant: Editor: Logo Design: Layout: Proofreading: Cover Design: Publisher:

Kurt F. Mitchell Roy Thomas Keith Dallas Bill Walko David Paul Greenawalt Scott Peters Jon B. Cooke John Morrow

Publisher’s Note: Some of the images in this book are of varying quality, since many vintage pages are available only from less-than-ideal microfiche reproductions. In every instance, we used the best images available to us. Also, some of the comics covered here depict ethnic and racial stereotypes and slurs that were commonplace in the 1940s, but are offensive by today’s standards. In the interest of an accurate documentation of comics history, they are not being censored, so we ask for your understanding, and to keep this context in mind, when viewing them. Special Thanks to Rich Fowlks and John Wells for providing many of the images presented in this volume.

TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive Raleigh, North Carolina 27614 www.twomorrows.com • 919-449-0344 email: twomorrow@aol.com First Printing • May 2019 • Printed in China ISBN 978-1-60549-089-2

American Comic Book Chronicles: 1940-1944 is published by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, North Carolina, 27614, USA. 919-449-0344. Kurt F. Mitchell, Writer. Keith Dallas, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. All characters depicted herein are TM and © their respective owners, as noted where they appear. All textual material in this book is © 2019 TwoMorrows Publishing. Archie, Black Hood, The Comet, The Fox, The Hangman, Madame Satan, Mr. Justice, Principal Weatherbee, Reggie Mantle, The Shield, Shield Sterling, Veronica Lodge, The Web, The Wizard TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc. Li’l Abner TM and © Capp Enterprises Inc. Doc Savage, The Shadow TM and © Condé Nast. Aquaman, Atom, Batman, Black Condor, Blackhawk, Blue Beetle, Bulletman, Bulletgirl, Boy Commandos, Captain Triumph, Commando Yank, Doctor Fate, Dr. Mid-Nite, Doll Man, Flash, Green Arrow, Green Lantern, Guardian, Hawkman, Hawkwoman, Hour-Man, Johnny Quick, Johnny Thunder, Joker, Justice Society of America, Kid Eternity, Lex Luthor, Liberty Belle, Lois Lane, Midnight, Minute-Man, Mr. Scarlet, Penguin, Phantom Eagle, Plastic Man, Prankster, Red Tornado, Robin, Sandman, Sargon the Sorcerer, Scarecrow, Seven Soldiers of Victory, Shazam Heroes, Solomon Grundy, Spy Smasher, Spectre, Starman, Star Spangled Kid, Stripesy, Superman, Uncle Sam, Vigilante, Wildcat, Wildfire, Wonder Woman TM and © DC Comics. Buck Rogers TM and © The Dille Family Trust. Bambi, Donald Duck, Dumbo, Goofy, Mickey Mouse, Pinocchio, Pluto TM and © Disney Enterprises Inc. Tarzan TM and © ERB, Inc. Sheena TM and © Galaxy Publishing and Valdoro Entertainment. Green Hornet TM and © The Green Hornet, Inc. Popeye, Prince Valiant TM and © King Features Syndicate, Inc., LLC. Angel, Captain America, Destroyer, Human Torch, Miss America, Patsy Walker, Red Raven, Sub-Mariner, Tuk Caveboy, Whizzer TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. Pogo TM and © Okefenokee Glee & Perloo Inc. Skyman TM and © Ron Frantz Dick Tracy TM and © Tribune Content Agency. Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Porky Pig TM and © Warner Bros. Lady Luck, Mr. Mystic, The Spirit TM and © Will Eisner Studios Inc. Airboy, Amazing-Man, Black Cat, Black Owl, Black Terror, Blue Bolt, Boy Heroes, Bulldog Denny, Candy O’Connor, Camilla Queen of the Jungle, Captain Battle, Captain Battle Jr., Captain Fight, Captain Midnight, Captain Wings, Cat-Man, The Claw, Crimebuster, Daredevil, Fantomah, The Face, Fighting Yank, The Flame, Flame Girl, Flash Lightning, Girl Commandos, Green Lama, Hack O’Hara, The Heap, The Kitten, Lash Lightning, Lightning Girl, Magno the Magnetic Man, Miss Fury, Miss Liberty, The Owl, Owl Girl, Pyroman, Raja the Arabian Knight, Rangers of Freedom, Red Blazer, Red Panther, Samson, Señorita Rio, Shock Gibson, Sky Girl, Skyman, Sub-Zero, Supermouse, Tiger Girl, V-Man, Valkyrie, Volton, Wambi-Jungle Boy, Yank and Doodle TM and © respective copyright owners.

Table of Contents Introductory Note about the Chronological Structure of American Comic Book Chronicles.................. 4 Note on Comic Book Sales and Circulation Data ......................................... 5 Introduction & Acknowledgements.............. 6 Chapter One: 1940 Rise of the Supermen.......................................... 8 Chapter Two: 1941 Countdown to Cataclysm................................62

Chapter Three: 1942 Comic Books Go To War................................ 122 Chapter Four: 1943 Relax: Read the Comics................................. 176 Chapter Five: 1944 The Paper Chase.............................................. 230 Works Cited....................................................... 285 Index .................................................................. 286

Notes Introductory Note about the Chronological Structure of American Comic Book Chronicles By Keith Dallas The monthly date that appears on a comic book cover doesn’t usually indicate the exact month the comic book arrived at the newsstand or at the comic book store. Since their inception, American periodical publishers—including but not limited to comic book publishers—postdated their issues in order to let vendors know when they should remove unsold copies from their stores. In the 1930s, the discrepancy between a comic book’s cover date and the actual month it reached the newsstand was one month. For instance, Action Comics #1 is cover dated June 1938 but actually went on sale in May 1938. Starting in 1940, comic book publishers hoped to increase each issue’s shelf life by widening the discrepancy between cover date and release date to two months. In 1973, the discrepancy was widened again to three months. The expansion of the Direct Market in the 1980s, though, turned the cover date system on its

head as many Direct Market-exclusive publishers chose not to put cover dates on their comic books while some put cover dates that matched the issue’s release date. This all creates a perplexing challenge for comic book historians as they consider whether to chronologize comic book history via cover date or release date. The predominant comic book history tradition has been to chronologize via cover date, and American Comic Book Chronicles is following that tradition. This means though that some comic books that were released in the final months of one year won’t be dealt with until the chapter covering the following year. Each chapter, however, will include a yearly timeline that uses a comic book’s release date to position it appropriately among other significant historical, cultural and political events of that year.

TM and © respective copyright owners

right owners TM and © respective copy

Notes Note on Comic Book Sales and Circulation Data Determining the exact number of copies a comic book title sold on the newsstand is problematic. The best that one can hope to learn is a close approximation of a comic book’s total sales. This is because the methods used to report sales figures were (and still are) fundamentally flawed. Beginning in 1960, periodical publishers that sold through the mail—which included comic book companies—were required to print circulation data (which eventually included a comic book title’s average print run, average paid circulation, and average returns from the newsstand) in their annual statements of “Ownership, Management and Circulation” in one issue of each of their titles. Prior to 1960, however, circulation data was information conveyed privately from the distributors to the publishers and subsequently reported by some publishers to the Audit Bureau of Circulations for advertisers’ use. Advertisers wanted to know the potential reach one of their ads would have in a comic book, but often the Audit Bureau didn’t break down sales data by individual title, only by individual publisher.

Throughout the 1950s, comic book sales data was printed in distributor newsletters like Box Score of Magazine Sales and resources for advertisers like the N.W. Ayer and Sons guides. Occasionally, though, sales figures would end up in media kits and publisher press statements. And then there was the U. S. Senate Subcommittee, which published a report in 1950 that focused on juvenile delinquency. It included sales figures of individual comic book titles from 1949 (and sometimes from several prior years) that were provided by the comic book publishers themselves. The problem is that since the publishers self-reported this data, its reliability can certainly be questioned. American Comic Book Chronicles then recognizes the flawed nature of newsstand circulation data but is resigned to the fact that it is also the only data available and will consider it a close approximation of a comic book’s total sales numbers.

TM and © respective copyright owners

The Flash TM and © DC Comics.

The publishers, editors, writers, and artists that produced the comic books of the 1940s are gone now, save for an ever-shrinking handful of hardy survivors. The generation of readers who bought them off the newsstands or received subscription copies by mail aren’t far behind them, even the youngest being in their early seventies. The comics themselves, falling prey to wartime paper drives, parental purges, and other assorted ravages of time, have become rare and often valuable relics irrespective of the quality or cultural significance of their contents. That rarity presents a significant challenge to the historian who wishes to examine the full spectrum of comics available in the ‘40s. Even in an era when the most obscure ephemera has their own webpages, and despite the diligence over the intervening decades of scores of collectors and scholars in recording the history of what has come to be called the Golden Age of Comics (a term otherwise unused in this volume), there are still creators who have never been and may never be identified, publisher records long since lost or destroyed, and comics about which virtually nothing is known beyond the bare fact of their existence. What history is available is often imperfectly remembered by those who lived it, obscured by legends repeated so often they have become “fact,” but are sometimes just plain wrong.

INTRODUCTION & ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

So I was hesitant (a polite way of saying “terrified”) when the legendary Roy Thomas, for whom I’d been contributing to Alter Ego and the All-Star Companion book series for about a decade, recommended me to take over when his many other commitments left him with no time to write the 1940s volumes of the American Comic Book Chronicles. Much as I appreciated the vote of confidence, I knew accepting the assignment meant an enormous commitment of time and energy on my part, a commitment I wasn’t sure I wanted to make. But after talking it over with family and friends, I knew I had to accept the challenge. As my sister said at the time, “This is the job you’ve been training your entire life for.” I can’t remember a time when comic books weren’t a part of my life. My mother taught me to read at age three using an issue of Dell’s Rocky and Bullwinkle. I wasn’t particular at first. I’d read anything as long as it was a comic. Something about the medium itself, its unique use of words and pictures to tell a story, spoke to me in ways I couldn’t begin to articulate at that tender age. Once I encountered The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1 (1964), I was all about the super-heroes: Marvel’s, DC’s, Gold Key’s, Charlton’s, Tower’s, you name it. Once I got my first taste of Simon and Kirby’s Captain America, as reprinted in the late ‘60s in Fantasy Masterpieces, I was all about the super-heroes of the 1940s, the original incarnations of my favorite characters in all their crude, powerful, innocent absurdity. And once my classmate Terry McLain lent me his copy of the Steranko History of Comics in ninth grade, I was all about the historical and social context in which those characters were created. I’d always been attracted to the pop culture of the era anyway, the music, movies, magazines, even the fashions and automobiles my parents knew in their teen years. This enthusiasm eventually led to a decades-long obsession with the Justice Society of America, which in 6

Reprints of Simon & Kirby’s “Captain America” in the 1960s sparked more than one young reader’s interest in the comic books of two decades earlier. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

turn led to my work for Roy, which brings us back to the here and now, to this book you now hold in your hands while waiting impatiently for me to wrap up the personal nostalgia and get to the good stuff. And so I shall, but not without a tip of the Mitchell sombrero to the many people whose contributions made this volume possible. Thanks first to Roy for that initial recommendation, to TwoMorrows publisher John Morrow for his leap of faith in hiring a relative rookie for a project of such high visibility, and to series editor Keith Dallas, who showed infinite patience and never offered a suggestion or critique that didn’t make my work better. Volunteer proofreader Dan Bailey was my first line of defense, correcting the errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation that invariably litter my first drafts. Roy, John Wells and Mike Tiefenbacher went over the manuscript, double-checking my facts and correcting them as needed. Any mistakes remaining should be laid solely at my feet. In preparing this book, I went through over 5,000 individual comic books of the 1940s page by page, a feat that

would have been impossible just twenty years ago. That it was possible at all is due to the hard work of the folks behind the Digital Comic Museum (www. digitalcomicmuseum.com), a website where thousands of public domain comic books are available for downloading, and to Jim Doty, Mark Waid, and Bill Wormstedt who gave me access to their personal collections, enabling me to peruse those comics still under copyright. Several other online resources were equally invaluable, notably the Grand Comics Database (www.comics.org), Jerry Bails and Hames Ware’s Who’s Who of American Comic Books (www. bailsprojects.com/whoswho), Don Markstein’s Toonopedia (www.toonopedia.com), David Saunders’ Field Guide to Pulp Artists (www.pulpartists.com), and Women in Comics (www. womenincomics.wikia.com). The community of comic book historians has been incredibly generous in sharing information and resources, sometimes from as-yet-unpublished works, with the new kid on the block. Special thanks to Mark Arnold (for information about Harvey comics), Bob Hughes (Frank Temerson and Holyoke), Russ Maheras (circulation data), and Will Murray (black market comics), as well as Ger Appledoorn, Rodrigo Baeza, Robert Beerbohm, Ray Bottorff, Jr., Shaun Clancy, Jamie Coville, Danny Fingeroth, Patrick Ford, Michael T. Gilbert, Sean Howe, Christopher Irving, David Lawrence, Jason Marks, Frank Motler, Ken Quattro, Trina Robbins, Steven Rowe, Bill Schelly, Diana Schutz, Steven Thompson, Anthony Tollin, Michael Uslan, Michael J. Vassalo, Nicky Wheeler Nicholson, and Craig Yoe. Standing on the shoulders of giants, that’s me. Thanks, too, to the following individuals who, in one way or another, made a contribution to this herculean effort: Elias Ali, Tracy Bennett, Mike Bromberg, Jonny Guilliot, Greg Hatcher, Alan Mitchell, Ken Mitchell, Karly Moxon, Dino Pidone, Tony 7

Pidone, Mark Yuhas, and the whole gang at the Classic Comics Forum. Finally, I have to single out three special people without whom none of this would have come about: my friend Rob Allen, who gave me the first shove that led to my writing about comics professionally and whose enthusiasm kept me going through times of self-doubt and exhaustion; Gavin Ramstead, whose skill and generosity kept me blessedly free of computer issues; and my sister Kay Smith, who keeps all the other aspects of my life in order so I can focus on my work. Without her encouragement, support, and dedication, this project would have died in the cradle. There are no words to adequately express my gratitude to all three. And now, it’s time for your patience to be rewarded. Let’s travel back to January 1, 1940, and enter a world where the humble 10¢ comic book was a ubiquitous part of American childhood and the industry that produced it was on the threshold of its creative and financial heyday. Kurt Mitchell August 30, 2018

For collectors of 1940s comics, a complete run of All-Star Comics, featuring the Justice Society of America, remains the Holy Grail. TM and © DC Comics

1940

Rise of the Supermen

America on January 1, 1940, was a nation on edge. Still suffering the aftershocks of the Great Depression despite Franklin D. Roosevelt’s progressive New Deal nostrums—unemployment stood at 17% for 1939—Americans eyed the expanding wars in Europe and Asia nervously. Some tried to dismiss Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini as comic opera buffoons, decrying the hostilities as a “phony war” because not much had happened since the blitzkrieg dismemberment of Poland the previous September. These naysayers did not see it for what it was: the calm before the storm. Before the first year of the new decade was out, Nazi Germany seized Norway, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, and ultimately France, while attempting to bomb the United Kingdom into subjection. The British held out defiantly, and Hitler reluctantly abandoned his plans to invade England. That small victory brought no cheer to the conquered nations, where Der Führer’s relentless oppression of Jews and other scapegoated minorities was in full force. Il Duce, too, continued his aggression, as Fascist Italy invaded Egypt and Greece. The Soviet Union, the MarxistLeninist people’s paradise that replaced the brutalities of Tsarist Russia with mass starvation and bloody political purges, was no better. Soviet strongman Josef Stalin— named Time’s Man of the Year in its first 1940 issue— signed a non-aggression pact with Germany in August ‘39, then helped himself to a piece of Poland and completed his de facto takeover of Finland. The Japanese Empire’s seemingly insatiable appetite for territory was also cause for alarm. Its brutal occupation of vast swaths of China was in its third year with no end in sight. Once Paris fell, Japan marched into French Indochina. That the warlords had their collective eye on the United States’ Pacific possessions was an open secret.

CHAPTER ONE

At home, Republican congressmen and a majority of Democratic legislators remained publicly isolationist, claiming with some justification that they were obeying their constituents’ wishes, all while enacting laws expanding the Navy and imposing the nation’s first peacetime draft. FDR, elected to an unprecedented third term later in the year, pledged he would not “send American boys into any foreign wars.” The public believed him or pretended to: polls suggested the man or woman on the street expected the country to be pulled into the slaughter sooner or later. The American Communist Party, with approximately 75,000 members at the start of the decade, also stood firm for isolationism despite internal unrest over Stalin’s pact with Hitler. Fascism and anti-Semitism had their homegrown 8

apologists and sympathizers—including prominent and influential citizens like industrialist Henry Ford, aviation hero Charles Lindbergh, and radio orator Father Charles Coughlin—but overt Nazism failed to find a foothold. The German-American Bund, despite a rally at Madison Square Garden the previous February that attracted some 20,000 participants, effectively fell apart as a national movement later in ‘39 when its leader, Fritz Kuhn, was convicted of embezzling its funds. That kind of venality wasn’t limited to would-be dictators. Corrupt political machines ruled many big cities, though New York’s popular mayor Fiorello LaGuardia had finally put an end to the dominance of infamous Tammany Hall. What the bosses didn’t control, the mob did. Prohibition was long over, but the crime organizations it spawned remained. The national syndicate organized by Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano, now headed by the “prime minister of the underworld” Frank Costello, had its fingers in more than the usual no-nos (drugs, gambling, loansharking, prostitution). It had worked its way into many legitimate enterprises like construction, sanitation, labor unions, and magazine distribution, using bribery, intimidation, extortion, and violence to gain every possible advantage.

By 1940, the major movie studios were coming to see the value in licensing their films for adaptation to comic books. TM and © respective copyright owner.

by the studios. Among the films they saw that year were The Grapes of Wrath, Rebecca, Fantasia, His Girl Friday, The Sea Hawk, Kitty Foyle, The Philadelphia Story, Gaslight, Pinocchio, the anti-Nazi The Mortal Storm, and a slew of westerns featuring Roy Rogers, Bob Steele, Tex Ritter, Johnny Mack Brown, and their fellow Hollywood cowboys. Feature films were only the tip of the iceberg. Theaters had a complete evening’s program in those days, including newsreels, travelogues, short films equivalent to modern music videos, even the occasional live appearance by a movie star. Serials, comedy shorts starring Our Gang or The Three Stooges, and animated cartoons made the Saturday matinee a rite of passage for kids of the 1940s. Walt Disney was the undisputed king of American cartoons—Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck were recognized around the globe—but other studios were girding their loins to challenge him. Fleischer Studios had released its own feature, Gulliver’s Travels, at Christmas ‘39. Less ambitious producers like Leon Schlesinger, Walter Lantz, and Fred Quimby contented themselves with improving and expanding their own cartoon brands. In addition to new installments of proven favorites Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Barney Bear, Andy Panda, and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, 1940 saw the screen debuts of Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Woody Woodpecker, The Fox and The Crow, George Pal’s Puppetoons, and a cat-and-mouse duo not yet named Tom and Jerry. Whether your tastes ran to prestigious literary adaptations, high-gloss melodrama, singing cowboys, or wascally wabbits, the movies had something for everyone.

Small wonder, then, that Mr. and Mrs. Average American and all the little Americans sought comfort and escape in entertainment, turning to three art forms born at the turn of the century—the motion picture, the pulp magazine, the comic strip—and their younger sibling, radio, to provide it.

Media Nation Movie factories like MGM, Warner Brothers, 20th CenturyFox, Paramount, Universal, RKO, and Columbia were happy to supply all the entertainment the public could handle. Americans spent $735,000,000 ($12.5 billion in 2018 terms) on movie tickets in 1940, often at theaters owned

A new medium called television would threaten film’s supremacy within pop culture by the end of the decade but for now it remained a novelty accessible to few. Not so with

Bugs Bunny made his screen debut in the 1940 short A Wild Hare. Animated cartoons would provide a rich vein of material for comics of the 1940s to mine. Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd TM and © Warner Bros.

TIMELINE: 1940 A compilation of the year’s notable comic book history events alongside some of the year’s most significant popular culture and historical events. (On sale dates are approximations.) January 8 – The first installment of the daily Blue Beetle comic strip—written and drawn by Jack Kirby as “Charles Nicholas”— appears in the Boston Evening Transcript. No other newspaper is known to have carried the strip which is cancelled in November.

JANUARY

June 2: Denny Colt, a.k.a. “The Spirit,” debuts as the main feature of a 16-page comic insert for Sunday newspapers. Created, written, and drawn by Will Eisner, the masked crimefighter will become one of the most legendary characters in comic book history.

April 25: The first issue of DC’s Batman quarterly introduces two of the Caped Crusader’s most famous villains: the Joker and Catwoman (originally named “the Cat”). Both stories are written by Bill Finger and drawn by Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson.

February 7: Walt Disney’s second full-length animated film, Pinocchio, makes its debut in a New York City movie theater before being distributed nationwide two weeks later. March 2: Warner Bros. cartoon character Elmer Fudd debuts in the Merrie Melodies animated short Elmer’s Candid Camera.

FEBRUARY

MARCH

May 10: As Germany prepares to invade France, Neville Chamberlain resigns as prime minister of the United Kingdom. He is replaced by Winston Churchill.

APRIL

March 5: Detective Comics #38 introduces Batman’s sidekick, Robin, the Boy Wonder, in a story written by Bill Finger and drawn by Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson.

M AY May 21: All-American Comics #16 introduces the Green Lantern in a story written by Bill Finger and drawn by Mart Nodell. May 17: Marvel Mystery Comics #9 features the first battle between the title’s two star characters, the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner, in a 22 page story written and drawn by Carl Burgos and Bill Everett.

February 22: Action Comics #23 introduces Luthor, soon to become Superman’s most famous arch-enemy, in a story produced by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster. February 12: The Adventures of Superman, starring Bud Collyer and Joan Alexander as the voices of Superman/Clark Kent and Lois Lane, debuts on New York City’s WOR before going national six months later. The syndicated radio serial will remain on the air until 1951.

May 15: Two brothers, Richard and Maurice McDonald, open their first McDonald’s restaurant in San Bernardino, California.

Batman, Robin and Superman TM and © DC Comics. Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd TM and © Warner Bros.

June 22: Six weeks after being invaded and suffering over 92,000 military casualties, France surrenders to Germany.

JUNE

June 4: Great Britain completes “Operation Dynamo,” an evacuation of over 330,000 Allied soldiers from Dunkirk, France, back across the English Channel via a hodgepodge fleet of over 800 military and civilian vessels. Winston Churchill describes the operation as “a miracle.”

don during the Blitz brought the war radio. By the end of the 1930s there The War of the Worlds had created into American living rooms with an were radios in 28,700,000 homes pockets of panic up and down the immediacy motion pictures could not offering a daily smorgasbord of news, Eastern Seaboard, a testament to the provide. Orson Welles and the Merinformation, and entertainment. Like power—and potential abuse—of the cury Theater of the Air’s October 30, film, radio was a national medium. airwaves. 1938, dramatization of H. G. Wells’ The Lone Ranger, Amos ‘n’ Andy, Despite the revenue lost The Green Hornet, Baby to movies and radio, Snooks, Fibber Magee print was by no means and Molly, Ma Perkins, dead. There were over Captain Midnight, 1,800 daily newspapers Henry Aldrich, and in the United States, other characters born most of which included on radio became cula page of black-andtural touchstones, their white comics on weekcatchphrases and theme days and an entire color music recognized from section devoted to them coast to coast. Radio on Sundays. The comic made stars out of Bob strip had been an AmerHope, Jack Benny, Bud ican obsession since its Abbott and Lou Costello, birth during the “yelFred Allen, Edgar Berlow journalism” circulagen and Charlie McCartion wars of the 1890s. thy, Kate Smith, Gene Papers might occasionAutry, and newsman ally commission a local Edward R. Murrow, cartoonist to create a Comic books added visuals to radio-born characters readers previously whose live broadcasts strip for them, but by knew only as disembodied voices. Green Hornet TM and © The Green Hornet, Inc. from the rooftops of Lon10

July 3: The World’s Fair in New York City hosts “Superman Day” to promote DC Comics’ 98-page New York World’s Fair Comics.

November 5: Franklin D. Roosevelt wins his third consecutive Presidential election by defeating Republican challenger Wendell Willkie by a wide margin. Roosevelt becomes the nation’s first—and only—third-term president.

September 16: President Roosevelt signs the Selective Training and Service Act. The first peacetime draft in U.S. history requires all men between the ages of 21 and 35 to register for military service.

November 22: All-Star Comics #3 introduces the Justice Society of America in a story written by Gardner Fox. The first super-hero team joins All-American Comics’ The Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, and the Atom with Detective Comics’ Spectre, Dr. Fate, Sandman, and Hour-Man.

July 10: The Battle of Britain begins as the Royal Air Force defends the United Kingdom against assaults from the German Luftwaffe.

J U LY

AUGUST

SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER

NOVEMBER

December 29: In a “fireside chat” radio broadcast President Roosevelt insists the United States must become “the great arsenal of democracy,” effectively ending the nation’s policy of wartime neutrality. December 20: Timely’s Captain America Comics #1 introduces not only Joe Simon and Jack Kirby’s famed Sentinel of Liberty but also his nemesis, the Red Skull.

DECEMBER December 8: In the National Football League championship game, the Chicago Bears defeat the Washington Redskins 73-0.

October 21: Scribner’s publishes Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom The Bell Tolls, about an American serving in a guerilla unit during the Spanish Civil War. The novel is considered one of Hemingway’s greatest works and is adapted into a 1943 motion picture starring Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman.

July 27: Warner Bros. cartoon character Bugs Bunny debuts in the Oscar-nominated Merrie Melodies animated short A Wild Hare.

1940 most subscribed to their comics through syndication services. William Randolph Hearst’s King Features Syndicate offered some of the most popular series, including Blondie, Thimble Theatre (starring Popeye), The Katzenjammer Kids, Henry, Barney Google (featuring Snuffy Smith), The Little King, Bringing Up Father (with Maggie and Jiggs), Skippy, Krazy Kat, and comic strip incarnations of Disney’s mouse and duck. Joseph Patterson and his Chicago Tribune and Register Syndicate, Hearst’s bitterest rival, featured The Gumps, Smokey Stover, Gasoline Alley, Harold Teen, Moon Mullins, Smitty, and Winnie Winkle. The United Feature Syndicate’s roster included Li’l Abner, Nancy, Joe Jinks, Abbie an’ Slats, Ella Cinders, and the other Katzenjammers strip, The Captain and the Kids. There were also the Associated Press (Dickie Dare, The Gay Thirties, The Adventures of Patsy), the Bell Syndicate (Mutt & Jeff, The Nebbs), the Newspaper Enterprise Association

(Boots and Her Buddies, Our Boarding House with Major Hoople, Freckles and His Friends), the McNaught Syndicate (Dixie Dugan, Toonerville Folks), and a host of smaller services. Since the October 1928 premiere of Tarzan of the Apes, an adaptation of the Edgar Rice Burroughs classic illustrated by Harold “Hal” Foster, and the early 1929 debut of Philip Nowlan and Richard Calkins’ Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, based on Nowlan’s pulp novel Armageddon 2419 A.D., adventure strips featuring continuing storylines had proliferated. Whether following the exploits of Harold Gray’s peripatetic Little Orphan Annie, V. T. Hamlin’s time-traveling caveman Alley Oop, Frank Martinek and Leon Beroth’s maritime detective Don Winslow of the Navy, Hammond “Ham” Fisher’s dimwitted but goodhearted prizefighter Joe Palooka, Fred Harman’s rugged cowpoke Red Ryder, or Chester Gould’s square-jawed cop 11

December 17: At a press conference President Roosevelt outlines his “Lend-Lease” plan to send military equipment and supplies to Great Britain. Despite opposition from isolationist Republicans, the bill passes both branches of Congress and is signed into law in March 1941.

Dick Tracy and his rogues gallery of gangland grotesqueries, readers waited on tenterhooks for each episode, their addiction reinforcing their loyalty to the newspapers featuring them. However serious their storylines might get, many of these strips were still drawn in a variety of “cartoony” styles. Others took a more illustrative approach. Roy Crane, creator of Wash Tubbs and his two-fisted “podnah” Captain Easy, combined simple but expressive figure work with atmospheric back-grounds rendered in duotone, a pattern pre-printed on art boards brought up by the application of a developing fluid, to give his panels depth and mood. Lee Falk, born Leon Gross, created and scripted a pair of prototype super-heroes for King Features. Mandrake the Magician, a professional prestidigitator with real magical powers (later toned down to hypnotic trickery), and The Phantom, an allegedly immortal protector of the African jungles clad in purple tights, were both drawn in a

Until comic books began reprinting them in the mid-1930s, fans of syndicated comic strips like Prince Valiant, Dick Tracy, and Li’l Abner had to clip episodes out of their local newspapers if they wanted to enjoy them again. Prince Valiant TM and © King Features Syndicate, Inc. Dick Tracy TM and © Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Li’l Abner TM and © Capp Enterprises Inc.

ing their blood-and-thunder sensibility and lack of literary pretense. As Lee Server notes in Danger is My Business: An Illustrated History of the Fabulous Pulp Magazines: “Thriving on unrestrained creativity, held accountable to few standards of logic, believability, or ‘good taste,’ the pulps were literary dream machines, offering regular entry to intense worlds of excitement, danger, glory, romance… [T]he imagination was loosed and roamed nearly out of control. When the pulps exhausted the possibilities in extant character types and popular fiction categories, they invented new ones—science fiction, sword and sorcery, hard-boiled detectives, occult detectives, erotic cowboy stories, tales of ‘Weird Menace,’ gangsters, flying spies, superheroes, masked avengers. In the creative boom years of the 1920s and 1930s, new pulps flared in all directions, offering a manic diversity of titles[, s]omething for every reader’s taste, no matter how narrow or obscure, and quite a few things left over with no known appeal at all.” (9-10)

“straight” style by Philip “Phil” Davis and Raymond S. “Ray” Moore, respectively. Hal Foster gave up Tarzan to focus on Prince Valiant, a Sunday-only Arthurian fantasy rich in period detail. One of his successors on the ape-man’s adventures, Burne Hogarth nee Spinoza Ginsburg, demonstrated a flair for dense, rococo settings and a mastery of human anatomy. The superb draftsmanship and lush linework of Alexander “Alex” Raymond made his strips—Flash Gordon and Jungle Jim, both scripted by Don Moore—aesthetic delights, as they had for Secret Agent X-9 (briefly written by Dashiel Hammett, later by Leslie Charteris, Moore, and others), now drawn in 1940 by Austin Briggs. Noel Sickles, former artist of the aviation series Scorchy Smith who left comics for advertising in 1936, had gone in another direction, adopting an impressionistic style that combined quick, sure brushstrokes with extensive use of chiaroscuro, the delineation of form through the dramatic juxtaposition of shadow and light. This technique reached its apogee in the work of Sickles’ former studio mate, Milton Caniff. His Terry and the Pirates, an adventure strip set in China, was and remains a masterpiece of visual storytelling. These creators, at the top of their form in 1940, inspired and influenced an entire generation of disciples.

Denigrated in their day as disposable, sensationalistic fodder for the lowest common denominator, the pulps nonetheless showcased such now-familiar authors as Edgar Rice Burroughs, Dashiell Hammett, H. P. Lovecraft, Zane Grey, Max Brand, Harold Robbins, Erle Stanley Gardner, Robert E. Howard, Raymond Chandler, Rafael Sabatini, James M. Cain, Sax Rohmer, Louis L’Amour, and Ray Bradbury, and contributed Tarzan, Zorro, Conan the Barbarian, Perry Mason, Captain Blood, The Shadow, Dr. Kildare, Nick and Nora Charles, Buck Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy, Fu Manchu, Cthulhu, Doc Savage, and private eyes Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe to the American zeitgeist.

Americans were, of course, reading far more than the funny pages. For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Ox-Bow Incident, Native Son, Darkness at Noon, Why England Slept, You Can’t Go Home Again, Horton Hatches the Egg, and Farewell, My Lovely competed for attention on bookstore shelves in 1940 with new offerings from perennial favorites Agatha Christie, P. G. Wodehouse, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Rex Stout, and James Thurber. Slick magazines like The Saturday Evening Post, Life, Look, Colliers, Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, The Atlantic Monthly, Vogue, Liberty, and The New Yorker were the aristocracy of the newsstands. For the less sophisticated reader, there were the pulps.

These four potent means of storytelling—movies, radio, comic strips, pulps—did not function in isolation. Popular properties in one medium quickly spread to the rest. Zorro, Dr. Kildare, Tarzan, and the detectives were repeatedly translated to film. The Shadow starred in his own pulp and on radio, each version influencing the other. Dick Tracy, Buck Rogers, Don Winslow, and Orphan Annie had radio shows. Serials devoted to Buck, Tracy, and Flash Gordon, every one a crowd-pleaser, were joined in 1940

Pulp magazines derived their name from the cheap brown paper, often flecked with wood chips, on which they were printed. They were the successors to the dime novels, shar12

by chapter plays of The Green Hornet, Zane Grey’s King of the Royal Mounted, and Red Ryder. The Lone Ranger and Charlie McCarthy received their own comic strips. Blondie was featured in a long-running series of comedy films starring Penny Singleton and Arthur Lake, with three released in 1940 alone. The Popeye animated cartoons produced by the Fleischer Brothers were their studio’s most dependable source of revenue. It is hardly surprising in hindsight that from this multimedia confluence of profitable pop culture, this miasma of concentrated creativity, a fifth medium should be born, one that melded the visual vocabulary shared by syndicated strips and motion pictures (establishing shot, medium two-shot, close-up, etc.) with the headlong narrative rush of radio and the pulps: the comic book. Developed for promotional purposes between 1929 and the mid-1930s as giveaways for gas stations and shoe stores, comic books required a few false starts before they became a familiar sight on newsstands. The comic book industry was centered primarily in the New York metropolitan area. Either 16 or 21 publishers were producing comics at the start of 1940, depending on how one interprets their oftimes-byzantine business connections. For tax reasons, and to ensure that the failure of one title couldn’t bring down an entire line, many publishers used multiple corporate identities, each claiming ownership of one or two comics. Fiction House, for example, published its 1940 titles under five different names: Real Adventures Publishing, Glen Kel Publishing, Love Romances Publishing, Fight Stories Inc., and Wings Publishing. Four more publishers were preparing the first issues of their new lines for an early ‘40 debut, with an additional six (or eight, again depending on interpretation) joining them by year’s end. Among them, these 33 (or was it 26?) publishers produced 736 comic books bearing a 1940 date, some 47,000 pages of material.

Cartoonist and puzzlemaster A.W. Nugent supplied filler pages like this one for several comics publishers. TM and © respective copyright owner.

Interior advertising was almost nonexistent, apart from “house ads” promoting a publisher’s other titles. Most companies did, however, rent out their comics’ back covers or interior cover pages to the likes of Remington Typewriters, Schwinn Bicycles, and the ubiquitous Johnson Smith novelty company, the king of mail-order whoopie cushions and sneezing powder. There had been and would be experiments with other sizes and formats but this had become the industry standard by 1940.

The average comic book at the beginning of the 1940s was 68 pages long counting covers, measured approximately 7½ by 10½ inches, printed on newsprint (the cover on a thicker glossy paper), stapled rather than squarebound, and retailed for ten cents. It was an anthology with anywhere from six to ten featured strips, a handful of singlepage fillers, and a two-page prose story or article required for second class mailing privileges. Depending on the publisher, it might include a puzzle page, a stamp page (stamp collecting was at its peak in popularity, thanks in no small part to Philatelist-in-Chief FDR), an essay contest offering cash for the best entry, or a newsletter from one of the many fan clubs a reader could join. The art on display within was created with pencil (later erased) and ink (brush and/or pen) on various kinds of illustration board at twice the printed size. Logos, captions, word balloons, and sound effects were lettered by hand between the penciling and inking stages. Four inked steel plates (black, red, blue, yellow) added color at the printing stage, sometimes at the direction of the publisher, more often in these early days left up to the printer. A few publishers still resorted to pages in black and white (one plate) or monotone (two plates: black and another color, usually red) interspersed among the full-color pages as a cost-cutting measure.

Tip Top Four Color Funnies on Parade The earliest comic books featured reformatted and edited reprints of syndicated newspaper strips, and that remained the bread and butter of a quartet of pioneering publishers. It is hard to exaggerate the nationwide impact of their lines. Most of their target audience, America’s children, seldom had access to more than one or two newspapers. Which strips they could follow depended on which syndicates their local papers subscribed to. If yours was a Hearst paper, you enjoyed regular doses of Blondie and Flash Gordon, but if you wanted to follow Li’l Abner or Dick Tracy you were out of luck. Titles like Famous Funnies, King Comics, and Comics on Parade gave their readerships the chance to enjoy comics they might otherwise never see. They also provided aspiring cartoonists a simpler way of collecting and studying the work of Raymond, Caniff, Hogarth, or Foster than clipping and scrapbooking. It was not an ideal solution. The art, especially the lettering, often suffered 13

a stand-alone product. Famous Funnies, the longest-running comic book on the market as of 1940, was Eastern Color’s flagship title. As had been the case from its launch in 1934, each issue featured two- to three-page installments of more than twenty newspaper strips from the Associated Press (Scorchy Smith, Oaky Doaks, Dickie Dare), the Ledger Syndicate (Somebody’s Stenog, Babe Bunting, and Frank Godwin’s exquisitely drawn Connie), Bell, McNaught, and a smattering of minor services. Lightnin’ and the Lone Rider, a western from the short-lived Associated Features Syndicate, featured early artwork by a young cartoonist from the Lower East Side named Jacob Kurtzberg, here using the pen name Lance Kirby. He will appear in this narrative again in his better known identity of Jack Kirby. Though the covers of its 1940-dated issues (#66-77) spotlighted a different feature every month, there was no question that the jewel in Famous Funnies’ crown was Buck Rogers. Nowlan and Calkins’ time-displaced hero was already starting to look dated, but his continuing popularity was evidenced by the launch at year’s end of a quarterly solo title collecting sequences previously published in Famous Funnies. Since 1937, the company had also been producing Gulf Funny Weekly, a 4-page giveaway for Gulf Oil service stations featuring original content. The front page was devoted to “Wings Winfair,” an aviation strip by writer Stan Schendel and artist Fred Meagher, with the same team’s “This Wonderful World” and two humor strips, “Joy ‘n’ Jim” and “Curly and the Kids,” rounding out the roster. Promotional comics, especially those with low page counts like Gulf Funny Weekly, are some of the rarest and most underresearched. In many cases, not even a cover image has survived down to the present day. Coverage of these ephemera in these pages must, of necessity, be incomplete.

Comic book fans had multiple clubs they could sign up for in 1940.

from the reduction in size necessitated by the difference in dimensions between the two formats, art patches were sometimes clumsy, and sequences did not always appear in the order of their original publication. The kids didn’t care. They bought them by the bushel. The Eastern Color Printing Company of Waterbury, Connecticut was the birthplace of the modern comic book. It was here that sales manager Harry Wildenberg first envisioned the format in 1933, and here that associate Maxwell C. Gaines nee Ginsburg proved its commercial viability as

The longest running comic book on the newsstands in 1940, Famous Funnies spotlighted a different syndicated comic strip on each cover. TM and © respective copyright owner.

Summer 1940 found Eastern Color launching a third ongoing title, the bi-monthly Reg’lar Fellers Heroic Comics. The book combined a handful of original series, reprints of syndicated strips Flyin’ Jenny and Don Dixon and the Hidden Empire, and cartoonist Gene Byrnes’ grandiose plan to use his kid strip, Reg’lar Fellers, to launch a non-profit youth group, the Reg’lar Fellers of America, to compete with the Boy Scouts. A dozen pages of each issue were devoted to promoting this club. Despite a promise to “stop all the sissy talk and get into action as fast as possible,” the Reg’lar Fellers apparently never materialized outside the comic. The title included two super-heroes: William Blake “Bill” Everett’s “Hydroman,” who could transform himself into various forms of water, and June “Tarpé” Mills’ “The Purple Zombie,” one of the first strips to feature a heroic monster. George Delacourte, Jr., founder and president of Dell Publishing, had been a skeptic where comics were concerned. Twice, in joint efforts with Eastern Color, the magazine magnate had flirted with the medium, first in 1929 with The Funnies, a short-lived weekly newspaper insert containing new content, then with the original Famous Funnies “one-shot” in 1934. When Eastern proposed making the title an ongoing series, Dell bowed out. Two years later Delacourte reconsidered, hiring M.C. Gaines, now with the McClure Syndicate, to put together two titles, Popular Comics and a revival of The Funnies in the new format. Originally based in Racine, Wisconsin, Western Printing & Lithographing, through its subsidiary Whitman Publishing, was one of the top producers of coloring and activity books, juvenile fiction, and children’s picture books. One of their most successful lines Color gave its top star, Buck Rogers, his own all-reprint solo title this year. was Big Little Books. Introduced in 1932, Eastern Buck Rogers TM and © The Dille Family Trust these compact storybooks (3½” x 4½” x 1½”) ers Syndicate, and a handful of others still dominated the ran a block of text on the left-hand pages and a black & content, Western and Lebeck were increasingly turning white line drawing on the right. Featuring licensed charto original series. Creators enjoyed the relative autonomy acters from newspaper strips, movies, and radio, BLBs that came with working for Lebeck. Dell veteran Franklyn weren’t quite comics—the reader could ignore the art “Frank” Thomas recalled: altogether and still enjoy a complete story—but they were close enough to inspire Western to enter the field. In 1938, “Oskar was a writer and artist in his own right and Western approached Dell about distributing two titles recruited a good staff of freelancers… [He] usually prepackaged by Whitman, Crackajack Funnies and Super sparked the original feature idea, then called in the Comics. It was the beginning of a business association that writer-artist he felt was best suited for it, the idea spanned four decades and resulted in some of the best and was talked over and enlarged upon, model sheets best-selling comic books of all time. were drawn up, a few pages executed and edited, then full steam ahead. After the first few episodes, By 1940, Western had assumed the production duties for all Oskar left the artist-author to go pretty much on four Dell titles. They were now the editorial responsibility his own, for he respected and encouraged individof Oskar Lebeck, a former theatrical designer (his clients ual tendencies.” (Barrier 31) included the legendary impresarios Florenz Zeigfeld and Max Reinhardt) turned children’s book author. Although Much of this new material presaged the direction the Dell syndicated strips from the Chicago Tribune, NEA, Publishline would take over the next few years. Adaptations of the 15

1940 saw Dell Comics’ four monthly titles, Popular Comics, Crackajack Funnies, The Funnies, and Super Comics, change emphasis from strip reprints to original series like “Martan the Marvel Man,” “Ellery Queen,” “Phantasmo,” and “Magic Morro.” TM and © respective copyright owner.

“sigma rays” that rendered him invisible. Crackajack Funnies played host to “The Owl,” a mystery-man in the Batman style introduced in issue #25 (July). Bill Baltz drew the first installment, with Frank Thomas taking over the following issue. Super Comics had “Magic Morro,” Kenneth “Ken” Ernst’s take on the jungle lord motif. “Phantasmo, Master of the World,” a magic-based character with a vast range of powers, ran in The Funnies beginning with the July 1940 issue (#45). It was illustrated by Elmer “E.C.” Stoner, a successful commercial artist and the earliest known African-American creative talent to enter the comic book industry.

radio crime dramas Gang Busters and Mr. District Attorney ran in Popular Comics and The Funnies, while Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee’s cerebral sleuth Ellery Queen found a home in Crackajack Funnies, beginning with the May issue (#23). Illustrated by William “Bill” Ely, the series ably captured the personalities of Ellery and his supporting cast, maintaining the feel of the original novels down to the breathless “Stop! You’ve seen all the clues! Do you know the identity of the killer?” interlude before Queen announced the solution, all in ten pages. A trio of serials—“The Crusoes,” “The Hurricane Kids,” and “The Scout Twins”—were based on Whitman juvenile novels penned by Gaylord DuBois, a prolific freelancer with a colorful jack-of-all-trades résumé. A major coup for the publisher was “John Carter of Mars,” a serialized spin-off of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ interplanetary fantasy by ERB’s son, illustrator John Coleman Burroughs. Late in the year, highly compressed versions of The Sea Hawk and One Million B.C. saw print, heralds of the dozens of book-length movie adaptations Dell would publish in years to come. All four titles included at least one super-hero. The earliest was “Martan the Marvel Man,” introduced in Popular #46 (December 1939) and credited initially to scripter G. Ellenbeck and artist William Kent. Martan and his wife Vana were visitors to Earth from the technologically advanced planet Antaclea. Using their superior physical strength and futuristic weaponry, they aided humanity against a Martian invasion and other threats. Together with Kent’s elegant linework, Martan’s penchant for wry observations about human culture and customs helped the series rise above the usual clichés. He was joined in issue #51 (May ‘40) by Jim Chambers’ “The Voice,” a private eye in a special suit treated by

Thanks to Oskar Lebeck and his commitment to quality, all these series featured scripts and artwork a cut above much of the competition. For now, though, strip reprints remained the main focus. The Funnies starred “Alley Oop” and “Captain Easy,” Crackajack featured “Red Ryder,” “Don Winslow of the Navy,” and “Wash Tubbs,” while Super Comics headlined Chicago Tribune heavy hitters “Terry and the Pirates,” “Dick Tracy,” and “Little Orphan Annie.” Only Popular Comics contained primarily new material.

In addition to the four main titles, Dell also published two series of irregularly issued one-shots, both collecting strips previously printed in the monthlies. Large Feature Comic was an oversized title (8.5” x 11”) with black & white interiors, Four Color its standard-sized color counterpart. Neither book was actually known by those names, as each issue’s title reflected its featured strip, but they were numbered consecutively, a system that has confused Adaptations of current movies were a staple of Dell’s comic novice comic collectors to this day. book line throughout its four decades of publishing. 1940’s issues of Large Feature (#9-13) TM and © respective copyright owner. were given over to “Dick Tracy,” “Terry 16

Publications, a short-lived line owned by licensing agent Steven Slesinger. Not surprisingly, its titles consisted mostly of licensed properties, beginning with a one-shot Captain Easy title. It was renamed Hi-Spot Comics with its second issue (November 1940), which featured the first-and-only installments of “The Sea Wolf,” adapted by writer Carol Van Ness and artist Don Milsop from Jack London’s 1904 novel, and “Adventures at the Earth’s Core,” John Coleman Burroughs’ adaptation of the first book in his father’s “Pellucidar” series. Hawley also produced two issues of Sky Blazers in 1940, based on a CBS radio series.

“The Owl” got a makeover when Frank Thomas took over the art chores with the second episode. TM and © Company Info

and the Pirates,” “Gang Busters,” and the King Features strip versions of “The Lone Ranger” and “King of the Royal Mounted,” while Four Color #4-12 spotlighted Tracy, Terry, Annie, “Gang Busters,” “Smilin’ Jack,” “Smitty,” and “Donald Duck.”

Western occasionally published comics under its own name as well, mostly but not entirely giveaways for various corporate clients. Two appeared in 1940: a 7½” x 5¼” collection of “The Owl” that appears to have been a premium of some sort and an 8” x 10” black and white issue of Santa Claus Funnies, a title eventually published annually by Dell in the standard format, produced in this case for the W. T. Grant variety store chain.

Since 1935 the Walt Disney Studios had been outsourcing production of an official Mickey Mouse Magazine. Under its first editor, United Artists advertising and publicity director Hal Horne, the mag was a mess. Few pages actually featured the Disney characters; when they did, they were often off-model. Disney handed the reins over to the head of its licensing department, Herman “Kay” Kamen, with the July 1937 issue. Kamen brought the art back in line with the studio’s designs and added reprints of the Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Silly Symphonies syndicated strips. It was not enough. Sales continued to slip. In September 1940, Western bought Kamen out, cancelled the flailing magazine, and replaced it with Walt Disney’s Comics & Stories, the fifth monthly title released through Dell. Produced out of Western’s printing facility in Poughkeepsie rather than Oskar Lebeck’s Manhattan offices, its early issues continued to reprint the three Disney strips interspersed with original illustrated short stories, giving little indication that within a few years the title would become the best-selling comic book in America. A bi-monthly title was added to the Dell lineup at the start of the year. War Comics featured a selection of original series on the title theme, some drawing on science fiction elements, and an assortment of informative fillers on weapons, tactics, famous battles, and so on. The book was up to Oskar Lebeck’s standards, but perhaps the comics-reading audience wasn’t ready. One feature, “The Sky Hawk” about a naval aviator, was moved to Popular Comics, but the others were in limbo following the title’s third issue (July), the last of the year. Between 1939 and 1941, Western Printing also packaged comics for Hawley The premier issue of a sales titan: Walt Disney’s Comics & Stories #1. Donald Duck TM and © Disney Enterprises Inc.

tist clad in an invisibility suit and comics’ only set of costumed triplets respectively.

Eastern Color and Dell’s successes inspired two of the largest syndicated services to start their own comics lines, both companies’ debut issues bearing a cover date of April 1936. United Feature Syndicate recruited former Eastern Color sales associate Leverett “Lev” Gleason to edit Tip Top Comics, an anthology collecting over a dozen UFS strips, headed by Burne Hogarth’s “Tarzan” and Al Capp’s hillbilly comedy, “Li’l Abner.” Two years later, they added a second title, Comics on Parade, which featured essentially the same roster of series appearing in Tip Top. Redundancy was averted by running the daily version in one book, the Sunday in the other. In 1938, United Feature began issuing a series of one-shots similar to Dell’s Four Color, each devoted to a single UFS strip, combining the dailies and Sundays from Tip Top and CoP. Published under the umbrella title Single Series, issues with a 1940 cover date included “Tailspin Tommy,” “Ella Cinders,” “Alice in Wonderland,” “Broncho Bill,” “Abbie an’ Slats,” Tarzan, Abner, and an entire issue devoted to gag cartoons. Late in the spring, two one-shots were released—Okay Comics, starring “The Captain and the Kids,” and United Comics, spotlighting “Fritzi Ritz”— along with a third title, Sparkler Comics, that fizzled out after two issues devoted to the now-obscure “Jim Hardy” and “Frankie Doodle.” Toward year’s end, United Feature added a trio of original series to Tip Top. Bernard Dibble’s “Iron Vic” starred a genetically enhanced baseball player, while a pair of super-hero strips from writer Frank Methot and artist Reginald “Reg” Greenwood, “The Mirror Man” and “The Triple Terror,” featured a scien-

Established in 1888 in Philadelphia, the David McKay Company had since published everything from Shakespeare to cookbooks to hardbound collections of the King Features Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck comic strips. That connection led to McKay starting a line of comic books starring the King characters. There were three monthly titles by 1940. King Comics, the eldest (its January issue was #45), spotlighted Sunday pages of “Flash Gordon,” “Thimble Theatre,” “Mandrake the Magician,” “King of the Royal Mounted,” the time-travel strip “Brick Bradford,” and “The Lone Ranger.” Its companion title, Ace Comics, offered “Prince Valiant,” “The Phantom,” “Blondie,” “Jungle Jim,” “The Katzenjammer Kids,” and “Krazy Kat.” A third monthly, Magic Comics, included “Secret Agent X-9” and the daily versions of Blondie, Popeye, Mandrake, and the Katzies. A pair of original series by Jimmy Thompson, “Redman” in King Comics and “Indian Lore” in Magic Comics, stood out for their fine artwork and their sympathetic, respectful dramatization of life in pre-Columbian North America. Feature Book began life as a 9” x 12” black & white title collecting the Sundays and dailies of individual strips, but by 1940 it had converted to a standard color comic. Published intermittently at best, McKay released only one issue this year, #23, featuring Mandrake. A fourth monthly title was added in June, Future Comics, which mixed tepid new material with “Phantom” and “Lone Ranger” reprints. It ran just four issues.

Putting the ‘Industry’ in Comics Industry Dell, Eastern Color, David McKay, and United Feature tied up all but a handful of the available syndicated strips among them, leaving other publishers little choice but to commission original material for their comics lines. Some, like Dell, maintained an “in-house” creative staff or dealt directly with freelancers. The majority relied on packaging services, art studios that provided comics, fillers, text stories, covers, everything up to and including complete, print-ready issues. The drawing tables were manned by veteran pulp illustrators, once-popular newspaper cartoonists, moonlighting animators, and hungry young graduates of the Pratt Institute, the Art Students’ League, the High School of Industrial Design, and other NYC-based

The business relationship between the David McKay Company and King Features Syndicate usually meant profit, but the short-lived Future Comics, which cover-featured the Italian comic strip “Saturn Against the Earth,” was one of the rare failures. TM and © King Features Syndicate, Inc.

art schools, all of them desperate for work, any work, to put food on their families’ tables. The most talented were given their heads, writing and drawing their own features. Others simply illustrated the scripts they were given. To increase the pace of production, some staffers became specialists: one artist laid out the page (breaking the action down into panels, staging the figures and major pictorial elements, making other basic storytelling decisions), another United Feature Syndicate’s penciled the lead characters, roster of top comic strips, led by Tarzan and Li’l Abner, another the secondary figures, a guaranteed its comic book fourth the backgrounds, with addi- line collecting them would find eager customers. tional artists providing the inking. Li’l Abner TM and © Capp EnterSome did nothing but lettering. A prises Inc. Tarzan TM and © ERB, Inc. few artists confined themselves to providing gag cartoons or movie star trivia as filler, but most drew whatever was handed to them. This was assembly-line production work geared to fill pages for clients who didn’t care about the content as long as it looked enough like its competition to attract the same young buyers. It could be, and all too often was, exploitative. “We worked like schoolkids at desks,” artist Irwin Hasen recalled decades later, “and [shop owner Harry Chesler] would sit in front of the desks. He’d ask each of us to come up like a student: ‘How much do you need to live on?’ That was the wonderful way he used to pay us” (Thomas 3). When the system’s veterans referred to the studios as “sweatshops,” they weren’t always speaking metaphorically. And yet, as former Fawcett Comics editor Wendell Crowley pointed out, “without such places, many of the great [comics] artists … never would have had the chance to develop” (Steranko 35). It was true. Some of the medium’s most brilliant creators, its finest draftsmen and most innovative storytellers, were forged in those figurative fires.

ars cannot identify the participants by style. Thus some credits are simply lost to history. This enforced anonymity is a sad reality of the industry’s early years, as even the least of these craftsmen deserves recognition for his or her contributions. The earliest of the packaging houses was the Harry “A” Chesler studio (the initial, with its omnipresent quotation marks, was a quirk of its founder and namesake). Established in 1935, the shop provided content for some of the earliest comics to feature original material instead of reprinted newspaper strips. Born Aaron Czesler in Lithuania, the former advertising artist had tried publishing his own line but wound up selling his titles to Ultem Publications, which in turn sold them to Centaur Publications, with the studio providing the content throughout. In the fall of ‘39, Chesler lost the Centaur account to rival studio Funnies, Inc., but made up for the loss the following year by packaging comics for neophyte publishers M.L.J., Street & Smith, and Timely. In September 1940, art director/shop foreman John “Jack” Binder left to form his own studio. Chesler took his departure in stride, replacing Binder with Charles Sultan and reorganizing the studio in anticipation of a return to publishing in 1941.

Whatever its shortcomings, this system worked. It worked for the studio heads, for the publishers, for the talent (as a training ground, if nothing else), but not so well for the comics historian. Untangling the creative credits for comics of the 1940s poses a daunting challenge. Some publishers allowed no credits at all, save for the occasional initials tucked into the corner of a panel, and any paper trail they left (payroll records, internal memos, etc.) has long since vanished. All three major studios made extensive use of “house names,” fictitious credits for which the studio or publisher held the copyrights, giving a frequent artistic rotation the illusion of constancy. In some cases, the nom de plume was a variation on the real creator’s name and remained in use long after the namesake left the strip. Artists and writers known to have worked for a specific studio also took side jobs, sometimes for the competition, sometimes working directly for a publisher, sometimes ghosting for a colleague behind on his deadlines. And some comics simply had so many hands working on them that even the most experienced and discerning comics schol-

Chesler’s first major competitor was Universal Phoenix Features a.k.a. Eisner & Iger, Ltd., more familiarly known simply as Eisner-Iger. A veteran staff artist for Hearst’s New York American, Samuel Maxwell “Jerry” Iger first formed his partnership with young cartoonist William Erwin 19

“Will” Eisner in 1937, following the cancellation of Wow! What A Magazine, a 9.5” x 11.5” black & white comic book Iger edited for laundromat-tycoon-turned-publisher John Henle to which Eisner contributed. With Jerry handling the business end and Will overseeing the creative work—both men writing and/or drawing features in addition to their administrative tasks—the shop was soon producing pages for the British magazine Wags, Fiction House, Fox Publications, and Comics Favorites, Inc. Their first effort for Fox found the studio in legal trouble, accused alongside publisher Victor Fox of plagiarizing another company’s hit character. Fox lost the lawsuit and, for reasons that will probably never be known, withheld payment for months’ worth of comics from Eisner-Iger, finally breaking off business with the studio altogether in December 1939. To add insult to injury, the publisher placed an ad in the trade papers attempting to lure the shop’s staffers into working directly for him. Some bit. Around the same time, Eisner was offered an opportunity to start his own studio in partnership with Comics Favorites publisher E. M. Arnold and [Des Moines] Register and Tribune Syndicate executives John and Gardner “Mike” Cowles producing a new 16-page comic book to be included as an insert in subscribing newspapers’ Sunday editions. Jerry Iger bought out Will Eisner’s share of their packaging company for $20,000 in March 1940 and carried on as the S.M. Iger Studio, nursing a grudge that found expres-

This rare, undated photo of Harry “A” Chesler depicts the benevolent elder statesman of his later years, not the penny-pinching taskmaster of the 1940s.

sion in caustic comments about his former partner in interviews decades later. Funnies, Inc. was the youngest of the three major packaging services. Lloyd V. Jacquet, editor of Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson’s pioneering New Fun #1 (February 1935), the first ongoing comic book to Art studios, like the one run by Jack Binder (far right), provided feature all-origicontent for comic book publishers, often at a pace that left its staff exhausted. nal content, was Courtesy of P. C. Hamerlinck. working as the art Stranger Than Fiction, This Curious director of CenWorld). The Mandrake clones alone taur Publishing’s comics line in the could populate a small town: Dakor, autumn of ‘39 when he and a few key Dr. Miracle, El Carim, The Ghost, Karfreelancers formed a new studio. Cendak, Magar, Mantor, Marvelo, Marvo, taur promptly switched the bulk of its Merlin, Merzah, Mister Mist, Monako, business from Chesler to Jacquet. The Mystico, Voodini, Yarko, Zambini, studio’s reputation as a hitmaker was Zanzibar, Zardi, Zatara, and the splenestablished when Marvel Comics #1, didly redundant Warlock the Wizard. the first comic produced by Funnies, Inc. for Timely Publications, exploded Nor were the comic strips the only vicon the marketplace. During 1940, the tims of this wholesale pilferage. Most shop also packaged comics for Eastof the publishers had or previously ern Color, Novelty Press, and Pelican. had lines of pulp magazines, and their comic books at the end of the ‘30s still The one thing all these packaging reflected those influences. Virtually services had in common was speed, every imaginable genre of pulp ficthe ability to crank out pages to order tion was mined to fill comic books. on soul-crushing deadlines. Neither Only romance, ironically the bestcreativity nor originality was the selling pulp genre, was neglected (it point. Every comic book publisher, would get its turn later in the decade). it seemed, wanted his own version There were dashing aviators, civilian of Tarzan (Kaänga, Kalthar, Ka-Zar, (Ace McCoy, Captain Desmo, Happy Samar, Sti-Vah, Tigerman, Trojak, Lannings, Powder Burns, Prop PowTy-Gor), his own Captain Easy (Capers, Sky Smith, Stratosphere Jim) and tain Fearless, Captain Valor, Clip Carmilitary (Buzzard Barnes, Lucky Byrd, son, Dick Storm, Gypsy Johnson, Rick Lucky Lucifer, Spin Shaw, Suicide O’Shay) and Secret Agent X-9 (A-5, F-4, Smith, Wings Wendall). The flyboys K-7, Z-2, K-51, M-11, Q-13, ZX-5, 5Y-8R, were joined by sailors (Anchors Away, 7B-3X, and the numberless Black X Bob and Swab, Lt. Bob Neal, Spark Steand X the Phantom Fed), his own vens), Marines (Biff Bannon, Duke Buck Rogers (Blast Bennett, Cap’t VenCollins, Leatherneck, Strut Warren), ture, Cosmic Carson, Dan Hastings, and Coast Guardsmen (Billy Olsen, Lt. Flint Baker, Rod Rian) and Joe Palooka Jim Landis, Storm Curtis). With Amer(Kayo Ward, Kid Dixon, Rocky the Red ica at peace, readers seeking conBomber, Socko Strong), his own King temporary battlefield action turned of the Royal Mounted (Corporal Flint, to strips featuring Britain’s Royal Corporal Merrill, Dan Savage, Moore Air Force (Air Patrol, The Lone Eagle, of the Mounted, Rex Royce, Reynolds Skull Squad, Spitfire Ace), His Majof the Mounted, Sergeant O’Malley) esty’s Navy (Clipper Kirk, Hurricane and Ripley’s Believe It Or Not (FanHanson, Lt. Jim Cannon, Tom Niles), tastic Facts, Nevertheless It’s True, 20

or the French Foreign Legion (Captain Strong, Wing Brady). Sharing the dangers of combat were the war correspondents (Chic Carter, Danny Dash, Scoop Mason). There was no shortage of gutsy journalism stateside, either. Wisecracking newshawks made good protagonists, whether he or she worked for a newspaper (City Editor, Gabby Flynn, Scoop Langdon, Penny Wright), a newsreel company (Flash Fulton, Patty O’Day, Streak Sloan), or a radio station (Spark O’Leary). There was a plethora of great white hunters (Clyde Beatty, Congo Bill, Roy Lance), vagabond sailors (Cap Fury, Lance O’Casey, Shark Brodie, The Terror Twins), train engineers (Casey Jones, Runaway Ronson, Speed Silvers), college athletes (Clip Chance, Dan Duffy, Pep Morgan, Rip Rory), lumberjacks (Big Red McLane, Paul Bunyan, Rip Sawyer), pirates (The Black Pirate, The Buccaneer, Captain Fortune, The Hawk), and cowboys (Bill Wayne the Texas Terror, Chuck Dawson, Lucky Lawton, The Rio Kid, Sunset Smith, The Texas Kid, Wilton of the West). There were science fiction series devoted to time travel (Ace Buckley, Adventures in the Unknown, Mark Swift and His Time Retarder, Whiz Wilson and His Futuroscope), lost worlds underground (Cotton Carver, Mark Lansing) and underwater (Chuck Hardy, Navy Jones, Neptina), fantastic super-vehicles (Air-Sub DX, The Bullet, Crash Barker and the Zoom Sled, Taxi Taylor and His Wonder Car, Typhon), and the horrific schemes of mad scientists (Dr. Doom, Dr. Mortal, Kardo, Landor, Quorak). And there were the detectives: big city cops in uniform (Copper Slugg, Radio Squad, Sally O’Neill) and plainclothes (Detective-Sergeant Burke, Inspector Dayton, The Silver Fox, Speed Saunders), stalwart FBI agents (Buck Brady, Dan Dennis, Federal Men, G-Man Dalton) and Secret Service agents (Nickie Norton, Sandra of the Secret Service), suave British investigators (Bentley of Scotland Yard, Captain Cook, Inspector Bancroft), incorruptible district attorneys (Mob Buster Robinson, Steve Malone, Tom Kerry), private eyes hard-boiled (Dan Dare, Bulldog Martin, Larry Steele, Slam Bradley) and soft (Carrie Cashin, Jack and Jill), scientific sleuths (Click Rush, Doc Doyle, John Law), specialists in the supernatural (Ace Powers, The Mystic,

Zero), teenage amateurs (Jane Drake, Les Watts, Pinkie Parker, Terry Vance), and slapstick Sherlockians (Dinky Dinkerton, Hemlock Shomes, Philpott Veep). Some of this redundancy was deliberate: studios occasionally sold the same strip under different names to two or more publishers. No one seemed to mind. This was pulp fiction boiled down to its essence to fit into six pages of comics. There was no time for characterization or context or nuance, just event relentlessly piled on event, each more outlandish than the last. No wonder kids were eating it up. By modern standards, many of these strips are dull. By any standard, some are bad - really, really bad. Even as relatively cursory a survey as this shows why it is simply not possible in the pages allotted to give the bulk of these strips further coverage. The historically important and the creatively excellent among them will have to serve for all. If imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery, then the sincerity was waist-deep in 1940. And the one property everybody hoped to imitate, the comic that was making its owners wealthy beyond all expectations, was a strip that had been rejected by every major syndication service before finding a home in Action Comics #1 eighteen months earlier. The king of the comic book mountain was a strange visitor from another planet clad in blue tights and red cape, a selfdeclared champion of the oppressed named “Superman.”

Super Men and Wonder Boys Superman has been a part of Americana for so long that it is easy to underestimate what a phenomenon he was in his early years. A year after his debut, Action was selling half a million copies a month. Superman #1, the launch of the first ongoing title devoted to a single character, went through four printings on its way to its 900,000 copies sold, more than the same month’s issues of Famous Funnies, Tip Top Comics, and King Comics combined. On January 12, 1939, a Superman newspaper strip distributed by the McClure Syndicate debuted in papers across the country, adding a new demographic to the Man of Tomorrow’s fan base. Radio was his next world to conquer. 21

Thanks to the business acumen and eye for talent of founder Lloyd Jacquet (seen here with sales representative Frank Torpey and staff writer Ray Gill), Funnies, Inc. became a major player in the industry.

The Adventures of Superman, with its classic opening “Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s… Superman!,” hit the airwaves on February 12, 1940, courtesy of New York’s WOR. Six months later it went national over the Mutual Network. Clayton “Bud” Collyer voiced reporter Clark Kent and his costumed alter ego, supported by Joan Alexander as trouble-prone Lois Lane. July 3, 1940 was declared “Superman Day” at the New York World’s Fair, complete with an actor in full costume. Superman merchandising was everywhere: toys, games, puzzles, everything from peanut butter to the bread to spread it on. This was all very good news for Harry Donenfeld and Jacob “Jack” Liebowitz, head honchos of Detective Comics, Inc., the corporate successor to Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson’s National Allied Publishing, and proud owners of all rights to their costumed cash cow. Donenfeld, a printer and publisher of “spicy” pulps with loose ties to mobster Frank Costello dating back to the bootlegging days, and Liebowitz, a former accountant for a garment workers’ union, had squeezed the Major out of his company over unpaid printing bills in 1937. Donenfeld held halfinterest in Independent News, the distributor of his comics line, and spent much of his time traveling the country schmoozing with wholesalers and retailers, leaving Liebowitz to manage day-to-day operations. When Detective began seeking a cover feature for a proposed new

drew the Man of Steel’s stories in the second issue of New York World’s Fair Comics, the 16-page Macy’s Department Store giveaway Superman’s Christmas Adventure, and the September through December issues of Action (#28-31). His classically constructed figures, dramatic use of lighting, and clean inks were an eyepopping change from the Shuster studio’s cruder, Roy Crane-inspired style. DC executive Harry Donenfeld with The Adventures of Superman stars Bud Collyer and Joan Armstrong. The radio series was the herald of a long line of adaptations for other media.

title in 1938, M.C. Gaines suggested a strip that had come across his desk at McClure. It was the creation of writer Jerome “Jerry” Siegel and artist Joseph “Joe” Shuster, two young science fiction fans from Cleveland, Ohio, who had been producing comics for DC since the Wheeler-Nicholson era. DC bought their first 13-page continuity for $130, reformatting the sample daily strips for the comic book page, and put the boys to work turning out as much new “Superman” as they could. By 1940, Jerry and Joe were producing a 13-page story for each monthly issue of Action Comics, four 13-pagers for each issue of the Superman quarterly (which went bi-monthly with #6 in September), plus the daily newspaper strip, Siegel in Manhattan, Shuster back home in Cleveland, all under the purview of editor Vincent “Vin” Sullivan. They were now celebrities, their names and pictures in mainstream magazines like Time, The Saturday Evening Post, and Look, for whom the duo whipped up a fantasy sequence in which Superman captured Hitler and Stalin, delivering them to the World Court for trial. The strain of the increased workload on Shuster, whose eyesight had already been problematic, forced him to hire assistants, his own participation reduced to layouts and inking the major characters’ heads. Paul Cassidy and Wayne Boring were the busiest of these ghosts in 1940, but even their help was not enough. New editor Whitney “Whit” Ellsworth (Sullivan had by then left to helm the new Columbia comics line) began assigning “Superman” work to King Features sports cartoonist Hardin “Jack” Burnley. It was Burnley who

The January 1940 issue of Action Comics (#20) found Superman in midbattle with The Ultra-Humanite, a paraplegic criminal genius now in the body of film actress Dolores Winters thanks to a miraculous brain transplant, who had been plaguing Metropolis for months. They clashed again the following issue before the villain slipped into comics oblivion, not to be seen again until 1980. His position as the Man of Tomorrow’s most persistent foe was taken up by another rogue scientist, a red-haired madman known only as Luthor. In his first appearance (Action #23), Luthor used his advanced technology to foment war between neighboring nations. Superman stopped this scheme, but the brilliant megalomaniac returned twice more in 1940. Late in the year he turned up in the syndicated strip, where the artist, mistaking a henchman from one of the Action stories for the man himself, depicted a bald Luthor. The version stuck. There were a few other interesting antagonists like the inhabitants of the lost city of Ulonda, but most of the opposition thrown against the Big Red S consisted of the same cheap crooks, con artists, labor racketeers, and corrupt civic leaders he had faced from the beginning. Certainly his most unusual case in 1940 was the one chronicled in Superman’s Christmas Adventure, in which

While Donenfeld basked in reflected glory, “Superman” co-creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, assisted by the art staff of their Cleveland studio, were cranking out comics pages at a fever pitch.

he helped Santa Claus complete his annual rounds despite the interference of Dr. Grouch, a Scrooge-like industrialist out to take over Santa’s toy factory. The Superman of 1940 was in transition, not quite the populist vigilante he began as, not yet the benevolent demi-god he would become. His strength had limits, he was vulnerable to electricity and poison gas, and he could not yet officially fly as he could on the radio show (though panels showing him hovering or changing direction in mid-air made it hard to argue convincingly he was merely leaping tall buildings with a single bound). He played rough, in one story destroying Luthor’s mountaintop laboratory with his henchmen still inside, in another allowing bad guys he could have saved to die. Clark Kent and Lois Lane still worked for editor George Taylor at the Daily Star, which had already become the Daily Planet in the newspaper strip. The comics caught up by the spring, the Star becoming the Planet halfway through the first Luthor storyline. Taylor was replaced by the radio series’ Perry White as of Superman #7 (November-December), not long after the same switch was made in the

Lois Lane comes face to face for the first time with Superman’s arch-nemesis Luthor, almost unrecognizable in his first appearance in Action Comics #23. TM and © DC Comics.

The Man of Tomorrow single-handedly staved off World War II in this specially commissioned two-page fantasy for the slick magazine Look. Superman TM and © DC Comics.

was the creation of cartoonist Bob Kane nee Robert Kahn, a friend of Will Eisner since high school and one of the original Eisner-Iger staffers, and writer Milton “Bill” Finger, whose key contributions to the development of the character’s look, concept, and environment were not officially recognized until 2015 but first came to light—over Kane’s vehement denials—in the 1960s. Kane, who later became notorious in the industry for claiming sole credit for the work of his ghosts, was still actively involved in the series’ artwork in 1940, albeit with the aid of 18-yearold inker Sherrill “Jerry” Robinson and background man George Roussos. Together, they and Finger produced all 26 of the year’s Batman stories, including those appearing in the new Batman quarterly title. Along the way, their working relationship changed. As Robinson recalled in a 2004 interview:

syndicated strip. Jimmy Olsen, a major presence on the radio series, was still a nameless background character in the comic books, the copy boy who entered long enough to tell Clark he was wanted in White’s office. Most jarring to readers familiar with the Krypton-centric Superman comics of the 1960s and later, not a single significant mention of the planet or of the hero’s extraterrestrial origins can be found in the 34 episodes published by Detective in 1940. Also not yet in classic form was “Batman,” Donenfeld and Liebowitz’s other super-star attraction. Now the cover feature of the line’s namesake title, Detective Comics, the Batman had only eight episodes under his utility belt by the January 1940 issue. Much of his mythos had not taken shape. There were as yet no Gotham City, no Batmobile or Bat-Cave, no Alfred. Millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne’s cowled alter ego had not yet forsworn killing, and his opponents often met their demises through his actions, if not always at his hands. Commissioner Gordon wanted very much to arrest the masked vigilante. Even the details of his costume weren’t settled until Detective #36 (February). That same issue introduced the first of the Dark Knight’s classic villains, Professor Hugo Strange, a brilliant but twisted scientific genius modeled after Arthur Conan Doyle’s James Moriarty, arch-enemy of Sherlock Holmes. Two issues later, the series made a left turn that changed everything: the introduction of Robin the Boy Wonder.

“Bill and I asked Bob for a suitable raise, after about a year or so, when the feature had proven successful, and Bob was making a lot more money. We didn’t get it, so Bill and I decided to go to DC… well, we had a lot of offers by this time. Everybody wanted to get their hands on anybody who had anything to do with the success of Batman.… When DC heard about this, they … hired both Bill and myself. From then on, I worked directly for DC and was paid by them, not by Bob.” (Amash 7) So why, if the series was such a hit, mess with success by turning its grim lead into a father figure for an orphaned 10-year-old circus acrobat? According to Robinson,

With its dramatically costumed star and bizarre ChesterGould-meets-German-Expressionism art, “Batman” was one of the most visually distinctive strips of its time. It 23

in advance, then carried them out under the noses of Gordon’s police, leaving his victims with their own ghastly grins as a calling card. Designed by Robinson and probably modeled in part after the Conrad Veidt character in the classic silent film The Man Who Laughs, the killer clown was slated to die at the conclusion of his second appearance until cooler heads prevailed. The jewel thief called The Cat earned her place among the pantheon of great Bat-foes with an entirely different kind of appeal. The debut of Robin the Boy Beautiful and cunning, she would Wonder in Detective Comics #38 spawned scores of imitaadopt the costumed persona of The tions. TM and © DC Comics. Catwoman in Batman #3 (Fall), her attraction to her bat-eared bête noire giving the duo the same deliciously ambiguous relationship as that between Terry and the Pirates’ Pat Ryan and the sultry Dragon Lady. Along with Hugo Strange, who appeared three times this year, and Clayface, a horror movie star turned homicidal maniac introduced in Detective #40 (June), these memorable antagonists formed the vanguard of the eccentric villains who came to define the series. Colorful crooks may have represented the wave of the future, but Kane and Finger were still experimenting, trying different approaches to see what worked and what didn’t. They effectively wrote out Julie Madison, Bruce Wayne’s fiancée, a character introduced during Gardner F. Fox’s short tenure as scripter (Detective #29-32), using her just twice this year. Other stories published in 1940 pitted Batman and Robin against a Chinatown tong, a murderous art collector, an army of disfigured derelicts, and even a caveman revived after eons of suspended animation. In one issue, Dick “Robin” Grayson went undercover at a boys’ boarding school to ferret out a counterfeiting ring. In another, the Dynamic Duo entered the Fourth Dimension to settle a war between giants and dwarves, an adventure that turned out to be a dream. That kind of overt fantasy fell outside the strip’s usual bailiwick but not so far as to discourage future experimentation.

“It was Bill’s idea.… [He] understood how much it would mean in expanding the story parameters. It’d help advance the plots to have a sidekick, someone for Batman to interact with. Further than that, Robin’s presence would help the feature appeal to all ages. The introduction of a kid gave the young readers someone they’d identify with. The youngest readers were too young to identify with Batman. Together they made a strong connection for various demographics of readers.” (9) Looking back, the whole conceit seems daft: what responsible adult would drag a child out into the night to fight killers and crooks? But the readers, primed by decades of man-boy teams in adventure fiction from Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver to Red Ryder and Little Beaver, accepted it at face value. Comics featuring Batman with Robin sold better than had those without the Boy Wonder. The surest testimony to the success of the concept is that within a year the costumed kid sidekick became a defining trope of the super-hero genre. Further contributing to the growing popularity of the strip were a pair of recurring villains who debuted in Batman #1 (Spring 1940). The Joker, an otherwise nameless psychopath with chalk-white skin, green hair, “burning, hate-filled eyes,” and an “awesome ghastly grin,” announced his murders

Cartoonist Bob Kane spent decades denying the critical role writer Bill Finger played in the creation of “Batman.”

Batman was not the first masked avenger to stalk the pages of Detective Comics. He was preceded by “The Crimson Avenger,” a transparent Green Hornet clone (right down to the newspaper publisher alter ego and Asian chauffeur) created by Jim Chambers. The series ran from issues #20-27 (October 1938-May 1939). It was revived in 1940 with issue #37 (March), now written and drawn by John “Jack” Lehti. He gave the Avenger a major overhaul with the October issue (#43), trading in his slouch hat, .45 automatics, and billowing red cloak for a gaudy pair of red-and-yellow tights. It was a sign of the times.

Adventure Comics had been featuring “The Sandman,” a gas-masked mystery-man who would not have been out of place in a pulp, since issue #40 (July 1939). The creation of Bert Christman, a former assistant to Noel Sickles, the strip was now in the hands of writer Gardner Fox and artists Ogden Whitney, Charles “Chad” Groth- Batman #1 introduced two of comics’ greatest villains, The Joker and The kopf, and Creig Flessel. A Cat, an alluring jewel thief who donned a costume two issues later and renamed herself The Catwoman. TM and © DC Comics. moonlighting lawyer, Fox began scripting comics at the suggestion of high school classmate Vin Sullivan. He Action Comics, expanded playboy businessman Wesley Dodds’ supporting of course, had cast, adding New York District Attorney Belmont and his Superman, long-lost daughter. Reforming after a short crime career and who was as The Lady in Evening Clothes, Dian Belmont became going to try to Sandman’s trusted companion in and out of costume. The compete with change didn’t prevent Sandman from being bumped off that? “Zatara the cover of Adventure #48 (March) by the debut of “The the Master Magician” came closest. He was one of Hour-Man,” a new super-hero series by the veteran team those aforementioned Mandrake wannabes distinguished of artist Bernard Baily and uncredited scripter Kenneth by the eye-pleasing art of Frederick “Fred” Guardineer and “Ken” Fitch. Meek corporate research chemist Rex Tyler the mustachioed mage’s magical trademark: spells spoken discovered a formula he called “Miraclo” that endowed backwards (e.g., to give the command “Guns be red hot!” him with superhuman strength and endurance for exactly Zatara would say “Snug eb der toh!”). When Guardineer one hour. Instead of wasting time patenting this wonder followed Vin Sullivan to Columbia, cartoonist Joseph “Joe” drug and becoming filthy rich, Tyler slung an hourglass Sulman took over the artistic reins beginning with the around his costumed neck and set out to fight crime. HourNovember issue (#30). Also of note this year was the debut Man (or Hourman or Hour Man; all three spellings were in Action #23 (April) of “The Black Pirate,” a swashbuckused, sometimes in the same story) was joined in issue ler written and drawn by Sheldon “Shelly” Moldoff. Like #53 (August) by the Minute Men of America, a network of many of his contemporaries, Moldoff leaned heavily on young ham radio enthusiasts who became his answer to “swipes” from Alex Raymond and Hal Foster, but his storySherlock Holmes’ Baker Street Irregulars. telling sensibilities elevated him above mere mimicry and made the saga of Jon Valor one of the bestdrawn pirate strips of the time.

The turn away from pulp-style heroes to costumed supermen was reflected in Adventure Comics’ replacing cover star “The Sandman” with “The Hour-Man.” TM and © DC Comics.

More Fun Comics, then DC’s longest running title, began the year with a fairly standard mix of adventure genres (private eye, Mountie, pirate, etc.), including a masked aviator called “The Flying Fox” who disappeared after issue #51 (January). The February and March issues (#52-53) coverfeatured the two-part origin of Jerry Siegel’s newest brainchild, “The Spectre.” Tough-asnails police detective Jim Corrigan ended up in a cement-filled barrel at the bottom of a river after running afoul of gangsters. The murdered man’s soul was turned away from “the gates of eternity” by a Voice that commanded him to “remain earthbound battling crime on your world with supernatural powers until all vestiges of it are gone!” Now a living dead man, a ghost animating his own corpse, Corrigan broke off his closest relationships to avoid revealing his terrible secret. This was a far darker strip than

Siegel’s “Superman,” with appropriately moody art by Bernard Baily. The Spectre’s adventures at times took the cloaked-and-hooded ghost far from of the relatively mundane world of bank robbers and mad scientists Superman and Batman inhabited, as did those of a second magic-based hero premiering in issue #55 (May). Clad in blue-and-yellow tights and a distinctive golden helmet that hid his face, operating out of a doorless, windowless stone tower on the outskirts of “witch-haunted Salem,” “Doctor Fate” was a far cry from the average top-hat-and-tails sorcerer spawned by Mandrake. Gardner Fox gave the series an eerie, Lovecraftian ambience, pitting his mysterious protagonist against inhuman elder gods, armies of the undead, the fishheaded inhabitants of an underwater kingdom, and the green-skinned Wotan, who combined science and magic to deadly effect. The art by Howard Sherman did not always

serve the series well (his women are all flat-faced and lantern-jawed) but contributed to its unique appeal. A third important strip debuted in More Fun #56 (June). “Congo Bill,” created by DC editor Whit Ellsworth and artist George Papp, was a well-crafted variant of all those pith-helmeted protagonists inspired by Jungle Jim. Despite its initially derivative nature, the series evolved over time, running uninterrupted (despite twice jumping titles) through Adventure Comics #283 (April 1961), including a shortlived solo title in the mid-1950s. The oddest item published by Detective Comics in 1940 was the one-shot Double Action Comics #2 (there was no first issue). Cover dated January, it featured black & white reprints from More Fun Comics #28-29 (JanuaryFebruary 1938) including an episode of Siegel and Shuster’s “Dr. Occult,” a defunct series about a “psychic detective” that foreshadowed elements of their later work on “Superman.”

More Fun Comics explored the mystical side of super heroics with “The Spectre” and “Doctor Fate.” The more prosaic “Congo Bill” outlasted both masters of magic by decades. TM and © DC Comics.

This rare comic—only two copies are known to exist—is an “ashcan edition,” a dummy created to register a new title and its logo with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. DC published a number of these between 1937 and 1964, many of them never becoming actual series. DC’s showcase title for 1940 was the second issue of New York World’s Fair Comics, a 98-pager with cardboard covers. Originally intended as a promotional giveaway to fair attendees, the 1939 edition was later distributed to newsstands with a 15¢ price tag. Like its elder sibling, the 1940 issue featured Detective characters— Superman, Batman, Sandman, HourMan, Zatara, and others—in stories set in or tied to the exposition, but this year it also included episodes of “Johnny Thunderbolt” and “Red, White & Blue,” strips belonging to a different publisher. And thereby hangs a tale.

All-American All-Stars In 1939, after years of packaging comics for others, M.C. Gaines decided to start his own line. With financial backing from Harry Donenfeld (who later gifted his half-interest in the new venture to partner Jack Liebowitz), All-American Comics was born, a sister company that shared printing and distribution costs with Detective. The lines advertised each other’s titles and employed some of the same creative personnel. As of their June 1940 issues, AA’s books even bore the by now familiar DC “slug” on their covers. Still, Gaines and editor/art director Sheldon Mayer maintained separate editorial offices and identities: where DC was “uptown, in plush, carpeted offices,” Gaines ran a “no-frills, pipe-rack office downtown” (Jacobs 59). His flagship title, AllAmerican Comics, combined newspaper strip reprints (“Mutt & Jeff,” “Toonerville Folks,” “Skippy,” “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not”) with original series featuring Jon L. Blummer’s orphaned farmboy-turned-aviator “Hop Harrigan;” Jerry Siegel and William A. Smith’s “Red, White, and Blue,” starring a trio of servicemen recruited as special operatives by G-2; and “Scribbly,” Mayer’s semi-autobiographical strip about a 12-year-old cartoonist. The second AA title, Movie Comics,

adapted contemporary motion pictures using “fumetti,” photographs (production stills provided by the studios in this case) arranged into panels with captions and word balloons added. An interesting but not particularly successful experiment (with five to seven adaptations per issue, perhaps licensing fees ate away its profitability), it was gone by the end of ‘39. More successful was Mutt & Jeff, an annual collection of Harry Conway “Bud” Fisher’s 33-year-old newspaper strip, the first significant daily strip in America, now ghosted by Al Smith (formerly Albert Schmidt). Its 1940 issue hit the stands in May. Artist Irwin Hasen remembered Gaines, a former high school principal in near-constant pain as the result of a childhood accident, as simultaneously “a grumpy old guy” and “a square shooter,” a “very provocative guy in his business, a progressive guy” who focused on the business end of things, leaving the creative decisions to Sheldon Mayer (Thomas 6). Just 23 years old at the dawn of the 1940s, Mayer had a contentious relationship with Gaines: “[Gaines] was in a perpetual state of apoplexy.… He treated me like his own son—rotten. I quit a dozen times on principle, but he always talked me into coming back by giving me more money. Even so, I was continually underpaid.” (Jacobs 56) Nonetheless, it is clear that Gaines respected and trusted his boyish editor, himself a bit of an eccentric— his T-square duel with Hasen has become the stuff of comics legend —but regarded by freelancers like Carmine Infantino as “a terrific editor [who] knew how to bring things out in people” (Koppany 7). It had been Mayer who brought Siegel and Shuster’s sample pages to his attention. His eye for talent had proven itself in spades. Watching the success of “Superman” and “Batman,” Gaines and Mayer assembled a new title largely devoted to super-heroes. Flash Comics #1 (January 1940) introduced two characters who quickly earned the affections of their readers. “The Flash” featured the adventures of Jay Garrick, a chemist who gained the power of

Superman and Batman shared the first of countless comic book covers for the second issue of New York World’s Fair. TM and © DC Comics.

super-speed in a lab accident. Dressed in winged helmet and boots like a modern-day Mercury, the speedster was the creation of scripter Gardner Fox and artist Harry Lampert, who was succeeded after two episodes by Everett E. Hibbard. Unlike Lois Lane or Julie Madison, Jay’s girlfriend Joan Williams was in on his dual identity from the start (Flash himself seems to have been a touch cavalier about protecting that secret in these early episodes). Battles with a costumed art thief called The Vandal and a pack of giant Gila monsters created by an eccentric scientist hinted at the glory days to come, but otherwise The Flash’s powers were the whole show in 1940. The series reached a climax of sorts in issue #12 (December) as the Scarlet Speedster singlehandedly dismantled the invasion forces of an aggressor nation, begging the question of how to keep a series fresh and interesting whose hero can disarm (and disrobe!) a country’s army, dismantle its air force, and scuttle its navy, all in a matter of minutes. Fox and Hibbard found their answer in an element of their approach readily glimpsed in the 14 Flash stories on the stands in ‘40: humor. Gardner Fox’s other super-hero strip in Flash Comics #1 starred wealthy scientist Carter Hall, a collector of antique weapons who received a package containing a glass knife. On touching the blade, Hall remembered his past life as Khufu, a prince of ancient Egypt, murdered alongside 27

his consort with that very knife by the rogue priest Hath-Set. To rescue plucky heiress Shiera Sanders from the clutches of “electrician extraordinary” Anton Hastor, the contemporary incarnations of his true love and their murderer, Hall donned a costume based on the Egyptian hawk god (incorrectly identified as Anubis; it should have been Horus), complete with fully functional mechanical wings, a bizarre hawk’s-head helmet, and a belt laced with the mysterious anti-gravitic “ninth metal.” The newly christened “Hawkman” tracked Hastor to his lair and dispatched him with a crossbow quarrel fired deep into the villain’s chest. This was not uncommon behavior for the Winged Wonder during the strip’s first year. Hawkman killed or caused the death of at least one villain in seven of his first ten stories, even committing genocide, albeit of necessity, in wiping out a race of telepathic water-breathers living in a cavern beneath Manhattan. This grim take on the masked avenger was enhanced by the atmospheric art of Sheldon Moldoff, who took over from original artist Dennis Neville with issue #3 (March). Moldoff modified Neville’s design, altering the proportions of the helmet and giving Hawkman the famous “furry” wings that came to define the character’s classic look. This more menacing appearance fit perfectly with the pulpy mix of mad scientists, voodoo masters, murderous cults, and hidden civilizations Fox unleashed against his hero in 1940.

A fine cartoonist in his own right, All-American editor Sheldon Mayer oversaw the creation of some of comics’ most enduring super-characters.

narios. By year’s end, the novelettes were cut back to every other issue, alternating with a direct revival of the old strip. The quick success of Flash Comics guaranteed the introduction of costumed heroes in All-American. The first was Jon Blummer’s “Gary Concord the Ultra-Man,” starring the super-powered president of 23rd-century America, an unintentionally campy strip that ran from issues #1019 (January-October). Of far more lasting import was the feature introduced in the July issue (#16). Civil engineer Alan Scott was the only survivor of a railroad trestle collapse. In the wreckage of the train, he found a strange lantern and fell into a trance. The Green Flame of Life, the immensely powerful intelligence that inhabited the ancient lamp, appointed Alan its champion. “Power shall be yours,” promised the Flame, “if you have faith in yourself … for will power is the flame of the green lantern!” It instructed Flash Comics was a rarity in the industry for having two characters, “The Flash” and “Hawkman,” popular enough to warrant alternating as the cover feature. TM and © DC Comics. him to fashion a ring from its substance, which, if recharged at the lantern every Two other Flash Comics features that skirted the edges 24 hours, gave him immunity to all metals, as well as the of the super-hero genre were the work of writer John B. power to fly and walk through walls. Donning a colorful Wentworth. “Johnny Thunder,” as the series was retitled costume “so bizarre that once I am seen, I will never be forwith the November Flash (#11), was a good-intentioned gotten,” the newborn super-hero took his sacred oath for but scatterbrained young man with a strange gift: whenthe first time: “—and I shall shed my light over dark evil ever he spoke the words “say you”—a homophone for the … for the dark things cannot stand the light … the light of mystic invocation “cei-u”—the Thunderbolt, a being of livthe Green Lantern!” Chicago-born artist Martin “Mart” ing lightning, was obliged to employ its awesome magical Nodell had come to Sheldon Mayer with the character’s powers to grant his every wish for one hour. Johnny gained origin sequence already worked out. Recognizing the conthis power in infancy when the high priests of the tiny ceptual strength of the premise (what kid wouldn’t want a Asian nation of Bahdnisia kidnapped him (he fit the astromagic ring?), Mayer assigned “Batman” scripter Bill Finger logical profile necessary to command the Thunderbolt) and to flesh out the new strip. Finger and Nodell spent much subjected him to the requisite mystic ritual. Rescued not of 1940 feeling their way, changing Green Lantern’s occulong after and returned to his parents in America, Johnny pation and home base, exploring and expanding his powgrew up unaware of this power. It took him, in fact, eleven ers, and looking for something more to make GL stand out issues just to notice the Thunderbolt, and he wouldn’t figfrom the costumed pack. ure out his magic word for nine issues after that. Stanley Two more super-types joined the Lantern in the pages of Aschmeier, who signed his work Stan Josephs beginning All-American by year’s end. Issue #19 (October) introduced in 1941, drew the feature, which was played for laughs “The Mighty Atom.” Tired of being bullied by taller men from the start. Wentworth’s other series, “The Whip,” was a and scorned by women, 5’1” freshman Al Pratt developed contemporary take on Zorro, its polo-playing playboy hero his body to the peak of physical perfection before donth assuming the identity of a 19 -century masked champion ning a costume and fighting crime in and around Calvin of justice to fight crime in modern-day New Mexico. It was drawn in loose, elegant pen strokes by George Storm, whose Bobby Thatcher strip had been an artistic highlight of the McClure Syndicate catalog from 1927-37. Rounding out the new title were Fox and Moldoff’s FBI operative “Cliff Cornwall;” Paul H. Jepson’s fanciful space opera “Rod Rian of the Sky Police” (a reprinted syndicated strip); Fox and Harry Lampert’s “The King” about a wealthy amateur sleuth, one of early comics’ many masters of disguise, and his recurring clashes with a female crook called The Witch; and “Flash Picture Novelettes” by Edgar “Ed” Wheelan, a variation on Wheelan’s defunct syndicated strip Minute Movies, in which his stock company of players acted out various exaggeratedly melodramatic sce-

In 1940 episodes, the magic thunderbolt that serves “Johnny Thunder” had not yet developed the sarcastic personality later creators endowed him with. TM and © DC Comics.

Green Lantern soon shared the pages of All-American Comics with two unique super-types: the vertically challenged “Mighty Atom” and feisty housefrau-turned-hero, The Red Tornado, co-star of the “Scribbly” strip. TM and © DC Comics.

College. Written by Benjamin “Ben” Flinton and drawn by Bill O’Connor (whose women, alas, made Howard Sherman’s ladies look like Gibson Girls), the Atom strip was nothing special. An issue later, Sheldon Mayer himself entered the fray in, of all places, his “Scribbly” series. After hearing Scribbly speak admiringly about Green Lantern, brawny Abigail “Ma” Hunkel, mother of the kid cartoonist’s best friend, decided to assume a masked identity of her own. Donning red flannel longjohns, carpet slippers, a helmet made from a stewpot, and the obligatory cape, Mrs. Hunkel became that terror of local thugs, neighborhood Nazis, and other assorted lowlifes: the mystery “man” called The Red Tornado. Frequently called the Red “Tomato” by friend and foe alike, Ma’s alter ego quickly came to dominate the series, appearing in nearly every subsequent episode. Mayer used the character to lampoon the very genre he was helping create as an editor, with every installment featuring hilarious slapstick, pointed satire, and enormous charm. Reprints of “Scribbly,” “Hop Harrigan,” “Ultra-Man,” and “Red, White and Blue” were also featured this year in Freihofer’s Comic Book, a one-shot giveaway for the bakery chain. The appearances of “Johnny Thunder” and “Red, White and Blue” in the second and final issue of the DC-published New York World’s Fair Comics paved the way for a new AA title, a quarterly called All-Star Comics that lived up to its name by featuring strips from both companies. The third issue (Winter) introduced a series nearly as revolutionary as “Superman” itself: the “Justice Society of America.” Scripted by Gardner Fox, the strip teamed AA heroes Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, and Atom with Detective secondstringers Sandman, Spectre, Dr. Fate, and Hour-Man in a fulllength story, with each hero given his own chapter drawn by the artist of his solo series. The first epi-

Sheldon Moldoff, rather than co-creator Mart Nodell, provided the dynamic cover art for the debut of “Green Lantern.” TM and © DC Comics.

sode, which featured the eight heroes swapping stories of their greatest adventures over a dinner crashed by Johnny Thunder and Red Tornado, gave only a hint of what was to come in the years ahead. Character crossovers were not new to comic books by then, but the JSA, as the first bona fide super-hero team, took what is now known as the “shared universe” concept to the next level.

Crazy Like a Fox The financial bonanza that Detective Comics reaped from “Superman” and his colorful cohorts was bound to inspire others to attempt duplicating that success. The first to try was a colorful, British-born entrepreneur with a shady past. Former Fox Publications, Inc. staffer (and future MAD editor) Albert “Al” Feldstein remembered his boss as

The Justice Society of America, comic books’ first super-hero team, originally included (L to R) The Atom, The Sandman, The Spectre, The Flash, Hawkman, Doctor Fate, Green Lantern, and Hour-Man. TM and © DC Comics.

“short, round, bald and coarsely gruff, with horn-rimmed glasses and a permanent cigar clamped between his teeth…

the personification of the typical exploiting comic book publisher of his day[,] grinding out shameless imitations of successful titles and trends, and treating his artists and editors like dirt.” (Irving 7)

acquired as art director for the Syracuse Journal-American and other high-visibility commercial art gigs. He lasted three months. His assistant, King Features letterer Alfred Harvey nee Wiernikoff, stepped in for the next few months before seizing an opportunity to start his own comics company. Former Ultem editor William Walter “Bill” Scott (no relation to the animation writer/actor who voiced Bullwinkle and Dudley Do-Right) took over with the October 1940 issues. Fox’s advertising manager, Robert “Bob” Farrell, a.k.a. Isidore Katz, a lawyer and then-current scripter of the Scorchy Smith syndicated strip, is credited as an editor in some sources but does not seem to have left any distinctive editorial traces. Three, possibly four, editors in one year isn’t necessarily proof of Feldstein’s assessment, but it does suggest life wasn’t all sunshine and lollipops in the world of Victor Fox.

Jack Kirby had a different take: “I remember him walking back and forth watching the artists all the time like a hawk, and just saying ‘I’m the king of comics!’ And we would look back at him, and actually he was a joy to us because he made working fun. He was a character in the full sense of being a character.” (Eisner 200) Legend has it that Victor S. Fox was a bookkeeper for Detective who saw the sales figures on Action Comics and promptly launched his own line of titles. No corroborating documentation exists, however, and at least one employee of both publishers, Robert Kanigher, has asserted that Fox never worked for DC in any of its incarnations. What is known is that Fox, a former stockbroker arraigned for mail fraud in 1929, somehow wound up publishing an astrology magazine distributed by Independent News, which would have given him ample access to industry scuttlebutt about DC’s good fortune. Whatever the impetus, Fox approached Eisner & Iger, Ltd., about producing a line of comic books for him, beginning with Wonder Comics #1 (May 1939). Its lead feature, “Wonder Man,” bore a deliberate resemblance to Action’s superhuman star. Donenfeld and Liebowitz promptly sued for copyright infringement. Despite Will Eisner’s testimony that he had created Wonder Man without any prior knowledge of Superman (an untruth that may have been forced upon the 22-year-old by Fox and Iger), the court found for Detective. Fox appealed, but lost in April 1940. Wonder Man was history by then, dropped after only one episode.

With his hopes for Wonder Man shot down, Fox decided “The Blue Beetle” was his ticket to ride. It is unclear who at Eisner-Iger created the Beetle. The character was probably conceived by Will Eisner and handed over to artist Charles Wotjkowski (who later legally changed his name to Charles Nicholas, the pseudonym he signed the strip with) and scripter Audrey “Toni” Blum. The series debuted in Mystery Men Comics #1 (August 1939), beginning in medias res with its hero already established. Dan Garret was a policeman by day, a masked vigilante wanted by both the law and the underworld by night. The sole gimmick to set this trenchcoat-wearing, slouch-hatted cliché apart from his pulpish kinsmen was the ability to make gangsters wet their pants at “the sign of The Blue Beetle,” a projected image of said bug. Even his creators must have known how boring he was because he was garbed in a prototype of the close-fitting blue chain mail costume he is best remembered for by the very next issue. Blue Beetle #1, published late in ‘39 in answer to the blockbuster debut of Superman Whether his legal expenses dictated it or he simply acted #1, provided its namesake with an origin: college senior out of spite, the publisher severed his ties to the Eisner-Iger Dan, a brilliant student and top athlete, adopted the Beetle studio—without paying the thousands he owed them— identity to avenge the murder of his patrolman father. Garand decided to produce his comics in-house. To that end, ret shared a beat with blustering Mike Mannigan, whose he hired Joseph “Joe” (born Hymie) Simon as his editor in sole goal in life was to slap handcuffs on the Beetle. The December 1939. In addition to the creative chops on discostumed crimebuster became ever more powerful as play in his work for Lloyd Jacquet’s Funnies, Inc., Simon 1940 progressed until, in Mystery Men #14 (September), brought a variety of production skills to the table, skills it was revealed that Dan Garret took a substance invented by a pharmacist friend, “Vitamin 2-X,” that endowed him with superstrength. It had taken some finagling but Fox had his Superman, adding spunky girl reporter and Lois Lane clone Joan Mason to the cast in case anybody missed the point. Sales proved sufficient to justify continuing the Blue Beetle one-shot as a bi-monthly title. Samuel “Sam” Cooper became the primary artist on the strip beginning with Mystery Convinced that “The Blue Beetle” had the star potential of “Superman,” publisher Victor Fox Men #12 (July), his solid starred the armor-clad adventurer in three titles. Blue Beetle TM and © DC Comics. 30

draftsmanship and polished inks giving the Beetle a clean, appealing look similar to Jack Burnley’s “Superman” work. Not content with success in one medium, Fox expanded his operation, creating a four-page Sunday newspaper insert to be distributed through his newly formed Fox Features Syndicate. The section, debuting on January 7, 1940, consisted of reprints from his comic books headlined by the Beetle and “The Green Mask,” Mystery Men Comics’ other costumed hero. The syndicate also offered a daily Blue Beetle strip beginning January 8. Scripted and drawn by Jack Kirby (as Charles Nicholas), the strip was a noticeable improvement on the comic book material in the Sunday supplement, as Kirby’s dynamic compositional sense and explosive approach to action scenes were already in evidence. Kirby stayed two months and then was gone, replaced by Argentinian artist Louis Cazeneuve (originally Luis Cosine). It was during the latter’s run that Vitamin 2-X first appeared, a few weeks before it was introduced in the comic books. Only one paper, the Boston Evening Transcript, is known to have carried the daily. It was cancelled that November, four months after the Sunday section had collapsed. Fox also licensed his pet super-hero to CBS. The Blue Beetle radio show premiered May 15, 1940, with Frank Lovejoy playing the title role. The actor quit after thirteen episodes, possibly “because Victor Fox didn’t pay him, or paid him so little,” according to radio historian Jim Harmon (Irving 50). At any rate, the series was off the air by September. The Blue Beetle was not going to become a household name like Superman no matter how much his publisher wanted it. Fox had to be content with being “king of the comics.”

The interiors didn’t always live up to the covers of Fox’s comics, but readers were not disappointed to find artist Lou Fine supplying both cover and story for Wonderworld Comics’ star character “The Flame.” The Flame TM and © respective copyright owner.

Most of the Beetle’s companions in the pages of Mystery Men were an undistinguished lot, the kind of cookie-cutter spy, detective, and aviation strips Eisner-Iger were cranking out for all their clients. Only three stood out. “The Green Mask” was another Eisner creation, drawn in a blend of straight and bigfoot styles by Walter Frehm (spelled Frame in later episodes). Originally a generic masked hero without origin, powers, or even a secret identity, he was retooled in the first issue of his solo title (Summer 1940). Now The Green Mask was Michael Shelby, mortally wounded in the same gangland attack that killed his senator father until miraculously brought back to life by a scientist friend’s “vita-ray” machine, which endowed Shelby with super-strength and the power of flight. In the same story, the Mask acquired a boy companion in Domino, an orphaned hit-and-run victim also saved by those handy vita-rays, one of the first costumed kid sidekicks to pop up in Robin’s wake. While the Walt Frame byline remained, Frehm was gone after Mystery Men #11 (June), replaced by Sam Cooper and others as yet unidentified. “Rex Dexter of Mars, Interplanetary Adventurer,” set in the 21st century, starred “the first man born on Mars” and his Earth-born gal pal Cynde. The duo rocketed around the solar system (which apparently contains a whole bunch of planets besides the nine science then recognized) saving Earth and her allies from various aliens, monsters, and mad scientists. The strip was the work of Richard “Dick” Briefer, an Eisner-Iger regular since the Wow! What a Magazine days, whose penchant for drawing memorably grotesque crea-

tures would serve him well in future assignments. Rex, too, appeared in his own title in 1940, an all-reprint one-shot that must not have sold well enough to merit more. “The Moth,” a crude filler featuring a winged hero à la “Hawkman” otherwise notable only as the first professional work by future “Supergirl” artist James “Jim” Mooney, debuted in issue #9 (April). With issue #13 (August), The Moth was replaced with “The Lynx,” essentially the same character (still able to fly, despite the lack of wings) with a costumed kid sidekick, Blackie the Mystery Boy, added. According to Mooney: “[O]n one of my first assignments [for] Victor Fox, … they said, ‘We want this to look like “Batman.”’ Well, being a kid and thinking they really wanted it to look like ‘Batman,’ I overdid it. A little later, DC sued them!” (Boyko 16) The cover feature of Wonder Comics, retitled Wonderworld Comics as of its third issue, didn’t require the makeovers Blue Beetle and Green Mask were subjected to. “The Flame” had super-powers from the start. Raised in a hidden Buddhist temple in the Himalayas, the orphaned son of American missionaries mastered the sect’s mystic secrets before he returned to the States to fight crime. Able to materialize out of any flame, armed with an amazing fire-spewing gun, equipped with custom car, airplane, and boat, the Flame’s real secret weapon was his artist. Louis K. “Lou” Fine, working here under the house name Basil 31

Fantastic Comics was Fox’s newest monthly title, the first issue bearing a December 1939 cover date. Its star was “Samson,” a modern day incarnation of the longhaired biblical strongman, a character the publisher knew the authors of the Old Testament wouldn’t be litigating over. Alexander “Alex” Blum, a serious painter paying bills with comics and the father of Eisner-Iger staffer Toni, was the initial artist behind the Alex Boon signature, with Sam Cooper and Albert “Al” Carreno contributing later art jobs. Pitting his superhuman strength against whole armies, Samson’s feats outdid the contemporary Superman but he was far more ruthless, killing his foes barehanded without batting an eye. He mellowed once he acquired a sling-wielding boy sidekick named David in issue #10 (September). Samson, too, was awarded a solo title, the first issue cover-dated Autumn 1940. Like the Blue Beetle, Flame, and Green Mask titles, each issue combined a new lead story with reprints of various series from the three monthlies. A standout among Fantastic’s other features was “Sub Saunders,” a series about a 30th-century oceanographer’s encounters with an ancient aquatic race, illustrated by Henry C. Kiefer, a World War I veteran and classically trained illustrator with a distinctive style. Kiefer was gone after Fantastic #8 (July), and none of the anonymous artists that followed him possessed his drawing chops. Also of note were two series by the era’s most eccentric creator, Fletcher Hanks. “Stardust,” in which an alien lawman came to Earth to wipe out its criminals, and “Space Smith,” a surreal space opera, both highlighted Hanks’ straightfaced absurdity and distinctively ugly dramatis personae. In style and attitude, Hanks anticipated the underground comics of the 1960s and early ‘70s. Fox added two more monthly titles in 1940. Science Comics ran for just eight issues (February – September), its four most popular strips continuing in the eighth issue (November) of its sister title, Weird Comics. Both series spotlighted costumed heroes. Weird’s “Thor, God of Thunder” starred Grant Ferrell, a despondent playboy chosen by the Norse god to serve as his superhuman avatar on Earth. The character underwent a series of metamorphoses, winding up as “Dynamite Thor,” a mystery-man with a different secret identity, different powers, and a different origin… but the same girlfriend. He and a handful of minor features were cancelled to make room for the Science refugees. “The Eagle,” who flew with the aid of an “antigravitation fluid,” and “Electro” (renamed “Dynamo” as of Science #2, probably to avoid legal hassles over Timely’s earlier character of the same name), who possessed electrical powers, were among the survivors, a pair of super-heroes hardy enough to withstand a redesign in Science #7 (August), cancellation, and continuation in a different title. Another emigre was “Marga the Panther Woman,” about a nurse adventuring in Edgar Rice Burroughs-style lost worlds after being genetically modified with panther blood by a dime-store Dr. Moreau. “The Bird Man” was a flying hero based on Native American mythology who winged his way through four issues of Weird Comics before yielding his slot to “The Dart,” a legendary lawman of ancient Rome who woke up from an enchanted sleep in 1940, donned a costume, partnered up with Ace the Amazing Boy, and

“Samson” was Fox’s answer to Superman, frequently topping him this year in the scope and lethality of his super-feats. Samson TM and © respective copyright owner.

Berold, was the star of the Eisner-Iger staff. Sidelined by polio in early childhood, a student of the great magazine illustrators, Fine brought a sophisticated approach to the comic book page that influenced not only his studiomates—including Jack Kirby—but virtually every super-hero artist of the 1940s: “Fine was one of the first comic book artists to understand that breaking up page design by panel composition added to the dramatic pace of the stories. His figures in motion created sweeping visual arcs for the eye to follow. His decorative use of line added the necessary contextual cues for this effect. Fine varied the sizes and shapes of his panels, rejecting the previous notion of uniform rows and columns, creating a harmonic symphony between figures and page layout.” (Amash 10) Fine’s work for Fox was a bit quieter than that but still stood head and shoulders above most of the art then appearing in that publisher’s titles. Wonderworld’s other superhuman star was “Yarko the Great,” a turban-wearing Mandrake knockoff created by Eisner and artist S. R. “Bob” Powell, born Stanley Pawlowski. 32

loss of Lou Fine, whose striking cover art disappeared from Fox’s comics after the April issues, particularly stung, though Joe Simon’s covers were worthy successors. Perhaps influenced by Fine’s approach, the comics were developing a look distinct from Dell’s or DC’s. Eisner, Simon, and Harvey had all encouraged their pencilers to break away from the standard grid that dominated the industry, opening up the art, producing pages with only two or three panels, even the occasional full-page panel (Mystery Men #12, Science #3, Weird #2). When Bill Scott took over the editorial reins, he imposed a rigid eightpanel, four-tier layout on all Fox features, bringing an abrupt end to this period of experimentation. Even at their best, Fox comics were blatant in their lack of originality. There are undeniable highlights—Kirby’s and Cooper’s Full-page panels like this Sam Cooper slugfest from Mystery Blue Beetle, Kiefer’s underwater Men Comics #12 became a thing of the past under new Fox editor Bill Scott, who insisted on a uniform eight-panel page fantasy, Fine’s Flame episodes, grid in his comics. Blue Beetle TM and © DC Comics. the seemingly inept Hanks— but there is precious little Fox matesquandered a great premise on rial that holds up to comparison with another “Batman and Robin” clone. the best work being done at DC and Credits for these two titles are Dell in the same period. obscured by house names and rapid turnover, but Dick Briefer, Louis CazeQuality Will Tell neuve and his brother Arturo/Arthur, If Victor Fox was the thesis, Everett Emil Gershwin, and Bert Whitman “Busy” Arnold was the antithesis. are believed to be among the contribWhere Fox saw comics as products utors. Jack Kirby popped in for single ground out for a fast buck, Arnold installments of “Cosmic Carson” and worked to ensure that everything his “Wing Turner, Air Detective.” publishing house produced lived up By the close of the year, Victor Fox’s comics empire encompassed four monthlies, a bi-monthly, and four quarterlies—including Big 3, an allstar title featuring The Flame, Blue Beetle, and Samson. In sheer numbers, Fox put out as many issues in 1940 as Dell (69), more than his nemesis Detective Comics (59) if not counting All-American’s 28 contributions to Donenfeld’s total. But this apparent success was laced with wormwood, the bitter aftertaste of courtroom losses, severed business ties, and failed ventures into other media. His line was hurt by the break with Eisner-Iger, which cost him the services of some of his best artPublisher Everett “Busy” Arnold, seen here with ists (though a handful stayed with assistant editor Gwen Hanson, encouraged his creative staff to produce comic books that lived their strips after the break, working up to the Quality label. directly for Fox off the clock). The 33

to the name that first appeared on the covers of the September 1940 issues: the Quality Comics Group. As noted by Mike Kooiman and Jim Amash in The Quality Companion: “Busy Arnold took great pride in the high standards [he set] for his magazines. He personally hired his artists and the writers, proofread scripts, and looked over the finished art.… By all accounts, [Arnold] fostered an atmosphere of creativity for his employees that allowed them to provide their best work, and when things began to boom, he was exceedingly generous in sharing his newfound wealth with his staff and freelancers.” (11) A Brown University graduate with a degree in history, Arnold had been around comics from the beginning, first as a press salesman whose clients included Eastern Color and the McClure Syndicate, then as a vicepresident of the Greater Buffalo Press, printers of former Wheeler-Nicholson staffers William “Bill” Cook and John Mahon’s short-lived Comic Magazines Company. In 1937, he established Comics Favorites, Inc., in partnership with the McNaught Syndicate, the Frank J. Markey Syndicate, and the Register and Tribune Syndicate. Arnold hired Rube Goldberg’s assistant Johnny Devlin to edit their initial title, Feature Funnies, which reprinted the three syndicates’ strips, including Joe Palooka, Dixie Dugan. Mickey Finn, Lala Palooza, and Jane Arden. Edward “Ed” Cronin, most recently a ghost artist for Palooka creator Ham Fisher, replaced him in the editor’s chair with the third issue, with Devlin staying on as a staff artist. Original material began to appear in progressively larger doses, including “The Clock,” a holdover from the Cook-Mahon line starring the first masked mystery-man created for comic books. Its creator, George E. Brenner, worked on staff, but most of the new material came from Eisner & Iger, Ltd. In the spring of 1939, Arnold and the Register and Tribune’s Cowles Brothers bought out McNaught and Markey’s shares of the company, rechristening it Comic Magazines, Inc. Encouraged by the sales of

buckler by Quality staff artist Vernon Henkle; and “Charlie Chan,” Alfred Andriola’s comic strip adaptation of the aphorism-spouting Asian-American sleuth created by Earl Derr Biggers. Chan and the other McNaught strips were gone after the April 1940 issue (#31). Smash Comics featured Arthur “Art” Pinajian’s “Invisible Justice,” about a crimefighting scientist armed with an invisibility formula, and George Brenner’s “Hugh Hazard and His Iron Man,” starring Bozo the Robot, a goofylooking automaton that criminologist Hazard could either remotely control or wear like armor. The real star of Smash, Though Doll Man shared the covers of Feature Comics with his many co-stars, the however, was The size-changing scientist was the indisputable star of the title. Doll Man TM and © DC Comics. Black X, later called The Black Ace, lead Feature Funnies, renamed Feature character of Eisner’s “Espionage.” In a Comics with issue #21 (June 1939), strip set against the volatile internathey added a second title, Smash Comtional scene, Eisner put his indomiics, moving a handful of syndicated table secret agent and his faithful strip reprints over from Feature and Hindu valet through some of the filling the rest of the pages with strips most apocalyptic adventures seen in provided by Eisner-Iger. In December, comics of the era. Arnold moved operations from Manhattan to Stamford, Connecticut. A few months before the relocation Super-heroes had cropped up in both titles by January 1940. Will Eisner’s “Doll Man” first appeared in Feature Comics #27 (December 1939). Scientist Darrel Dane discovered a way to shrink himself to six inches in height while retaining his full-size strength. First using this power to free girlfriend Martha Roberts from a blackmailer, Dane decided to don a cape and costume and continue to fight crime. He immediately found favor with readers, especially after Lou Fine assumed the art duties. Doll Man’s Feature co-stars included William A. Smith’s “Rance Keene, Knight of the West,” an amiable oater set in modern times; “Captain Fortune,” a swash-

to Stamford, Busy Arnold and Henry Martin, the Register and Tribune’s liaison to Quality, approached Will Eisner with an offer to join them as partners in a new venture. As Eisner told it: “[Martin] said, ‘The newspapers in this country, especially the Sunday papers, are looking to compete with the comic books, and they would like to get a comic book insert into the newspapers. I think I can sell that to them. … Busy Arnold tells me that you are very reliable and one of the best guys in the business.’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t want to 34

brag about that, but yeah, I’d be interested in doing it.’ The magnitude of it was enormous and risky. It meant that I’d have to leave Eisner & Iger. [We] were making money, we were very profitable at that time and things were going very well. A hard decision.” (Amash 15) In the course of their negotiations, Eisner made an unusual request for the time: he wanted to retain ownership of any characters created for the insert. Martin balked, but eventually a compromise was reached. The weekly was copyrighted under Busy Arnold’s name with the legal proviso that, should the partnership end or the section be cancelled, all rights would revert to Eisner. It was an unprecedented deal for the comic book industry. There was a tacit understanding between the three new partners that Jerry Iger, whom Arnold in particular disliked, was not part of the package. Eisner sold his share in the company—and all rights to the characters he created during their partnership— to Iger and set up shop in a Tudor City apartment in Manhattan rented by Arnold. The agreement allowed him to take up to three Eisner-Iger staffers with him. He chose Bob Powell, Charles “Chuck” Mazoujian, and, not surprisingly, Lou Fine. The 16-page Sunday section debuted on June 2, 1940. Arnold had wanted a super-hero as the lead feature. Eisner had hopes of doing something more down to earth. They met in the middle. Criminologist Denny Colt was entombed alive after being put into a state of suspended animation that resembled death by the fiendish Dr. Cobra. Awakening to find himself legally dead (luckily, he was neither autopsied nor embalmed), Colt adopted the masked persona of “The Spirit” to battle criminals beyond the reach of the law. His true identity known only to Central City Police Commissioner Dolan, Spirit converted his mausoleum in Wildwood Cemetery into a combination crime laboratory and living quarters. At first glance, The Spirit was just another masked detective like The Clock and a zillion other mystery-men, but there was much to distinguish this hero from the many similar types Eisner

was seldom emphasized, as he continued to help and be helped by Dolan on the down low. The stories were indeed more varied and adult, with characters displaying an emotional depth largely missing from conventional comics of the time, while retaining such pulpish elements as the “autoplane,” the hero’s flying car, and fantastical opponents like an angst-ridden talking orangutan, Palyachi the Killer Clown, and The Black Queen, the first in a long line of femmes fatales that graced the series in its dozen-year run. The adventures of “Lady Luck,” created by Eisner, drawn by Chuck Mazoujian, and scripted from the third installment on by Richard “Dick” French, featured debutante Brenda Banks who, bored with life among the idle rich, adopted the persona of a green-clad female The weekly Spirit comic offered Robin Hood, her martial arts skills 8 pages of its eponymous star, plus and deductive talents serving four pages each of the glamorous “Lady Luck” and the mysterious her well. Despite not wearing a “Mr. Mystic,” all included at no mask or any other disguise apart extra charge in subscribing newspapers’ Sunday editions. from her trademark hat, Lady L TM and © Will Eisner Studios Inc. was never recognized as Brenda by sometime love interest Police Chief Hardy Moore or the bumbling Officer Feeny O’Mye. Her adventures took her around the world but tended to be rooted more firmly in reality than The Spirit’s. The same had launched at his former studio. Gone were the sloppy could not be said for “Mr. Mystic,” the section’s third feaplotting and uneven pacing dictated by relentless deadture. Scripted and drawn by Bob Powell, the series was a lines and impatient publishers. As Eisner explained in a variation on his and Eisner’s earlier “Yarko the Great” strip 1978 interview: for Fox. An American diplomat, chosen by the mysterious “What I was really interested in was developing Council of Seven Lamas to serve as their champion, gained the kind of character who could be a vehicle for the vast magical powers which he wielded against an array kind of stories I wanted to do. I had always wanted of sorcerers, monsters, and other bizarre to do short stories. I always regarded menaces. Like many such strips, the plots comics as a legitimate medium, existed largely as a framework on which to my medium. Creating a detective hang various visually interesting “special character would, as far as I was coneffects” (growing to giant-size was one of cerned, provide me with the most Powell’s favorites), making “Mr. Mystic” viable vehicle for the kind of stories the least satisfying of the three features I could best tell.… I had the characfor adult readers. ter fairly well framed in my mind, In addition to the Spirit Sunday suppleand what he would do[, an] urban ment, Eisner’s deal with Arnold called for kind of character who would be a his studio to create new titles for Quality. good vehicle for telling stories.… I Three debuted in 1940. To fill those 200+ was aware that I was about to write pages each month, Arnold and Eisner for a different audience than comic lured away another half-dozen Iger staffbooks. I wanted it to be varied and ers: writer Toni Blum and artists Charles adult.… I knew I was dealing in a “Chuck” Cuidera, Nicola “Nick” Viscardi medium capable of more.” (Yron(better known today as Nick Cardy), Phillip wode 37) “Tex” Blaisdell, George Tuska, and Alex“The Spirit” series proper occupied the ander “Alex” Kotzky. The star of Eisner’s first half of the supplement. In the sev- Artist Lou Fine’s depictions of “The Black Condor” roster remained Lou Fine. Busy Arnold enth installment, Spirit was framed for in flight earned the mystery-man cover-feature grew so enamored of Fine’s work that he status for Crack Comics. murder but his status as a wanted man Black Condor TM and © DC Comics.

by Mongolian bandits. Adopted by a flock of condors as an infant, the avian Mowgli was later rescued and educated by kindly Father Pierre. When the monk too was murdered by bandits, the young man he had named Black Condor vowed to use the secret of flight taught him by his feathered foster family to avenge his death and wage war on all evil. By the third issue, “Black Condor” was the title’s lead feature. The Asian backdrop was deemphasized by the end of the year in favor of urban settings or ornately rendered lost cities, bandits and jewel thieves giving ground to mad scientists, living statues, and sentient weapons of mass destruction. Scene after scene of the Condor in flight, his lithe figure soaring across backgrounds seen from dizzying perspectives with a grace Joe Shuster’s barrelchested Superman could not hope to match, made the series irresistible. Two more titles were added in July, Hit Comics and National Comics. By this time, Eisner and his studio were so swamped that, in a move rife with irony, they subcontracted much of the work to Jerry Iger. Iger himself contributed “Neon the Unknown,” about an American-born Foreign Legionnaire who gained “neonic” energy powers after drinking from a strange glowing pool. Drawn at first by Alex Blum, the series was assigned to Lou Fine later in the year. Two other superheroes, Dan Zolnerowich’s “Hercules” and Charles Nicholas’ inane “The Red Bee,” appeared alongside Neon in Hit #1, the first starring a carnival strongman inspired by a “Doll Man” story to don a costume and fight crime, the latter featuring a masked mystery-man aided by the trained bees he stored in his belt buckle. No, that’s not a typo. Bees. Trained bees. In his belt buckle. From a historical perspective, the most interesting strip in Hit Comics was “Weird Tales” starring The Old Witch, a creepy crone who narrated a short horror story in each episode. Drawn by John Celardo, the series was a prototype for the kind of material perfected by the EC comic books of the 1950s. The star of National was no less than “Uncle Sam.” His look derived from the famed World War I recruitment poster by James Montgomery Flagg, the living spirit of America possessed a patriotic small-town grocer, teaming with orphaned waif Buddy to wreak havoc on fascists foreign and domestic. Good art by Will Eisner and future MAD contributor David “Dave” Berg, the occasional flash of Eisnerian wit, and an explicitly progressive viewpoint mark this as one of the best early Quality super-hero strips. The title’s other highlights included three strips authored by Toni Blum: “Sally O’Neil, Policewoman,” a lively series about the only daughter in a family of big city cops using her expert marksmanship and Jujitsu skills to prove her worth; “Wonder Boy,” an over-the-top tale about a superpowered teenage alien; and “Kid Patrol,” an early entry in the kid gang genre that was an odd mishmash of Our Gang and The Dead End Kids. Chuck Mazoujian, John Celardo, and Charles Nicholas, respectively, provided the art.

Will Eisner’s “Uncle Sam” gave the cartoonist a forum to express his progressive political philosophy and avid anti-fascism through the metaphor of super-heroic action. Uncle Sam TM and © DC Comics.

recruited the artist to join Cronin, Devlin, Brenner, and Henkel on Quality’s full-time staff. Fine worked exclusively for Arnold until he left the field in 1946 for more lucrative opportunities in advertising. The first of the new comics packaged by the Eisner shop was Crack Comics. “The Clock” and several strip reprints emigrated from Feature Comics to Crack, Brenner’s masked sleuth gaining extra pages and a new sidekick, has-been prizefighter Pug Brady, in the process. Joining them in the pages of the first issue (May) were Vernon Henkel’s sci-fi “Space Legion;” Henry Kiefer’s “The Red Torpedo,” about a retired Navy officer and his super-submarine; former Funnies, Inc. stalwart Paul Gustavson’s costumed archer “Alias The Spider,” a reworking of the bow-wielding “Arrow” character he did for Centaur; and what is easily the strangest strip ever to appear in a Quality publication: Art Pinajian’s “Madam Fatal,” in which Broadway star Richard Stanton donned drag to solve crimes disguised as a little old lady. It was the new super-hero occupying that premiere issue’s final seven pages that proved the first breakout star of Crack. The co-creation of Will Eisner and Lou Fine using the house name Kenneth Lewis, “The Black Condor” was Richard Grey, Jr., the son of American archaeologists slain

The team of Eisner and Fine co-created one more memorable super-hero together. Premiering in Smash Comics #14 (September), “The Ray” was brash newspaper reporter Happy Terrill, who gained incredible light-based powers after being exposed to cosmic rays while covering the 36

doctor after her father’s death. A statuesque strawberry blonde clad in leopard fur, Sheena was of the same “jungle girl” lineage as H. Rider Haggard’s Ayesha a.k.a. She-WhoMust-Be-Obeyed, the big bad in his 1886 novel She, and W.H. Hudson’s Rima the Bird Girl from the 1904 novel Green Mansions. The strip is generally considered an Eisner creation despite Jerry Iger’s insistence that “the closest Will got to ‘Sheena’ was to do the art for a cover or two, long after the character had been published in Wags” (Disbrow 44). “Anybody who knew the comQueen of the Newsprint Jungle pany laughed at his claim,” Despite the break-up of EisEisner later responded, ner & Iger, Ltd., and the loss “because Iger never created of revenue from Fox, Jerry anything” (Andelman 30). Iger’s fortunes improved in This wasn’t quite true— 1940 thanks to one of the stuIger created the kid strips dio’s earliest and most loyal “Bobby” and “Pee Wee”— clients. In 1938, Iger had but “Sheena” bears more persuaded pulp publisher stylistic resemblance to EisJumbo Comics cover star “Sheena” wasn’t just “Queen of the Jungle.” She was the Thurman T. Scott to launch most successful character Fiction House would ever produce. Her Jungle Comics ner’s work of the time than a comics line under his Fic- counterpart “Kaánga,” ran almost as long but never entered the public consciousness to Iger’s. Originally drawn the way Sheena did. Sheena TM and © Galaxy Publishing and Valdoro Entertainment. tion House imprint. Its first by Morton “Mort” Meskin, title, Jumbo Comics, began life the art chores were in the hands of Bob Powell by the Janas a 10½” x 14½” tabloid, but by 1940 it had assumed the uary 1940 issue of Jumbo (#11). That issue and the next standard dimensions. The odd size was a direct result of its saw Sheena’s home village wiped out, its people killed or contents: the first eight issues reprinted strips originally enslaved, leaving the jungle goddess free to face the usual created by Eisner-Iger for Wags, a weekly comic section assortment of genre menaces alongside her boyfriend, available in British and Australian editions. Most of those safari guide Bob Reynolds, and their pet ape, Chim. The series were still running new episodes, though not always rest of the year featured Burroughsian lost civilizations, produced by their creators. Scott, pleased by the increase slave traders, ivory hunters seeking the elephants’ gravein sales that accompanied the format change, decided to yard, and a long line of wild beasts for the pulchritudinous expand his line. Three new titles debuted with first issues primitive to best in hand-to-hand combat. Other holdovers cover-dated January 1940, each patterned after a Fiction from the pages of Wags were Eisner’s pirate saga “Hawks House pulp: Fight Comics, Jungle Comics, and Planet Comof the Sea,” continued after the split by artists Dan Zolneroics. A handful of short-lived exceptions notwithstanding, wich, John Celardo, and Arthur “Art” Saaf; Bob Kane’s funny the company bypassed the super-hero craze, preferring to animal strip “Peter Pupp” (in reruns as of issue #16); and stick to the genres it knew best. an adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte The unquestioned Cristo illustrated by star of Jumbo ComLou Fine that conics was “Sheena, cluded in issue #17 Queen of the Jun(July). “Lightning,” gle.” Worshipped debuting in Jumbo as a goddess by the #15 (May), was one inhabitants of a of Fiction House’s hidden African valrare ventures into ley, the daughter of super-heroes, in this American anthrocase a young scienpologist Cordwell tist able to transform Jungle Comics was home to the indescribable “Fantomah, Mystery Woman of the Jungle,” Rivington was raised himself into a bolt of a bizarre strip from gonzo cartoonist Fletcher Hanks. ntomah TM and © respective copyright owner. by the tribe’s witch lightning. test flight of a high-altitude balloon. The strip showcased Fine’s growing mastery of lighting effects, as well as the wild fight scenes and memorably ugly villains that had by now become trademarks of his style. The same issue saw the debut of Paul Gustavson’s “Magno,” a utilities lineman who jumped into tights after acquiring electromagnetic powers. With their addition, all five Quality titles were dominated by costumed heroes. Whether any of them achieved the success of a Superman, Batman, or even a Blue Beetle remained to be seen.

With a female Tarzan as Fiction House’s big draw, it was no surprise that the company’s second title Jungle Comics headlined a more conventional clone of Burroughs’ vine-swinging icon. “Kaänga” was based on Ki-Gor, the lead character of the publisher’s Jungle Stories pulp title, but that just made him a copy of a copy. He had blonde hair instead of black and his girlfriend was Ann instead of Jane but otherwise he was a bland imitation of the Tarzan of the Johnny Weissmuller film series, lacking the mythology-inspired origin and backstory that made the ERB novels memorable. Drawn initially by Alex Blum, with covers by Lou Fine, the art was never the series’ problem. Another Jungle feature that owed its inspiration to the movies was “Wambi the Jungle Boy,” patterned after Mowgli, the hero of Rudyard Kipling’s popular Jungle Books plus overtones of the 1937 film Elephant Boy (movie versions of each had starred the young Indian actor Sabu). Wambi was a kind-hearted orphan who lived in a hollow tree and spoke the language of the animals, using that gift to protect the jungles of the sub-continent from the depredations of treasure hunters, gunrunners, and similar nogoodniks Stunning art by Henry Kiefer, whose depictions of Indian wildlife are rich in texture and personality, made “Wambi” the title’s best strip. The art was also the attraction in “Simba, King of the Beasts,” William M. “Bill” Allison’s saga of an aging lion driven away from his pride by a younger male, all told in narrative captions broken only by

the word balloons of the occasional human character. Several strips attempted, with mixed results, to combine the super-hero and jungle lord archetypes. “The White Panther,” renamed “The Red Panther” in Jungle #2, was a white man raised by natives who ran around in a mask and tights, armed with a bow and the foresight granted him by his unique attunement to nature. “Tabu, Wizard of the Jungle” had magical shapeshifting powers. Created by the inimitable Fletcher Hanks, the strip was placed in the care of others after its premiere episode so that Hanks could focus on “Fantomah, Mystery Woman of the Jungle,” starring comic books’ first super-powered heroine. Fantomah was a beautiful blonde in a filmy negligee, later a black one-piece, who flew around the jungle enveloped in lightning visiting horrific vengeance on any malefactor unlucky enough to cross her path. When her wrath was suitably aroused, Fantomah’s face transformed into a ghastly death’shead. Simultaneously grotesque and goofy, horrific and hilarious, the strip truly defies description. The balance of the title contained uninspired genre riffs.

Hanks also bore responsibility for what was, for better or worse, the most memorable strip in Jungle’s companion title, Fight Comics. His “Big Red McLane,” about a crimesolving lumberjack, stood out from what was otherwise an uneven mixture of adventure genres (aviation, lost world, vagabond sailor) with a special emphasis on the manly art of prizefighting. One feature, “Oran of the Jungle,” starred yet another Tarzan wannabe, this one distinguished by his prowess in the boxing ring. Another was a biographical series illustrated by Alex Blum devoted to notable fighters. Beginning with its third issue (March), Fight gained a resident super-hero, “Rip Regan, the Power Man,” a two-fisted private eye given a bulletproof “powersuit” that enhanced his physical prowess. The title achieved a dubious first when Klaus Nordling’s humorous military strip “Strut Warren,” about a U.S. Fiction House’s other titles—Fight Comics, Planet Comics, and Wing Comics—largely ignored the super-hero fad in favor of Marine stationed in Asia, featured more familiar pulp fiction tropes, Fight’s “Rip Regan, Power Man” a paper doll of the title character, being the notable exception. TM and © respective copyright owners. 38

complete with five outfits, in its seventh episode. Paper dolls of Jane Arden, Boots, and others were routinely reprinted from Sunday installments of their syndicated strips but Strut was the first character created for comic books to be so honored. Planet Comics showcased science fiction strips, primarily in the Buck Rogers mold. Henry Kiefer’s “Spurt Hammond, Planet Flyer,” Alex Blum’s “Captain Nelson Cole of the Solar Force,” and Fletcher Hanks’ wacky “Buzz Crandall of the Space Patrol” all featured macho heroes of the future fighting the good fight against alien invaders, space pirates, bug-eyed monsters, and other space opera staples. No credits are known for “Gale Allen of the Women’s Space Battalion.” Debuting in Planet #4 (April), the series jumped its smart, tough heroine through the same genre hoops as Spurt, Nelson, and Buzz. Dick Briefer’s “The Planetary Adventures of Flint Baker” was a John Carter-style interplanetary romance similar in look and feel to his Fox series “Rex Dexter.” The title also included two futuristic super-heroes whose creators are obscured by ever-changing house names. “The Red Comet” was a 31st-century explorer who gained the power to shrink or grow at will after being exposed to an otherwise unspecified “outer space force,” while “Auron, Lord of Jupiter” was a bizarre amalgam of sci-fi and jungle genres featuring an Earth-born infant raised by a saber-toothed tiger in the jungles of Jupiter, later becoming ruler of a tribe of Jovian ape-men. Often formulaic and uninspired, none of Planet’s strips had much to commend them aside from the art. The same could be said of Wings Comics, a fifth Fiction House title aimed squarely at aviation enthusiasts that premiered in the summer. To those living in an age when virtually every part of the globe is just an airline ticket or two away, America’s obsession with fliers and their planes in the period between the world wars can be hard to appreciate. The exploits of pioneer aviators like the Wright Brothers, Eddie Rickenbacker, Charles Lindbergh, and Amelia Earhart earned them the kind of celebrity reserved today for musicians and reality TV stars. Aviation-themed

comic strips like Smilin’ Jack, Scorchy Smith, Tailspin Tommy, Flyin’ Jenny, and Barney Baxter were among their syndicates’ most popular. The various series in Wings were largely inferior to their newspaper counterparts, though the greater space available on the comic book page in theory should have made for more exciting scenes of air battle. Only two will be noted in passing. The first, Greg Fielding’s “How Uncle Sam Trains His Warbirds,” was an unusual nonfiction look at the rigorous training required to become a military pilot. The other, “The Phantom Falcons,” credited to an otherwise unknown Kit Gleason, followed the exploits of a team of flying mercenaries fighting alongside the RAF, a longforgotten predecessor to Quality’s later hit, “Blackhawk.”

still packaged by the Chesler Studio, as well as two new titles added in the summer of 1938, Keen Detective Comics and Amazing Mystery Funnies. Produced in-house by a team of talented freelancers who later formed the core of Jacquet’s Funnies, Inc., these new series did so well that the staff was soon given responsibility for Funny

Thurman Scott’s expansion of the Fiction House line was executed prudently. His four new titles began as monthlies, but as sales figures trickled in, Planet Comics and Fight Comics were put on brief hiatuses (no issues dated November or December) before returning the following year as bi-monthlies. The strategy paid off. All five comics would run into the 1950s.

The Rise and Fall of Centaur Expansion did not yield similar results for another pulp publisher’s slate of comics. Ultem Publications executives Isaac Wise Ullman and Frank Z. Temerson, business associates of Harry Donenfeld since the days when they distributed his “spicy” pulps, entered the comics field in 1937 by purchasing the rights to titles previously published by Harry Chesler and Cook-Mahon’s Comics Magazines Co. They published three issues each of Chesler’s Star Comics and Star Ranger and four each of Cook-Mahon’s Funny Pages and Funny Picture Stories between September 1937 and January 1938, then sold them in turn to Centaur Publications. Centaur co-publisher Joseph J. Hardie, who signed his enthusiastic messages to his readers “Uncle Joe,” hired former Wheeler-Nicholson editor Lloyd Jacquet to helm the acquired titles, 39

Funnies, Inc. stalwart Paul Gustavson created two of Centaur Publications’ biggest stars, “The Arrow” and “The Fantom of the Fair.” TM and © respective copyright owners.

revolted.” The series lasted four issues, was revamped by Art Pinajian as “The Red Man of the Rockies” for one additional story, then disappeared.

and ace shot Miss Betty wearing an oversized artificial male torso. The title’s piece de resistance was “Space Patrol,” a fun science fiction series by Basil Wolverton, whose detailed, elaborately textured artwork here and elsewhere was a major stylistic influence on legendary underground cartoonist Robert Crumb two decades later.

Amazing Mystery Funnies headlined another Paul GusThe star attraction of Keen Detective tavson creation first Comics was Ben Thompson’s “The seen in the July 1939 Masked Marvel.” Originally described issue. “The Fantom as possessing super-strength and the of the Fair,” a figure ability to read minds, the otherwise out of (made-up) legThe fearsome phantom called “The Headless Horseman” was actually one of nameless Marvel displayed little of end rumored to be comics’ first cross-dressing super-doers. TM and © respective copyright owners. the former and none of the latter. thousands of years old, Pages as well. In the fall of 1939, CenHe was instead a crimefighter in the lived in a super-scientaur added a fourth title, Amazing Doc Savage mold, headquartered tific subterranean chamber beneath Man Comics, and cancelled the three atop a southwestern mountaintop the New York World’s Fair grounds, being packaged by Harry Chesler. and aided by two former FBI agents emerging whenever crime or danger known only as ZR and ZY. A third, ZL, threatened the exposition. Originally By January 1940, all four Centaur had died in the December ‘39 issue. clad head to toe in skintight black monthlies featured super-heroes There was nothing routine about with a red cape for contrast, the Fanof one kind or another. The eldest, the strip that debuted later in that tom had taken on a less sinister air debuting in the September 1938 issue issue. “The Eye,” written and drawn by his sixth appearance, his costume of Funny Pages (#10 but actually the by Frank Thomas, was exactly what now a bright blue and his cowl modi21st published), was “The Arrow,” a its name suggested: an enormous fied to reveal the lower half of his face. mysterious archer in red (occasiondisembodied eye “to whom time and Gustavson abandoned the series after ally blue or yellow). The creation of distance are nothing—who bares Amazing Mystery #18 (March), having Paul Gustavson, the bowslinging already dropped the Fair backvigilante had no compunction about ground in favor of more varexecuting any criminal he deemed ied settings, and the character too dangerous to live. When Robert became just another mystery“Bob” Lubbers took over the series man in the hands of others. following Gustavson’s departure for Debuting an issue after the Quality, he removed some of Arrow’s Fantom, “Speed Centaur” was mystery, allowing readers to glimpse the last of his mythological the face previously hidden in the race, raised and educated by a shadows of his hood and eventually former newspaper editor who revealing his true identity as military encouraged his four-legged intelligence agent Ralph Payne. Two foster son to take up his abanother costumed heroes joined him doned crusade against big in the January issue (#1/34). Marcity corruption. Teamed with tin Filchock’s “The Owl” was a meek nervy reporter Reel McCoy, library clerk who donned a flying suit the unlikely crimefighter’s invented by his paraplegic father. No adventures often verged on relation to the later Dell character, he the ridiculous, particularly appeared only once. Of greater interin those episodes where he est was “Mantoka, Maker of Indian donned a fake head and posed Magic,” a Native American shaman as an actual horse. Malcolm with shapeshifting powers written Kildale drew, and possibly and drawn by Pennsylvania-born wrote, the series. Another cartoonist Jack Cole. Though little of Amazing Mystery strip also the humor Cole was later noted for featured an unusual disguise: was on display, the opening episode Martin Filchock’s western contained a statement unusually prohero “The Headless Horsevocative for the time: “Our American man,” a ghastly specter of the Indians, during the early days of the open range who sent black United States, were robbed of land, hats into paroxysms of terror, The namesake of Amazing Man Comics finally donned possessions and homes by white was actually pretty waitress a costume in the last episode by creator Bill Everett. man’s treachery—little wonder they TM and © respective copyright owner. 40

tin Filchock’s lighthearted western fantasy “Mighty Man” centered on a 12-foot-tall naif, the last survivor of a community of pioneers who settled in the mysterious Valley of Giants, and his adjustment to the outside world.

man’s thoughts and pierces his conscience!” Appearing wherever injustice plagued the innocent, the eerie orb used its mystic abilities to visit doom on the evil. In the June issue of Keen Detective (#21), the lead character of “TNT Todd, Ace G-Man,” a formulaic crime strip illustrated by Ecuadorian cartoonist Victor “Vic” Pazmiño, accidentally gave himself super-powers in a lab accident. Now able to fly and hurl lightning from his fingertips, he donned a suit of futuristic steel armor and went about his FBI duties. Writer George Kapitan and artist Harry Sahle introduced their “Air Man” in issue #23 (August). Drake Stevens used an experimental jet pack and a pair of helium-filled artificial wings to avenge his ornithologist father’s murder. Despite a nice costume design and pleasant art, the series lacked the noir ambience of All-American’s similar “Hawkman.” Arguably the best of Centaur’s remaining titles was Amazing Man Comics. Its titular star, “Amazing-Man,” was trained since early childhood by the mysterious Council of Seven in Tibet to be “an amazing specimen of ultra-manhood.” Granted the ability to transform himself into a green mist and sent on a “world-wide crusade against crime,” John Aman was unaware at first that council mem-

Despite signs that cash flow was an issue— sections of each issue of Keen Detective were in black & white or monotone—Centaur decided to expand its line, adding a new title in June. Amazing Adventures Funnies featured a handful of lesser series playing second fiddle to reprints of “Arrow” and “Fantom of the Fair.” With its second issue, it became Fantoman, as the Fantom was renamed since the strip was no The release of the first issues of Crash Comics Adventures and Whirlwind Comics marked longer tied to the World’s Fair. the return of veteran publisher Frank Solo titles for The Masked Marvel Temerson to the comics marketplace. TM and © respective copyright owners. and The Arrow followed in September and October. The company next ber The Great Question had cancelled Funny Pages, Keen Detecmore sinister plans for him. tive, and Amazing Mystery, replacing Their struggle provided the series’ them with three new anthology titles, main plotline. Created by Bill EverSuper Spy, Detective Eye (starring Air ett, the previously plainclothes hero Man and The Eye), and Wham Comics. gained a costume and a companion, All these new titles either depended New Orleans newspaperwoman Zona heavily on reprints, some dating back Henderson, in Everett’s final issue to the Ultem days, or continued fea(#11, April). He was capably succeeded tures created for the cancelled antholby writer Allen “A.L.” Kirby and the ogies. This cosmetic repackaging did art team of brothers Louis “Lew” and nothing to staunch the bleeding. By Samuel “Sam” Glanzman. Lew GlanNovember 1940, the Centaur comics zman was also responsible for “The line was $90,000 in the red. Declaring Shark,” a series about the half-human bankruptcy, Joe Hardie and his partson of Neptune and his battles against ner, Raymond J. Kelly, cancelled all various marine marauders. “The Iron but one of their titles. Only Amazing Skull” starred an anonymous soldier Man Comics, their bestselling book who was given new life by a series of and the only one published under the metallic prosthetics implanted in his alternate company name Comic Corshattered body. Set in the year 1970, poration of America, survived. twenty years after the end of World Meanwhile, Frank Temerson (UllWar Two, the series was the creation man had since retired) decided to of Carl Burgos nee Max Finkelstein. cautiously re-enter the arena in the When he, like Everett, gave up his spring of 1940 with two titles, Crash Centaur assignments to focus on his Comics Adventures and Whirlwind work for Timely Comics, the strip was Comics, the first under the name Tem given a two-issue hiatus before being Publications, the other under Nita picked up by Sam Gilman—later a TV Publications. Both were packaged and film actor best remembered for by Bert Whitman Associates, a small playing Doc Holliday in an episode studio run by its namesake, a former of the original Star Trek—who had newspaper and magazine cartoonist. the Skull’s entire body turn to solid “Strongman the Perfect Human” was iron in issue #15 (August). Two other the cover feature of Crash. A hybrid of features of note were thematic oppoSuperman and Batman, the mighty sites: John F. Kolb’s “Minimidget” fol“scourge of the underworld,” secretly lowed the tribulations of a man and idle playboy Percy Van Norton, was woman stuck at a height of six inches besting entire armies on the battlethanks to a mad scientist, while Mar41

Timely Marvels of Daring Mystery

fields of Europe by the third installment. Created by editor Bill Scott and artist Walter Frehm, “Strongman” stories averaged 17 pages an issue, consisting primarily of long fight scenes. Among the better series offered by Crash were Matt Robertson’s “Jane Drake,” a charming Nancy Drew knock-off about an impulsive teenage sleuth, her much-put-upon boyfriend, and her disapproving lawyer father, and “Solar Legion,” an exciting space opera by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. Whirlwind, by contrast, was a dreary collection of carbon copy genre strips distinguished only by “The Cyclone,” Whitman’s venture into super-heroics whose lead character posed as a blind beggar when not in costume. Like “Strongman,” the series was long on action, short on logic. None of the characters seen in these titles demonstrated any staying power with a single exception. Introduced in Crash #4 (September), “The Cat Man” was an odd amalgam of Batman and Tarzan illustrated by Irwin Hasen. Raised from infancy by tigers after his family was massacred by hostile natives, David Merrywether returned to America in adulthood, using his cat-like super-powers to combat crime. The gimmick of Cat Man having nine lives and thus being killed and resurrected in each episode implied a short run for the series but Whirlwind and Crash were cancelled before that could happen, axed late in the year to make room for Green Hornet Comics, published under the alternate corporate identity of Helnit Publishing. Adapted by Bert Whitman from the radio series created by George W. Trendle and Fran Striker, the title had built-in audience appeal the publisher hoped would translate into revenue. Among its writers was 20-year-old Ruth Rae Hermann, a Trendle staffer who became Temerson’s executive assistant and later a comics publisher in her own right. Speed Comics first appeared in October 1939. Brookwood Publishing was a joint venture of Frank Temerson and J.A. Rosenfeld, brother-in-law of Isaac Ullman, with the financial aid of Irving S. Manheimer, a former pulp publisher turned president of Publisher’s Distributing Corporation. Edited by J.A.’s son, Maurice “Reese” Rosenfeld, Speed was produced by a coterie of moonlighting freelancers and consisted largely of the same routine filler material they churned out for the major packaging houses. Its only significant feature was “Shock Gibson,” about a scientist turned into a “human dynamo” after being simultaneously struck by lightning and doused by chemicals (the same origin given to DC’s second version of “The Flash” in 1956). Co-created by Reese Rosenfeld and Bill Scott, with art by Norman Fallon, the strip was built on the same template used for “Strongman” and “The Cyclone”: long, action-heavy stories told in pages of two to four panels, with full-page panels in every episode from issues #4 through #8 (January-May). The title was cancelled with its eleventh issue (August) but that did not spell the end for Speed Comics or “Shock Gibson.” Both were destined to return in 1941 under the aegis of a new publisher.

Martin (originally Moe) Goodman had a career in pulp publishing going back to the 1920s and the legendary Hugo Gernsback’s tenure as editor of Amazing Stories, the first American magazine devoted to science fiction, for which Goodman sold advertising space. He had since earned a reputation as a shameless follower of fads, flooding the market with copycat variants of whatever the hot trend seemed to be. By 1939, he had two dozen pulps on the newsstands. Even so, it took a while for Funnies, Inc., sales manager Frank Torpey to convince Goodman to have a go at the new medium that was making his competitors rich. His persistence paid off. The first comic book published by Timely Publications, Marvel Comics #1 (October 1939), sold at a Superman-level pace, going into a rare second edition only a month later. Goodman wrote Torpey a $25 check every week for years in gratitude for his good advice. The immediate success of Marvel Mystery Comics, as Marvel Comics was renamed as of its second issue, was

The first super-hero crossover occurred in Marvel Mystery Comics #9, which featured an epic battle between The Human Torch and The Sub-Mariner.TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Second-string Timely titles Daring Mystery Comics and Mystic Comics saw a long procession of minor super-heroes pass through their pages, never looking better than in the cover art of Alex Schomburg. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

due to the thematic contrast of its two lead features. The title’s star from Day One was “The Human Torch.” Despite his name, the Torch was an android created by eccentric Professor Horton capable of bursting into flame and controlling fire in all its forms. After angrily parting ways with his creator, who wanted to exploit his powers for personal gain, the “synthetic man” adopted the human guise of Jim Hammond (spelled “Hamond” throughout 1940) and joined the New York City police force. Created by Carl Burgos, The Human Torch is one of the most arresting visuals to ever appear in comics, his aesthetic and conceptual strength overcoming Burgos’ weaknesses as a draftsman and scripter. Neither was an issue for Bill Everett, whose “Sub-Mariner” was comics’ first great anti-hero. The hybrid son of a human seaman and a noblewoman of the undersea empire of Aquaria, the pointy-eared Prince Namor possessed superhuman strength, the ability to breathe in both air and water, small wings growing from his ankles that gave him the power of flight, and a colossal case of anger management issues that led him to declare a one-man war on the human race. A fascinating study in adolescent angst, the Sub-Mariner was capable of destroying the Holland Tunnel one moment, then rescuing an innocent baby from the resulting flood the next. Under the influence of policewoman Betty Dean and others, Namor eventually turned his wrath from America to the Axis nations, but not before he clashed with the one being capable of stopping his rampage: The Human Torch!

the Flaming Fury was ordered to bring the Sub-Mariner to justice. Their battle spanned 22 pages of the following issue, as Burgos and Everett pulled out all the stops, their creations wreaking havoc across the length and breadth of the Five Boroughs. If the conclusion in issue #10 was a bit of a wet firecracker (Betty Dean persuaded them to shake hands and walk away), it didn’t detract from the epic excitement—or the spike in sales—their struggle generated. Future battles were inevitable. The elemental clash of fire and water may have been the key to Marvel Mystery Comics’ cachet, but it didn’t hurt that the book had a strong lineup of secondary features. “KaZar” had been the eponymous star of a 1936 Goodman pulp written by Bob Byrd. As adapted by Ben Thompson, it was better than the average Tarzan knock-off, with clean art lovingly swiped from Hal Foster. The episode for the September issue (#11) included what may be the first two-page panel in comic books. Paul Gustavson’s “The Angel” began as a run-of-the-mill crimefighting mystery-man but by mid-year he was tangling with ghouls and giants. “Electro, Marvel of the Age” was a brightly colored super-robot in the service of altruistic Professor Zog, its adventures rendered by creator Steve Dahlman in an Art Deco-flavored style. The title’s few weak spots— Al Anders’ “The Masked Raider,” a lifeless Lone Ranger imitation, and “The Ferret,” a homely detective with a pet weasel—were easily overlooked and were gone by year’s end. Another key to the success of Marvel Mystery and its sister titles debuting in 1940 was the cover art of Alex Schomburg.

Comics’ first super-hero crossover story began at the conclusion of Marvel Mystery #8’s “Human Torch” episode, as 43

A former Works Progress Administration muralist turned top pulp illustrator, Schomburg created colorful images dense with detail, multi-character extravaganzas that made the Timely line pop off the newsstands. Several of Goodman’s many secondand third-string super-heroes never looked better than on Schomburg’s covers. Just two months after Marvel Comics #1 hit the streets, Martin Goodman added a second title, Daring Mystery Comics. He turned again to Funnies, Inc. for most of the content, with contributions from the Harry “A” Chesler and S.M. Iger studios becoming more common as the series progressed. Lightning did not strike twice. Daring had no breakout characters like SubMariner or the Torch. Readers were unimpressed by dull, derivative strips like Larry Antonette’s “Monako, Master of Magic,” Joe Simon’s “Trojak the Tiger Man,” or the aviation-themed “K4 and the Sky Devils.” To make matters worse, characters constantly rotated in and out of the title, changing names, costumes, and creators with dizzying regularity. One series began life as “The Laughing Mask,” became “The Purple Mask” in the second episode, then was dropped after the third installment and replaced with a virtually identical character by the same creators called “The Falcon.” “The Phantom of the Underworld” gave up his slot to “The Phantom Bullet,” who in turn gave it up to “The

This picture of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby was taken after their creation of “Captain America” had made them the hottest team in comics.

Phantom Reporter.” Even Fletcher Hanks couldn’t help. “Whirlwind Carter of the Interplanetary Secret Service,” another of his gonzo sci-fi sagas, was lost in the shuffle. Similar woes plagued Mystic Comics, added to the Timely schedule in January. Packaged primarily by Chesler, its roster demonstrated a bit more stability. Harry Douglas’ “The Blue Blaze” was the best of the early offerings. College student Spencer Keen, put in suspended animation in 1852 after exposure to a strange blue flame discovered by his scientist father, awoke in 1940 endowed with startling energy powers. The robotic “Flexo the Rubber Man,” created by William “Will” Harr and Jack Binder, covered the same ground as “Electro” but without the panache of Steve Dahlman. “The Dynamic Man” New Timely editor Joe Simon’s first new title, Red Raven was essentially The Human Torch Comics, was not a success, and was renamed Human Torch with its second issue. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. minus the fire: a super-powered android who assumed the human In a 1983 interview, Kirby explained identity of FBI agent Curt Cowan. And why they were so successful together: so it went throughout the title: forgettable, copycat characters rendered “We were both professionals in varying degrees of competence. and we were both capable of writing the stuff, but Joe did Frustrated by his inability to duplimost of the business. He was cate Marvel Mystery’s success, Gooda big guy, six foot three, very man decided he needed an editor impressive, and he had colin-house to reduce his dependence on lege experience which I didn’t the packaging shops. He snatched up have—but I had a unique Joe Simon after his falling out with storytelling ability. … Joe did Victor Fox and set him to work crebusiness with the publisher ating new and better characters and because he could meet the titles. An unexpected benefit of hirpublisher on an equal footing Simon was that in doing so, the ing. I was younger[,] I was the publisher also gained the services of kid in the turtleneck sweater Joe’s new partner. who was always working.” (Van Hise 5) Joe Simon and Jack Kirby first met while Simon was editing the Fox The first fruits of Simon’s editorial comics line. As he recalled six decades labors were on display in a new title, later: Red Raven Comics, which debuted in late spring with an August cover date. “The day I talked to Jack “The Red Raven” of the title was the [about working together], I sole survivor of an airliner destroyed explained to him what I was when it crashed into a floating island doing. ‘If I have an assignhidden within a bank of clouds. ment,’ I told him, ‘I work on it Raised by the winged Birdmen who at night, here in my office. If lived there, he was given a pair of artiI don’t have an order, I build ficial wings on reaching adulthood up an inventory, put it on a and tasked with bringing the peace shelf, then sell it later,’ That and harmony of his adopted people was the way Jack and I did it to the surface world below. Scripted for the rest of our collaboraby Simon and drawn by Louis Cazetion, doing what we loved to neuve, the strip’s unique backstory do.” (Simon 83) 44

made it stand out amidst the small flock of winged heroes created to cash in on Hawkman’s popularity. The new title also included “The Human Top,” Dick Briefer’s only venture into costumed heroes; “The Eternal Brain,” the saga of a deceased scientist who lived on as… well, you know; “Magar the Mystic, Re-Creator of Souls,” an atypical magician series whose lead could summon such historical luminaries as Napoleon, Mata Hari, and Thomas Edison out of the past to aid him; and two strips by Simon and Kirby: “Comet Pierce,” a sci-fi romp set in the year 2150, and “Mercury,” the first iteration of Kirby’s recurring motif of mankind caught in the crossfire between warring gods, in this case those of the Greco-Roman pantheon. Despite the promise of its contents, Red Raven never made it past its first issue for reasons long since lost to time. The struggling Daring Mystery Comics also got doses of the Simon & Kirby magic in its September issue (#6), as the team tackled “The Fiery Mask,” a Simon-created series running intermittently since the first issue, and introduced “Marvel Boy,” another series drawing on classical myths. Martin Burns was the 14-year-old avatar of Hercules who garbed himself in the requisite costume before using his vast strength to stop a Nazi sabotage plan. Simon injected fresh

blood into Mystic Comics with a brace of new strips, most notably George Kapitan and Harry Sahle’s “The Black Widow,” in which murdered medium Claire Voyant was chosen by Satan himself as his agent on Earth, collecting those souls deemed too evil to wait for their natural deaths. But it was too late for Daring Mystery and Mystic. Both titles suspended publication pending retooling. Goodman, meanwhile, focused on what was working, adding a quarterly Human Torch title to the schedule. Its first issue (#2, as it continued the numbering from Red Raven) introduced Toro the Flaming Kid, an orphaned circus fire-eater who discovered he had the same powers as the Torch and became his partner in adventure. Over in Marvel Mystery, “The Masked Raider” was replaced by “The Vision,” a Simon and Kirby creation featuring a superhuman dogooder who traveled between dimensions through smoke, which served as a gateway between his world and ours. It was a fun series, moody and weird, but the green-skinned Aarkus was not the super-star Martin Goodman needed to shore up his roster of profitable properties. That would come in 1941.

Three Heads and a Tale As circulation manager for the Eastern News Distributing Company in the early ‘30s, Louis Silberkleit played a role in the launch of several pulp lines. Silberkleit himself entered the field in 1932 as a partner with Martin Goodman in Mutual Magazine Distributors and its publishing arm, Newsstand Publishers, both companies ending up in bankruptcy. In 1934 he tried again, this time partnered with Maurice Coyne (born Morris Cohen), a CPA and notary, and Daily Mirror circulation associate John L. Goldwater nee Max Goldwasser. The trio published pulps under multiple corporate identities. In late 1939, Silberkleit, Goldwater, and Coyne commissioned the Harry “A” Chesler Studio to package the first of their new line of comic books, a line that MLJ founders Maurice Coyne, Louis Silberkleit, and John Goldwater, whose first initials spelled their company name, posing with the character whose popularity led to the line’s rebranding as Archie Comics.

The first offering from new publisher M.L.J. Magazines, Blue Ribbon Comics #1’s quiet cover art left it lost amidst its gaudier companions on the newsstands. TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

took its name from the partners’ first initials, M.L.J. Magazines, Inc. Their first title, Blue Ribbon Comics, hit the newsstands a month after Marvel Comics. Instead of a flaming man melting his way through a bank vault door, Blue Ribbon’s cover featured a gunman being disarmed by a dog as a man in a sickly green suit looked on. The pooch was “Ranga-Tang the Wonder Dog,” a circustrained German shepherd on the run from an abusive master. Adopted by police detective Hy Speed after the dog saved his life, Rang-a-Tang was smart, brave, resourceful, and all the other things a proper canine hero should be. Created by writer Norman Danberg and artist Edwin “Ed” Smalle in imitation of the famous film canine Rin-Tin-Tin, it was a decent strip of its kind but a poor choice for a cover feature in a market where costumed heroes were the hot ticket. By the third issue, he was replaced on the cover by “Corporal Collins,” a military series about a wisecracking American serving in the French army scripted by Abner Sundell nee Sundelewich, the editor of M.L.J.’s pulp line, with art by Charles Biro, a name that will figure prominently in later chapters. The title added a super-hero in the second issue (December 1939), the unpretentiously named “Bob Phantom,” a newspaper gossip columnist with the power to make himself immaterial

and teleport in a burst of yellow smoke. Drawn by Chesler staffer Irving “Irv” Novick and scripted by Harry Shorten, a former professional football player, it was an inauspicious start to what became a small army of super-types by the end of 1940. There was a gap between Blue Ribbon #3 (January) and #4 (June), during which Goldwater, Silberkleit, and Coyne hired away Biro, Novick, and other Chesler personnel to form their own bullpen of creators supervised by Sundell. The publishers launched a title a month in the three months following Blue Ribbon’s debut. The star of Top Notch Comics was “The Wizard,” also known as “The Man with the Super-Brain.” Society playboy Blane Whitney, the scion of a long line of heroes dating back to the Revolutionary War, secretly used his power of clairvoyance, his superhuman athletic prowess, and his inventive genius to aid his brother, Chief of Naval Intelligence Grover Whitney, in the fight against America’s enemies from within and without. He was the creation of Will Harr and Edmund “Edd” Ashe, Jr., who spent the early episodes focused on the Whitney brothers’ campaign against a spy ring in service to the hostile nation of “Moscovia.” Originally dressed in a tuxedo, cape, and red domino mask, The Wizard replaced the tux with blue-and-red tights in the August issue (#7), as new scripter Harry Shorten wrapped up the old storyline and changed the strip’s focus from espionage to crimefighting. An issue later, Roy the Super-Boy, the by now obligatory kid sidekick, was added. Other notable series running in 1940 issues of Top Notch included “The West Pointer,” about an orphaned “mental and physical marvel” enrolled at the U.S. Military Academy, and our friend Bob Phantom, transferred from Blue Ribbon when that title went on hiatus. Two more costumed heroes joined the line-up later in the year. “The Firefly,” created by Shorten and artist Bob Wood (born Robert Silva), was entomologist Harley Hudson, who discovered how to harness “the tremendous strength of insects” and used

Original Top Notch Comics cover feature “The Wizard” was soon displaced by the more popular “Black Hood.” TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

it to (what else?) fight crime. He—and every other Top Notch feature—was quickly eclipsed by “The Black Hood, Man of Mystery,” a new costumed hero series written by Abner Sundell using the house name Cliff Campbell and illustrated by Al Camy (Cammarata, originally) that usurped The Wizard’s role as cover feature with its premiere in issue #9 (October). NYPD beat cop Kip Burland, framed for robbery and left for dead by a cadaverous criminal mastermind called The Skull, was nursed back to health by The Hermit, a reclusive former sheriff similarly done wrong by Skull years before. After months of training in every branch of science, his body built up to the acme of physical development, Burland donned the yellow-and-black costume of the Hood to clear his name and bring The Skull to justice. M.L.J. was so confident in the new hero’s potential, it redesigned the Top Notch cover logo to emphasize his name over the book’s actual title. Pep Comics began with a pair of strong features. “The Shield, G-Man Extraordinary” was the prototype of a long string of patriotically-themed heroes to follow. At first, FBI agent Joe Higgins gained superhuman strength and agility whenever he put on his star-spangled bulletproof, flameproof costume. When creators Harry Shorten and Irv Novick told his origin in full later in the year, readers learned that his powers were actually derived from a chemical formula. Only J. Edgar Hoover, a friend of Joe’s late father, knew that Agent Higgins and The Shield were one and the same. Aided by his partners, inept Ju Ju Watson and impetuous Betty Warren, Shield spent 1940 tackling subversive organizations, crime rings, and foreign agents, including the same Moscovians who plagued The Wizard. Jack Cole’s “The Comet” was really scientist John Dickering. By repeated injections of a gas “fifty times lighter than hydrogen,” Dickering gained the power to fly at high speed and emit disintegration rays from his eyes that only the glass of his costume’s visor could suppress. One of comics’ most cheerfully bloodthirsty vigilantes, The Comet thought nothing of dropping bad guys from a mile up or blasting them to bits, all while wearing a wide, happy grin. Wanted by the law after killing an innocent

Pep Comics included two strong entries in the ever-growing super-hero sweepstakes with Harry Shorten and Irv Novick’s “The Shield” and Jack Cole’s “The Comet.” TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

Artist Irwin Hasen refined the look of his character “The Fox” over the course of the year, a wise move given that first attempt. TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

magically grow to 15 feet in height; “The Scarlet Avenger,” a Sundell-Novick product that borrowed his origin and modus operandi from The Avenger, the title character of a Street & Smith pulp; and “Zambini the Miracle Man,” a Mandrake clone so powerful that in one episode he went toe to toe with Satan (the devil, not the hero in purple)… and killed him! When Blue Ribbon Comics returned from limbo, only Ranga-Tang remained from the earlier run. Now written by Joe Blair, the noble mutt gained a new master, Richy the Amazing Boy, with whom he shared adventures set in the glamorous environs of Hollywood. Blair was behind the typewriter for five other strips in the revamped Blue Ribbon, notably “Hercules,” in which Zeus sent the demi-god to 20th Century Earth to “rid the modern world of wars, gangsters, and racketeers,” and “The Fox,” a black-clad mystery-man drawn by Irwin Hasen. Hasen’s first two versions of reporter Paul Payton’s vulpine alter ego were unintentionally ludicrous but by his fourth appearance, The Fox had assumed a dramatic silhouette that anticipated Hasen’s later “Wildcat.”

“Steel Sterling,” lead feature of Zip Comics, was comic books’ original Man of Steel, a nickname adopted by DC for Superman later in the decade. TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

while under a villain’s hypnotic control, with only sympathetic girl reporter Thelma Gordon aware of his true identity, Comet was abandoned by his creator mid-storyline. Cole was gone after the fifth episode, replaced first by Abner Sundell and an unknown artist trying hard to mimic Cole, then at year’s end by writer Joseph “Joe” Blair and artist Bob Wood. Two other Pep series mirrored strips running in Blue Ribbon: “The Midshipman” was the navy equivalent of “The West Pointer,” while “Sergeant Boyle” outranked “Corporal Collins” and served with the British army instead of the French.

One of the trademarks of M.L.J.’s comics during its first year of operation was the frequent use of crossovers. The Shield and The Wizard teamed several times in 1940, most notably in a continued story running in both Top Notch and Pep that also featured the leads of “The West Pointer” and “The Midshipman.” The heroic duo ultimately wound up sharing a quarterly series titled, appropriately enough, Shield-Wizard Comics. Its first issue featured not only the Shield origin mentioned previously but an adventure of the original Wizard of the 18th Century, the patriotic patriarch of Blane Whitney’s storied family. Despite the hiatus imposed on Blue Ribbon and irregular publication of the other three monthlies (Pep and Zip came up short by two issues for the year, Top Notch by three), solid scripting by Sundell, Shorten, and Blair, above-average art on virtually all their major features, and a roster of exciting super-characters made 1940 a good year for Mssrs. Coyne, Silberkleit, and Goldwater.

The final title in M.L.J.’s first burst of creativity was Zip Comics. Its main attraction was “Steel Sterling, Man of Steel,” a super-hero strip by Abner Sundell and Charles Biro. After giving himself “the resistance, the magnetism, and the strength of steel,” scientist John Sterling began a one-man war on crime as the costumed Steel. In the third episode, “as a blind to both police and underworld” Steel adopted an alternate identity, that of his own twin brother, a non-powered private eye. Biro was not yet the draftsman Edd Ashe or Irv Novick were, but he brought an energy to his action scenes that made the strip one of M.L.J.’s most exciting. Other highlights of Zip were “Mr. Satan,” a mystery-man in lavender tights and a yellow cape whose cowl bore a pair of small horns; “Kalthar,” a jungle lord able to

For Better Or Worth Noah L. “Ned” Pines began his pulp empire while still an undergraduate at Columbia University. By the mid-’30s, he was selling 18,000,000 magazines a year under a variety of corporate names, including Standard Magazines, Nedor Publishing, and Better Publications. It was under this last 47

You’d never know it from the cover art, but Better Publications’ “Adventures of the Red Mask” starred comics’ first black super-hero. TM and © respective copyright owners.

Richard E. “Dick” Hughes a.k.a. Leo Rosenbaum, a moonlighting industrial copywriter just starting a long career as a comics scripter and editor. Only a handful of the strips were signed. Some artists can be identified by style, but most of the writing credits are lost to history. Many early Better contributors had ties to Chesler and/or Eisner-Iger, while others worked for a small packaging service organized by Ben Sangor this year with the backing of silent partner Harry Donenfeld.

name that Pines published his first comic books in late 1939 in partnership with his father-in-law Benjamin W. “Ben” Sangor, a former lawyer and real estate developer who spent two years behind bars for larceny and embezzlement. (Sangor, in turn, was related by marriage to Paul Sampliner, co-owner with Harry Donenfeld of Independent News and himself a former business associate of Pines.) Their first title, Best Comics, had an odd format (12” x 9” stapled along the shorter side) due to its contents: all four issues reprinted strips from a short-lived newspaper section produced in 193637 by the Syndicated Features Corp. Consisting mostly of humor strips, Best’s chief claim to fame is “The Red Mask,” a mystery-man of the jungle often cited as the first black super-hero (though the covers of issues #2-4 and scattered interior pages gave him Caucasian coloration). The series was cancelled once the source material ran out but it had served its purpose, establishing the company’s presence in the industry.

Richard Hughes is known to be the co-creator of Thrilling Comics cover star, “Dr. Strange.” Affectionately called “Doc” by his loyal aide Virginia Thompson, Strange was a research scientist who discovered a chemical called “alosun,” made from a “distillate of sun atoms,” that gave him the standard assortment of super-powers. A hero in the pulp tradition, Doc eschewed masks, capes, and tights for a red T-shirt, dark blue jodhpurs, and a pair of riding boots. His identity a matter of public record, Strange’s aid was frequently enlisted by law enforcement and the government against organized crime, foreign spies, and the occasional super-villain. Alexander Kostuk, using the pen name Alexander Koster, was the original artist of “Dr. Strange,” with George Mandel stepping in late in the year. Hughes was likely the writer of several other Thrilling features, including “The Woman in Red,” comic books’ first masked mystery-woman. George Mandel drew the adventures of undercover policewoman Peggy Allen and her costumed alter ego. She was not an action heroine; her stories were long on mood and mystery, short on fisticuffs. The book’s other strips were so-so takes on the same aviation, detective, college athletics, and western themes that crowded the back pages of the competition.

Better followed up with three new anthologies: the monthlies Thrilling Comics (its first issue cover-dated February), Exciting Comics (April), and the bi-monthly Startling Comics (June). Scant information exists about who edited, packaged, or created these books. Ned Pines himself is often credited as editor, though this seems unlikely. Other candidates are Leo Margulies, editorin-chief of the pulp line, and writer

Exciting Comics’ resident mystery-man was “The Mask,” a reworking of Norman Daniels’ character “The Black Bat” appearing in Pines’ Black Book Detective. Like his pulp counterpart, Tony Corby was a former district attorney blinded by acid who kept the surgical restoration of his eyesight secret as a cover for his alter ego. Instead of a bat costume, artist Raymond Thayer gave Corby a hood resembling a stylized owl’s head, later streamlined into a simple cowl. More interesting was a hero introduced in the May issue (#2). While excavating the legendary Labyrinth of Daedelus, archaeologist John Thesson discovered “Dr. Strange” claimed the covers of the mystical Ring of Poseidon. Revealed as the Thrilling Comics, but “The Woman in reincarnation of the ancient hero Theseus, ProfesRed” claimed the title of comic books’ first masked mystery-woman. sor Thesson vowed to use the ring to oppose evil TM and © respective copyright owners.

rarely strayed from the crime, corruption, and espionage rut—the comics seemed to be paddling against the current. But thanks to a handful of new heroes created by Richard Hughes in 1941, better days lay ahead.

One of the most amateurish comics on the market, Colossus Comics did not save its publisher, Sun Publications, from bankruptcy. TM and © respective copyright owners.

as the “Son of the Gods.” Less interesting was “The Sphinx” who, despite a pseudonym suggesting an Egyptian connection, was just another wealthy socialite donning a mask to dabble in detection. None of these characters, nor any of the others running in Exciting, lived up to the title’s promise, which may explain why it dropped from monthly to quarterly with the fifth issue. Similar problems haunted Startling Comics. Features like John Daly’s “The Masked Rider,” Leonard Sansone’s “Mystico,” and Leon Morey’s “G-Man Dalton” were exactly as uninspired as they sound. The title’s only highlight was “Captain Future,” a super-hero strip unrelated to the space opera character starring in the Pines magazine of the same name. This Future was a scientist, Dr. Andrew Bryant, who gained electrical powers in one of those fortuitous lab accidents that were a cornerstone of 1940 comics. His “costume” was not unlike Dr. Strange’s but substituted blue shorts for Doc’s blue jodhpurs. Ned Pines’ comics were as wellwritten and well-drawn as many of their competitors but suffered in comparison nonetheless. In sticking so closely to their pulp roots—none of their heroic characters, arguably excepting The Woman in Red, wore anything resembling a Supermanstyle costume, and their adventures

Chicago-based Sun Publications was dying. Its line of pulps had largely collapsed by 1940, including The Golden Fleece, a highly regarded title devoted to historical fiction that had counted Robert E. Howard among its contributors. It is hard to fathom what publisher Arthur Gontier, Sr. and editor Bill O’Donnell had in mind with the release of Sun Fun Komiks in 1939. It wasn’t exactly a hit: copies are so rare that only eight pages of the one-shot have surfaced to date, just enough to suggest the book was intended as a burlesque of the comic book fad. The duo tried again the following year with the more conventional Colossus Comics #1 (March 1940). Its cover feature was “Colossus A.D. 2640,” a space opera by scripter Mark Reinsberg and artist Bernie Wiest. An incorrectly mixed physique enhancement formula transformed puny Richard Zenith into a megalomaniacal 2,000-foot-tall titan just as a fleet of “plantaliens” invaded the solar system. Like every other series in Colossus, it was terribly drawn, with crude figures awkwardly posed in panels mostly devoid of backgrounds. Wiest also illustrated several other strips, including “Lum Sims,” a ludicrously bad Lil Abner knock-off, and “Ruggey,” about a dimwitted cab driver chosen

by billionaire Phil Thelucre to serve as puppet king of the newly purchased nation of Bulmania. It had a few funny bits, which gave it a leg up on its companions. The only feature to show any genuine potential was “Educational Adventures of PandaLin,” in which father-and-son pandas visited the Taj Mahal aboard a flying bamboo mat, but it suffered from the same amateurish art that marked the entire book. Colossus Comics sank without a trace, ending Gontier’s hopes of breathing new life into his moribund company. Two final publishers were already in business at the start of 1940, both issuing their first comics with December 1939 cover dates. Perhaps inspired by his former coworker M. C. Gaines’ success with All-American Comics, Lev Gleason gave up his position with United Feature Syndicate to start his own line of comic books. Partnered with pulp publishers Arthur Bernhard and Morris Latzen, both former employees of the defunct Eastern News, he launched a single title, Silver Streak Comics, under their Your Guide Publications imprint. Edited by Jack Cole,

The influence of editor Jack Cole was felt throughout early issues of Silver Streak Comics. Cole not only created “The Claw,” one of the 1940s’ most unforgettable super-villains, but redesigned eponymous star, “Silver Streak.” He would soon do the same for new character “Daredevil.” TM and © respective copyright owners.

The quiet approach of the comics produced through Majestic Studios worked against them on newsstands crowded with the costumed super-heroes readers were demanding. TM and © respective copyright owners.

it was likely produced by moonlighting staff from the big packagers, which may account in part for its bimonthly status. It was Cole who provided the series’ first cover feature. “The Claw” was the ultimate in “yellow peril” menaces (a genre all too common in that period that has thankfully disappeared from contemporary pop culture): a grotesque Asian sorcerer bent on world conquest. Able to grow to colossal proportions and with an army of dream-controlled slaves at his bidding, he found a formidable foe in stalwart American “chemistadventurer” Jerry Morris. Spectacular scenes of the Godzilla-sized Claw laying waste to an entire Allied fleet ended with the mad mastermind’s apparent death at the end of the second episode (January). That was also the last issue to feature a handful of overfamiliar genre series and, alas, the contemporary children’s fantasy “Red Reeves the Boy Magician,” the story of a plucky kid from the slums who improves the lives of everyone around him with the aid of a genie. Beautifully drawn by Harold DeLay, it had provided a welcome change from the blood-and-thunder vibe of the rest of the book’s features. The March issue (#3) introduced the title’s namesake. As created by Jack Binder, “Silver Streak” was an anonymous taxi driver hired to helm the futuristic race car of the same name.

Killed in a crash, the cabbie was resurrected with the power of superspeed through an ill-defined feat of magic. Next issue Jack Cole took over and the strip shifted into high gear. Trading in his racing slicks for a pair of purple-and-green tights between issues, the Streak became one of the most entertaining super-heroes of his day, thanks largely to the same breezy dialogue, eccentric characters, and lushly-inked cartooning that made Cole’s later “Plastic Man” a hit. The character who became Gleason’s best known and longest running costumed hero debuted in Silver Streak #6 (an issue that also heralded the return of The Claw, resurrected by faithful cultists). “The Daredevil, Master of Courage” was Bart Hill, rendered mute by the trauma of being tortured as a boy with a hot iron that left a boomerang-shaped scar on his chest. Now a master of the weapon whose brand he bore, the silent Daredevil was already famous at the time the series began. “The President of the U.S. praised him,” the narrator told us, “for his daring and bravery in rounding up a vicious gang of criminals.” His costume was a big part of his appeal: a full body suit divided down its vertical axis, blue on the left, yellow on the right, with a totally impractical spiked belt that looked totally bad ass just the same. The first episode, drawn by Jack Binder and written by Donato “Don” Rico, was all that saw 50

print with a cover date of 1940. With three strong leads, Silver Streak should have been able to hold its own. The problem may not have been sales. The inclusion of monotone sections in every issue suggest money was tight. There was little indication that in a few years one of Lev Gleason’s titles would be among the bestselling—and most controversial—comic books in America. If beautiful art and a more muted approach to super-heroes were a guarantor of sales success, Worth Publishing might have competed on an equal footing with DC or Dell. Financed by Irving Manheimer and managed by PDC executive Leo Greenwald, the company actually published under a different corporate identity for each of its three titles, only one of which took its name from the man who was the heart and soul of the line. Worth B. Carnahan was a commercial artist affiliated with Majestic Studios, an art service run by Adolphe Barreaux specializing in pulp illustrations. (In another example of the complicated skein of business connections in the pulp and comics industries, Barreaux had originally been set up in business by Harry Donenfeld to provide art for his “spicy” pulps.) According to Carnahan’s daughter, it was he and fellow Majestic staffer Charles M. Quinlan who first had the idea of starting a comics line, convincing Barreaux to

alternately friendly and hostile relationship with Lt. Brad Fletcher, USN. “Jungleman” was a white savage prowling the jungles of French Indochina accompanied by an albino tiger. Both strips featured some of the best comic art then in print, Parkhurst’s underwater and jungle scenes alike oozing atmosphere aided by coloring far above the norm for the period. Turner’s contribution was “Liberty Lads,” with art by Henry Kiefer. A boys’ adventure series set during the American Revolution, it preceded Esther Forbes’ Newbury Prize-winning novel Johnny Tremaine by three years. Best friends Tom, nephew of a Tory landowner, and Will, a tavernkeeper’s son, played active roles in the fight for independence, crossing paths with Lafayette, John Hancock, and George Washington in the process. Turner’s “Johnny Fox,” introduced in issue #6 (April), was a Native American private investigator who could turn invisible. Drawn by unknown hands, the series stripped its star of his powers in issue #9 (July), continuing on as a straight detective strip, a rare reversal of the prevailing trend. Worth’s second title, Cyclone Comics, was Charles Quinlan’s baby, his byline gracing four of its strips. His “Volton the Human Generator” starred Guy Newton, a scientist who gave himself electrical super-powers. Naturally, he used this gift to fight crime. That he chose to do so wearing a sweater vest emblazoned with a big red V is what made Volton unique: he was the only super-hero to embrace the preppy look. “Tornado Tom” was less fashionable, content with rumpled street clothes. Struck with amnesia after being swept up in a twister, the title character discovered he had gained superhuman strength and speed. His quest for his true identity and the trouble he found on the way were the throughline of the series, credits for which are unknown. Equally anonymous talents were behind two fine animal strips, “The Adventures of Jag” and “Koroo the Black Lion,” which later turned Koroo into the sidekick of a Sheena-style jungle goddess. Other notable features were “King Anthony,” a Ruritanian fantasy drawn by George Papp, and “Robo of the Little People,” about a race of microscopic aliens who construct a man-sized robot with which to interact with the people of Earth.

A last-minute infusion of Joe Simon-style super-heroics could not save the Worth Publishing line from extinction, but its characters were to live on under new management. TM and © respective copyright owners.

approach Manheimer. The duo between them wrote and/ or drew much of the material appearing in their titles. Champion Comics debuted with issue #2 (December 1939). The first issue, which was likely an ashcan, is long since lost. Four of its initial strips endured to the end, three scripted by Carnahan, one by Robert Turner, a freelancer who had ghostwritten Red Ryder earlier in the year and later found success as a paperback novelist and TV writer. Drawn by Adolphe Barreaux, Carnahan’s saga of a college athlete known only as “The Champ” began as just another round of the old “crooked gamblers try to fix the big game” chestnut until revealing that the boy owed his physical and mental prowess to the tonic given him every day for seven years by the kindly scientist who raised him. The formula was thereafter the MacGuffin driving the strip, as The Champ sought to avenge Dr. Marlin’s murder and keep his discovery out of the clutches of The Yellow Spider, dwarfish spymaster for a certain Asian aggressor nation (the name “Japan” was carefully avoided). Inspired in part by Philip Wylie’s 1930 novel Gladiator, which had also been a major influence on Siegel and Shuster, the series never put its hero in a costume and never allowed his superior agility and stamina to cross the line into superhuman. Two other Carnahan-scripted series were illustrated by Harry L. Parkhurst. “Neptina, Queen of the Deep” concerned a female Sub-Mariner type and her

Carnahan and Quinlan shared responsibility for the final Worth series, which relied a little too much on formulaic genre strips. The best strip in O. K. Comics was writer Karin O’Dowd and artist Ray Willner’s “The Phantom Knight,” about the ghost of a cruel Crusader forced to wander the living world until he had atoned for every sin he committed in life, but Carnahan’s “The Further Adventures of Ulysses,” an intelligent sequel to Homer’s The Odyssey, ran a close second. The best thing about Champion, Cyclone, and O. K. was that they neither looked nor read like the majority of their contemporaries. This was also the worst thing about them, from a business standpoint at least. Gorgeous as so much of the art was, it was also constricted by a rigid four-tier, eight-panel page layout. The line’s super-heroes didn’t wear costumes and were usually the only fantastical element in their stories. A Joe Simon cover on Champion Comics #8 featuring an honest-to-goodness costumed hero indicated that someone—probably Leo Greenwald, 51

who had rented studio space to Simon earlier in the year—decided a more dynamic approach was needed. Inside, “Duke O’Dowd,” previously devoted to an American serving with Britain’s Congo Lancers, transformed its lead into a super-hero called “The Human Meteor” courtesy of the advanced science of a lost civilization. It was radical surgery and it did no good. O. K. Comics was cancelled after only two issues, Cyclone Comics after five. Enter Alfred Harvey. Keen on starting his own comics brand, he persuaded Irving Manheimer to finance his purchase of Champion Comics and its inventory as a jumping-on point. Rechristening it Champ Comics with the eleventh issue and boosting the visibility of Duke O’Dowd by adding an uncostumed boy sidekick, the publishing house later known as Harvey Comics was born.

The Legacy of Captain Billy He was a former artillery captain from Robbinsdale, Minnesota, who parlayed an off-color humor magazine into a publishing empire. The man was Wilford H. Fawcett, the magazine was Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang, and the empire was Fawcett Publications. By the end of the 1930s, his roster of magazines included Motion Picture, True Confessions, and Mechanix Illustrated. It was the youngest of his four sons, circulation manager Roscoe Fawcett, who pushed for the expansion into comic books. In a 1997 interview for Fawcett Collectors of America, Roscoe recalled: “I got us into the comic book business. The surveys showed the greatest comic book readership The auspicious start of what eventually became the first super-hero franchise in comic books, Whiz Comics #2 was published with the reluctant blessing of Fawcett Publications founder was among 10- to 12 year-old boys. Wilford H. Fawcett just months before his death. TM and © DC Comics. I said, “Give me a Superman, but have his other identity be a 10- to wrath of DC’s Donenfeld and Liebowitz. But the Fawcetts 12-year old boy instead of a grown man.” I put our weren’t Victor Fox and their crimson-clad crusader was no art director Al Allard in charge of coordinating the Wonder Man. project with some assistance from editorial direcHe was an orphaned newsboy, living on the streets after tor Ralph Daigh.” (Hamerlinck 11) being robbed of home and inheritance by a greedy guardAllard and Daigh assigned the actual creative work to a ian, who was chosen by an ancient wizard to serve as his pair of longtime Fawcett staffers, editor William “Bill” superhuman champion. The boy was Billy Batson, the Parker and artist Clarence “C.C.” Beck. Their efforts hit the wizard was Shazam, and the champion was The World’s newsstands in the form of Whiz Comics #2, cover dated Mightiest Mortal, “Captain Marvel.” Whenever he spoke February 1940 (an ashcan edition had served as issue #1 the wizard’s name—an anagram signifying the wisdom after two previous titles—Flash Comics and Thrill Comof Solomon, the strength of Hercules, the stamina of Atlas, ics—were rejected by the Trademark Office as already regthe power of Zeus, the invulnerability of Achilles, and the istered). What they delivered soon earned them the legal speed of Mercury—a bolt of magic lightning transformed 52

Beck’s clean, open style illustrated them with a diagrammatic clarity understandable to even the youngest reader. With a poor but virtuous boy protagonist straight out of Horatio Alger cast in the Lucky Hans role in a modern-day fairy tale, combined with the simplicity of a memorable magic word that in essence allowed Billy to serve as his own genie, the strip had an entirely different look and feel from the sci fi origin and pulpish ambience of Superman. That didn’t stop Detective Comics’ lawyers from filing suit on the familiar charge of copyright infringement. The legal battle would continue for over a decade.

Even the youngest reader could follow C.C. Beck’s storytelling, as in this first confrontation between Captain Marvel and his arch-enemy, Sivana. TM and © DC Comics.

Billy into the mighty Marvel (or Marvel to Billy should the Captain be the one to shout “Shazam!”). His role in the spoiling of a criminal genius’ scheme to blackmail the nation with his “radio-silencer” won Billy a job as a radio reporter for WHIZ. The station’s president, Sterling Morris, made up the entire supporting cast throughout 1940, giving little hint of

the roster of unforgettable characters the strip featured in its 13-year run. From the very first episode, Captain Marvel stood apart from his superheroic brethren. Parker’s scripts were a breath of fresh air, providing plenty of excitement and action without taking themselves or the genre altogether seriously, while

Much of the good captain’s time in his first year was spent thwarting the plans of his arch-foe, an ugly little mad scientist in a pharmacist’s jacket named Sivana, and his ally, the toothsome Beautia, Empress of Venus. Other foes faced in 1940 included the Fagin-like Master Mind, modern day pirates Captain Death and Professor Skull, a tribe of superhuman cavemen frozen in the Arctic since the Pleistoscene Era, and Dr. Allirog, a gorilla with human-level intelligence. Allirog was featured in Special Edition Comics, a one-shot issued in the summer as a test balloon for a solo title starring the hero Sivana soon nicknamed “The Big Red Cheese.”

Fawcett experimented with alternate formats in 1940, as with the bi-weekly 36-page Nickel Comics and the oversized Master Comics. TM and © respective copyright

owners.

Parker and Beck were also responsible for two other features in that first Whiz. “Ibis the Invincible” starred Prince Amentep, a hero of ancient Egypt resurrected along with his lover, the beautiful Princess Taia, in the 20th Century. Armed with the enchanted Ibisstick and dressed in formal evening wear and a red turban, Ibis looked at first glance like just another imitation Mandrake. He wasn’t. Zealous as Ibis was about combatting evil, he was not above using his magic to create a magnificent palace amidst the ruins of Thebes for himself and his diaphanously attired sweetie. Several episodes found a powerless Ibis and Taia on the trail of the missing Ibisstick as it passed from owner to owner with increasingly disastrous results. The couple served briefly as foster parents to Tommy, a teen they rescued from his abusive drunk of a guardian during their quest, until they shipped him off to a military academy. Beck penciled the first five installments before handing it over to Peter “Pete” Costanza, his frequent inker. “Spy Smasher” was a masked aviator, his identity unrevealed in the 1940 episodes (though even the slowest reader could have guessed it was handsome Alan Armstrong, the only possible candidate in the tiny cast). The strip had the feel of a Saturday matinee serial, as Spy Smasher clashed issue after issue with The Mask, “master mind of America’s most dangerous spy ring,” and his apparently endless supply of agents. Beck soon turned the art over to others who maintained its graphic simplicity. Pete Costanza was Bill Parker’s collaborator on “Golden Arrow,” a western that started out set in the present but was moved to the 1880s in the second episode. Roger Parsons was a master archer who used his skill to oppose the machinations of Brand Braddock, the unscrupulous munitions magnate turned cattle baron who killed Roger’s parents, and his vile sons, Bronk and Brute. Whiz #7 (August) introduced “Dr. Voodoo,” an American physician working among the Amazonian Indians of Brazil. Written and drawn by John Hampton, it wasn’t half bad as jungle strips go. Its importance, however, stems from the artist who began illustrating Hampton’s scripts with issue #9, an artist who quickly became one of the

Buck Jones was the first cinematic cowboy to license his likeness for use in comic books.

brightest stars in the Fawcett cosmos: Emmanuel “Mac” Raboy. Three more titles hit the stands in the two months following Whiz #2, two of them in alternate formats. No other publisher experimented with the medium in the 1940s as did the folks at Fawcett. Master Comics was an oversized (10½” x 14”) 52-pager priced at 15¢. What readers got for their money was an assortment of features packaged by the Chesler studio. “Master Man” was the cover feature for the first six issues. With powers derived from a vitamin compound given him in boyhood by a “wise old doctor,” the aloof hero watched the world from his isolated mountaintop castle, sallying forth at the first sign of his kind of trouble. The art was by Newt Alfred; no writing credits are known. Premiering alongside Master Man were the de rigeur magician (“El Carim, Master of Magic”), jungle strip (“The White Rajah”), two-fisted sailor (“Shipwreck Roberts”), and masked detective (“The Devil’s Dagger”), all of them competently executed, none displaying the imagination or spirit of the strips in Whiz. With issue #4 (July), the title was downsized, now offering 36 of its large pages for a dime. Master’s horse opera, “Frontier Marshal,” dropped its lead, collegeeducated lawman Ben Crane, in issue #6 (September) for movie cowboy Buck Jones, the first of many western stars to license their names and images to comic books. 54

Slam-Bang Comics was also packaged by Chesler and had a similar air of dreary sameness as that hanging over the Master Comics lineup. Its lead feature, “Diamond Jack,” starred a colorless nonentity in a business suit armed with a magic ring. That he was the title’s most exciting character did not bode well. Not that there weren’t some good reads. “Lee Granger, Jungle King,” by Chesler’s managing editor Manly Wade Wellman and Jack Binder, included a talking lion named Eric, given human-level intelligence and the power of speech by the strip’s scientist-adventurer namesake. But something was missing. Neither book had the magic, for lack of a better word, of Whiz Comics. The third title, Nickel Comics, came closest. It came out every two weeks, though at half the length of a standard 68-pager it required no more time or manpower than a monthly. Whiz’s Bill Parker was on hand, lending his light touch to another superhero strip. “Bulletman” was the name adopted by police scientist Jim Barr after he tested his chemical “crime-cure” on himself. The formula permanently transformed the unprepossessing science nerd into a physically perfect powerhouse. Able to fly and repel bullets thanks to the “gravity helmet” from which he took his action name, Bulletman spent the first three episodes taking on Blackmask, a mysterious crimelord, then settled into a familiar crime-and-corruption groove. Parker also wrote “The Jungle Twins.” The Dale brothers were separated in infancy, one raised a child of privilege in America, the other as the lord of a hidden African jungle known, with good cause, as the Valley of Giants. After several issues adventuring in ERB territory accompanied by the pygmy Dagoo, whose magic pipes let him command wildlife, Bill and Steve (a.k.a. Sti-Vah) sailed for America, the story thereafter focusing on Sti-Vah/Steve’s acclimation to civilization. Detective Comics veteran Sven Elven illustrated. “Cap’t Venture and the Planet Princess,” an interplanetary romance distinguished by lovely art from Rafael Astarita, and “The Red Gaucho,” starring the masked champion of fictional Sante Palos, were above-average contributions from the Chesler shop added to

about us going into the comic book market… but he wasn’t opposed, either.” (Hamerlinck 11) Whatever his ambivalence at the time, surely Wilford H. Fawcett would have been thrilled with the success of his company’s comics and proud that its greatest creation, a character named in part after him, has endured for more than 75 years, conquering the realms of movie serials, television, and animated cartoons along the way, and contributing that unforgettable magic word to the American lexicon. As legacies go, that ain’t half bad.

Everybody Wants to Get into the Act Ten other publishers entered the field in Fawcett’s wake in 1940. Some in time became major players, with comics running well into the next decade. Others dropped out, then returned stronger the following year. Two published just three issues between them before vanishing into obscurity. The Curtis Publishing Company, publishers of such bastions of respectability as The Saturday Evening Post and The Ladies’ Home Journal, commissioned Funnies, Inc., to produce comics for their Novelty Press imprint. Its first title, Target Comics, showcased the studio’s top talents. Bill Everett’s contemporary western “Bull’s-Eye Bill” was the lead feature for one whole issue before being displaced by “Manowar the White Streak,” Target’s requisite superhero. The Streak was “the last of the servants of a dead civilization dedicated to mete out justice to those murderers who prey on the weak—the war-mongers!” Another of Carl Burgos’ android heroes, Manowar was prone to giving speeches about the evils of armed aggression and war profiteering while blowing away the bad guys with the deadly lightning-like energy from his eyes. In the November issue (#10), White Streak underwent plastic surgery, his inhuman, mask-like features altered to those of a normal man, in order to infiltrate the subversive Green Tie Society. That same issue introduced a new hero, “The Target,” with one of the best opening sequences of the year. Waging psychological warfare against the city’s criminal element, the title character placed full-page ads in the local newspapers and broke in on radio broadcasts and telephone lines for weeks, warning them of their coming downfall. His actual

Jack Kirby contributed the art for the pilot episode of “Mr. Scarlet,” cover feature of the new quarterly Wow Comics. TM and © DC Comics.

the book with its fourth issue, cover dated June 28. With none of the new titles selling anything like Whiz, Fawcett decided to cut its losses, combining the three books’ best features into a single title. Slam-Bang and Nickel Comics were cancelled, Nickel’s Bulletman, White Rajah, Red Gaucho, and Cap’t Venture joining Slam-Bang’s Lee Granger, the generic “Zoro the Mystery Man,” the aviation strip “The War Hawk,” and “Mark Swift and the Time Retarder” in the pages of Master Comics #7 (October), the first published in the standard format. Master Man was kaput, but The Devil’s Dagger, Buck Jones, and El Carim retained their slots in the title. It was a setback for Fawcett but not a serious one. Toward year’s end a quarterly, Wow Comics, was added to the schedule, its back pages filled with “Diamond Jack” and other refugees from Slam-Bang and Nickel who hadn’t made it into the revamped Master, while up front spotlighted “Mr. Scarlet,” another frustrated district attorney turned costumed vigilante, this one created by Jack Kirby and writer France “Ed” Herron. Herron stepped into the editor’s position in October, when National Guardsman Bill Parker was called up to active duty. And what of Captain Billy? Roscoe Fawcett admitted: “My father… lived long enough to only see the first issue of Whiz Comics. I don’t think it meant much to him. As a matter of fact, he wasn’t too thrilled

Novelty Press paid Funnies, Inc. top dollar for the contents of its small line of comic books. TM and © respective copyright owner.

appearance was a touch anticlimactic, as he was just another man in tights (bulletproof tights, to be fair) seeking vengeance for the death of a family member, in this case a district attorney brother. Creators Bob and Richard “Dick” Wood livened things up the following issue by giving their new hero not one, but two costumed kid sidekicks, The Targeteers. Two Target strips stand out for their art. “Calling 2-R” was an adventure strip set in a technologically advanced Boys’ Town, breathtakingly illustrated by Alonzo Vincent, a pseudonym for pulp artist Jack Warren. The highlight of the book was Basil Wolverton’s “Spacehawk,” a science fiction series in which the artist’s gift for creating hideous monsters and exotic backgrounds could find expression. Joe Simon was the talent behind “Blue Bolt,” a title that spotlighted Fans of great art had plenty of styles to choose from in Novelty Press comics, from the art deco fantasies of Jack not only its eponymous star but sevWarren’s “Calling 2-R” to the sci-fi grotesqueries of Basil Wolverton’s “Spacehawk.” TM and © respective copyright owner. eral other super-heroes. When his airplane crashed after being struck hero and faithful steed alike enjoyed superhuman prowby lightning, Harvard football star Fred Parrish was given ess (superequine, in the case of Cloud) thanks to years of electrical superpowers by Dr. Berkoff to serve as his chamexposure to the strange atmosphere of Lost Canyon; and pion against The Green Sorceress, beautiful emeraldMalcolm Kildale’s “Sergeant Spook,” the tale of a patrolskinned dictator of a hidden kingdom somewhere in the man killed in a laboratory accident continuing to walk his mountains of North America. This was the first comic beat as a ghost. After a few issues of otherwise dull crime strip on which Simon and Jack Kirby teamed, early verstories enlivened by the often comic reactions of crooks sions of Kirby’s fantasy cityscapes and massive yet elegant to their unseen nemesis, Kildale began to weave a clever machinery appearing with the second issue. Featured mythos around Spook. After tangling with the ghosts of alongside the “human lightning bolt” were Robert “Bob” Jesse James and his gang of ectoplasmic train robbers the Davis’ “Dick Cole, Wonder Boy,” a superhuman military previous issue, the spectral cop discovered Ghost Town, school cadet à la M.L.J.’s Westpointer; “The White Rider a community of the dead presided over by George Washand His Superhorse,” an oddball western where dauntless ington, in Blue Bolt #6 (November). “Old Cap Hawkins’ Tales” was another Henry Kiefer feature, this one presenting true tales of maritime lore narrated by the grizzled old tar of the title. Begun by Larry Antonette, “The Sub-Zero Man” starred a Venusian explorer who crashlanded on Earth after the frozen gases of a comet gave him uncontrollable ice powers. Pursued by the military as a menace, the stranded spaceman nonetheless tried to harness his unwanted abilities for good. By the fourth episode, Sub-Zero had his powers under control and donned the obligatory costume. Bill Everett took over with the October issue (#5), lending the character some of the panache of his “Sub-Mariner.”

“Blue Bolt” was the first feature to showcase Jack Kirby’s flair for designing futuristic city skylines. TM and © respective copyright owner.

Debuting the same month as Whiz #2 and Target #1 was the first issue of Miracle Comics. Hillman Periodicals,

founded in 1938 by former book publisher and fine art collector Alex L. Hillman, was home to a line of romance and true crime pulps. Miracle and its sister title, Rocket Comics, were edited by Anatole Feldman but packaged, at least in part, by a small studio run by Ed Kressy. Although a handful of the books’ creative talents have been identified by name, most credits remain a mystery. Miracle’s lead feature was “The Sky Wizard,” scripted by pulp writer Emile C. Schurmacher and drawn by Kressy. Sky Wizard was “the world’s greatest scientist,” an inventive genius who ran around in super-hero garb for no clear reason. Aided by Kee-Shan, his faithful Pathan bodyguard, and teenage Pat Dale and her twin brother Jerry, the hero employed rocket cars, paralyzer guns, and the amazing Sky Island, his airship headquarters, to oppose the designs of the sinister Unholy One and his hirelings. Schurmacher and Kressy also worked on “K-7,” a spy strip adapting a shortlived radio program. “Dash Dixon, Man of Might” was the title’s other super-hero, a police detective given superhuman strength and a metallic uniform by the brilliant scientist he was guarding. Rocket headlined “Rocket Riley,” a badly drawn Buck Rogers knock-off. Its pair of costumeless super-heroes, “Red Roberts the Electro Man” and “The Defender,” the former an innocent man sent to the electric chair who gained super-powers instead of dying, the latter a disfigured crimefighter able to mold the plastic mask he wore into any face he chose, were equally uninspired. Both titles ran three issues each then vanished from the newsstands. Hillman would try again the following year. Harry “A” Chesler and crew provided the contents for the new comic book line from Street & Smith Publications, one of the earliest and most successful pulp publishers. Its pilot title, Shadow Comics, featured the most popular characters from S&S’s forty-year history. Walter Gibson, the professional stage magician who wrote the majority of the Shadow pulps under the house name Maxwell Grant, lent his talents to the comic book adaptation, ably aided by artist Vernon Greene. The seven installments published with 1940

book, which featured true sports stories, beyond photos of its covers.

Pulp giant Street & Smith had decades’ worth of characters to draw on for its nascent comics empire. The Shadow TM and © Condé Nast.

cover dates adapted stories from the pulps, their plots stripped to the bone to fit into eight pages. These radical abridgements necessitated a drastic reduction in The Shadow’s large supporting cast, leaving only aide/ girlfriend Margot Lane and policeman Inspector Cardona. A similar approach to “Doc Savage” reduced the mighty Man of Bronze’s entourage from five sidekicks down to two, the apelike chemist Monk Mayfair and the clotheshorse lawyer Ham Brooks. Writing credits for the strip are unknown; Savage creator Lester “Kenneth Robeson” Dent apparently had no hand in it. Henry Kiefer supplied the art, continuing with the series when it graduated to its own title in April. Other Street & Smith stars appearing in Shadow Comics included “The Avenger,” aviator “Bill Barnes,” “Iron Munro,” sci fi novelist Otto Binder and artist E. C. Stoner’s adaptation of John W. Campbell’s Arn Munro stories, and two heroes dating back to the dime novel era, cleancut collegian “Frank Merriwell” and detective “Nick Carter.” The company delved into more typical super-hero fare late in the year, adding “The Hooded Wasp,” a generic mysteryman, to Shadow Comics and “Ajax the Sun Man,” about a being from the sun’s core who came to Earth to counter evil with his solar powers, to Doc Savage Comics. A third title, Sport Comics, appeared in August. Little is known about the early issues of the 57

Theodore “Teddy” Epstein and Milton M. “Mike” Blier, co-owners of Crestwood Publications, lacked the reservoir of ready-made characters Street & Smith could draw on to populate their entry in the comic book sweepstakes. Published under the corporate identity of Feature Publications, Prize Comics was edited by Reese Rosenfeld under the pseudonym John Reese. It featured a standard assortment of genre series packaged by moonlighting studio staffers from EisnerIger and Funnies, Inc., headlined by “Power Nelson, Man of the Future.” Set in the year 1982 after America, “exhausted by the Second and Third World Wars, has been conquered by a Mongol horde,” the strip followed the efforts of its genetically engineered hero to overthrow the oppressive rule of Emperor Seng the First. Combining elements of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, “Power Nelson” stood on its own as an exciting super-hero series with appealingly stylized art by future “Batman” mainstay Richard “Dick” Sprang. Further back in the book were Grieg Chapian’s “Jupiter the Master Magician,” who juggled being an alien, a magician, and a costumed crimefighter all at once, and “K the Unknown,” a lackluster pledge in the “bored-and-boring-playboybecomes-mystery-man-wanted-bypolice-and-underworld” fraternity. With the second issue, K got a makeover, becoming “The Black Owl,” still high society wastrel Doug Danville but at least wearing more stylish duds. After six issues, Prize Comics disappeared from the newsstands, not returning until mid-autumn. Several changes had been made: “Power Nelson” was now set in the present, “Jupiter” was gone, and “The Black Owl” was in the hands of Simon & Kirby, who put the Owl in tights and ratcheted up the action. Three new series debuted in Prize #7 (December), one of them destined to become a cornerstone of Crestwood’s comics line. Ben Thompson’s “Doctor Frost” was an orphan raised by an Alaskan scientist who taught him the secret of generating ice. A kind of negative Human Torch, Frost’s adventures were nicely drawn but unmemorable. “The Green Lama” had started life as the star of

Big Shot #3. Ogden Whitney’s attractive art was the strip’s biggest asset: not only was The Wing a plausible design (as opposed to, say, Spy Smasher’s ungainly Gyrosub) but Skyman’s costume was one of the era’s best. Markey and McAdams had to be pleased at the polish Sullivan gave Columbia’s initial offering. Whether readers agreed enough to justify adding more titles remained to be seen.

After its first six issues failed to catch fire with audiences, Prize Comics upped its game with new features like Dick Briefer’s modernized “Frankenstein” and Simon & Kirby’s revamped “Black Owl.” TM and © respective copyright owners.

Double Detective, a pulp title published by the Frank Munsey Company that had been cancelled just a month or two earlier. Like so many other comic book heroes, American-born Jethro Dumont studied magic in Tibet before unleashing his mystical might on crime in his homeland. Adapted by creator Kendall Foster “Ken” Crossen, it was handsomely illustrated by Mac Raboy. The third new feature was “Frankenstein,” a modernization of the Mary Shelley classic by Dick Briefer using the groanworthy pen name Frank N. Stein. Victor Frankenstein, now an American living in contemporary New York, created a hideous monster from the sewntogether pieces of corpses. Though drawn to suggest the classic Boris Karloff version, the creature owed more to the Shelley novel than to the Universal film series: he was intelligent, articulate, and obsessed with avenging himself on his creator. Briefer’s take on the horror classic, highlighted by a showdown between scientist and experiment atop the Statue of Liberty in the premiere episode, was refreshingly idiosyncratic. After selling their shares of Comics Favorites, Inc., to Busy Arnold and the Cowles Brothers, syndicate executives Frank J. Markey and McNaught’s Charles V. McAdams decided to go

into business for themselves as the Columbia Comic Corporation. They lured Detective editor Vin Sullivan away from Donenfeld and Liebowitz with a higher salary and a promise of creative autonomy. Sullivan brought artists Fred Guardineer and Ogden Whitney with him, also convincing DC/AA workhorse Gardner Fox to add to his already impressive load. The result was Big Shot Comics, its first issue cover-dated May. Along with “Joe Palooka,” “Charlie Chan,” “Dixie Dugan,” and “The Bungle Family,” Big Shot featured six new series scripted by Fox, three starring super-heroes. “Marvelo, Monarch of Magicians” was a revamped version of Fox and Guardineer’s “Zatara” with a single magic word, “kamora,” instead of spells spoken in reverse. Drawn by Mart Bailey, “The Face” was the alter ego of radio commentator Tony Trent, his handsome features hidden behind a grotesque green fright mask while he dealt with racketeers the law couldn’t or wouldn’t touch. But it was Fox and Whitney’s “Skyman” who deservedly landed the cover. A masked aviator piloting a technologically advanced plane of his own design called “The Wing” capable of hovering in mid-air, he conducted a one-man war on spies and saboteurs. His true identity of playboy Allan Turner was revealed in 58

A. A. Wyn nee Aaron Weinstein had spent the 1930s working his way up the pulp industry ladder until, by 1940, he was the publisher of Ace Magazines. Seeing that comic books were adding to the bottom line of many of his competitors, Wyn chose to try his luck with two titles, SureFire Comics and Super-Mystery Comics. The story behind these titles is murky at best. Supposedly Wyn hired artist Patrick “Pat” Lamar to package these books then fired him after a few months, refusing to pay Lamar for his work, forcing Lamar to sue. Harry Lucey, the artist on both titles’ super-heroic cover features, is known to have been operating a small studio at the time, so it is possible that he ended up with some sort of editorial responsibility. Only a handful of creators apart from Lucey have been identified to date, most minor players with ties to the major services, but whether they worked through Lamar, Lucey, or directly for Ace is anybody’s guess. Super-Mystery and Sure-Fire were hardly innovative, their backup features the same spies, Mounties, aviators, and private eyes that were a dime a dozen on the newsstands. The books’ costumed heroes, several patterned after characters from Ace’s pulps, were a mixed bag. Sure-Fire’s “The Raven,” a police detective moonlighting as a masked vigilante based on pulp hero The Moon Man, was hampered by dull scripts and a terrible costume design. The book’s lead was Lucey and Robert Turner’s “Flash Lightning,” loosely based on Captain Hazzard. Taught “all the ancient and modern sciences” by “the ageless Old Man of the Pyramids” and armed with the Amulet of Annihilation, Robert Morgan’s mission was to use his super-strength and electrical powers to “stop the spread of evil.” He proved popular enough to warrant changing the title of Sure-Fire to Lightning

Comics with the December issue (#4). The same team was responsible for “Magno the Magnetic Man” (no connection to the Quality hero named “Magno”). With no civilian identity, no origin, no headquarters or vehicle, nothing but his control of magnetism to distinguish him, Magno was at first as generic as they came. In SuperMystery #4 (November), he acquired a sidekick, the younger brother of beautiful private eye Carole Landis, and discovered he could temporarily give the boy his own magnetic powers. The following issue, the Magnetic Man and the identically costumed Davey had their first encounter with arch-enemy The Clown, “super-agile and covered with degravitating solvent” which allowed the mad killer to travel in enormous leaps. Magno’s co-star in that title, “Vulcan the Volcanic Man,” was a hybrid of Timely’s Human Torch and Sub-Mariner without the visual power of the one or the anti-hero attitude of the other. The Ralston-Purina Company, whose products included Shredded Ralston (the breakfast cereal we know today as Wheat Chex) and Purina Dog Chow, was the sponsor of the Tom Mix Ralston Straight Shooters radio series, starring Russell Thorson as the famed movie cowboy last seen on screen in 1935. As a promotional tie-in, the firm commissioned a 36-page comic book readers could receive in exchange for two box tops from any Ralston cereal. Ads for Tom Mix #1, the first of twelve issues offered between 1940 and ‘42, began airing in September, less than a month before the real Mix died in an automobile accident. Edited and primarily written by Steve Schendel with art by Fred Meagher, Charles Biro, and August Froelich, the giveaway included the children’s fantasy “Jane of Dream Castle,” “The Fumble Family,” and a selection of westernthemed fillers in addition to the fictional adventures of Tom and Tony, his famed “wonder horse.” Fox advertising manager Bob Farrell also owned an interest in Elliot Publishing. Its sole title, Double Comics, was a 128-pager consisting of two coverless comics from other publishers with a new, often misleading cover slapped on. These were not authorized reprints or reissues. The company bought up lots of “used”

comics—though whether this meant they were “remainders” (unsold comics returned coverless to the distributor for credit), leftover copies purchased direct from distributors, or a combination of the two is far from clear—and repackaged them, paying no royalties or licensing fees to the copyright owners. Every copy of Double Comics had a different combination of contents, frequently featuring titles from different publishers, having in common only the new cover. Three cover variants with a 1940 date have been identified, but there may be more. The original publishers understandably took umbrage at this. Fawcett, in particular, filed suit against Elliot for copyright infringement. It was an ignominious start for a company destined to midwife one of the era’s most prestigious yet most denigrated success stories.

episode turned into a graphic depiction of European colonialism and the evils of slavery before concluding with an intelligent debunking of the legend. Peter may also have been the man behind the Earl E. Byrd pseudonym gracing “Fuller Spunk and Company,” a very funny and slightly naughty comedy about a troupe of former vaudevillians who open a detective agency. The unfortunately named “Disco the Boy Detective” was further burdened with art that looked as if it had been crudely traced from photographs. Only the signature “Addy” was available to take the blame. The title’s cover star was “Hyper the Phenomenal,” a superhero strip by Reg Greenwald. Scientist Don-Vin a.k.a. The Hyper, armed with “magno-hydro gloves” and a “neogas helmet,” was the Secret Service’s secret weapon, sent to rescue beautiful agent 2Y from the clutches of a spy ring. It was a trainwreck of a strip with awkward pacing, execrable

Hyper Publications was and remains an enigma, its only title, Hyper-Mystery Comics, an anomaly. An anonymous editorial in its first issue claimed its contents were based on “the daring exploits and thrilling adventures of Major J. Smith Lawrence” who died of yellow fever in Central America, leaving behind “[an] original manuscript and his private diary, together with voluminous notes on his adventures.” Questionable backstory notwithstanding, nothing is known of the company’s owners or who edited or packaged the contents of either issue of Hyper-Mystery. The only name associated with the title is artist Harry George “H.G.” Peter, who reportedly drew two, possibly three, of its features. “The Diamond Smugglers” was a crime melodrama enlivened by a talent for caricature Peter’s later, better-known work only hints at, while “Commodore Ambord” started as the tale of three adventurous academics on the trail of a legendary monster haunting a tropical Promotional comics like Ralston-Purina’s Tom Mix, are among the island, then with the second rarest and most difficult for 21st-century collectors to track down. TM and © respective copyright owner

dler” to reveal the satanic features of Pluto beneath. It was no coincidence that so many of the movers and shakers of the industry, both executives and creators, were Jewish. Their justified fear for the fate of their European relatives at the hands of the genocidal Nazi regime was symbolically exorcised again and again through their comics. The many costumed vigilantes prowling the urban jungle reflected similar anxieties, albeit on a smaller scale. Corrupt politicians, unscrupulous businessmen, and murderous gangsters might grind the average schmoe under their thumbs in real life, but in comic books Batman or The Comet or The Face could impose justice upon them, often with extreme prejudice. Joe Simon and Jack Kirby were among the earliest comics creators to explicitly depict Adolf Hitler (or, as here, his fictional analogue) as demonic. TM and © respective copyright owner

dialogue, and a hero who spent the majority of two episodes standing in one spot with his arms outstretched, his magnetic powers keeping the steel walls of 2Y’s cell from closing in on her. Although Hyper-Mystery was one of the few anthology titles offering fewer and longer features per issue, the end product felt dated even by 1940 standards. Had it hit the stands just four years earlier, it might have had a chance.

George Kapitan and Harry Sahle, the Giant should have had a big future. Green Giant’s other notable feature was Henry Kiefer’s science fantasy “Dr. Nerod, Super Scientist,” in which the good doctor ended the war in Europe by using genetically modified tsetse flies to spread an instantaneous form of sleeping sickness behind enemy lines.

Which brings us finally to Green Giant Comics #1-and-only, the sole comic book released by the mysterious Pelican Publications. There seems to be no connection to either the New Orleans-based company of that name or to Pelican Books, the non-fiction arm of Penguin Books. Given that Green Giant’s contents were copyrighted by Funnies, Inc., it may have been an attempt by owner Lloyd Jacquet to start his own line but there is no evidence at present to support that theory. Whatever led to the company’s premature demise, it wasn’t the fault of the title’s cover feature. A stockbroker named Brentwood in his civilian identity, “The Green Giant” could grow to several stories in height with the aid of a device worn on his costume’s belt that also negated the gravitational stresses on his enlarged physique, a concession to real-world science most size-changing characters ignored. Created by the team of

Dr. Nerod’s imaginative solution to the problem of Axis aggression exemplified a theme running all through the comic books of 1940. It appeared again and again: as Superman delivering Hitler and Stalin to the World Court; as Samson and Strongman defeating entire armies with their bare hands; as The Black Ace and his brethren foiling the dastardly designs of hostile nations like Nazilia, Swastikia, Muscovia, Prussland, and Toran; as any number of wish-fulfillment fantasies disposing of the source of America’s collective anxiety in twelve action-packed pages. Outside the context of those military strips openly dealing with the war, Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union were rarely identified by name. Still there was little doubt where the creators stood: Simon and Kirby made the point inescapable in Red Raven Comics #1 when they stripped away the human facade of “Rudolph Hen-

Enemies Without and Within

The message was clear: the world had become so corrupt, so dangerous, that nothing less than divine intervention—literally, in some cases— could save us. Before the year was out, super-heroes and mystery-men had come to completely dominate the industry, commanding the covers and lead features of virtually every comic that included one. The appeal was visceral, not intellectual, morally black and white – the hero is always right and the villain deserves whatever grisly fate comes his way. It was a child’s solution to events beyond his or her understanding. Every publisher in 1940 operated under the assumption that children were their primary audience and had from the industry’s earliest days. Avuncular messages from editors that addressed that audience as “boys and girls,” advertising for kid-oriented products like toys or bicycles, and color schemes predominated by bright primaries made this key fact indisputable, Will Eisner’s aspirations for the medium notwithstanding. And yet very little of the material offered seems to have been created with children, particularly beginning readers or preschoolers, in mind. Outside of Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories, funny animals were filler material. Kid strips, family comedy, romance, and fairy tales were confined to the syndicated strip reprints. Everything else was pulp in content and attitude, unapologetically so. Never pornographic and rarely gory,

these comics were nonetheless bound to fail the average bluenose’s sniff test. They were also depressingly, relentlessly, often grotesquely racist in their portrayals of blacks, Asians, Latinos, Middle Easterners, and Native Americans; hopelessly sexist by today’s standards; and quick to see violence as the best solution as long as it was righteous violence, but so was every other contemporary form of pop culture. In that, comics reflected the society around them that found such depictions acceptable. There were publishers, editors, writers, and artists who were sincerely committed to producing a quality product. Others were happy to cynically exploit children’s appetite for the monstrous and sensationalistic. And some just wanted their paycheck and did what they were told. Which was which depended on who you asked and when. What can be said with certainty is that adult eyes were watching the world of comics, eyes that didn’t like what they saw and took steps to act on that disapproval. The first salvo came in the form of an editorial in the May 8, 1940 edition of The Chicago Daily News, scribed by author and literary critic Sterling North:

It was inevitable that the appearance of savage racial caricatures, sexy women, and brutal violence in what was considered a children’s medium would invite the disapproval of critics and self-appointed moral watchdogs. TM and © respective copyright owners.

“A great obstacle to good education is the ordinate passion prevalent for novels, and the time lost in that reading which should be instructively employed. When this poison infects the mind, it destroys its tone and revolts it against wholesome reading. Reason and fact, plain and unadorned, are rejected. Nothing can engage attention unless dressed in all the figments of fancy, and nothing so bedecked comes amiss. The result is a bloated imagination, sickly judgment, and disgust towards all the real businesses of life.” (Schechter 122)

“Virtually every child in America is reading color ‘comic’ magazines—a poisonous mushroom growth of the last two years. Ten million copies of these sex-horror serials are sold every month. One million dollars are taken from the pockets of America’s children in exchange for graphic insanity.… Save for a scattering of more-or-less innocuous ‘gag’ comics and some reprints of newspaper strips, we found that the bulk of these lurid publications depend for their appeal on mayhem, murder, torture and abduction—often with a child as the victim. Superman heroics, voluptuous females in scanty attire, blazing machine guns, hooded ‘justice’ and cheap political propaganda were to be found on almost every page.… Badly drawn, badly written and badly printed—a strain on young eyes and young nervous systems—the effect of these pulp paper nightmares is that of a violent stimulant. … [T]heir hypodermic injection of sex and murder make the child impatient with better, quieter stories. Unless we want a coming generation even more ferocious than the present one, parents and teachers throughout America must band together to break the ‘comic’ magazine.” (56)

Dime novels, motion pictures, comic strips, pulps, radio: each in their turn had been accused of spreading intellectual rot and moral turpitude among the nation’s children. But something about North’s diatribe struck a chord. His editorial was reprinted in dozens of papers around the country, and the Daily News claimed to have received hundreds of requests for copies. Perhaps parents, themselves feeling helpless in the face of a threatening world beyond their control, saw in the proposed crusade a way to do something, anything at all, that felt like protecting their kids. Perhaps he simply appealed to that aspect of the American psyche that thrives on the suppression of others’ pleasure. Whatever the reason, North’s editorial sparked a campaign of criticism and condemnation that would build in intensity throughout the coming decade.

Condemnation of pop culture had been a pastime of America’s intelligentsia since the days when Thomas Jefferson was decrying the deleterious effects of that sordid new art form, the novel: 61

Countdown to

Cataclysm It is an image familiar to comics aficionados: a powerfully built man clad in red, white and blue chain mail, protected from gunfire by a metal shield, bursts into the war room of the German High Command and delivers a crushing right jab to the jaw of a terrified Führer, a redundant caption exclaiming “Smashing through, Captain America came face to face with Hitler!” There is nothing subtle about the image, nothing restrained or polite. It is an unapologetic exemplar of the “cheap political propaganda” Sterling North sneered at in his indictment of the comic book industry. Captain America Comics #1 (cover dated March 1941) hit the newsstands late in ‘40. It sold nearly a million copies, instantly becoming Timely Publications’ best-selling title, and made stars out of co-creators Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. “The time demanded it,” Kirby explained in a 1970 interview. “The country was almost at war; we needed a super-patriot” (Steranko 53). Their flag-draped super-soldier served as both herald and epitome of the industry’s embrace of patriotic themes. If war was coming, comic books were ready. So, increasingly, were the American people, though clinging to the hope the United States could avoid direct involvement in the fighting overseas. Polls showed 80% of the populace supporting the Lend-Lease program and other initiatives to shore up Britain as she suffered through relentless bombing and U-boat predation. Nevertheless, isolationism remained a significant factor in the public dialogue. The America First Committee had begun life as an anti-war movement at Yale University that quickly spread to other campuses, but by 1941 it had fallen under the influence of the same reactionary industrialists, financiers, and media moguls who had bitterly opposed Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal from the beginning. Anti-British sentiment ran high in this group, leading America First to oppose aiding the UK with money or materiel, resources they contended should be devoted to the nation’s own defenses. Heading the aid-for-England forces was the Century Club, a New York-based private organization of “movers and shakers in the East Coast’s top journalistic, legal, financial, and intellectual circles” (Olson 139), many of them combat veterans of the earlier World War, all proBritish and fervently anti-fascist. Internal dissension over priorities and tactics led to the club’s disbanding early in

CHAPTER TWO 62

‘41. It was replaced in April by Fight for Freedom, a more militant movement that advocated direct military action, criticized Roosevelt and Congress for their caution, and labeled America First a Nazi front. Historian Lynne Olson, author of Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America’s Fight Over World War II, observes that “most of [America First’s] leadership and members were … decent, honest, sincere citizens who passionately believed that foreign entanglements were bad for the United States” (235), but FDR didn’t see it that way: “In his May 26[, 1941] fireside chat, Roosevelt contended that attacks on the government’s … foreign and military policies were not part of ‘a wholesome political debate of honest and free men,’ as [Charles] Lindbergh and other isolationists maintained. Instead, those assaults were connected to the ‘clever schemes of foreign agents’ … To preserve the country’s unity and safety, he said, Americans must combat this new Fifth Column with all their might.” (105) America First was the loudest section of the isolationist chorus, but it was by no means soloing. A number of militant mothers’ groups staged angry protests in the halls of Congress and on the streets of Washington, where they hanged interventionist Senator Claude Pepper in effigy. Passions on both sides rode high. Protests and counter protests at each other’s rallies frequently erupted into violence. The controversy raged throughout the year until the question became moot in the early morning hours of December 7.

Joe and Jack vs. the Axis Captain America was not the first costumed hero to dress himself in the nation’s colors—M.L.J.’s Shield and Quality’s Uncle Sam preceded him—but he was the one whose adventures captured the imagination of American kids, the one whose sales guaranteed a horde of patriotic copycats. Some forty such characters had appeared by year’s end. A handful—Better’s The Fighting Yank, Fawcett’s Minute-Man, and DC’s The Star-Spangled Kid among them—proved viable characters in their own right. Many—Dynamic’s Yankee Doodle Jones, Fiction House’s Captain Fight, Helnit’s The Flag Man, Harvey’s Captain Freedom, and Timely’s own The Defender, to name but five—were shameless imitations, unimaginatively aping the new hero’s name, costume, setting, origin, villains, or all of them at once. What they couldn’t duplicate was the one element that made “Captain America” click with readers: the storytelling magic of Simon and Kirby.

Many heroes to follow would steal elements from Captain America’s origin story, but none would match, let alone surpass, the Simon & Kirby prototype. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

them a terror to spies and saboteurs!” No sooner had this serum transformed the scrawny young patriot into a tall, muscular Adonis than a Nazi mole within the project assassinated its creator, grandfatherly Professor Reinstein. Alas, Reinstein had not committed the formula to paper. There would be no army of super-soldiers. After intensive training under the military’s best instructors, Rogers was given the rank, name, costume, and shield of Captain America. His true identity known only to the top brass, “Cap” hid in plain sight as a bumbling buck private, the bane of hardbitten Sgt. Duffy’s existence. When orphaned Camp Lehigh mascot Bucky Barnes stumbled on Steve’s secret, the boy inexplicably won the right to don his own costume and go into action with him. With the addition of gutsy FBI agent Betty Ross to the cast later in the first issue, the stage was set for a series that redefined how action was depicted in comic books.

As a wave of sabotage and other acts of subversion swept across the United States, a pure-hearted but frail 4F named Steve Rogers volunteered as a test subject for a secret government-sponsored experiment. He was injected with a chemical formula capable of “rapidly building his body and brain tissues, until his stature and intelligence increase to an amazing degree,” making him “the first of a corps of super-agents whose mental and physical ability will make

The initial idea was apparently Joe Simon’s—he reportedly designed the lead characters before coming to Timely— but it was the unleashed imagination, breakneck pacing, and electrifying action scenes of partner Jack Kirby that 63

TIMELINE: 1941

May 1: Citizen Kane—written, directed, and starring Orson Welles—premieres at a movie theater in New York City before gaining wider release later in the year. The film will garner nine Academy Award nominations, winning the award for Best Writing, Original Screenplay.

A compilation of the year’s notable comic book history events alongside some of the year’s most significant popular culture and historical events. (On sale dates are approximations.)

March 28: The first chapter of the Adventures of Captain Marvel is released to movie theaters. Distributed by Republic Pictures, the twelve-chapter film serial stars cowboy actor Tom Tyler as Captain Marvel and Frank Coghlan Jr. as Billy Batson.

January 17: The first issue of Fawcett’s new quarterly, Captain Marvel Adventures, arrives at newsstands. It includes a Captain Marvel story written by Joe Simon and drawn by Jack Kirby and Dick Briefer.

April 15: Lev Gleason publishes Daredevil Battles Hitler, written and drawn primarily by Charles Biro and Bob Wood in which several Lev Gleason heroes help Daredevil dismantle Hitler’s armed forces.

March 17: Timely’s Captain America Comics #3 arrives at newsstands. It includes the first professional work of Stan Lee in the form of a two-page Captain America text story.

JANUARY

FEBRUARY

May 2: Quality’s Military Comics #1 features a story written by Will Eisner and drawn by Chuck Cuidera that introduces a team of international fighter pilots called Blackhawk, soon to become one of Quality Comics’ most popular series.

MARCH

APRIL

June 22: Germany launches Operation Barbarossa by invading the Soviet Union. Despite initial decisive victories, the operation will ultimately fail and contribute to Germany’s defeat in World War II.

M AY May 14: Quality’s Police Comics #1 introduces several new characters including S.M. Iger and Reed Crandall’s Firebrand, Arthur Peddy’s Phantom Lady, Paul Gustavson’s The Human Bomb, and most notably, Jack Cole’s Plastic Man.

January 23: Testifying before the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs, aviator Charles Lindbergh proposes the United States negotiate a neutrality pact with Germany. His views are criticized by President Roosevelt.

May 1: General Mills introduces CheeriOats, soon to become one of the country’s most popular breakfast cereals, especially once its name is changed to Cheerios in 1945.

Captain Marvel, Dr. Fate, Firebrand, the Human Bomb, Phantom Lady, Plastic Man and Superman TM and © DC Comics.

fanned that spark into a wildfire. In his 2011 memoirs, Simon recalled: “I turned Kirby loose on the artwork, and [the result] was something different. The layout was different, the whole format was different from anything that was being published. After Captain America, the whole business was copying the flexibility and power of a Kirby drawing.” (89) Execution was everything. Joe and Jack’s plots were not always original (neither creator was adverse to cribbing elements of Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, classic Warner Brothers gangster movies, or even the previous year’s “Batman” stories) but the end result was. Kirby’s figures had an innate power that could not be contained within the panel borders, exploding off the page in a cacophony of mayhem. Cap and Bucky seemed to defy gravity as they leapt, dove, and charged headlong into battle, foes buckling left and right beneath a furious onslaught of fists, feet, and shield that made Batman and Robin look like Abbott and Costello. Knowing they had a winner on their hands, Simon and Kirby negotiated a deal with Timely publisher Martin Goodman, who knew it too, giving them 25% of the title’s net profits. Despite its military milieu, the “Captain America” series was a horror strip in super-hero drag, its panels chockful

Jack Kirby’s dynamic fight scenes changed how action was depicted in comic books. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

JUNE

July 1: After the Federal Communications Commission authorizes commercial television, both NBC and CBS begin broadcasting in New York City.

September 25: DC’s More Fun Comics #73 introduces three new heroes, all created by editor Mort Weisinger: Aquaman (drawn by Paul Norris), Green Arrow (drawn by George Papp), and Johnny Quick (drawn by Ed Moore and Chad Grothkopf). September 26: Produced by Fleischer Studios, the first Superman cartoon is released to movie theaters. It will earn an Academy Award nomination for Best Short Subject: Cartoons.

J U LY

AUGUST

July 17: For the first time after 56 consecutive games, New York Yankees outfielder Joe DiMaggio fails to get a hit. His hitting streak, which has earned national interest, sets a major league baseball record.

SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER

September 28: Boston Red Sox outfielder Ted Williams ends the baseball season with a batting average of .406. It will become the last time any major league baseball player will hit over .400 for a season.

October 15: M.L.J.’s Pep Comics #22 includes a story written by Victor Bloom and drawn by Bob Montana that introduces a redheaded teenager that will soon become one of the most famous characters in comic book history: Archie Andrews. October 31: Walt Disney’s fourth full-length animated film, Dumbo, debuts in a New York City theater before gaining wider release a week later. The story of a ridiculed circus elephant whose enormous ears allow him to fly grosses $1.6 million at the box office, making it the most financially successful Disney film of the decade.

of sadism, monsters, torture, mass murder, war crimes, and wholesale destruction. Whether Axis agents, homegrown fascists, costumed serial killers, or mad scientists and their creations, the gruesome outer appearances of Kirby’s villains reflected their inner malevolence, none more so than the ne plus ultra of Nazi menace, The Red Skull. The title’s only recurring bad guy, allegedly inspired by the maraschino cherry atop a hot fudge sundae (though there had earlier been a Doc Savage pulp novel with that title), the Skull killed without remorse or mercy anyone who interfered with his unspeakable plans, embodying in a single horrific avatar the lust for power and naked hatred at the heart of Nazism. Surprisingly, given the dictator’s prominence on the first two covers, Hitler himself appeared only once in the 1941 issues. Cap beat him up, of course, while Bucky whaled on Hermann Göring. The Red Skull had no Japanese counterpart. In fact, only two stories dur-

October 25: DC’s All-Star Comics #8 includes a nine-page insert that previews a new heroine created by Dr. William Moulton Marston: Wonder Woman. Her story continues two weeks later as the lead feature of Sensation Comics #1.

November 28: Fawcett’s Whiz Comics #25 includes a story written by Ed Herron and drawn by C.C. Beck and Mac Raboy that introduces Freddy Freeman, a boy crippled by the villainous Captain Nazi but subsequently transformed by the wizard Shazam into Captain Marvel Jr.

NOVEMBER

December 11: Germany and Italy declare war on the United States, which responds in kind.

DECEMBER

December 7: Japan launches a surprise attack on the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The U.S. fleet is crippled and over 2,400 American servicemen die as a result of the attack. The United States declares war on Japan with President Roosevelt proclaiming December 7 as “a day that will live in infamy.”

December 17: Leading Comics #1 groups together seven DC Comics’ heroes—the Crimson Avenger, Green Arrow and Speedy, the Shining Knight, Star Spangled Kid and Stripesy, and the Vigilante—as the Seven Soldiers of Victory in a story written by Mort Weisinger, Jerry Siegel, and Jack Lehti, and drawn by Lehti, Mort Meskin, George Papp, Hal Sherman, and Creig Flessel.

ing Simon and Kirby’s run dealt with the Pacific War at all, most of their ire being reserved for the Third Reich. That ire was returned. Joe Simon recounted the harrowing backlash in his book The Comic Book Makers: “[W]e were inundated with a torrent of raging hate mail and vicious obscene phone calls. The theme was ‘death to the Jews’ … Finally we reported the threats to the police department. The result was a police guard on regular shifts patrolling the halls and offices.” (92) If he or Jack Kirby were intimidated, it didn’t show. “Captain America” continued to call attention to the Nazi threat.

The Red Skull was not only one of the most memorable comic book villains of the 1940s but one of the most imitated. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

A fan club, the Sentinels of Liberty, offered a membership card and tin badge (now treasured collectibles) for a dime and a pledge to “fight spies and

traitors to the U.S.A.” Sentinels, led by club president Bucky, began figuring in the plots, good American boys too young to serve drawn together by a need to punch the enemy in the face. For all the propagandistic flavor of the strip, its creators were careful not to paint all Germans with the Nazi brush. Scenes set in Germany suggested a people living in fear and misery under the madness of its Führer and the bloodthirsty bullyboys who worshipped him. In the fifth issue’s “Killers of the Bund,” Cap avenged the father of Bucky’s German-American classmate, brutally beaten by Bundists for his loyalty to his adopted country. Ed Herron and Otto Binder occasionally contributed Badges and membership cards for the Sentinels of Liberty, the Captain America fan club, scripts to lighten the workload, Simon and Kirby tailoring them to their own stylistic strengths. The command high prices in the pop culture memorabilia marketplace. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. art became ever more bravura. Kirby’s cinematic ments drawn by Crandall showcased his superior draftspanel composition, expressionistic figure work, and iconomanship on both figures and backgrounds. clastic page design (including the occasional full-page or Martin Goodman was no stranger to nepotism, regutwo-page panel) gave his work an energy and excitement larly putting relatives to work in his various publishing that made the eight-panel, four-tier layouts and staid, eyeconcerns, so it was par for the course when Goodman level staging that had dominated the industry since the announced that Joe Simon had a new editorial assistant, 1930s look hopelessly outdated. Mrs. Goodman’s 17-year-old cousin. In later years Jack Simon and Kirby also created the title’s original back-up Kirby liked to say that the kid mostly sat around playing an features, though by the May issue (#3), the art chores were ocarina and annoying them, but the kid’s first professional in other hands, including those of Reed Crandall, later a credit, a text story in Captain America Comics #3, proved he mainstay of the Quality line. “Hurricane,” super-swift “last could write. An aspiring novelist and screenwriter, Standescendent of the ancient Greek immortals,” was a slightly ley Martin Lieber wanted to reserve his real name for those repurposed “Mercury,” last seen in Red Raven Comics #1. more prestigious gigs, so he adopted a pseudonym for his The renamed speedster continued his crusade against comics work. As Stan Lee, he was soon scripting two new arch-foe Pluto for a few issues until the boys handed it off. features in the back pages of Captain America, the selfThe mythological aspects were subsequently downplayed, explanatory “Headline Hunter, Foreign Correspondent,” and Hurricane became a more conventional super-hero, premiering in issue #5 (July) with art by Charles Nicholas, adopting the human identity of Harry Kane in issue #5 and “Father Time,” a masked avenger created by Simon and gaining a comic relief sidekick in issue #7, one Solidand Kirby, debuting one issue later. By the end of the year, ius X. “Speedy” Scriggles. “Tuk, Caveboy” was a short-lived the Stan Lee byline was on display throughout the Timely venture into prehistoric fantasy featuring an orphaned line. Cro-Magnon raised by Neanderthals and his quest to find Though bumped from the top of Timely’s sales charts by Atlantis (called Attilan in the first episode). Later installCaptain America, flagship title Marvel Mystery Comics continued to rake in the dimes. Editor Joe Simon took a hands-off approach to the title, recognizing that the winning formula of Carl Burgos’ “Human Torch,” Bill Everett’s “Sub-Mariner,” Simon and Kirby’s “The Vision,” Ben Thompson’s “Ka-Zar,” Paul Gustavson’s “The Angel,” and “Terry Vance, Schoolboy Sleuth” by scripter Raymond A. “Ray” Gill and artist Robert “Bob” Oksner was central to its continuing success. His editorial touch can, perhaps, be detected in an increased use of grotesque villains and war-themed plots, though most of Marvel Mystery’s strips were already touching on such elements. In a twist on their big battle of the year before, the Human Torch and Sub-Mariner teamed up in issue #17 (March) to thwart a Japanese Later episodes of the short-lived “Tuk, Caveboy” series were plan to tunnel under the Bering Strait illustrated by newcomer Reed Crandall, soon to become a and attack the American mainland by super-star of the medium. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. 66

Bizarre villains like the vampiric Plant Man, the macabre Parrot, and the unforgettable Armless Tiger Man were a staple of Marvel Mystery Comics in 1941. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

way of Alaska. An issue later, Toro made his first Marvel Mystery appearance, becoming the Torch’s full-time crimefighting partner. The Flaming Furies acquired their first arch-foe in the person of The Parrot, a ruthless gangster whose resemblance to his avian namesake made him simultaneously comic and repulsive. The “Sub-Mariner” strip focused primarily on Prince Namor’s grudge match with the Axis powers and his complicated relationship with Lynne Harris, the surface woman his mother ordered him to marry, and her fiancé, wealthy adventurer Luther Robinson, both surgically transformed against their wills into water breathers. Named Emperor of Aquaria in the first issue of the new Sub-Mariner Comics quarterly, Namor faced an insurrection by one of his royal uncles in Marvel Mystery #24. After wrapping up a trip to America begun the previous year, Ka-Zar and his feline companion Zar returned to their native Africa, where they conducted a one-man, one-lion guerrilla war on Italian and German troops. The Angel spent three issues (#18-20) tangling with The Cat’s Paw, a seductive hired killer in a slinky black cat costume who turned against her employer when he was unmasked as a Nazi agent. Marvel Mystery #26 (December) introduced Angel’s most memorable antagonist this year, the bizarre Armless Tiger Man. Steve Dahlman’s eyecatching “Electro” was dropped after the May issue (#19), replaced two months later by “The Patriot,” a strip first introduced in a Ray Gill-scribed text story in Human Torch #4 (Winter). Jeff Mace, a reporter for the Consolidated Press, led a double life as The Patriot, a bargain-basement Captain America with an uncanny knack for stumbling into Axis conspiracies. Though artists Arthur “Art” Gates and Sidney “Sid” Greene did their best to replicate Jack Kirby’s frenetic fight scenes, the feature had none of the charisma of its inspiration. Marvel Mystery’s stars took turns appearing in the title’s requisite text stories, written by Stan Lee from issue #21 onward. His story in issue #25 (November), starring all seven feature characters, already demonstrated the personality clashes and bickering that became a defining trademark of Lee’s approach to super-heroics.

man strength and a vampiric appearance thanks to a serum made from the saliva of a mad dog; by “The Black Marvel,” a white man whose physical prowess, marksmanship, and character earned him the sacred mantle of the Blackfeet, which came with a “duty to right wrongs wherever you may find them, and … destroy those enemies of mankind who would prey upon the helpless;” and by “The Blazing Skull,” a spookily masked mystery-man who went behind enemy lines to battle Hitler from within aided by the anti-Nazi German resistance. This quartet appeared in all three issues with a 1941 cover date (#5-7). Joining them in the October issue (#6) were “The Destroyer,” a Stan Lee-written mash-up of Captain America’s origin and Blazing Skull’s setting notable largely for its hero’s eerie grey-and-red costume, and “The Challenger,” a refugee from Daring Mystery. Only one issue of the latter title bore a ‘41 cover date, its seventh (April), featuring an all-new roster of strips by the Marvel Mystery gang. Bill Everett’s “The Fin” continued the water theme of his “SubMariner” and “Hydroman” series, this time via the exploits of Lt. Peter Noble, a navy engineer who gained the power to breathe beneath the sea after exposure to the waters of a strange subterranean realm ruled by bat-winged barbarians. Carl Burgos illustrated John Compton’s story of “The Thunderer,” a Federal Communications Commission investigator who donned tights and a loudspeaker to combat subversives who threatened the airwaves. Meek geologist Professor Elton Morrow became invulnerable after his body was riddled with fragments of a strange gem during a U-boat attack, so he decided to fight Axis espionage as “The Blue Diamond” with Ben Thompson doing the creative honors. “The Silver Scorpion,” drawn by Harry Sahle but signed “Jewell,” was arguably the best new character in the Daring Mystery line-up. Betty Barstow was the secretary of an inept private eye whose reputation as a master sleuth was due to Betty’s efforts behind the scenes as the masked title character. The relationship between the leads provided much of the fun. Despite these new characters, sales remained disappointing for both books.

Mystic Comics and Daring Mystery Comics returned from limbo in early 1941, largely gutted of their previous features and populated with a baker’s dozen of new superheroes courtesy of Lloyd Jacquet’s Funnies, Inc. “The Black Widow” was the only familiar face in Mystic, her co-stars replaced by a modern-day Jekyll-and-Hyde named “The Terror” who, when angered or frightened, gained superhu67

Over a dozen new super-hero strips appeared in 1941 issues of Timely’s second-string anthology titles, but only “The Destroyer” and “The Whizzer” had any staying power. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Undeterred by the underperformances of his second-string anthologies, Goodman launched a new quarterly title, U.S.A. Comics. Its two 1941 issues (August and November) featured yet another slate of new super-heroes from the Funnies, Inc., crew, this bunch centered on the themes of patriotism and war. The standout on the roster was Basil Wolverton’s Rockman a.k.a. the Underground Secret Agent, superhuman king of the subterranean land of Abysmia, who joined the fight against the totalitarian nations of the surface world after a firsthand encounter with Axis treachery. Stan Lee and Charles Nicholas struck a kindred note with “Jack Frost,” in which the legendary living embodiment of winter joined the same fight following a similar encounter. Nicholas was also at the drawing board for “The Defender,” a rip-off of Captain America so blatant one half suspects its first episode began life as a discarded Cap script. The Defender was a Marine when not in costume and his boy pal was Rusty, but nobody was fooled. In the same patriotic vein was “Mr. Liberty,” renamed “Major Liberty” in U.S.A. #2. Dr. John Liberty, a college professor, was given the power to summon the heroes of American history to his aid by the ghostly Spirit of Freedom. A new low in verisimilitude was struck in “The Whizzer,” starring a costumed super-speedster who gained his powers from an injection of mongoose blood. Simon and Kirby assistants Alfred “Al” Avison and Albert “Al” Gabriele provided 68

the art. No scripter has ever come forward to take credit (not that anyone could blame him). Mongoose blood notwithstanding, U.S.A.’s strangest feature was Ed “Win” Winiarsky’s “The Vagabond,” about an investigator for a big-city district attorney prone to infiltrating the underworld disguised as a bloviating hobo named Chauncey Throttlebottom III. With a hero who looked like Emmett Kelly and acted like W.C. Fields, the strip provided a change of pace from the relentless flag-waving of the book’s other headliners. Despite their evident willingness to throw a variety of super-types at the walls to see what stuck, Martin Goodman and Joe Simon remained fully aware that their fortunes were built on the triumvirate of Captain America, The Human Torch, and The Sub-Mariner. Bill Everett’s elveneared amphibian achieved equal standing with the other two when his solo title was launched. The first issue of Sub-Mariner Comics (Spring) was epic, as Nazi Germany declared war on Namor’s homeland, killing his grandfather, the Emperor of Aquaria, and countless others during their submarine blitzkrieg, leaving the hot-headed young prince in command of a shattered realm. His war with the Nazis flavored the next two issues, with the fourth featuring stories with a horror theme. “The Angel” served as the title’s back-up feature. Forty pages of art per issue of Sub-Mariner on top of the episodes running in Marvel Mystery and Human Torch proved more than

Everett could handle alone. Other artists and scripters began pitching in, including a Funnies, Inc. staff writer with a big future named Frank Morrison “Mickey” Spillane. The Human Torch title, which issued two #5s this year to correct the numbering anomaly caused by its beginnings as Red Raven Comics, found Carl Burgos in similar straits. Harry Sahle stepped in to help pencil the fourth and first fifth issues, and Spillane contributed a script to issue #6 (Winter). The high point for the year was the full-length story in the second fifth issue (Fall) that teamed the Torch and Toro with Sub-Mariner, The Angel, Ka-Zar, and The Patriot in an adventure that took the fiery pair around the world. Everett and Burgos’ production woes were compounded by the introduction of All Winners Comics, a quarterly showcase title spotlighting all three Timely titans, backed by Marvel Mystery’s Angel, Mystic’s Black Marvel and Destroyer, and U.S.A.’s Whizzer. Another new title, Young Allies, shoved boy sidekicks Bucky and Toro to the forefront, teaming

Timely had better success with new titles starring its most popular characters. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

them with the first of Simon and Kirby’s takes on the kid gang genre. Costarring alongside the costumed duo were a quartet of Sentinels of Liberty: Jefferson “Jeff” Sandervilt was the brainy kid, Percival Aloysius “Knuckles” O’Toole the tough kid, Henry “Tubby” Tinkle the fat kid, and (alas) Whitewash Jones the harmonica-playing, watermelon-loving, racist-caricature kid. This improbable sextet proved surprisingly effective, defeating no less than The Red Skull in their debut outing (albeit with some last-minute assistance from Cap and the Torch). Stan Lee assumed the scripting with issue #2 and set Toro and Bucky to arguing over who was the team’s leader. Sharpening this shtick, Lee also turned out prose stories for All Winners and U.S.A. that teamed up each title’s heroes—all of whom, of course, bickered. These assignments were, if nothing else, a chance for the young writer to familiarize himself with the company’s many super-characters. It was knowledge he would need before the year was out.

Led by boy sidekicks Bucky and Toro, “The Young Allies” was one of comic books’ first kid gangs. Though other hands produced the stories, the team was created by Simon & Kirby, soon to prove themselves the masters of that genre. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Maurice Coyne, the ‘M’ in M.L.J., was also the accountant for Martin Goodman’s publishing line. It was he 69

who set in motion the events that turned the Timely editorial offices upside down. Troubled by what he saw in the company books, Coyne went to Joe Simon and Jack Kirby (by now credited as the line’s art director), and exposed their boss’ financial duplicity: “‘I’m sorry about those royalties,’ [Coyne] told me, ‘You’re getting 25%, but only after they deduct all the fees and salaries for the whole company.’ Martin Goodman was charging all his expense to one title—Captain America. So by the time the ‘profits’ were accounted for, they had been eaten up by the cost of running Timely Comics.” (Simon 112)

The bookkeeping shenanigans of Timely publisher Martin Goodman eventually cost the company the services of the red-hot Simon & Kirby.

DC Comics’ Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz had been courting Simon and Kirby for some time. Stung by Goodman’s underhanded treatment, Joe and Jack became receptive, working on their own time on proposals for new DC features. Word got back to Goodman, who promptly fired them. Jack Kirby did not work for the company again for eighteen years. Joe Simon never did.

in a 2001 interview for Alter Ego, Fleischer animator and future Timely editor Vincenze “Vince” Fago reminisced that “Whoever worked on it felt they were doing something beyond the call of duty” (Amash 9). It showed. The seventeen “Superman” theatrical cartoons are an astonishing accomplishment even by modern standards. Siegel and Shuster themselves were busier than ever. Aside from Jack Burnley’s three issues of Action Comics (#32-34) and Superman’s cameo in All-Star Comics #7 (OctoberNovember), all of the art for the Man of Tomorrow’s 1941 comic book stories, plus the daily newspaper strip, was produced by the Shuster shop. Wayne Boring and Paul Cassidy handled the art on the daily strip and much of the first half of the year’s comic book work, with Cassidy penciling the entirety of Superman #9 (March-April). When Joe Shuster decided that fall to relocate family and shop to New York City, Cassidy stayed behind, bowing out of comics to pursue other career paths. Much of his DC workload was assumed by Leo Nowak, who drew all of Superman #11, three-fourths of the following two issues, and a majority of the stories in Action from the July issue (#38) on. The balance went to John Sikela. Both artists interpreted the Shuster style similarly, filling their panels with solid, broad-shouldered figures with inexpressive faces depicted in thick, confident brushstrokes, Sikela’s approach a degree subtler and warmer than Nowak’s.

As 1941 gave way to 1942, the future of Timely Comics was in the hands of its new 18-year-old editor, the suddenly promoted Stanley Lieber. Whether it, and he, could bounce back from the loss of the medium’s most dynamic storytellers remained to be seen.

The House That Superman Built Donenfeld and Liebowitz wanted Simon and Kirby, but they didn’t necessarily need them. Detective Comics and its sister company, All-American Comics, were doing just fine, continuing to dominate the marketplace—the two lines combined represented 11% of all comic books released in 1941—on the proven appeal of Superman, Batman, The Flash, and the rest of their costumed heavy hitters. Already a star of comic books, syndicated strips, and radio, Superman headlined a series of prestigious animated cartoons produced by the Fleischer Studios that brought him even further into America’s collective consciousness. The first cartoon, simply titled Superman, was released to theaters on September 26, 1941. A near-perfect distillation of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s extraterrestrial vigilante, it was a huge hit with audiences and critics alike, earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Short Subject. In the second cartoon, The Mechanical Monsters, Clark Kent steps into a phone booth to change into his caped alter ego, an image that will come to define the Man of Steel in the eyes of the public despite the near-total absence of such scenes in the comics. Given the biggest budget per episode for an animated series up to that time, the studio lavished it on production values. Looking back on the shorts

The artists had little time for anything other than “Superman,” but Jerry Siegel, insecure about money as so many children of the Great Depression were, wrote not only the daily strip and all the comic book episodes (All-Star #7 excepted) but continued to script other series. His focus in these side jobs shifted in 1941 away from his older creations. By the end of the year, Siegel’s byline was missing from Detective Comics’ “Slam Bradley” and “Spy,” Adventure’s “Federal Men,” More Fun’s “Radio Squad,” and AllAmerican’s “Red, White and Blue.” Even “The Spectre” was handed off to Gardner Fox. Siegel launched a new superhero strip in DC’s latest anthology book, Star Spangled Comics. “The Star-Spangled Kid” was a clever twist on the man-boy team with a genius teenager as the lead and an adult, a brawny Irishman with the dopey codename Stripesy, as the sidekick. The characters debuted in a special two-page preview in Action #40 (September). It was into this new venture and the Superman syndicated strip that Jerry Siegel seemed to pour most of his creativity. The newspaper comic featured a series of skirmishes between the Man of Tomorrow and The Scientists of Sudden Death, a cabal of renegade eggheads vying for a million-dollar bounty put on the hero’s head by gangland. The storyline ran from March through November, culminating in a showdown with The Blonde Huntress, a beautiful big game hunter convinced Superman killed her father. The comic books, by contrast, found Siegel offering up the same old stories of corrupt politicians, crooked businessmen, and mob bosses, repeating himself to the point of using the same plot—a spoiled heiress learns a hard lesson about responsibility—twice within two months. At least one new element was introduced: in Superman #11, Lois Lane began to suspect that cowardly Clark Kent and her caped McDreamy might be one and the same. Politics

A series of brilliant animated cartoons from Fleischer Studios brought “Superman” to life on movie screens around the world, vastly increasing the character’s fan base. TM and © DC Comics.

reared its head in Superman #9, wherein the leaders of the isolationist Committee Against Militarism were exposed as fifth columnists. In case readers had missed Siegel’s point, the Man of Steel proved the same of the powers behind the pacifistic Volunteers for Peace in Action #36 (May). This would be the case in dozens of comics of the era. Rarely were isolationists or pacifists shown as anything but foreign agitators or their dupes. Still, the Big Red S seldom contended directly with the Axis war machine save on the covers of Action Comics and Superman, where Frederic “Fred” Ray depicted the alien-born strongman shedding bullets as he charged an enemy gun emplacement, intercepting Nazi paratroopers in mid-air, punching out a German patrol boat, and walking armin-arm with an American sailor and soldier. There were a handful of worthy foes, such as the genetically engineered giants Superman faced in Action #32 (January), or The Ghost, an irradiated research scientist turned homicidal maniac, from issue #39 (August), or the costumed hitman named The Archer, introduced in Superman #13 (November-December) in a story that also gave would-be reporter Jimmy Olsen his first prominent role in the comic book series. And there was Luthor. Now as bald as in the syndicated strip, the demented genius returned four times in 1941, creating giant animals and running them amok in one episode, disguised as a costumed extortionist called The Light in another, and as master of the fantastic floating Empire City in the Sky in Action #42 (November). This touch of high-concept science fiction suggested a possible new direction for a series still riding high economically but flailing creatively, a direction suggestive of the influence of Detective Comics’ new story editor, Mortimer “Mort” Weisinger.

Dramatic cover art by Fred Ray depicted Superman taking on the Axis, but the character remained stateside in the stories within. TM and © DC Comics.

With more and more of Detective managing editor Whit Ellsworth’s time taken up with overseeing Superman’s use in other media, he needed help with the day-to-day responsibilities of editing an expanding line of bestselling comic books. To that end and with his bosses’ blessing, Ellsworth hired Weisinger, a founding father of science-fiction fandom and for the past seven years an editor for Ned Pines’ pulp line, to manage the company’s slate of freelance and staff scriptwriters. Murray Boltinoff, a staff writer for The New York Daily Mirror who broke into the industry the previous year with scripts for Helnit’s Green Hornet and Street & Smith’s Shadow Comics, joined him in the DC offices as art editor, responsible for assigning and coordinating art jobs, supervising corrections, and keeping his eyes open for new talent. Boltinoff and Weisinger assumed these duties with those issues cover-dated September 1941. Their time in uniform during the war

excepted, both men would stay with the company until their retirements in the 1970s. It is evident from this year’s output that Detective Comics was committing itself to the super-hero genre as its creative focus. The four monthlies— Detective, Action, Adventure, and More Fun—adapted themselves to that reality, axing the stalest of their backup strips in favor of new costumed crusaders, many of them created by Mort Weisinger. Detective Comics was the title least affected by the change in editorial emphasis. Its back pages continued to be inhabited by “Slam Bradley,” “Larry Steele,” “Speed Saunders,” and other interchangeable tough-guy sleuths. “Spy,” a Siegel and Shuster creation, was now in the hands of cartoonist Edward M. “Ed” Moore, whose Chicago Tribune strip Captain Storm had just been cancelled. Moore’s understated writing and affably minimalist art was soon 71

Batman #5, socialite-turned-nurse Linda Page, the daughter of an oil tycoon. The lovely redhead figured in fewer than a dozen stories over the next two years before slipping into obscurity. Kane and Finger continued to experiment in their plotting, trying out different premises. The Dark Knight and Boy Wonder crossed the interdimensional barrier into Fairyland in one episode, battling a shapeshifting sorceress and her magical minions on behalf of its inhabitants. In another, they convinced all of Gotham to help a failed actress convince her visiting parents she was the toast of the theater world. Most stories dealt in crime. Batman solved several murders this year, as well as thrashing such pedestrian foes as phony swamis, Chinatown hatchet-men, and river pirates. In Detective #55 (September), our heroes had the first of their rare encounters with Nazi antagonists. Costumed villains remained a major draw. The Joker returned three times this year, Clayface once. Several new villains—The Clock-Maker, The Witch, The Three Devils—failed to capture the audience’s fancy and were never seen again. The radioactive Professor Radium was more interesting but died at the conclusion of his only appearance. More successful were The Scarecrow, a masked psychology professor obsessed with studying the emotion of fear firsthand, and The Penguin, a portly, tuxedo-clad, umbrella-toting eccentric whose comical exterior hid a murderous ruthlessness, both characters earning a permanent place in the Masked Manhunter’s rogues’ gallery. But perhaps the most important development in Batman’s status quo occurred in “The People Vs. the Batman” in the seventh issue of his solo title (Fall), as Commissioner Gordon made the Dynamic Duo fully deputized officers of the Gotham City Police Department. The former vigilante was now legit.

The first car dubbed The Batmobile was simply a high-performance roadster. Its successor, debuting in Batman #5, lived up to the name. TM and © DC Comics.

appearing throughout the DC line. “The Crimson Avenger” was still a nicely drawn, otherwise average mystery-man strip that occasionally went over the line in its stereotypical use of Wing, the Avenger’s Chinese man Friday, as comic relief. Jack Lehti continued to script the series but gradually ceded the art chores, bringing sure-handed brushman Charles Paris in as inker with Detective #49 (March) and having Paul Norris fill in on pencils for issue #56 (October). Whatever individual appeal these strips might have had, the book’s popularity remained rooted in the adventures of “Batman and Robin.” The team of scripter Bill Finger and artists Bob Kane, Jerry Robinson, and George Roussos produced 31 out of 32 appearances of the Dynamic Duo this year, everything but Batman’s cameo in All-Star Comics #7. More pieces of the Caped Crusader’s mythology fell into place. The strip’s setting was established as New York analog Gotham City in Batman #4 (Winter 1940-41). The first Batmobile, a red roadster with a bat-shaped hood ornament, debuted in Detective #48 (February), replaced four months later in Batman #5 (Spring) by the classic model with its enormous tail fin and stylized bat’s-head battering-ram grill. There was still no Bat-Cave, but readers did learn of the old barn that hid the entrance to the tunnel through which the Batmobile and Batplane secretly accessed Wayne Manor’s basement levels. The series bade farewell to Julie Madison, sending her off to Hollywood to pursue a movie career as “Portia Storme” in Detective #49 (March). Bruce Wayne soon found a new love interest in

The back pages of Action Comics witnessed the end of two long-running series in 1941 and the reimagining of another, while Gardner Fox’s “Zatara” and “Three Aces” (an aviation strip) continued doing their respective things unmolested, with art by Joe Sulman and Chad Grothkopf respectively. Bernard Baily and Ken Fitch’s “Tex Thomson,” a fixture in the title since the first issue, starred a globetrotting oil millionaire and his best friend, balding, bespectacled, rolypoly Bob Daley. In the February issue (#33), letting the world think him dead after a U-boat sank the relief ship he’d sponsored, Tex assumed the alternate identity of “Mr. America,” a whip-wielding masked man in Revolutionary War-era garb. Bob, too, assumed a costumed identity, joining Mr. A in battle as the broom-wielding Fat Man beginning in issue #42 (November). “Pep Morgan,” a series about a college athlete that dated back to the August 1936 issue of More Fun (#12), had lately taken on an air of international intrigue, but the changes came too late. It was replaced by “The Vigilante,” a contemporary western starring a motorcycle-riding, crimefighting cowboy. Hidden behind the scarlet bandana was countryBatman and Robin also acquired two new nemeses in 1941, The Penguin and The Scarecrow. western radio star Greg Sanders, surreptitiously TM and © DC Comics.

carrying on his family’s tradition of bringing justice to the West. Created by Mort Weisinger, the series was drawn by Mort Meskin. The original “Sheena” artist had since honed his style, soaking up studio mate Jack Kirby’s hyperkinetic staging while discovering his own designerly balance of shading and negative space. If DC could not yet claim Simon and Kirby, they had in Meskin a talented disciple. Sheldon Moldoff’s “The Black Pirate” swashed its last buckle in Action #42, though Jon Valor would soon return in an unexpected new forum. And, in a move straight out of major league baseball, soldier of fortune “Clip Carson” was traded to More Fun for “Congo Bill,” now drawn by Fred Ray, the swap occurring as of the books’ June issues. “The Sandman” and “Hour-Man” were the stars of Adventure Comics at the beginning of 1941, but they were bumped off the covers with the April issue (#61) by a new series illustrated by “Superman” ghost Jack Burnley. Faux-hypochondriac playboy Ted Knight was secretly “Starman,” mysterious costumed wielder of the super-scientific “gravity rod” who put its energy powers at the disposal of FBI agent Woodley Allen, uncle of Knight’s unsuspecting girlfriend. There is some question as to who wrote the inaugural episode, in which the red-and-green-clad hero was already active (he didn’t get an origin until 1984). Gardner Fox claimed it as his, but Burnley once credited Murray Boltinoff. Either way, it was Fox who provided the bulk of the year’s scripts. Burnley’s polished art was the main attraction, as the Astral Avenger’s exploits were otherwise nothing new. Alfred Bester, a University of Pennsylvania grad who forsook law school to write science fiction, gave Starman his first recur-

ring villain in issue #67 (November), an elderly scientist called The Mist whose head and hands seemed to be floating in mid-air thanks to robes treated with an invisibility formula. One of Mort Weisinger’s clients during his days as a literary agent, Bester would not be the last sci-fi author to turn to comic books to supplement his income. “Starman” replaced “Barry O’Neill,” a strip set in China that reeked of “yellow peril” stereotyping. Two “lost world” series, Gardner Fox and Jack Lehti’s “Cotton Carver” and Howard Purcell’s “Mark Lansing of Mikishawm” were cancelled in favor of “The Shining Knight,” the tale of a Knight of the Round Table awakened in the Twentieth Century after he and his flying horse Winged Victory, a gift from the legendary Merlin, were frozen in a glacier while battling an ogre 1,300 years earlier. Baffled by contemporary mores, Sir Justin nonetheless picked up anew his fight against evil and injustice, facing down guntoting gangsters in his enchanted bulletproof armor. Writer Henry Lynn Perkins and artist Creig Flessel were the masterminds behind this twist on Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. The title’s most startling change came in issue #69 (December), as fill-in writer Mort Weisinger and artists Paul Norris and Chad Grothkopf overhauled the “Sandman” strip. Convinced that pulp-flavored heroes were passé, Weisinger tossed the hero’s two-toned gas mask, garish suit, slouch hat, and girlfriend Dian Belmont in favor of purple-and-gold tights and a kid sidekick, Sandy the Golden Boy. Adventure Comics was now dominated by super-heroes, only Ed Moore’s “Paul Kirk, Manhunter” (starring a crimesolving big game hunter), “Federal Men,” and Jack Lehti’s “Steve Conrad, Adventurer” remaining of the wide

The polished art of Jack Burnley helped “Starman” steal the cover of Adventure Comics away from “Hour-Man.” TM and © DC Comics.

selection of genre strips it traditionally featured.

The same could be said of More Fun Comics, the publisher’s oldest title, where the Weisinger influence was most keenly felt. “Captain Desmo,” “Sergeant O’Malley of the Red Coat Patrol,” and “Detective-Sergeant Carey” were dropped to make room for a trio of Mort Weisinger creations. The first to debut was “Johnny Quick,” about a newsreel photographer whose super-speed powers were activated whenever he recited the formula “3X2(9YZ)4A.” This lighthearted knock-off of “The Flash” was distinguished by its sarcastic hero; by his sidekick, the ever-hungry Tubby Watts; and, beginning with the fourth episode in issue #74 (December), by the dynamic art of Mort Meskin. The other new features, both debuting in issue #73 (November), were “Aquaman,” the Paul Norris-drawn exploits of an oceanographer’s son given the power to survive underwater through the ancient technology his father discovered in the sunken ruins of Atlantis, and “The Green Arrow,” cruelly but accurately summed up as “Batman with a bow.” He and sidekick Speedy the Cyclone New DC story editor Mort Weisinger co-created three new heroes for More Fun Comics. “The Green Arrow” and “Aquaman” live on today, starring in a hit television series and a blockbuster movie respectively. Speedster “Johnny Quick” had a Kid drove a custommore modest career, though his series would last for more than a decade. TM and © DC Comics.

In between were installments of “Zatara,” “The Crimson Avenger,” and All-American features “The King” and “Red, White and Blue.” Also appearing, though not every issue, were “The Sandman,” AA’s “Johnny Thunder” and “Hop Harrigan,” and “Drafty #158,” a military humor strip by Ed Moore. World’s Best/Finest also featured original series. The AA-produced “Lando, Man of Magic” was Howard Purcell’s turban-wearing entry in the junior league Mandrake sweepstakes. The improbable adventures of a heroic physician and his ambulance-driving sidekick were the focus of “Young Doc Davis,” a rare “straight” strip from cartoonist Henry Boltinoff. The kid brother of art editor Murray, Henry was soon producing fillers for the entire DC line, one- and two-page gag strips starring recurring characters like “Private Pete,” “Chief Hot Foot,” and “Jerry the Jitterbug,” as well as pages of gag cartoons and odd facts. Thereafter Boltinoff cartoons became a defining feature of DC comics, a familiar presence month in and month out until 1970.

ized car called the Arrowplane, later changed to Arrowcar once they acquired an actual aircraft. George Papp illoed the adventures of wealthy Oliver Queen and his teenage ward Roy Harper. From the start, the Battling Bowmen differed from earlier comic book archers in using specialized (and aerodynamically implausible) shafts like flare arrows and the arrow-line. More Fun’s existing super-heroes were not immune to Weisinger’s editorial tinkering. Gardner Fox and Howard Sherman were just hitting their stride on “Doctor Fate,” finally giving their mage an origin that combined science fiction and Babylonian mythology, when they were forced to transform their inscrutable wizard into a wisecracking muscleman in the Superman mold, minus most of his sorcerous powers and the bottom half of his distinctive helmet. Weird foes like Wotan and the living shadow Ian Karkull were replaced by the likes of Mr. Who, a crippled scientist who discovered a chemical that turned him into a super-powered giant. “The Spectre” strip, no longer in the creative control of Jerry Siegel, was likewise stripped of its spooky, occasionally cosmic ambience, as the ghostly detective became the straight man for a bespectacled geek named Percival Popp, a bumbling amateur sleuth who fancied himself a “super-cop.” It was a disappointing decline for one of DC’s most original characters.

The headliner of Star Spangled Comics was Jerry Siegel’s “The Star-Spangled Kid,” whose series occupied 34 out of 64 pages in the three issues published with a 1941 date (October-December). His intellect and athleticism hidden beneath the facade of a pampered, effete snob, Sylvester Pemberton III managed to thwart the plans of arch-enemy Dr. Weerd, a contemporary Jekyll-and-Hyde who lived up to his name, without his wealthy parents ever suspecting that their pantywaist bookworm of a son was really the costumed teen vigilante. Harder to swallow was their failure to recognize the barefaced Stripesy as their own chauffeur (or was the point that they never saw the help?). The scripts took a more light-hearted, almost campy, approach than had been Siegel’s wont. Harold “Hal” Sherman, whose association with Detective dated back to the New Fun days, drew the strip in a loose, exaggerated style reminiscent of a sunnier Bob Kane. Back-up series included Jon L. Blummer’s “Captain X of the RAF,” about a London-based American newspaper reporter doubling as a daring masked aviator, Ed Moore’s “Armstrong of the Army,” and “The Tarantula,” a Mort Weisinger-created mysteryman armed with a web gun and able to climb walls thanks to special boots. Harold “Hal” Sharp provided the art. Despite the big push for the Kid, Star Spangled struggled to find an audience. It needed something more.

Confident in the drawing power of its super-heroes, Detective launched three additional titles: the monthly Star Spangled Comics and the quarterlies Leading Comics and World’s Best Comics. Rechristened World’s Finest Comics with its second issue, World’s Best was an unofficial continuation of New York World’s Fair in the same 15¢, 96-page format. Each of the four 1941 issues opened with a “Superman” story and closed with “Batman and Robin.”

The final Detective title to premiere with a ‘41 cover date was Leading Comics, its first issue dated December. Its sole feature, “The Seven Soldiers of Victory,” was an all-DC version of AA’s “Justice Society of America.” Like

1941 was a year of expansion for DC. The monthly Star Spangled Comics featured a slate of new characters headed by “The Star-Spangled Kid,” while the 96-page quarterly World’s Finest Comics spotlighted Superman, Batman, and other popular characters from both DC and All-American titles. TM and © DC Comics.

the All-Star Comics series, the strip teamed second-string characters from the five monthly anthologies— More Fun’s Green Arrow and Speedy, Action’s Vigilante, Adventure’s Shining Knight, Detective’s Crimson Avenger, Star Spangled’s Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy—in book-length stories, each chapter illustrated by the artist of its leads’ solo series. “Seven Soldiers” was well-drawn and entertaining, a worthy competitor for its All-Star inspiration despite its colorful cast’s lack of true super-powers (apart from the Knight’s bulletproof armor and flying steed).

Meanwhile, Across Town… All-American co-publisher M. C. Gaines and editor Sheldon Mayer agreed with AA partner Jack Liebowitz that super-heroes were the wave of the near-future, recasting their flagship title with additional costumed crimebusters. “Ben Webster,” which had been running in All-American Comics since its first issue, was discontinued after issue #24 (February), leaving only “Mutt & Jeff” and “Daisybelle” out of the dozen odd syndicated strips the title formerly reprinted. Its page allotment went to “Dr. Mid-Nite,” a mystery-man series drawn by “Johnny Thunder” artist Stan Aschmeier and written by the enigmatic Charles Reizenstein, about whom almost nothing is known. MidNite was really Charles McNider, M.D., a surgeon blinded by a gangster’s grenade who discovered he could now see in the dark. Equipped with special goggles that let him see in daylight, armed with darkness-inducing “blackout bombs,” and accompanied by his pet owl, Hooty, the good doctor continued to play the helpless blind man by day as a cover for his nocturnal crusade against crime. Though both scripting and art were sub-par in the early episodes, “Dr. Mid-Nite” became the longest-running super-hero in AllAmerican after cover star Green Lantern. “Adventures in the Unknown,” a sci-fi strip adapting a series of pulp novels by Carl H. Claudey, was replaced as of All-American #26 by “Sargon the Sorcerer.” A close cousin visually of artist Howard Purcell’s “Lando,” the turbaned magician enjoyed better writing than his World’s Finest counterpart courtesy of John B. Wentworth. Sargon, born John Sargent, wore the mystic Ruby of Life on his brow, giving him power over anything he touched. Despite the premise’s potential, Wentworth and Purcell’s sorcerer faced the

With super-heroes trending, it was not surprising that All-American Comics swapped out some of its older strips for new costumed crusaders. TM and © DC Comics.

same kind of feeble opposition that filled “The Atom.” The adventures of the pint-sized mystery-man remained the book’s low point, still plagued by humdrum scripts and terrible art. Sheldon Mayer’s “Scribbly” continued to spotlight The Red Tornado, now joined in action by The Cyclone Kids, a.k.a. her daughter Sisty and Scribbly’s little brother Dinky in homemade costumes. That the masked moppets terrified bad guys far worse than the Tornado did was a typical Mayer touch. Even flyboy “Hop Harrigan” was briefly bitten by the super-hero bug, as Jon Blummer toyed early in the year with the idea of turning Hop into a masked aviator named The Guardian Angel. The youthful pilot appeared in costume in All-American #25-28 (March-June) before Blummer abandoned the idea.

DC’s answer to the Justice Society, “The Seven Soldiers of Victory” teamed (L to R) The Green Arrow and Speedy, The Crimson Avenger, The Shining Knight, The Vigilante, and The Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy. TM and © DC Comics.

Flash Comics remained comparatively stable in 1941, the only major change to its contents being the cancellation of “Cliff Cornwall” in order to expand the page counts of the two lead features, “The Flash” and “Hawkman.” Gardner Fox and Shelly Moldoff maintained the Winged Wonder’s moody vibe while gradually lightening up his character. Fewer villains died at Hawkman’s hands, and he began acquiring allies. In the November issue (#23), an injured Carter Hall was nursed back to health by the birds of remote Hawk Valley, who taught him to speak the avian lingua franca. Big Red, the duck hawk who ruled the valley, often flew into battle alongside Hawkman, at times with an entire flock of faithful feathered friends backing them up. An issue later, Shiera Sanders donned her own wings and

All-American h e av y we i g ht s “The Flash” and “Green Lantern” earned their own quarterly solo titles this year, in addition to retaining their coverfeature statuses Green Lantern’s cab-driving man Friday Doiby in the two monthDickles was the first of the comic relief sidekicks lies. All-Flash Quarthat came to define the AA approach to terly debuted in super-heroics in the early ‘40s. TM and © DC Comics. May with a Summer cover date, Green Lantern Quarterly four months later. After first issues that introduced the characters, their origins, and the creative talents behind them (in biographical text pieces), Sheldon Mayer decided to run a single, full-length story in each issue rather than the quartet of 13-pagers used in the Superman and Batman solo books. This gave “Flash” scribe Gardner Fox and “Green Lantern” writer Bill Finger the chance to use more complex plots and a larger cast of characters than was the norm. Both rose to the challenge admirably. All-Flash #2 (Fall) featured a multigenerational revenge saga that spanned more than three decades, with Fox delivering one of his most ambitious scripts. Finger countered in Green Lantern #2 (Winter) with the story of Joe Stromboli, a janitor railroaded into an insane asylum by the heirs of a business magnate who had left Joe, the tycoon’s occasional fishing buddy, his fortune. The Emerald Gladiator procured Stromboli’s freedom with the help of his new sidekick, a scrappy little taxi driver named Doiby Dickles first seen in the June issue of AllAmerican (#27). His look based on character actor Edward Brophy, Doiby was designed by new GL artist Irwin Hasen. As had happened with Timely creators Bill Everett and Carl Burgos, neither “Green Lantern” co-creator Mart Nodell nor “Flash” artist E.E. Hibbard could handle the increased demand for material alone. Hasen ghosted for Nodell on GL’s All-American appearances, while Hal Sharp spelled Hibbard on Flash Comics, freeing them to concentrate on the quarterlies and their chapters of the “Justice Society of America” series.

The adventures of “Hawkman” took on a refreshing new flavor when love interest Shiera Sanders assumed the identity of Hawkwoman. TM and © DC Comics.

ninth metal belt and began a crimefighting partnership with her winged fiancé as Hawkwoman, a guise she had briefly assumed once before in All-Star Comics #4 (MarchApril). The Hawks were the latest in a minor craze for heand-she teams of costumed heroes that began earlier in the year with Owl Girl in Dell’s Crackajack Funnies #32 (February). In Flash #21 (September), Wentworth and Aschmeier’s “Johnny Thunder” adopted a little girl nicknamed Peachy Pet, a feisty child far smarter than her new father, with predictably comical results. Fox and Harry Lampert’s “The King,” Don Cameron’s “Les Watts, Radio Amateur” (retitled “Les Sparks” in issue #16), and Ed Wheelan’s alternating “Minute Movies” and “Flash Picture Novelette” continued to hold down the back pages, as did Wentworth’s “The Whip,” now drawn by DC western specialist Homer Fleming.

AA headliners The Flash and Green Lantern were awarded their own quarterly solo titles in 1941. TM and © DC Comics.

Gaining their own solo titles cost Flash and Green Lantern their spots in All-Star Comics, as a peculiarly metatextual bylaw required that any JSA member with a solo book assume honorary status and no longer participate in their cases. Johnny Thunder was voted in as the Scarlet Speedster’s replacement in issue #6 (August-September), while All-American’s Dr. Mid-Nite and Adventure’s Starman stepped in two issues later for GL and Hour-Man, the latter dropped without warning or explanation. The challenges the Justice Society faced were epic in scope—defanging a homegrown fascist movement modeled after Fritz Kuhn’s German-American Bund, busting up a nationwide crime syndicate headed by a mousy

by Dr. Lauretta Bender, a widely respected child psychiatrist affiliated with New York’s famed Bellevue Hospital: “Comic books can probably best be understood if they are looked upon as an expression of the folklore of the age[, comparable to] the mythology, fairy tales and puppet shows, for example, of past ages.… All of these are what we might call an outgrowth of the social unconscious; the social problems of the time are expressed through them. Many of them have so well stated the fundamental human problems that they have remained vital throughout the ages and are the literature of choice for children… Since our enemies are no longer animals, and man-to-man combat is much less, [these menThe JSA roster changed in 1941, as Johnny Thunder, Dr. Mid-Nite, and Starman replaced departing aces are] replaced by the problems members Flash, Green Lantern, and Hour-Man. TM and © DC Comics. of science, mass organization and little fellow known as Mr. X, raising a million dollars for social ideologies.… The magic in the comics is therefore war orphans with the aid of honorary members Superman expressed in terms of fantastic elaborations of and Batman—as they had to be to justify the use of eight science[, a] greater magic needed in modern mystery-men in a single story (though scripter Gardner folklore … due to the greater dangers which Fox was at times hard-pressed to put the über-powerful assail society and the individual… [N]ormal, Spectre to the test). The team showed no signs of squabwell-adjusted children with active minds, bling à la Stan Lee’s super-characters. Indeed, their boyish given insufficient outlets or in whom sense of camaraderie was a huge part of their appeal: haznatural drives for adventure are curbed, ing Johnny T. as an initiation and adopting Hooty as maswill demand satisfaction in the form of cot were exactly the kind of club activities young readers some excitement. Their desire for blood could identify with. Still, the JSA had nothing to do with and thunder is a desire to solve the the most significant event to occur in All-Star in 1941. The problems of the threats of blood and December-January issue (#8) included a special nine-page thunder against themselves or those insert previewing a new super-character. they love, as well as the problem of their own impulses to retaliate and “Wonder Woman” was a female Superman raised on Parapunish in like form. The comics dise Island, home of the Amazons, the immortal warrior may be said to offer the same kind women of classical mythology. “Beautiful as Aphrodite, of mental catharsis that Aristowise as Athena, swift as Mercury, and strong as Hercules,” tle claimed was an attribute of the original Princess Diana was about to rival the Man of the drama.… The chief conflict Tomorrow and Batman in popularity, even as the stylistic over comic books is in the quirks, sexual politics, and personal demons of her creadult’s mind.” (Gilbert ator, Dr. William Moulton Marston, psychologist, lawyer, 66-67) author, radical feminist, shameless huckster, and latest member of the DC/AA Editorial Advisory Board, threatIt was exactly what ened to undermine the very family-friendly image the Liebowitz wanted to board was created to project. hear. Not only were his comics in the grand tradition of children’s literature, they were actually good for kids! He contacted Dr. Bender and offered her a seat on his

Jack Liebowitz Takes a Stand As Harry Donenfeld traveled the country basking in the success of his comic book empire, the ever-practical Jack Liebowitz took steps to ensure their company would not fall prey to the public vilification and judicial censorship that befell the publishers’ “spicy” pulp line years before. Stung by Sterling North’s denunciation of the industry, Liebowitz cast about for an effective counterargument. He found it in the pages of the July 1941 issue of The American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, in an article co-authored

Premiering in a special insert in AllStar Comics #8, “Wonder Woman” quickly became one of the most popular—and most controversial— features in comic books. TM and © DC Comics.

of wholesome entertainment. Early this year we recognized the value of active assistance on the part of those professional men and women who have made a life work of child psychology, education and welfare. As a result we secured the cooperation of [our] Advisory Editors, each a leader in his or her respective field.”

DC/AA executives M.C. Gaines, Harry Donenfeld, and Jack Liebowitz took steps to avoid public censure by creating an Editorial Advisory Board to oversee the contents of both comics lines.

new Editorial Advisory Board. Her colleagues included Dr. Robert Thorndike of Columbia University’s Teachers College, child psychologist Dr. Ruth Eastwood Perl, New York University mythologist and folklorist Dr. C. Bowie Millican, boxing champ and Boy Scouts of America executive Gene Tunney, and Josette Frank of the Child Study Association of America, whose monthly column “Good Books for Reading” became a regular feature of the Detective and All-American lines. It was an impressive assembly of serious people. An announcement in the October 1941 issues of every DC and AA title introduced the Advisory Board and explained its purpose: “Since the inception of this and other DC magazines, a rigid policy has guided the editors in their selection and presentation of editorial material. A deep respect for our obligation to the young people of America and their parents and our responsibilities as parents ourselves combine to set our standards

Writers and artists soon began receiving laundry lists of “thou shalt nots,” story elements the Advisory Board deemed no longer welcome in the pages of DC’s comic books. (It was likely their influence that drove the changes to “The Spectre” and “Doctor Fate.”) An undated memo from editor Sheldon Mayer to his staff, preserved in the papers of writer Gardner Fox, provides one such checklist of no-nos, some a direct response to Sterling North: “1. Under no circumstances are we to show a hypodermic needle. If it is necessary to drug a man, it can be done by use of a ray, or something equally fantastic. 2. We must never show a coffin, least of all with a corpse in it. 3. Never show an electric chair or a hanging. If we must show a hanging, a silhouette will do the trick. If we must show an electrocution, show other prisoners talking about it, then have the lights dim, and go on again. This is much more dramatic and will not offend the mothers and fathers of our readers. 4. We must never show anybody stabbed. If we should have a fencing scene, the ‘kill’ can be shown again in silhouette. 5. No blood or bloody daggers. 6. No skeletons or skulls. 7. We must not roast anybody alive. 8. No character is permitted to say, ‘What the…?’ 9. No one is to be called ‘jerk’ … 10. Little children are not to be killed or to die of sickness, accident, etc., in the course of the story. It is all right for them to have died sometime before the story opens, and on rare occasions – not too often – it may be necessary to threaten their lives, but that’s all. 11. We must not chop limbs off characters – unless a character has been injured in a normal accident and had a limb removed by surgery. The same goes for putting people’s eyes out, etc., etc.” At the bottom of this memo, Mayer added a handwritten note: “P.S - Now go ahead and write a good story – I dare you. SM” (Gilbert 10). Through such guidelines, Donenfeld, Liebowitz, and AA co-owner M.C. Gaines sought to redefine themselves within the industry. Let Timely pit its heroes against ghouls and zombies and skull-faced Nazis. Any resulting outrage was no longer their problem. The DC slug was now a guarantor of family-friendly entertainment.

The Editorial Advisory Board had an immediate effect on the DC/AA heroes, putting an end to Hawkman’s use of deadly force, turning sorcerer Doctor Fate into just another costumed muscleman, and making the once-mighty Spectre the stooge of the inane “super-cop” Percival Popp. TM and © DC Comics.

Captain Marvel, Family Man Detective Comics might dismiss Timely’s “Captain America” as no threat to its self-image as the market’s foremost purveyor of wholesome super-heroic catharsis, but it could not ignore the growing popularity of Fawcett Publications’ “Captain Marvel.” 1941 not only saw a small explosion of Marvel-related characters and titles, but the World’s Mightiest Mortal received his own 12-chapter Republic Studios serial, the first super-hero born in comic books to be translated to live-action film. Starring movie cowboy Tom Tyler as Marvel, Frank Coughlan Jr. as Billy Batson, and Nigel De Brulier as the wizard Shazam, The Adventures of Captain Marvel took considerable liberties with the source material but delivered some of the most thrilling action sequences of the year. Scenes of Captain Marvel in flight, achieved by drawing a seven-foot-tall, fifteenpound papier-mâché dummy through the air on thin wires, look hokey to CGI-spoiled 21st-century eyes but

were hailed as a breakthrough in special effects of the era. The serial’s success in turn meant a boost in sales for the comics.

So confident were the Fawcetts in the earning potential of their crimson-and-gold superstar that they experimented with publishing Whiz Comics on a bi-weekly basis. The title had two March and two October issues. The first four issues of the year featured the last of former editor Bill Parker’s scripts. Parker wrapped up his “Captain Marvel” run with a three-issue showdown with Dr. Sivana (#13-15), giving the World’s Maddest Scientist a surprisingly sympathetic backstory and revealing Beautia as his daughter, while setting up Marvel’s next challenge in the “Spy Smasher” back-up. In Whiz #15, The Mask captured Spy Smasher, unmasked him as Alan Armstrong, and brainwashed him via “hypno-chair” into hating America. The now-maniacal costumed aviator promptly murdered The Mask with his bare hands and declared war on the U.S. government. Over the next two issues, his schemes to kidnap FDR, gas the military in their own camps, destroy munitions factories with an enormous lawnmower (!), and kill Alan’s girlfriend Eve Corby were barely thwarted by Captain Marvel, a clash that ran through both strips before Marvel restored the renegade hero’s true personality in issue #17 (May). If their battle didn’t quite live up to the standard set by the first Human Torch/Sub-Mariner scrap, it made up for it in emotional intensity, as Eve and the nation were shattered by Spy Smasher’s betrayal while Billy was torn between his desire to help the deranged hero and his obligation to protect the nation from him. Spy Smasher finished up the year by trading in his The introduction of the Three Lt. Marvels was a dry run for the debut brown costume for a green of Captain Marvel Jr., soon to knock “Bulletman” off the covers of one in Whiz #25 (DecemMaster Comics. TM and © DC Comics. 79

The World’s Mightiest Mortal got a huge boost in visibility in 1941 thanks to Republic Pictures’ The Adventures of Captain Marvel. TM and © DC Comics.

ber), giving the masked pilot a more overtly super-heroic look. Bill Parker’s parting gift to “Ibis the Invincible” was the introduction of Trug, a rival mystic who used the stolen Ibistick to kidnap the foster son of Ibis and Taia, then strand the powerless duo in the Arctic. Their struggle spanned eight issues of Whiz (#13-20). Backup features “Golden Arrow,” “Lance O’Casey,” and “Doctor Voodoo” survived both Parker’s departure and artist changes unscathed, but the private eye series “Dan Dare” disappeared following the second October issue (#22). Scripting credits are scanty for the rest of the 1941 issues but include two writers destined to loom large in the fortunes of the Fawcett line, Otto Binder and William Woolfolk. “Captain Marvel” gained a new cast member in issue #22 as Whitey Murphy, a character created for the Republic serial, came aboard to serve as radio newscaster Billy’s sound engineer. No scripter has been identified to date for the introduction of The Three Lt. Marvels in Whiz #21. A trio of boys also named Billy Batson discovered that

they too could call down Shazam’s lightning and become a not-quiteCaptain Marvel as long as they were all together when they said the magic word. Someone farther up the food chain must have recognized that the trio could only diminish the original Marvel’s uniqueness, for the Lt. Marvels were thereafter used sparingly. But they also started the wheels turning for editor Ed Herron. It started in Master Comics #21 (December), as scripter Woolfolk and artist Mac Raboy teamed cover star Bulletman with Captain Marvel against the despicable Captain Nazi. His splendid physique and handsome Teutonic features, marred by a long dueling scar, made Nazi the very image of Hitler’s idealized Aryan superman, a vivid counterpoint to Timely’s repulsive Red Skull. The heroic duo seemed to have met their match, held at bay by the fanatical fascist’s superb athleticism and stymied by his utter ruthlessness. This ruthlessness proved his downfall, as it led to the creation of the villain’s greatest nemesis. In the follow-up story in Whiz #25, written by Woolfolk and drawn by Captain Marvel co-creator C.C. Beck, Nazi murdered an old fisherman and left his grandson, young Freddy Freeman, on the brink of death, his back broken. Billy Batson took the boy to Shazam, who allowed Captain Marvel to pass some of his own mighty powers to Freddy, saving his life and transforming him into the World’s Mightiest Boy, Captain Marvel Jr. Clad in a blue variant of the elder Marvel’s costume, Junior possessed the same superhuman attributes but remained a slim youth instead of becoming a heavily muscled adult like Billy, providing the visual and conceptual contrast the Lt. Marvels had lacked. It was the beginning of what was to become the first super-hero franchise. In addition to “Bulletman,” Master Comics carried an olio of strips from the Harry “A” Chesler, S.M. Iger, and Jack Binder studios, most of them uncredited. Otto Binder and Rafael Astarita’s space fantasy “Capt. Venture and the Planet Princess” was the only series to retain the same creative team through all the 1941dated issues (#10-21). Three features got artistic facelifts. Mac Raboy

Bulletman gained a new partner in 1941, the identically powered Bulletgirl. TM and © DC Comics.

spy, and her various allies and henchmen. Not until Master #21 did Minute-Man face an unambiguous Axis foe, no less than the notorious Black Dragon Society, a real-world ultranationalist secret society alleged at the time to be the prime movers behind the rise of aggressive militarism in Imperial Japan. “Bulletman” went through a number of changes prior to his encounter with Captains Marvel and Nazi, not least of which was the loss of co-creators Bill Parker and Jon Smalle following the February issue. Chesler Studio staff, following Sultan layouts, handled the art for most of the year, working in a stiff, stilted style that aped Lou Fine’s surface mannerisms without the compositional sense or solid draftsmanship beneath them. After learning Bulletman’s true identity in the previous issue, Susan Kent took Jim Barr’s miracle serum, donned her own gravity helmet, and joined him in action as Bulletgirl in issue #13. Weird villains became the order of the day. The Flying Detectives spent three issues (#17-19) dueling The Unholy Three— a malevolent dwarf and two hulking brutes, one human, one simian— then tackled The Son of Dracula as an encore.

brought his impeccable figure work to the adventures of “Zoro the Mystery Man” and his pet cheetah in issue #11 (February), the same issue Ralph Carlson assumed the art chores on “Buck Jones, Frontier Marshal.” A month later, George Tuska took over on “El Carim.” Two strips were dropped before year’s end. “The Red Gaucho” disappeared after the April issue (#13), replaced by “Companions Three,” a soldiers-of-fortune series previewed in Whiz Comics #15. Ken Battefield’s “The Devil’s Dagger” got the axe after issue #20 (November). A third, “Jungle King,” lost its page allotment to “Minute-Man, the One-Man Army” in Master #12 (March). Drawn by Charles Sultan for an unidentified scripter, the strip began as a lazy imitation of Captain America: given a topsecret commission to ferret out and smash subversive threats to the nation as the patriotically garbed Minute-Man, Jack Weston posed as an ordinary private as cover. There was no origin, no explanation for his extraordinary fighting prowess, no kid sidekick or grotesque Nazi villains, for “Minute-Man” was stuck in the world of fictitious fascist nations that Simon and Kirby scorned as too timid for the times. Most of his early episodes dealt with the machiThe Death Battalion, comic books’ first super-villain team, consisted of nations of Illyria, a beautiful (clockwise from top) The Horned Hood, Dr. Death, The Laughing Skull, The Black Thorn, The Black Clown, and The Ghost, led by The Brain (center).

TM and © DC Comics.

Fawcett aggressively expanded its line in 1941, granting solo books to four of its most popular super-heroes, as well as launching Gene Autry Comics #1, its first licensed title. TM and © DC Comics.

Mr. Scarlet, the cover star of the quarterly Wow Comics, had by the second issue pushed out all the Nickel Comics and Slam-Bang Comics refugees who populated the back pages of issue #1, save for Jim Wilcox’s “Jim Dolan,” starring a two-fisted true crime magazine editor, and “Rick O’Shay,” a Ken Battefield-drawn clone of newspaper comics hero Captain Easy. The crimson-clad crimebuster, now allotted three stories of 8 to 10 pages each issue, faced a string of costumed villains: Dr. Death, The Ghost, and The Horned Hood in issue #2 (Summer), The Black Thorn, The Black Clown, and The Laughing Skull in issue #3 (Autumn). The unfortunately named Pinky the Whiz Kid debuted in the Winter issue (#4). His new sidekick proved invaluable to Mr. S in the pages of America’s Greatest Comics, a new 15¢ quarterly in the World’s Finest Comics format that also starred Captain Marvel, Bulletman, Minute-Man, and Spy Smasher, each given more pages than they filled in Whiz or Master. In America’s Greatest #1, all six of Scarlet’s previous foes broke out of prison and banded together as The Death Battalion. Under the direction of would-be dictator The Brain, they attempted to assassinate America’s political, military, and industrial leaders. The Battalion was comic books’ first team of super-villains, beating the cabal of baddies that prompted the formation of the Seven Soldiers of Victory into print by two months. Wow #2 also debuted Fawcett’s least savory super-hero. “The Hunchback” was really society playboy Allan Lanier, who, inspired by Victor Hugo’s tragic anti-hero Quasimodo, disguised himself as an ugly freak to terrorize the underworld. The cackling glee with which Hunchback dispatched his criminal prey stood in stark relief against the innocent nobility of Captain Marvel. No credits are known for this over-the-top pulp-flavored series.

comics, ensuring that they all shared that clean, accessible Beck look. Although all four books featured their protagonists fighting the usual assortment of crooks and spies, fantastic villains predominated in every title but MinuteMan. Captain Marvel faced such foes as the vampire Bram Thirla, a schizophrenic fire insurance salesman called The Arson Fiend, The Swamp Devil (a phony monster), the Spider-Men from Mars and Dragon Men of Saturn, and, inevitably, Sivana. The mad scientist’s latest schemes involved Z, a robot posing as a new super-hero; a monstrous mananimal hybrid called The Beast-Master; and an alliance with the insect-sized Germ People. Marvel took on Hitler himself, thinly disguised as “The War Lord,” in CMA #4 (Autumn), upsetting Der Führer’s plan to tunnel under the Atlantic Ocean and blitzkrieg America from below. Bulletman and Bulletgirl faced off against the same kind of macabre antagonists that populated their Master Comics stories, weird foes like The Man Without a Face, The Black Spider, and The Limping Mummy. Spy Smasher #2 (Winter) gave the titular hero a new arch-foe: America Smasher a.k.a. The Mailed Fist, a lumpish little Nazi sporting cesti, the metallic boxing gloves worn by Roman gladiators. The duo clashed again in Whiz #25. Other villains introduced in the quarterly included a masked bioterrorist known as The Red Death and two sexy dames, The Dark Angel and The Huntress. Even Minute-Man found time to battle The Green Hood, a ho-hum masked mastermind, amidst his usual assortment of pseudo-Axis opponents. A fifth new quarterly, Gene Autry Comics, starred the popular country singer turned film star, who released hit versions of “You Are My Sunshine” and “Blueberry Hill” this year, as well as seven singing cowboy movies. Fawcett’s first venture into licensed titles, the Autry book was packaged by Western Printing.

Four Fawcett heroes received their own quarterly solo titles. The first, and longest-lived, was Captain Marvel Adventures, which became a monthly with its fourth issue (November). The once-in-a-lifetime team of Jack Kirby and Dick Briefer illustrated issue #1, C.C. Beck and Pete Costanza issue #5, with George Tuska providing the art for the intervening issues. Bulletman, Spy Smasher, and Minute-Man were launched over the summer. Charles Sultan laid out all three books, with the Chesler bullpen providing the finished art. By October, the serial-fueled demand for “Captain Marvel” material led to Fawcett setting up Beck as the head of his own shop. His studio thereafter produced the vast majority of art for the World’s Mightiest Mortal’s

America’s Greatest Comics was one of three Fawcett experiments with new formats in 1941. Captain Marvel Thrill Book was an 8.5” x 11” one-shot reprinting stories from Whiz and Special Edition Comics in black-&-white. It failed to find an audience. Xmas Comics #1 was the first of an annual series of Christmas specials with an astounding 324 pages collecting five coverless comics from the previous year priced at 50¢. But it was a trio of narrative innovations—the first spin-off super-hero, first super-villain team, and first super-hero to turn evil (albeit temporarily)—that put Fawcett Publications at the forefront of those comics lines exploring the possibilities of the genre in 1941. 81

Fawcett continued to experiment with other formats. The 96-page America’s Greatest Comics and the 324-page Xmas Comics were hits; the odd-sized, black & white reprint title Captain Marvel Thrill Book was not. TM and © DC Comics.

Tragedy, Redemption, and America’s Typical Teen

‘41. Dr. Wang, a villain from the previous year, made two return appearances as well. Strangely enough considering Innovative as Fawcett was, it was M.L.J. Magazines that his patriotic trappings, The Shield didn’t begin tackling took the boldest step in 1941. The unthinkable happened Axis-related menaces until issue #21 (November). Shorten in Pep Comics #17 (July): the death of a super-hero, as a and Novick produced all twelve Pep episodes plus an addibullet-riddled John Dickering, alias The Comet, died in the tional dozen stories for Shield-Wizard Comics, making “The arms of his younger brother Bob, who adopted the cosShield” the longest-running M.L.J. series still in the hands of tumed identity of “The Hangman” to wreak vengeance its creators. “The Comet,” now by the team of Joe Blair and on the killers. Another milestone was the premiere in Blue Lin Streeter, plodded along, much of the character’s energy Ribbon Comics #13 (May) of the first super-hero strip to having departed with creator Jack Cole. Thus, Comet’s death feature a reformed villain. And yet, these dramatic breakcould be seen as a mercy killing. throughs were not the publishers’ What inspired guest scripter Harry most significant contribution to Shorten to make this drastic move the medium this year. That honor is open to speculation, but it proved belonged instead to the debut in a sound decision. Although lacking Pep #22 of a seemingly innocuous his brother’s superhuman powers, teenager who would nonetheless The Hangman was a more exciting become one of the most iconic character. Aided by his egregiously characters in the history of comic stereotyped valet Anthracite and books. Comet’s gal pal Thelma, Bob Dickering played mind games with his That debut came at the end of foes before swooping in for the figthe year, however. M.L.J’s year urative kill, stalking them, terrorizstarted with the introduction of a ing them, assuring them that their different adolescent in the Janufate, as foretold by the projected ary issue of Pep Comics (#11), as image of a gallows, was inevitable. writer Harry Shorten and artist The first four installments were Irv Novick’s “The Shield” took a drawn by George Storm in a wild, youngster orphaned by criminals loose, cartoony style full of rubberunder his wing, making him his limbed figures and exaggerated new crimefighting partner as the violence. Harry Lucey handled the masked Dusty the Boy Detective. balance of the year’s episodes, makThe same story introduced The ing an interesting attempt to comVulture, a vampire-like cloaked bine Storm’s fluidity with his own grotesquerie with huge pointed solid if unspectacular illustrative ears and, as of his second appearstyle. Hangman proved popular ance, green skin. The murderous enough to merit cover star status mastermind faced off against A comic book first: the death of The Comet. in Special Comics #1 (Winter), a test Shield and Dusty four times in TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

flight for a quarterly solo title, backed by “Roy and Dusty, Boy Buddies,” a team-up of Shield and Wizard’s sidekicks illoed by Paul Reinman. While “Sergeant Boyle,” “Kayo Ward,” and “Bentley of Scotland Yard” retained their places in the back pages, many of Pep’s original slate of features were replaced over the course of the year by new super-hero and fantasy strips. Two debuted in issue #12 (February). Shorten and Streeter’s “Danny in Wonderland” starred a farm boy and his dog swept to a storybook kingdom by a tornado à la The Wizard of Oz, where they befriended Kupkake, an accident-prone dwarf whose good-intentioned blundering often drove the plot. These were old-school fairy tales with a modern touch, the series’ heroes cheerfully stuffing witches into gas ovens or dousing giants with kerosene and setting them Change was afoot in the pages of Pep Comics this year, as “The Shield” acquired a kid sidekick and “The Hangalight. That wouldn’t have set well with man,” brother of The Comet, took his murdered sibling’s spot in the comic. TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc. “The Fireball,” M.L.J.’s answer to The Human glowing donkey, who personified the collective goodness Torch. Firefighter Ted Tyler gained the power to absorb and of mankind. control flame after exposure to burning chemicals. A superhero who specialized in capturing arsonists, Fireball wore The overtly sensual nature of Madame Satan’s crimes and bright blue tights and a cowl but didn’t maintain a secret the ease with which she entranced her prey, as well as the identity, working openly for the fire department in and out strip’s many scenes of mayhem and murder, epitomized of costume. One series, “Lee Sampson, Midshipman,” came the general rise of sexual titillation and brutal violence in to a natural conclusion in the June issue (#16), with the title M.L.J. comic books throughout the year. Deaths by decapicadet graduating from Annapolis and entering naval sertation, by fire, by slow torture, by zombie and vampire, by vice as a freshly minted ensign. Debuting the same issue acid and poison, by knife and axe and sword, or by a bulwas “Madam Satan,” outgoing editor Abner Sundell’s varilet fired point-blank into the eye were depicted in every ation on Timely’s “Black Widow.” After a homicidal goldsuper-hero series, and many of the back-up series to boot. digger named Tyra died This darkening tone in a struggle with an cannot simply be attribenraged mark, her soul uted to a difference in was cast down into editorial philosophies Hell. Satan, taking a likbetween Abner Suning to the warped murdell and Harry Shorten, deress, sent her back to as the change was well the mortal plane with underway by the time the new identity of Iola, Sundell left to helm Fox where she was to use Publications’ comics her seductive wiles to line in June. It was as if lure men into sin so he executives Louis Silberkcould claim their preleit, Maurice Coyne, and viously innocent souls. John Goldwater decided As portrayed by Sunto answer Sterling North dell’s scripting succesby doubling down on the sor Joe Blair, Madam very story elements he Satan wasn’t very good found objectionable. at her job, her plans The February issue of to give her victims a Blue Ribbon Comics (#9) “death kiss”—during reflected this new editowhich her face changed rial reality as the title into a ghastly green launched a new cover skull just like Fiction feature. Created by Joe House’s Fantomah— Blair and Sam Cooper continually thwarted using plot points borby Brother Sunbeam, Though her creators probably didn’t consciously design her that way, the diabolically rowed from the 1935 a glowing monk atop a seductive “Madame Satan” was bound to set critics of the medium howling. movie The Ghost Goes TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc. 83

tator resorted to monstrous allies like The Green Ghoul, a three-eyed demon it took Mr. Justice three issues to defeat, and the sinister Evil Eye. Cooper’s clean, Alex Raymondinspired art proved surprisingly effective when the story called for monsters or demons, and he was not averse to experimenting with layout, as his spectacular double-page spread in issue #13 attests. His cover art featuring Mr. Justice is some of the era’s most eye-catching. While its other main feature, “Rang-a-Tang the Wonder Dog,” retained the services of Ed Smalle throughout the 1941 issues, many of Blue Ribbon Comics’ back-up series were affected by the departures of their original artists for greener pastures. “The Fox”’s Irwin Hasen went to AllAmerican, “Ty-Gor”’s Mort Meskin to Detective, and Charles Biro (“Corporal Collins”) to Lev Gleason’s comics line, their strips reassigned to Warren King, George Storm, and Carl Hubbell, respectively. Others were replaced by new series, including two spotlighting super-heroes. “Inferno the Fire Breather” began his career in comics as a bad guy in the “Steel Sterling” story in Zip Comics #10 (January). The reformed crook intended to serve out his prison sentence but was forced to participate in a jailbreak. His innocence known only to the governor and his sympathetic daughter, Inferno donned a costume of red-and-yellow and did his good deeds while trying to stay one step ahead of the law. “Captain Flag” was M.L.J.’s Captain America, a hard-drinking wastrel named Tommy Townsend who donned the colors of Old Glory after months of training himself in the wilderness to avenge his father’s murder. One of several characters with bird sidekicks introduced this year, Flag’s bald eagle pal, Yank, was gone after the second episode. Despite there being nothing special about this derivative Joe Blair/Lin Streeter series, Mr. Justice was forced to share the covers with Captain Flag beginning with the September issue (#16).

Joe Blair and Sam Cooper’s ghostly “Mr. Justice” haunted the pages of Blue Ribbon Comics beginning with the January 1941 issue. TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

West, “Mr. Justice” was an heir to the English throne, bloodily murdered by a rival claimant 200 years before (though Cooper depicts these 18th-century characters in medieval garb), his spirit bound to the castle where he was slain. The British government ordered the castle disassembled and transported to America for safekeeping, but a U-boat sent the transport ship to the bottom of the ocean, liberating the ethereal Prince James. Making his way to New York, the ghost decided to use his supernatural attributes for good after helping free a kidnapped heiress. In both powers and appearance, the white-faced Mr. Justice owed a debt to Jerry Siegel and Bernard Baily’s “The Spectre,” but adopted a lighter tone in both art and writing. Blair’s villains committed heinous crimes, but the Royal Wraith captured them alive, turning them over to the law or even, in one case, helping a vampire recover his humanity. Able to assume mortal form, Mr. J went to work as a troubleshooter for Mayor Clark and struck up a tentative romance with his daughter Pat, a much happier fate than Spectre’s alter ego was allowed. The series took a darker turn with a six-episode story in issues #13-18 (June-November) pitting Mr. Justice against the otherwise anonymous dictator of “Mitteleuropa,” a thinly disguised Hitler analog who was actually a certain satanic “epitome of all things evil.” In an impassioned burst of wish-fulfillment fantasy, Justice wreaked a bloody vengeance on the Nazi hierarchy: Himmler bayoneted, Von Ribbentrop blown up, Göbbels riddled with bullets, Göring blasted to bits during a Luftwaffe air raid. With his henchmen dead, the desperate dic-

“The Black Hood” and “The Wizard” remained the headliners of Top Notch Comics, sharing its covers (albeit with the Hood’s figure and logo predominant). The title was almost entirely written by Harry Shorten, who scripted not only the two lead features but also “Bob Phantom,” “The Firefly,” “Kardak,” “Keith Kornell, West Pointer,” and “The St. Louis Kid,” a pointless regurgitation of prizefighter clichés that began in the February issue (#12), with Joe Blair stepping in on occasion to give Shorten M.L.J. was so keen on “The Black Hood” that the a breather on one mystery-man was given his own short-lived pulp magazine. TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc. strip or another. 84

Blair and Ed Smalle’s “Wings Johnson” and Harvey A. Biern’s “Fran Frazer,” about an adventurous newsmagazine photographer, were the exceptions. Al Camy handled the art on both “Black Hood” and “Wizard.” The Hood’s adventures centered on various weird villains, including four encounters with his arch-foe The Skull, a villain apparently so popular that he appeared on the covers of three issues he didn’t otherwise appear in. A running subplot concerning Kip Burland’s romantic rivalry with meatheaded jock Joe Strong over reporter Betty Sutton quickly grew tedious and was dropped in favor of exonerating Burland of the crime Skull had framed him for (issue #19, December). The publishers were so confident in the hero’s star power that, in a rare reversal of the usual pattern, they launched a pulp magazine, Black Hood Detective, featuring prose adventures of the Man of Mystery. Legal pressure from Popular Publications, owners of top-selling detective pulp Black Mask, dictated a title change to Hooded Detective. It lasted only three issues. Shorten’s “Wizard” scripts were equally full of blood-and-thunder, but his recasting of alter ego Blane Whitney as a crusading newspaper publisher instead of the Doc Savage-style scientist-adventurer seen in the Will Harr version was a letdown. “The Firefly” relied heavily on a pair of recurring enemies who between them dominated half the year’s episodes. The Mummy, the living corpse of an ancient Egyptian sorcerer whose depraved necromancies left a trail of death and destruction, clashed with Firefly four times, while The Whirling Dervish, a homicidal Hindu holy man able to turn himself into mist, appeared twice. Shorten’s other series showed a tendency to run in place, though he did take the step of sending Keith Kornell, temporarily promoted to lieutenant, to train recruits at an Army “draft camp,” reflecting newly drafted artist Nick Zuraw’s departure from the strip, announced in issue #16 (June). Zuraw was but the first of a platoon of comics creators and executives soon to be vacuumed up into the man-hungry maw of America’s military machine.

Artist Ed Smalle specialized in spectacular air combat scenes, like this intricate dogfight from “War Eagles.” TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

fantasy with a fairy tale setting by Louis Golden, and “War Eagles,” an aviation strip that, like M.L.J. companion strips “Wings Johnson,” “Lucky Larson,” and “Jolly Roger and His Sky Pirates,” featured complex scenes of air combat by artist Ed Smalle. Other series lacked such consistency, and two had disappeared by year’s end. “Zambini the Miracle Man” was none the worse for wear after the substitution of Paul Reinman for Lin Streeter at the drawing board, but excessive artist turnover and a general feeling of nowhere to go in plot or characterization spelled the end of cop strip “Red Reagan” and the long-gone-stale “Scarlet Avenger.” Reagan’s place went to “Black Jack,” a super-hero strip drawn by “Black Hood” co-creator Al Camy about a police detective whose crooked partner lured him into a gangland ambush. Financed by the eccentric millionaire who inadvertently saved him, Jack Jones adopted a costumed persona modeled on the ace of spades to psych out the superstitious mob boss who ordered his death. Replacing “Scarlet Avenger” was “Wilbur.” Wilbur Wilkin was a boy in the small town of Westfield whose inept overconfidence and harebrained schemes bedeviled his stuffy but malleable father, loving but exasperated mother, and boy-crazy sister. Drawn by Lin Streeter and scripted initially by Harvey Willard, replaced by Joe Blair as of the third installment, the strip delivered its share of chuckles but soon became overshadowed by the success of a different M.L.J. teen humor strip.

Over in Zip Comics, cover star “Steel Sterling” began the year by staging the death of his fictitious twin brother and revealing the truth to love interest Dora Cummins. During that same three-part storyline (#10-12), the other Man of Steel squared off against renegade sideshow freak Twisto the Rubber Man, whose reluctant accomplice Inferno the Fire Breather switched sides mid-battle. After helping Sterling round up The Rattler, a fugitive mobster dressed in a snake costume, Inferno surrendered to the law, his storyline continuing in his Blue Ribbon series. Later episodes pitted Steel against Garguilo, a puppeteer turned killer who appeared three times this year, and sent Sterling and his supporting cast on a goodwill tour of South America, where they encountered various Axis-sponsored menaces. Irv Novick took on the art chores following the mid-year departure of co-creator Charles Biro. Adventure strip “Captain Valor” lost its artist, Mort Meskin, around the same time, his vacancy filled by Lin Streeter. The visual transition in the August issue (#17) heralded a change in direction for the strip, as the previously footloose Valor joined the Marines. Frank Volpe’s pseudo-Lone Ranger, “Nevada Jones, Quick-Trigger Man,” was at least consistent throughout 1941, as were “Dicky and the Magic Forest,” a 85

The Shield-Wizard quarterly continued to feature three “Shield” stories and two “Wizard” stories per issue. Highlights included the G-Man Extraordinary and Boy Detective’s showdowns with a suave vampire and with The Black Robes, a band of costumed terrorists patterned after the Ku Klux Klan. The Wizard and Roy faced more mundane foes, but readers could find consolation in the Mort Meskin art featured in the Spring and Summer issues (#34). Curiously, the cover of the Winter issue depicted Shield, Wizard, and their boy pals battling Black Hood’s nemesis The Skull, a villain they never otherwise encountered. A second quarterly, Jackpot Comics, was added to the schedule in 1941. It was a showcase title featuring Top-Notch’s “The Black Hood,” Zip’s “Steel Sterling,” and Blue Ribbon’s “Mr. Justice,” backed by “Sergeant Boyle” episodes gueststarring Corporal Collins. What made Jackpot #4 (Winter) most notable had nothing to do with any of those characters. Instead, the issue featured the second appearance of a bucktoothed, redheaded teenager who made his debut two months earlier in Pep Comics #22. His name was “Archie.”

There is considerable controversy surrounding the origins of America’s Typical Teen. John Goldwater in later years insisted he was the creator of the strip, and that remains the publishing company’s official stance today. The truth is more complicated. The rise of youth culture in the years following World War I—the word “teenager” itself was first coined in the pages of a 1941 issue of Popular Science—has been attributed to any number of factors, including the end of child labor and a resultant rise in high school attendance and graduations; the growth of a comfortable middle class and the disposable income it put into young peoples’ pockets; the rise of new forms of media and the emergence of a nationwide pop culture; and the mobility that came with affordable automobiles. Whatever the causes, the six years between 13 and 18, the years of junior and senior high, had come to be seen as a distinct chapter in life, a carefree time of best friends and school rivalries and endless possibilities, to be looked back on in later years with nostalgia and regret. Beginning with Seventeen, Booth Tarkington’s seminal 1907 novel of adolescence, the entertainment media discovered there was money to be made from this emergent demographic, by glamorizing it, by pandering to it, as well as by making fun of it. “Archie” had many antecedents. Carl Ed’s Harold Teen was the first successful syndicated comic strip featuring a teenage lead character, though by the ‘40s it had become more of a family strip. The Aldrich Family, one of the top-rated radio comedies, centered on squeakyvoiced Henry Aldrich and his ever-hungry best friend Homer, a lovable pair of hopelessly awkward adolescent bumblers. Taking a more sentimental approach to teenagers were the “Andy Hardy” movies from MGM starring Mickey Rooney as the wholesome small-town boy whose brash impetuosity and easily entranced libido were held in check by his father, the sagacious Judge Hardy. It was theatergoers standing in line to see the latest Andy Hardy picture that allegedly inspired John Goldwater to order up teen-themed features for his comics. It was common practice at M.L.J. to develop multiple features on different themes—as in such pairings as Sergeant Boyle/Corporal Collins, The West Pointer/The Midshipman, and Danny in Wonderland/Dicky in the Magic Forest—and this was no exception. Hence, Willard and Streeter’s “Wilbur” on one hand, “Archie” on the other. The first episode was dialogued by Boni Victor “Vic” Bloom and drawn by 21-year-old artist Robert “Bob” Montana (possibly from a plot suggestion by Harry Shorten, though Montana insisted he laid out the first story without any editorial or authorial input). Bloom was a writer and editor for Dell’s comics line, for which he had created “Wally Williams, All-American Boy” in the February 1940 issue of Popular Comics. Wally was a top student and star athlete at Riverview High School, who had a best friend named Jughead Lewis and was caught in a romantic triangle with a pure-hearted girl from the wrong side of the tracks named Betty Riley and her snooty rich rival. Pep #22 gave us fumbling, overreaching Archibald “Archie” Andrews (self-nicknamed “Chick” in this first story only) of Riverdale High School, who had a best friend named Jughead Jones and spent the episode trying to impress his new neighbor, a demure blonde named Betty Cooper. There can be little

It was supposedly this entry in the “Andy Hardy” film series that inspired M.L.J. executive John Goldwater to order up some teen-themed features for his comics line. TM and © respective copyright holder.

doubt that Bloom recycled some character names and relationships for the M.L.J. series. Still, “Wally Williams” was a sports strip with a hint of soap opera, not a humor strip. The “Archie” characters were young teens, 13 or 14, in the pilot. Shorten took over the scripting with the series’ second episode in Jackpot #4, aging its leads by a few years and introducing Archie’s academic bête noire, Riverdale principal Mrs. Grundy (soon to be unmarried and demoted to teacher as the creative team finetuned its supporting cast). Even in these earliest stories, there was something special going on that set “Archie” apart from “Wilbur” and the hordes of pubescent copycats to follow. Bob Montana drew on his own not-so-distant school experiences for inspiration, basing his character designs on himself and his classmates at Haverhill High School in Massachusetts. It was perhaps that connection to reality, however leavened with slapstick and exaggeration, that resonated with comics readers. Or perhaps, as suggested by Jon B. Cooke, co-author of The MLJ Companion, it was something more basic: “Let’s face it: the appeal of the comics depicting the antics of a gang of high schoolers from the mythical American town of Riverdale (as idyllic and improbable a place as Walt Disney’s “Main Street, U.S.A.” attraction) is sex. Not the icky, sweaty, fumbling-in-the-backseat kind of our all-too real world, but more the foolishness and, well, quaint hormone-driven attraction between kids growing ever so slowly into adulthood amid a typically middle class rural American hamlet. The love triangles, the striving to impress, the pining (with just a dash of angst), the stereotypes and cliques, and overall silliness of the courtship “drama” of pubescent youngsters… That’s what keeps the Archie Comics’ teenage humor juggernaut barreling along.” (118)

The modest beginnings of a comic book juggernaut: the first appearance of “Archie,” as well as girl-next-door Betty Cooper and sleepy-eyed best friend Jughead Jones. TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

Jerry Iger and Will Eisner were still credited as Feature Editor and Art Director, respectively, despite having gone their separate ways nearly a year before. As of the April issues, Jungle Comics, Planet Comics, and Wings Comics listed Gene Fawcette as their art director, a change in regime heralded by a mass switch in the house names the three titles’ strips were signed with, while Iger was now credited as art director for Jumbo Comics and Fight Comics, his books retaining their rosters of fictitious bylines. It is not altogether clear what happened behind the scenes. What is known is that publisher Thurman Scott had retired to Florida following a heart attack the previous year, leaving Fiction House editor-in-chief Malcolm Reiss in nominal charge of the comics. How much influence Reiss actually had over the work provided by the S.M. Iger Studio is also uncertain. Regardless, a kind of chaos had descended on the line. Aside from a handful of series either still in the hands of their creators or burning off the inventory left

Still, there was little about America’s Typical Teen in 1941 to indicate that young Mr. Andrews would come to outshine his super-heroic co-stars, let alone that within five years his popularity would dictate the company’s rebranding to Archie Comics.

Fiction Housekeeping Casual followers of Fiction House comics saw little evidence that the publisher was paying attention to the hot trends dominating the industry this year, as its three monthly and two bi-monthly titles retained their lineup of pulp-influenced genre strips. The sharper-eyed among them, however, might have noticed a change in the line’s indicia (the legally required boilerplate that appeared in tiny type at the bottom of a comic book’s inner front cover or first interior page). In the January through March issues, 87

Jumbo Comics remained the publishing house’s top seller, primarily on the strength of its lead feature. A strong, confident, competent woman, “Sheena, Queen of the Jungle” was herself the chief selling point of the series, as well as its moral center. Not that the strip’s readers were all there for the feminist subtext: as the year progressed, new artist Bob Webb slowly upped the cheesecake factor, the glamorous lead’s figure growing shapelier as her trademark leopard-skin one-piece got skimpier. Sheena continued her Edgar Rice Burroughs-flavored adventures largely undisturbed by the tempestuous events of the outside world, though she went toe to toe with a Fascist-sponsored insurrectionist known as The Great Black Father in issue #28 (June). Lightning, the title’s only super-hero, no longer became a bolt of lightning but instead projected it from his hands, a useful power to bring to bear on the criminals and Nazis he encountered. The strip was passed from artist to artist, its hero losing his mask along the way, before Webb settled in as regular illustrator with the October issue (#32). The time travel series “Stuart Taylor,” a Jack Kirby creation now handled by Sy Reit, had its stalwart hero team up with Don Quixote, visit pre-cataclysmic Atlantis, and cross swords with Napoleon, Bluebeard, Lucretia Borgia, and the Olympian gods. Will Eisner’s swashbuckling “The Hawk” (formerly “Hawk of the Seas”) continued on in a strange half-life. As Roche & Iger staffer Mortimer “Mort” Leav recalled decades later: “Eisner had split, and left Jerry with stacks of Hawk of the Seas pages. Arty Saaf was assigned to write new material. He carefully cut out Eisner panels and partial panels to paste onto fresh pages and drew in the rest, thereby incorporating as much original Eisner as he could. The new stories on the doctored pages would then go straight to the engraver and—voila—the books came out with new ‘Eisner’ Hawk of the Seas stories.” (Leav 9)

Definitive “Sheena, Queen of the Jungle” artist Bob Webb settled in for a twelve-year run on the jungle girl series beginning with Jumbo Comics #28. TM and © Galaxy Publishing and Valdoro Entertainment.

behind by those artists hired away by Eisner, all five titles saw art assignments passed out indiscriminately among the shop staff, with everyone from George Appel to Stanley Zuckerberg taking a hand at one point or another. Things stabilized somewhat with the April issues. Though some features, and even entire titles, continued to be plagued by creative turnover, the major Fiction House strips were by year’s end in the hands of a core group of dependable inkslingers like Robert “Bob” Webb, Seymour “Sy” Reit, Dan Zolnerowich, Al Gabriele, and Art Saaf.

The balance of Jumbo was split between unremarkable filler material and Iger’s animation-style kid strips, “Bobby” and “Pee Wee.” “Wilton of the West” was dropped, replaced in issue #25 (April) by “Midnight the Black Stallion,” an animal strip about a horse torn between the wild mustang herd he rules and the father-and-son Texas Rangers who raised and trained him. Bob Webb drew the first four episodes, Saaf the next four, with Alex Blum taking over for the year’s final two installments. Reprints of Bob Kane’s “Peter Pupp,” a sci-fi funny animal series dating back to the Wags days, ran through issue #25, its page allotment doled out thenceforth among several features.

Iger himself must have sensed that he needed help. Early in the year, he hired Ruth Roche, a smart, talented 23-yearold newly moved to Manhattan from Holyoke, Massachusetts, as his business manager and executive editor. She could also write well and fast, replacing the prolific Toni Blum, lost the previous year to Eisner (though still freelancing for Iger on other accounts in her spare time). How much of Fiction House’s material the triple-threat newcomer scripted this year is unknown, as is which series she had a hand in. It was likely Roche who thought to streamline production by dividing the responsibility for the various titles between Iger and Fawcette. Her importance to the operation was soon made manifest by the studio’s official reorganization as Roche & Iger.

Although all the features in Jungle Comics enjoyed uninterrupted runs, many became something other than their creators might have intended. “The Red Panther” abruptly and inexplicably morphed in the July issue (#19) from a caped-and-cowled clairvoyant archer to a fur-clad, knifewielding savage leading a leap of leopards. “Captain Terry Thunder,” which began as an ordinary Foreign Legion strip, now centered on the antics of Kismet the Camel, Vincent the Vulture, and Anderson the Arab, one of many ostensibly humorous ethnic stereotypes rampant in this series. “Tabu, Wizard of the Jungle” lost many of his most 88

flamboyant powers, such as shapeshifting and casting elaborate illusions, and became more of a generic wild man. A similar fate befell “Fantomah.” Without the gonzo genius of creator Fletcher Hanks, who left the strip following the March issue (#15), The back pages of Jungle Comics saw “The Red she quickly devolved Panther” get a new costume and powers in 1941, into an ordinary, vine- while “Captain Terry Thunder,” once a straight Forswinging white god- eign Legion strip, was taken over by its comic relief characters. TM and © respective copyright holder. dess-type. As for cover star “Kaänga,” he broke no new ground in the realm of jungle lording, discovering lost worlds stocked with the obligatory dinosaurs and dueling with jungle beasts of every stripe (and spot). His adventures were at least always well drawn, particularly after Dan Zolnerowich settled in as regular artist with issue #20 (August). The title’s highlights remained the animal series “Simba” and Henry Kiefer’s “Wambi, Jungle Boy,” each offering well-crafted storytellafter that. The contributions of Gene Fawcette provided ing and superbly rendered wildlife. the only consistency, his eye for dramatic composition and meticulously rendered aircraft gracing not only the covers, Save for a handful of encounters between Red Panther and but also the informational “Wing Tips” and a fascinatingAxis agents, the Jungle crew seemed unaware the world in-hindsight series speculating on the future of airplanes was at war. The same could not be said for the stars of the and air combat. In the last 1941-dated issue, “K-4” was third Fiction House monthly. Wings Comics was fixated on replaced by “Captain Wings,” a Dan Zolnerowich-drawn the conflict from cover to cover. The characters of “Skull strip about a masked aviator, the closest Wings ever came Squad,” “The Phantom Falcons,” “Clipper Kirk,” “Suicide to a super-hero. Already a legend for his fearless flying for Smith,” and “Greasemonkey Griffin” all either flew for or the RAF, the eagle-eyed Wings (his real name, believe it or were affiliated with the RAF. The other series had equal jusnot) went undercover as the safety-obsessed commander tification for their focus on war: “K-4” was a British intelliof a U.S. Army Air Forces squadron to ferret out the true gence agent, “The Parachute Patrol” were British Boy Scouts identity of The Mad Killer, a disfigured pilot whose lethal working for the Coastal Defense, and “Jane Martin, War raids on the camp were shattering morale. Only Mickey, a Nurse” was by definition in the thick of things. All these teenage mechanic, knew that the fussy “armchair pilot” strips eschewed the and the heroic Captain Wings were one and the same. costumed villains and fantastical weaponry that snuck into other publishers’ war comics in favor of an idealized yet gritty reality. Scripting on these features was solid but unspectacular. The art was another matter. Wings was the title most afflicted by the behind-the-scenes chaos at Iger, with roster turnovers a nearly monthly event. A series drawn in a dull but serviceable style one issue might be beautifully illustrated the next and The closest thing to a mystery-man Wings Comics display the crudest ever featured was “Captain Wings,” a grounded hackwork the issue fighter pilot who continued to fly anonymously.

Similar woes befell the Fiction House bi-monthlies. The departures of Dick Briefer, Fletcher Hanks, and Henry Kiefer by mid-year left their Planet Comics series vulnerable to the revolving door syndrome, artists changing with every issue. Space operatics with interchangeable heroes— save for “Gale Allen and her Girl Patrol”—remained the bill of fare. Several of the title’s original features were dropped for a bevy of new characters like Al Walker’s “Norge Benson,” Al Gabriele’s “Reef Ryan,” and “The Star Pirate,” a swashbuckler set in outer space. Fight Comics, too, underwent constant artistic turnover. The title held the middle ground between ignoring the war as Jungle and Planet did and wallowing in it like Wings, some strips centering on the war (“Chip Collins,” “Strut Warren,” “Frosty North”), some occasionally touching on it (“Shark Brodie,” “Rip Regan”), and the remainder (“Kayo Kirby,” “Oran,” and the boxer biographies) adhering to the book’s original prizefighting theme. One series, “The Spy Fighter,” abruptly recreated itself with the August issue (#14), its setting shifting without explanation from the future to the battlefields of contemporary North Africa, its hero’s costume and superpowers forgotten.

TM and © respective copyright holder.

A sixth Fiction House title launched in late summer also reflected the publisher’s belated decision to jump on the buntingclad bandwagon. Its editing credited to pulp writer DeWitt Shank instead of Malcolm Reiss, Rangers of Freedom Comics coverfeatured Biff Barkley, Percy Cabot, and Tex Russell, a trio of young men recruited by the FBI for their physical and mental prowess, given bulletproof costumes, and sent into action against The Super-Brain, a macrocephalic megalomaniac intent on ruling the USA. Illustrated by Joe Doolin for an unidentified scripter, “The Rangers of Freedom” tried hard to capture the action and horror elements of a Timely strip but were undercut by their silly barelegged uniforms Though largely indifferent to the super-hero fad, Fiction House did yield to the temptation of exploiting the popularity of Timely’s and crested skullcaps. “The “Captain America” by adding “Super-American” and “Captain Fight” Defense Patrol,” retitled to the Fight Comics line-up. TM and © respective copyright holder. “Defense Kids” with the secThough no circulation figures are ond issue, concerned a multi-ethnic available, Fight may have been the kid gang fighting spies and saboteurs line’s poorest seller, for with its final under the watchful eye of federal two 1941-dated issues a quintet of agent Thomason. A roster of forits original features were dropped in gettable genre strips filled out the favor of a pair of new series featuring back pages, mostly military series patriotically themed mystery-men. like “The Anzac Hawks,” “Don Stu“Super-American,” debuting in issue art of the Far East Rangers,” and the #15 (October) with art by Dan Zolnerohumorous “Jeep Malarkey.” Like wich, was a volunteer from the idyllic its elder siblings, Rangers of FreeAmerica of the far future sent back dom was competently written but through time by the “chronoptican” hampered by art that veered from to aid his 20th-century forefathers in polished professionalism to rank their struggle with totalitarianism. amateurism. Worse, none of its Using the Superman-level strength, features displayed enough origispeed, and reflexes common to men nality to compensate. The new biof his era, the otherwise nameless monthly needed more to ensure time traveler prevented the conquest its survival. of the United States by make-believe dictators with names like Tyrannus Some of the seeming disarray and Vultro. He was joined an issue behind the scenes at Roche & Iger later by the Rudolph “Rudy” Palaishad to do with Great Comics Pubdrawn “Captain Fight,” in which lishing, a small publishing house high school gym teacher Jeff Crockthat entered the field late in the ett donned star-spangled mask and year with two titles packaged by tights to thwart crime and subverthe shop. Neither book identified sion in the Maryland town of Freea publisher or editor; its contents ville. Though kid sidekick Yank wore were copyrighted in the corpono costume, Fight was much closer rate name. It was in fact a joint in spirit to Captain America than venture of Jerry Iger and Fred Super-American. Fiore, about whom little else is 90

known, and at least one of the studio’s clients believed Iger was putting his best people on his own titles to the detriment of his paying customers. In a letter dated December 26, 1941, Quality publisher “Busy” Arnold, who laid the blame for his line’s losses of late at Iger’s doorstep, spoke his mind: “I take [offense to] the statement in your letter of December 4th, where you say ‘Maybe I’m a fool, but I’ve turned down considerable business so I may better serve you in your books. What do I get in return?’ Are you trying to be funny or do you think I am a bit simple? You never turned down any business because of me and grabbed off all the accounts you could get from such magazines as Pocket Comics, Champ Comics and Speed Comics. Aren’t you the same Jerry Iger who started Great Comics and Choice Comics with Fred Fiore even though you were supposed to be concentrating on producing extra good work for E.M. Arnold and Thurman Scott? Don’t make me laugh, Jerry.” (Quattro 16)

A new Fiction House title, Rangers of Freedom Comics, was entirely devoted to strips with patriotic or war-based themes. TM and © respective copyright holder.

Outfoxed On the surface, Fox Publications seemed to be thriving, placing more comic books on America’s newsstands in 1941 than everyone but DC/AA, Quality, and Dell, even adding two new bi-monthlies to its schedule. That was an illusion. Publisher Victor Fox, self-styled “king of the comics,” was neglecting his realm to focus on other business ventures, including the launch of a raunchy-for-the-times men’s magazine called Swank and the heavy promotion of Kooba Kola, a soft drink that never existed outside the pages of Fox’s publishing line. Despite the monotony of the mandated eight-panel four-tier page layouts, the comics under the guidance of editor Bill Scott continued to offer action-packed super-hero series like “Blue Beetle,” “Samson,” and “The Flame.” Scripting credits during this period are largely unknown, though it is likely Bob Farrell and Scott himself pitched in.

Jerry Iger had high hopes that Great Comics and Choice Comics would be the foundation for his own comic publishing empire, but the books were sunk by their own mediocrity. TM and © respective copyright holder.

The Blue Beetle was still the dauntless publisher’s pet character, as is evident by the full-page advertisements for the radio series that ran in every 1941-dated Fox comic book, ads citing dozens of stations supposedly airing a program cancelled the previous September. Never wildly innovative, the strip maintained a consistency of quality throughout the year to match that of hated rival “Superman.” While most stories threw gangsters or Axis spies at the Beetle that the azure-clad avenger could handle in his sleep, the occasional colorful villain like The Sphinx or the deadly dowager named Countess Belladonna tested Dr. Franz’s Vitamin 2-X formula to the limit. His Mystery Men Comics co-star “The Green Mask” faced a less interesting assortment of foes, the most exciting being an armed robber who framed Michael Shelby’s costumed alter ego for his own crime wave. In issue #6 (August) of his solo book, Green Mask and boy pal Domino gained two new supporting players, heiress Olivia Tracy and her chauffeur Peters, a well-meaning fumbler who caused as many problems as he helped resolve. “The Lynx,” now drawn by Chuck Winter, suffered from the same relentless formula that plagued several Fox strips: every episode found Lynx and Blackie, never seen out of costume, contending with the

Arnold needn’t have worried. If Jerry Iger was putting his best efforts toward the Great Comics titles, it wasn’t apparent in the end products themselves. The cover of the monthly Great Comics #1 (November) spotlighted “The Great Zarro,” a skilled aerialist who, along with his little pal Rags, was the only survivor of an arson fire that killed the rest of their circus troupe. Able to fly at will thanks to “gypsy herbs,” Zarro vowed to use this gift to fight crime. The series was as lackluster as it sounds, with clichéd writing and stiff, inconsistent art (Rags was drawn in a jarringly cartoony style that clashed with his surroundings). “Madame Strange,” drawn by Charles A. “Chuck” Winter, was Great’s other super-hero. Debuting sans origin or alternate identity, the scantily clad superwoman used her titanic strength to counter Japanese subterfuge in the South Pacific. The comic’s best feature was “Snarzan the Ape,” a funny animal strip by former Joe Jinks artist Pete Llanuza that lampooned the contemporary political scene. The star of its bi-monthly sister title Choice Comics was Iger and Winters’ “Kangaroo Man,” a pleasantly illustrated but silly strip about “daredevil American explorer” Jack Brian, his trained kangaroo, and their improbable encounters with Axis agents. Several other mystery-men series that borrowed heavily from other publishers’ strips appeared alongside Jack and Bingo in that first issue, including the super-strong “Atlas the Mighty” (a clone of Fox’s Samson); “Fire-Eater,” a flamespewing sideshow performer dabbling in crime crushing (aping M.L.J.’s Inferno); and “The Secret Circle,” three brothers, each an Olympic-level athlete, who assumed their identically costumed alter egos to avenge their murdered father (ä la United Feature’s Triple Terror). The back pages of both titles were crammed with featurettes devoted to tales of true crime, war, and espionage; one- and two-page humor strips; and formulaic genre strips like “Devildogs Three” and “Zomba, Jungle Fighter.” In short, Great Comics weren’t. After three issues each of Great Ads offering prizes that were never meant to be awarded in exchange for bottle caps from a non-existent and Choice, the line was dead. soft drink were a staple of Fox comics in 1941. TM and © respective copyright holder. 91

not compensate for the utter paucity of originality the series demonstrated. Grieg Chapian’s “The Green Knight” remained a highlight of the back pages but its companions limped along with tired plotting and often barely professional art.

same villain, a goggle-eyed criminal called The Rook armed with a “hypnoray,” who seemingly perished at story’s end only to return without a scratch in the following installment. “Rex Dexter of Mars” continued to showcase Dick Briefer’s way with a bug-eyed monster, but the rest of the Mystery Men back-up strips, all long abandoned by their creators, showed little imagination or variation.

Fox’s fourth anthology, Weird Comics, cover-featured “The Dart,” the 2,000-year-old mystery-man with the invincible sword. Aside from a oneepisode duel with The Council of Nine, Wonderworld Comics, Fox’s senior a cabal of hooded subversives, Dart and title, introduced “The Black Lion and Ace’s adventures stayed firmly rooted in The Cub” in its January issue (#21). their urban crime and corruption milieu. Big game hunter George Davis and his The electrically powered “Dynamo” suforphaned nephew Larry first donned fered from a similar malaise, lacking the black-and-crimson garb of their even a youthful partner to give him a leonine alter egos to avenge the longsemblance of personality. The title’s ago murder of the boy’s father. Like third super-hero, “The Eagle,” gained a The Lynx, they spent every episode new costume, a new artist (Chuck Winfighting the same foe, in this case an ter again), and a kid sidekick, Buddy the eyepatch-wearing Nazi code-named Though new to comic books, Robert Kanigher was an Daredevil Boy, in issue #11 (February). Blitz. Chuck Winter’s art, though pleas- experienced writer when he began freelancing for Fox in late 1941. Following the now familiar formula, ant, did little to relieve the monotony. the duo fought the same two baddies, Even so, the strip offered more excitea claw-handed sadist known as The Beast and The Gimp, ment than “The Flame.” Pitted against a succession of bora gang boss with a wooden leg, in five consecutive issues. ing spies and predictable crooks, his cause wasn’t helped The changes did, however, earn Bill Powers’ airborne alter by the quirky art of Larry Antonette. Lou Fine was sorely ego his own title. The Eagle joined Blue Beetle, The Flame, missed. The other series in Wonderworld shared the probSamson, and Green Mask on the newsstands, all five solo lems of their Mystery Men cousins, though the western titles now published bi-monthly and featuring all-original strip “Tex Maxon” at least retained the services of original content. Each included three or four stories of its title charartist Munson Paddock. acter backed by minor features from the monthlies. “Samson,” cover feature of Fantastic Comics, supplied its One of Bill Scott’s key contributions as editor was to give readers with lots of spectacle. The loincloth-clad stronga writer new to the industry, a former radio scripter for man and his boy companion David faced little real oppothe Work Projects Administration destined to become one sition, as Samson handled natural disasters, Axis war machines, and criminal gangs with equal alacrity, but artist Al Carreno made the frequent scenes of destruction lively enough to compensate. A rare challenge arose in issue #15 (February) in the form of Arpor, High Priest of Evil, whose magicks stymied Samson until, emulating his famous ancestor, he brought the costumed cult leader’s temple down around his ears. Fletcher Hanks’ surreal “Stardust” pitted its eponymous lead against a coalition of American fifth columnists and the Sky-Demons from Mars. To aid him in this battle, the space-born super-hero organized The Sixth Column, a nationwide network of patriotic boys ä la the Sentinels of Liberty. Perhaps a realworld fan club might have been built around the concept had not the eccentric Hanks ended the comics portion of his career early in the year, never to return. “Stardust” was replaced in Fantastic #17 (April) by “The Black Fury and Chuck,” another man-boy team of masked adventurers. Artist Dennis Neville gave them costumes identical to Black Lion and Cub save for different chest emblems and the lack of ears on their cowls. Gossip columnist John Perry and Chuck Marley, the orphaned son of a murdered policeman, were the faces behind the masks. The Fury’s strip followed the same formula as its counterparts, right down to the endlessly recurring villain, this time a vicious gangUnder new editor Abner Sundell, “The Flame” gained a new secret identity ster called The Fang. Neville’s quietly competent art could and a new partner, the like-powered Flame Girl. TM and © respective copyright holder. 92

of the comics medium’s most influential wordsmiths, his first assignment. Decades later, Robert “Bob” Kanigher recalled how he got his foot in the door: “[I] answered an ad in the Sunday New York Times. … I had never read comics in my life[, i]n newspapers or magazines. … I was ushered into an office about a mile long. Behind a desk the size of a baseball field sat a bald head. I’m walking towards this bald head and it says, ‘Tell me a story.’ So I immediately said, ‘A skeleton. Not someone who wears a costume, but a real skeleton is driving an open convertible at top speed down Times Square, with terrified pedestrians leaping out of the Please change caption to this: “Of more than a dozen new super-heroes added to Fox’s comics line—including “The Banshee,” “Lu-Nar,” and “The Wraith”— only way.’ The bald head said, ‘I “U.S. Jones” was deemed worthy of a solo book. TM and © respective copyright holder. like a man who can think on of private investigator Gary his feet. You’re hired. Go see Preston, and a supporting cast, W. W. Scott.’ That was his editor, his only editor.… secretary Linda Dale and selfHe ordered Blue Beetles and Samsons from me by appointed bodyguard Pug (a the yard. (Morrisey 70) retired boxer, naturally). Wonderworld #30 (also October) What happened behind the scenes in the late spring to completed the transformation, retelling The Flame’s origin shake up this comfortable groove is lost to history. For and turning Linda into the identically powered Flame Girl. whatever reason, Scott was out, as were Sam Cooper, WinThe Eagle and Buddy got a similar refurbishing, with Bill ter, Neville, and such longtime fixtures as Briefer, Chapian, Powers enlisting in the military in Weird Comics #16 (July) and Klaus Nordling. Though Victor Fox originally lured and the duo getting new patriotically themed costumes, Abner Sundell away from M.L.J. to helm Swank, the new making them essentially a flying Captain America and editor was given responsibility for the comics as well, his Bucky. immediate tasks to include lining up a roster of creative His roster already top-heavy with Superman and Batman talent and revamping the anthologies with new back-up copies, Victor Fox had no qualms about aping Simon and features. The results began to see print with the August Kirby’s hit character more than once. “U. S. Jones,” debuting 1941 issues. There was no missing the difference. After in Wonderworld #29 (September), was the most successful some nine months of uniform eight-panel layouts, the Fox of the fourteen new super-heroes introduced in the fall. books returned to the more dynamic stylings of the EisScripted by Bob Farrell and illustrated by Louis Cazeneuve, ner-Iger, Simon, and Harvey days. According to Kanigher, “America’s Ace Defender” roamed the nation’s roads in the Sundell increased production using a process that decades company of a gloomy hobo named Grumbler, jumping into later became known as ‘the Marvel method’: costume whenever Axis agents or fifth columnists reared “[Sundell] fancied himself a genius. He got the idea their heads. Never provided an origin, Jones was recruited of having the writers do an outline of the script, by the Secret Service in his second appearance and spent which we would give to the artists, who would the rest of his short career fighting Nazi menaces of varidraw the script, then the pages would be given ous kinds. A solo title debuted bearing a November cover back to the writers who would then write the copy date. in the space left over.” (70) The other members of this second generation of Fox superThis technique didn’t originate with Sundell—it was heroes ran the gamut from the clever to the mundane. reportedly the secret to Toni Blum’s productivity—but this Debuting alongside U. S. Jones in Wonderworld #29 was was the first time it was used across an entire line. Much “Lu-Nar,” a dime-store Superman from the moon whose of this artwork was provided by the small studio jointly Weismulleresque command of English (“Me stop bad owned by Pierce Rice and the Cazeneuve Brothers, which men!”) and amusing misunderstandings about American specialized in dynamic page designs spotlighting large, customs lent spice to what would otherwise have been a cleanly rendered figures. One of their first assignments cookie-cutter super-hero strip. Garry Kennedy, a police was to fan the flickering Flame. In the October issue of his detective gunned down in the line of duty, rose from the solo title (#7), the hero received a new secret identity, that 93

grave in Mystery Men #27 (October) as “The Wraith,” a green-skinned ghost able to possess the living. Another phantom was the star of Eagle #3’s “Joe Spook and Nickie the Boy King,” in which the American guardian of the teenage monarch of tiny Luzano continued to protect his royal ward after his own assassination. “The Yank and The Rebel” weren’t exactly ghosts but they had returned from the dead in a way. Kept alive in a state of suspended animation by the radioactive waters of a strange pool, a Union soldier and his Confederate counterpart awoke in the present, put aside their differences, and joined the fight against the Axis. Husky young Irishman Jim O’Donnell followed his stepfather’s murderer, a devil-masked scoundrel known as The Scorpion, to America, where Jim adopted the costumed identity of “The Banshee” to capitalize on his prey’s superstitious nature. His strip premiered in Fantastic #21 (August), two issues ahead of “The Gladiator,” in which art expert Dan Kenneth donned Roman armor to rescue the beautiful young hostage of a murderous collector. Shannon Kane, widow of a murdered chemist, used her late hubby’s final discovery, an artificial spider webbing stronger than steel that could be fired from a set of special bracelets, to terrorize the underworld as “The Spider Queen,” anticipating Spider-Man and his web-shooters by two decades. Fetching in her anachronistic mini-skirt and go-go boots, the leggy vigilante formed an alliance with straight-arrow cop Mike O’Bell in The Eagle #2 (September) to bring down his corrupt superiors. These

were the best of the lot. The remainder were bereft of anything resembling originality. Weird Comics #17 introduced “The Black Rider,” a modern-day Lone Ranger named Jack Cody forced to don a mask to combat the machinations of a ruthless banker and the corrupt lawmen who covered up his crimes. “The Blackbird” was aeronautical engineer Jake Baxter, the designer of a super-airplane with which the costumed aviator fought Axis saboteurs. He first took flight in the October issue of Blue Beetle (#7). “The Night Bird” was really news photographer “Lens” Crockett, whose generic costume of bright primaries didn’t exactly help him blend into the shadows. The deep blue costume of “The Tumbler” would’ve suited him better. A circus acrobat believed killed in a mob hit, Lee Brothers’ talents aided his new career as a vigilante. They first appeared in Green Mask #6 and #7, respectively. “The Topper” was a by-the-numbers masked detective first and last seen in Samson #6. All of these strips were drawn in the Rice-Cazeneuve style, giving the entire line a uniform look and feel it had never had previously. Could the changes to Fox’s comics line instigated by Abner Sundell have improved its fortunes? We’ll never know, for the publisher’s own questionable business tactics torpedoed them before they had a chance. With the operation awash in red ink, titles began disappearing. Samson was cancelled with issue #6 (September), Fantastic Comics and Weird Comics with their November issues (#23 and #19). The others staggered on, surviving long enough for their final issues to bear 1942 cover dates. The line was dead by year’s end, but the wily Victor Fox was not done with the comics industry. He’d be back.

Stumbles and Comebacks Fox Publications was not the only comics group fighting for its life in 1941. Frank Temerson’s Helnit Publications was down to the licensed title Green Hornet Comics, still being packaged by Bert Whitman’s small studio. It was joined in the spring by a revival of Crash Comics Adventures rebranded as Cat-Man Comics, its first issue bearing a #1 on the cover and a #6 in its indicia. Its eponymous star was the only feature carried over from the Crash days. The feline hero was now in the hands of Charles Quinlan, hired away from Majestic Studios to edit the new book. Quinlan designed the hero a new costume, dropped the awkward “nine lives” gimmick, enlisted David Merrywether in the military, and gave him his own Robin in the form of orphaned circus acrobat Katie Conn in issue #5 (December). As The Kitten, she became comics’ first female costumed kid sidekick. The back pages of the title featured a handful of new strips, including several super-heroes. The bestdrawn of these fillers were Quinlan’s own “Blaze Baylor,” starring an arson investigator whose skintight costume of “impurbestos” allowed him to get up-close and personal with fire, and “Hurricane Harrigan,” about an American cowboy adventuring his way

“The Cat-Man” returned in his own title with a new costume and, as of the fifth issue, a sidekick. The Kitten was the first girl to fill that role in comic books. TM and © respective copyright holder.

Two new Helnit titles joined Cat-Man Comics on the newsstands, both packed with costumed heroes, most notably “Miss Liberty,” the first of the female Captain America wannabes. TM and © respective holder.

across India. Scripted and, for the pilot episode only, illoed by Allen Ulmer, “The Deacon” was a strange series about a reformed gangster posing as a minister fighting crime out of an abandoned church with the aid of spunky orphan Mickey Matthews. Quinlan provided the art in later installments. Ulmer was also the creator of “Dr. Diamond” a.k.a. Dr. Drake Gorden, a shipwreck survivor chosen to receive the superhuman powers granted by a mystical black gem. Told he must use this gift to oppose evil, Gorden vowed that “with the great strength the magic diamond gives me, I will smash the most deadliest criminals that prey upon society!” Bruce Elliot, using the pen name Warren Z. Gardner, produced the first episode of “The Rag Man.” With a bounty put on his head by the corrupt political machine he threatened to expose, millionaire newspaper publisher Jay Garson, Jr., changed places with a lookalike vagrant after the latter was killed by a bullet meant for Garson. Only his faithful butler Tiny knew that his employer lived on as the tatterdemalion crimefighter. Issue #3 (July) introduced another Ulmer brainchild. Framed for the murder of his own secretary, defense lawyer Steve Prentice adopted the costumed identity of “The Pied Piper,” using a magic flute to root out the human rats responsible.

father and appointed his offspring “guardian of the American way.” Like Captain Fearless, the costumeless hero could summon his ghostly pater in times of crisis. The first of the female Captain Americas, “Miss Victory” used her position as secretary to an international trade negotiator to ferret out Axis dirty dealings. Whether any of the patriotic trio might’ve caught on is unanswerable, as the book was cancelled after two issues, the first indicator that Helnit was in trouble. The final blow may have been the loss of the rights to “The Green Hornet.” The popular radio character’s book was renamed Captain Aero Comics with its seventh issue (December), its contents replaced with all-new features. Artist Ray Willner and scripter Allen Ulmer handled both “Captain Aero” and “The Flag Man,” the former a mediocre aviation strip about an American test pilot ferrying war materiel to Britain, the latter exactly the dreary copycat the name implies. When not in his star-spangled costume, Flag Man was really Captain Hornet, special investigator for President Roosevelt. He and boy pal Rusty had only one adventure before the axe fell. Despite boastful blurbs on the cover of Cat-Man that “500,000 readers can’t be wrong,” Helnit was hemorraging money and Temerson was forced to once again shut down his comic book line.

Originally a monthly, Cat-Man Comics went bi-monthly with its fourth issue, alternating on the newsstands with a new title, Captain Fearless Comics. Charles Quinlan and Allen Ulmer again did most of the heavy lifting on the new book. The buckskin-clad title character was really military cadet John Fearless, the namesake of a Revolutionary War hero, who fought subversion and sabotage armed with a mystic horn that could summon the ghost of his illustrious ancestor. Sometimes credited to Quinlan, the series shows no sign of his polished illustrative style apart from the covers. Irwin Hasen’s “Citizen Smith, Son of the Unknown Soldier” struck a similar note. Raised in an orphanage, John Smith visited the famed Arlington tomb, where the spirit of the anonymous occupant revealed himself as John’s

Comic Corporation of America, the publishing house formerly known as Centaur, also began the year with only one title, the monthly Amazing Man Comics. Still packaged by Funnies, Inc., the line expanded in fits and starts throughout 1941 until four titles bore December cover dates. In the January through March issues of Amazing Man (#19-21), its eponymous star continued his deadly duel with The Great Question much as before, but the status quo began to change when the title went bi-monthly. Allying himself with Hitler in issue #22 (May), The Great Question, formerly never seen without his all-concealing white hood, abruptly renamed himself The Great Que and 95

charges to a German began wearing a simconcentration camp. ple white eye mask. Escaping from that An issue later, the living death, the trio previously unmenreturned to Amertioned kid brother of ica only to find the John Aman’s compangovernment honorion Zona accidentally bound to return them acquired identical to the Nazis. Going super-powers, joinunderground, they ing Amazing-Man in converted their prison action as Tommy the uniforms to colorAmazing-Boy. After ful costumes and, a final inconclusive financed by Van’s confrontation with family fortune, began The Great Que, Aman combating fifth coland Tommy took on umnists as The Stars a string of highly forand Stripes. Despite gettable, mostly Axisthe super-heroic related enemies. Sam trappings, this was and Lew Glanzman a rather ordinary provided the art, not Like so many other heroes this year, Centaur’s ‘Amazing-Man’ picked up a boy pal, this one with the obvious name Tommy the Amazing-Boy. The duo also had a regular berth in a new title, adventure strip best always in tandem, Stars and Stripes Comics. TM and © respective copyright holder. appreciated for artist both their underdrawMyron Strauss’ assured imitation of Lou Fine. ing and their finishes visibly improving from issue to issue. Martin Filchock’s “Mighty Man,” which had long since jetA third title, Liberty Scouts Comics, also began its run tisoned its original Old West timeframe and given its prowith a #2 as its first issue and a roster of all-new features, tagonist additional shapeshifting powers, spent the first most starring super-heroes of one kind or another. The half of the year thwarting the plans of a criminal mastertitle characters, “The Liberty Scouts,” were the three sons mind known as The Witch. In Amazing Man #24 (October), of billionaire industrialist Patrick Henry, each the masMighty Man met Super-Ann, the World’s Strongest Girl, ter of a fantastic war machine: Smokey manning a highwho was taught “secrets of another world” by a mysteritech tank, Skipper at the helm of a super-submarine, and ous centuries-old man while growing up in Alaska. Mighty Strut piloting a unique rocket plane. Their true identities Man began acting as her guardian angel, helping her from known only to their father and FDR, the Henry Brothers behind the scenes whenever her extraordinary strength used their vehicles to frustrate the invasion plans of the landed her in trouble. “Mini-Midget,” still produced by credictator nations. Writing credits are unknown for this Bob ator John F. Kolb, was the third and final strip to appear in Lubbers-drawn series. The publishers must have held great every issue of the title. Co-stars “The Iron Skull” and “The expectations for the feature, as a message from “Uncle Joe” Shark” relocated following issue #22 to Stars and Stripes Hardie inside the front cover announced the formation of a Comics, a new bi-monthly debuting with a July-dated #2 Liberty Scouts readers’ (the first issue may club. The book’s other have been an ashcan). big name was “Man Despite its title, the of War,” a hybrid new book was a virof Captains Marvel tual twin of its elder and America by Paul sibling, with installGustavson and his ments of “Amazingbrother Nils. Mars, Man,” “Mighty Man,” God of War, frustrated and “Mini-Midget” in by the slow pace of each of its five issues. Axis aggression, used Beginning with the his divine powers to fourth issue (Septemcreate a super-solber), “The Stars and dier to hurry things Stripes” became the along but mistakenly cover feature. News brought his avatar correspondent Patto life on American rick “Pepper” O’Henry, soil. Clad in skin-tight diplomat Benjamin red, white and blue, Franklin “Whitey” armed with Mars’ Allen, and tourist own flaming sword, Vance “Van” Stuyvesthe being self-named ant were condemned The cast of Liberty Scouts Comics relocated to a new book, Man of War Comics, after legal action Man of War, “created on trumped-up by the Boy Scouts of America pulled the plug on the former title. TM and © respective copyright holder 96

Hillman Publications couldn’t seem to keep a foothold in the comic book marketplace in 1941, with both Miracle Comics and its successor, Victory Comics, failing after four issues each. The publisher tried again at year’s end with Air Fighters Comics. TM and © respective copyright holder.

a crimefighting scientist able to bring his own shadow to life. Frank Frollo’s “The Blue Lady” was novelist Lucille Martin, given super-strength by the strange fumes contained inside an ancient ring. “The Sentinel” was a teleporter in colonial garb created by the Spirit of Freedom to defend America’s shores. The other new characters introduced late in the year were generic mystery-men like Paul Gustavson’s “The Black Panther” or Ed Herron and Al Plastino’s “The Rainbow,” who decided to jump into tights and fight crime after reading a comic book (one of CCA’s, no doubt).

in a peace-loving nation, not an aggressive one,” dedicated himself to defending freedom. The back pages included a pair of super-powered champions who bore strong resemblances to other, better heroes. Sam Gilman’s “Vapo-Man” concerned chemist Bradford Cole, who gained the ability to transform himself at will into a gas à la Amazing-Man in a laboratory explosion. Martin Filchock’s “Fire-Man” was a kidnapped firefighter given super-strength, the power of flight, and command over fire in all its forms by a mad scientist. Liberty Scouts lasted just two issues, cancelled after the Boy Scouts of America objected to the use of “Scouts” in the names of comic and fan club, but a new book, Man of War Comics, which premiered with an actual #1 (November), continued all its features, including the renamed “Liberty Guards.”

Any promise this new pack of heroes demonstrated proved irrelevant. Recurring distribution problems reportedly plagued the small line to the point where Hardie and copublisher Raymond Kelly were forced to consider dropping comic books completely. The final issues of Amazing Man and Man of War bore a 1942 date. Only the non-fiction comic World Famous Heroes and the digest-sized Khaki Wacky, a humor magazine for servicemen, held on into the following year. When they were gone, Comics Corporation of America was no more.

Later issues of Amazing Man and Stars and Stripes, as well as a third, long-delayed issue of The Arrow, featured an assortment of super-heroic also-rans from Funnies, Inc. Several were from the team of Harry Francis Campbell and Henry Taylor. “Dash Dartwell, The Human Meteor,” with its bench-warming college jock hero turned super-speedster thanks to a chemical formula, was a xerox of “The Flash.” Unlike the All-American headliner, Dash never donned a costume or intentionally fought crime in his brief fourissue run, most of his adventures taking place on the athletic field. The Campbell-Taylor combo were also behind two other tyro super-doers. “Dr. Synthe” was a visitor from the planet Mo with the power to mentally rearrange matter, creating anything he willed, even living creatures, out of thin air. Though able to instantly heal any disease or disfigurement, the alien preferred to don a costume and battle the forces of the totalitarian nation of Moronia, most often by becoming a towering giant. Radio engineer Bruce King, inventor of the “black zero transmitter” which could create a zone of absolute cold and darkness, used this device and a special suit that protected him from its effects to counter enemy espionage as “The King of Darkness.” Homer Fleming contributed “Nightshade,” starring Howard Hall,

Taking a long break following publication of the fourth and final issue of Miracle Comics in January, Hillman Publications reentered the field with Victory Comics, a title packaged by Funnies, Inc, divided between militarythemed series like “Private Parker,” “Sergeant Flagg of the Marines,” and the submarine-set “The Steel Shark,” and a trio of costumed heroes. Bill Everett created “The Conqueror,” another Captain America wannabe who gained superhuman strength and stamina after being treated with cosmic rays, but consigned him to lesser talents with the second episode. Derivative as the series was, it held far more interest than “The Crusader,” a pulp-style detective in slouch hat and cape whose creators, scripter Laura Baker and artist George Mandel, couldn’t be bothered with an origin or civilian identity. At least “Bomber Burns and His Firebrand” provided its aviator hero with a set of bright red-and-yellow super-hero togs. This was far from 97

House of Frankenstein and other Universal Studios movies released later in the decade. Joining the title’s cast in issue #13 (September) were “Yank and Doodle, America’s Fighting Twins,” a pair of Buckys without a Captain America drawn by “Aquaman” artist Paul Norris. Rick and Dick Walter, unbeknownst to their widowed father, possessed super-strength and invulnerability as long as they were in each other’s presence. Their debut was part of a general shift in emphasis to Axis enemies, only “Black Owl” continuing to battle crooks and the occasional costumed villain.

the best work to come out of the Jacquet shop, and readers responded accordingly. Victory was cancelled after four issues. Hillman tried again at year’s end with Air Fighters Comics. As the title implied, the new comic, edited by John Compton, scripter of the first Human Torch/Sub-Mariner battle, was devoted to tales of air combat illustrated by Funnies, Inc. regulars like Larry Antonette, Bob Oksner, Malcolm Kildale, and Harry Francis Campbell. The closest the book came to a super-hero was “The Black Commander.” Lt. Barry Haynes, an American pilot serving in the RAF, adopted his alter ego after being framed for treason by a Nazi double agent. Though Black Commander flew a nifty experimental plane, writer Kermit Jaedeker and artist Harry Anderson failed to make their costumed aviator different enough or exciting enough to stand out from the pack. Air Fighters would nonetheless prove the salvation of publisher Alex Hillman’s hopes of comics glory the following year, once the book acquired the breakout character it needed.

Pioneering comics packager Harry “A” Chesler, whose failed foray into publishing in the mid-1930s had inadvertently launched first Ultem’s, then Centaur’s ventures into the field, made a cautious comeback in the summer and fall of 1941 under the name Dynamic Publications. His four titles—Yankee Comics, Dynamic Comics, Scoop Comics, and Punch Comics—were edited by Phil Sturm and laid out primarily by studio art director Charles Sultan. Aside from a few art jobs latterly recognized by comics historians as the work of George Tuska and Al Plastino, no credits are known for the Dynamic line.

Prize Comics, the sole comic book produced by Teddy Epstein and Mike Blier’s Crestwood Publications, briefly suspended publication following the February issue (#9). This was, perhaps coincidentally, the point when their “Yankee Doodle Jones and Dandy” were the stars of Yankee work for other companies led to Simon and Kirby abandonComics. In an unsettling twist on Captain America’s origin, ing “The Black Owl” and the aviation strip “Ted O’Neil,” Mac three disabled World War I veterans of different faiths volRaboy ceding the art assignment on “The Green Lama,” and unteered to be surgically combined into a single, physically Fred Guardineer handing off “The Great Voodini” to “Bulperfect being, a “protector of the American doctrines,” and letman” co-creator Jon Small. With neither an in-house injected with an invincibility serum. When the formula’s staff nor ties to a specific packaging service, editor Reese creator was murdered by Nazi Rosenfeld may have found agents, his young son used the himself scrambling for last of the serum to give himreplacements following this self the same superhuman wave of defections. The title qualities. Not content to ape returned three months later Timely’s flag-draped star, the with Otto and Jack Binder creators also borrowed from assuming creative duties on Quality, having their new “Black Owl” and Charles Sulheroes receive orders direct tan taking over the art for from Uncle Sam. In the second “The Green Lama.” Missing episode, Jones and Dandy met from Prize #10 (May) was Dick their Red Skull, a fiendish Nazi Briefer’s “Frankenstein.” The physician masked as a ghastly strip returned the following green corpse sent to spread issue. Briefer softened the a virulent form of rabies. Monster’s gruesome appearTheir co-stars in Yankee were ance, advanced the plotline just as lacking in originality. ten years, and gave his antag“The Echo” was Jim Carson, onist a new enemy. Denny a skilled ventriloquist given Dunsan was Victor Frankenan invisibility belt and the stein’s ward, raised from boypower to project paralyzing hood to oppose the scientist’s rays from his eyes by his sciwayward creation. Wearing entist brother to avenge their a black costume emblazoned murdered father. Jim Chalmwith a portrait of his pet ers was “The Enchanted Dagpooch, “Bulldog” Denny was ger,” who took his name from the first to successfully defeat the mystic blade that granted and capture the Monster. The him hypnotic powers. “Yankee creature soon escaped, teamBoy” and “Johnny Rebel” were ing up with two other horrific two sides of the same coin, menaces, The Witch and The two-fisted teenage heroes ever After a three-month hiatus, the struggling Prize Comics added the teenaged Mummy, a monster mash- “Yank and Doodle” to its roster and gave “Frankenstein” a new antagonist, Bullready to slug a Nazi. There was up not unlike those in The dog Denny, adoptive son of the monster’s creator. TM and © respective copyright holder. also the electricity-slinging 98

Harry “A” Chesler returned to publishing with his Dynamic comics line, four titles crammed full of derivative characters. TM and © respective copyright holder.

Kolah, elfin servants of the benevolent pagan god the hero served, who gave the otherwise mundane strip a fun fairy tale vibe. “The Sky Chief” was a masked aviator who bore a suspicious resemblance to a capeless Spy Smasher but lacked the latter’s distinctive aircraft. “The Unholy Three” were a trio of private detectives, each a master of disguise, whose pedestrian exploits were anything but “unholy.”

“Firebrand,” a pair of non-powered mystery-men called “Black Satan” and “The Scarlet Sentry,” and “Barry Kuda,” a strip about treasure hunters discovering an underwater civilization. Dynamic Comics cover-featured “Major Victory,” an army sentry killed in a bomb blast. Brought back to life by Father Patriot, an ethereal being who resembled a bizarre hybrid of Uncle Sam and Santa Claus, Victory was sent forth to fight America’s enemies. “Dynamic Man” was an android created by a scientist to oppose the machinations of The Yellow Spot, a master of black magic. “The Green Knight and Lance” were masked archers in the Green Arrow mold. (It seemed to bother no one at the Chesler shop that other publishers already had heroes with these names.) Schoolboy Kent Banning was given super-powers by a scientist in gratitude for rescuing his daughter from a burning building. As “Dynamic Boy,” he could fly and possessed great strength and agility. “The Black Cobra” and “Lady Satan,” costumed detectives with no unique or even memorable qualities, rounded out the title. The other two titles, Scoop and Punch, offered similar menus of derivative super-heroes and dull fillers, though each included one feature with potential. Scoop’s most original character was “Mother Hubbard,” a crimefighting witch who spoke entirely in rhymed couplets, a gimmick that was grating by the third page. “Rocketman” was an obvious doppelganger of Fawcett’s Bulletman, right down to the identically powered female counterpart, that relied heavily on swipes from Lou Fine’s “Black Condor” and “The Ray.” Charles Sultan’s “The Master Key” was wealthy radio astronomer Ray Cardell. Gaining the power to see through solid matter and fire force beams from his eyes, Ray donned evening clothes and an opera cape to rescue a kidnapped FDR. The lead feature in Punch was “Mr. E.,” an odd strip about a wealthy adventurer aided by the Messengers of

There is a calculated cynicism evident in the four Dynamic titles. None of the features was strikingly original and most were badly written, badly drawn, or both. It was as if Harry Chesler took all the series his studio’s clients turned down and built his new line around them. He even resorted to copying Victor Fox’s scam, running full-page ads in every issue extolling the virtues of a fictitious soft drink, King Kola, ads that bore a small copyright notice for Harry “A” Chesler Features Syndicate. With only six issues published with a 1941 date, it was too soon to tell if Chesler’s return to the industry, cynical or sincere, was to pay off.

Dynamic did manage to scrape together a few original ideas like the elfin Messengers of Kolah who aided “Mr. E.” but most were like “Yankee Doodle and Dandy” or “Rocketman,” badly crafted copies of better characters. TM and © respective copyright holder.

Big Fish, Little Ponds

Jerry Iger and Sy Reit that also appeared in Great’s Choice Comics, were added mid-year, the page counts of several Champ back-up series reduced to make room.

Alfred Harvey began 1941 with a single bi-monthly title to his name—Champ Comics, purchased the previous year with the financial aid of distributor Irving Manheimer from the defunct Worth Publishing—but he had big ideas. The first involved taking over the short-lived Brookwood title Speed Comics. Its first issue under new management (#12) bore a March cover date. Speed alternated with Champ on the newsstands through the rest of the year.

“Shock Gibson,” wearing a new costume to mark his change of employers, remained the cover-featured headliner of Speed Comics. Only he, the aviation strip “Crash, Cork and The Baron,” and “Ted Parrish, the Man with a Thousand Faces,” remained of the original Brookwood line-up. A number of new characters passed in and out of the title’s pages, including “The Wasp,” a by-the-numbers masked avenger; “Speed Taylor,” about the son of a disgraced sports star; and “The Hand,” a bizarre variation on Centaur’s “The Eye” by “Atom” co-creators Bill O’Connor and Ben Flinton starring a giant disembodied hand that wrote messages in blood on walls to warn evildoers to mend their ways. Speed #13 (May) introduced “Captain Freedom,” yet another costumed patriot, this one appearing out of nowhere bereft of civilian identity or origin to deliver Kirbyesque punishment to any German or Japanese agent crossing his path. The same issue premiered 18-year-old Katherine “Jill” Elgin’s “Pat Parker, War Nurse,” who donned a star-spangled costume of her own in the November issue (#15) and thereafter led a double life. By then, the book itself had gone through its own startling change.

Once the last of the Majestic Studios inventory left over from the Worth era had been used up, Harvey turned to Roche & Iger to provide the content for Champ Comics. Although the new scripters occasionally got a character name wrong and kept forgetting where “Jungleman” was set, the title’s features remained largely intact. The notable exception was “The Liberty Lads,” which as of the February issue (#12) was no longer set during the American Revolution. It focused instead on two contemporary boys, the spirited sons of active-duty military personnel, and their encounters with saboteurs and Bundists. Whether this shift was the idea of co-creators Robert Turner and Henry Kiefer, who remained with the series following the turnover in publishers, or was Harvey’s editorial directive is long past knowable. It may also have been the new publisher who encouraged Turner to restore the invisibility powers of “Johnny Fox” in the same issue, powers the Native American private eye put to good use against various Axis enemies. The Turner-scripted “Duke O’Dowd the Human Meteor,” its art credited to the house name Ed Waldman beginning with issue #14 (July), changed emphasis from urban crime to more exotic menaces like the skyscrapersized descendent of Genghis Khan, a blatant if blander ripoff of Jack Cole’s “Claw,” who tried to conquer the U.S. with his modern-day Mongol horde. A handful of lesser genre strips and “Will O’Wisp,” a slapstick hillbilly comedy by

Speed and Champ sold well enough to embolden the publisher to not only release a third title, but to try a new format he had first pitched to former boss and close friend Joe Simon: “Al Harvey and I grabbed a table and ordered lunch. Soon he was opening a little homemade pamphlet. It was a comic book cut in half and stapled together. The cover was pasted over with a sheet of colored paper on which was lettered Pocket Comics. He said, ‘Look, 2/3rds of the size of a regular comic book. I can give the kids a book and a half for the same money and still come out ahead.’ … Of course, his multiplication was not quite accurate, especially since he was including both sides of the front and back covers in his count. Still, it couldn’t be denied that his sales pitch was impressive. He promised he was going to find someone interested in his idea to finance [it].” (Simon & Simon 48) Pocket Comics #1 (August) looked like a great bargain, offering 96 pages for the same dime that normally bought 64. Its smaller dimensions, however, worked against it. To be legible, the hand lettering had to be the same size as in a standard format comic, resulting in pages dense with copy. What space remained required clean, uncluttered art. Perhaps that’s why Harvey turned to the RiceCazaneuve shop, as its house style adapted well to the unusual constraints. The studio provided half of the title’s features, including a pair of super-heroes: “The Phantom Sphinx,” an altruistic Egyptian sorcerer named Amron revived after a sleep of six millennia, and “The Zebra,” alias convict John Doyle. Sentenced to be executed for a murder he did not commit, Doyle faked his death during a jailbreak and set out to avenge his own and other injustices in his costumed identity. The Cazaneuve Brothers were also on hand to illustrate “Satan,” an Otto Binderscripted series about a master criminal so bloodthirsty

“Shock Gibson” survived Speed Comics’ transition from Brookwood to Alfred Harvey’s Speed Publishing Company intact, gaining a new costume in the process. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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even Hitler feared him. Horned, taloned, with pointed ears and bloodred skin, the monstrous menace seemed to die at the conclusion of the first story. Two other strips were produced by the Funnies, Inc. crew. Al Avison was the artist behind “The Red Blazer,” alias cowboy Jack Dawson, given fiery powers by exposure to “astro-pyro rays.” Edd Ashe drew the pilot episode of “The Spirit of ‘76,” wherein West Point cadet Gary Blakely donned the uniform of his greatHarvey and his financial backer Irving Manheimer had high hopes for the new 96-page “pocket comics” format, but both customers and retailers turned thumbs down on the experiment. TM and © respective copyright holder. great-grandfather, an aide The namesake of Spitfire Comics was an English privateer to General George Washnamed Black Douglas who drank from the real Fountain ington, to ferret out fifth columnists. In the following issue, of Youth, which put him to sleep for two centuries and Spirit of ‘76 matched wits with his co-star Satan, revealed transformed him into a human flame-thrower. Awakening as a 500-year-old Spanish conquistador transformed into to find his beloved homeland besieged by Nazi Germany, a devilish freak after drinking from what he thought was “The Spitfire” used his new power—and an uncanny knack the Fountain of Youth. It was Alfred Harvey himself who, for piloting aircraft—to counter their aggression. Funnies, with artist Barbara Hall, created the character destined Inc.’s Malcolm Kildale was the cartoonist responsible. The to become the book’s breakout star. “The Black Cat” was studio’s staff contributed several other super-heroes to actually movie actress and judo expert Linda Turner, who the book. Sam Glanzman’s “Fly-Man” was heavyweight adopted her feline alter ego out of equal parts thrill-seekchampion Clip Foster, reduced to twelve power-packed ing and patriotism. Her skimpy costume—stylized eye inches in height by his scientist father. “The Clown” by Ed mask, halter top, short shorts, ankle boots—was much of Winiarsky starred Newtown Police Commissioner Nick the draw in these early episodes, as her ongoing campaign Nolan, a former circus performer who put on his greaseto expose her current film project’s director as a Nazi operapaint and rubber nose once more to go after the crooks he tive was nothing extraordinary. couldn’t legally pursue. Though otherwise uninspired, the A confident Harvey converted Speed Comics to the new forpremiere of Frank Frollo’s “The Magician from Baghdad” mat with issue #14, then added a third digest-sized title. featured an exciting duel between the protagonist and a pair of elementals, blue-skinned giants set loose by a rival sorcerer. Neither these characters nor the genre strips that filled out Spitfire’s 100 pages got the chance to find their footing, for according to Joe Simon: “At first the concept [of ‘pocket comics’] seemed to take off like a rocket. … But then it came to light that a lot of the pocket comics were being stolen, right off the newsstands. They fit conveniently into the pockets of the buyers, and the vendors dropped them like a hot potato.” (Simon 116) This may not have necessarily been the real problem. Harvey and Manheimer were also publishing a pair of humor titles featuring military-themed gag cartoons, Hello Buddies and Fun Parade, in the same 5” x 7” format, and they both ran until 1960. Retailers may have objected to the odd size, as they had earlier to the oversized versions of Fiction House’s Jumbo Comics and Fawcett’s Master Comics, because they didn’t fit readily into displays designed for standard format titles. The result was the same either way. Pocket Comics was cancelled after four issues, Spitfire after just two. But Alfred Harvey was an optimist. He dusted himself off, returned Speed Comics to its original dimensions, and soldiered on.

Despite the failure of Pocket Comics, “The Black Cat” went on to become Harvey’s most popular and longest-running costumed character. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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Incorporated,” in which neophyte troubleshooters-for-hire John Pierce and Bud White regularly found themselves up to their inexperienced ears in trouble, his art here showing more care and detail than his work for DC. His assistant (and future Brenda Starr ghost) John J. Olson drew “Jeff Barter, Trader,” a by-the-numbers jungle strip notable for nice wildlife art. Ken Ernst did his best Milton Caniff impression for “Rick Masters, Foreign Correspondent,” while Jack Ryan, writer/artist of the Sunday-only Streamer Kelly syndicated strip, provided the title’s only super-hero. “Lady Fairplay” was timid, bespectacled schoolteacher Mary Lee voluntarily transformed into a superwoman by one Professor Amazo. It seemed out of place in a roster of features geared toward more mature sensibilities than the average newsstand comic. Sales figures no longer exist for the three quarterly issues of Bang-Up Comics released before it folded, but its demise may be due more to distribution problems and the loss of several creators—Ed Moore to the draft, Ken Ernst to his duties as the new artist on Mary Worth—than to insufficient profits. Regardless of why it failed, Angerman gave up on comics thereafter. The McNaught and Markey syndicates, co-owners of Columbia Comic Corporation, certainly had no cause to complain about the performance of editor Vin Sullivan. The line’s flagship title, Big Shot Comics, kept their newspaper strips in the public eye while simultaneously spotlighting original characters popular enough to warrant test runs for their own solo titles. The key to Sullivan’s success may have been consistency. With Gardner Fox at the typewriter for every Big Shot feature except the reprinted syndicated material and a handful of humor fillers, and artists Ogden Whitney (“Skyman,” “Rocky Ryan”), Mart Bailey (“The Face,” “Spy Chief”), and Fred Guardineer (“Marvelo,” “Tom Kerry, District Attorney”) providing the clean, attractive look each was noted for, readers knew exactly what to expect when they laid down their dimes. Fox for the most part ignored the industry’s prevalent fads like costumed patriots, grotesque villains, or kid

Progressive Publishers’ Bang-Up Comics gave several Chicago-based syndicated strip artists a chance to spread their wings. TM and © respective copyright holder.

Progressive Publishers, Inc. was a small Chicago company best known for its Science and Mechanics magazine. What prompted publisher and editor Virgil D. Angerman to enter the comic book marketplace late in the autumn of 1941 is no longer known but the quality of his sole title indicates his intent was serious. Bang-Up Comics showcased the work of a half-dozen artists whose careers were primarily centered on syndicated strips, all of them either native to or educated in the Windy City. Most of Bang-Up’s features probably started life as proposals for newspaper comics, though the art was unmistakably designed for the comic book page. Writing credits for the book are as yet undiscovered, though it is likely most features were plotted, if not scripted, by their artists. Featured on the cover of BangUp #1 (December) was “Cosmo Mann,” starring a scientistadventurer and his fantastic inventions. It was drawn by Leonard “Len” Dawkins, an assistant to Buck Rogers ghost Richard “Rick” Yager, as was “Dick Star” of the F.B.I.,” a routine Feds vs. Nazis thriller. Yager himself contributed “Buzz Balmer,” about a scientist’s teenage son permanently reduced to insect size after being accidentally exposed to the experimental “minus beam.” The first episode included many scenes reminiscent of the 1957 sci-fi classic The Incredible Shrinking Man, while later installments found the boy seeking adventure at the controls of a miniaturized pursuit plane. Ed Moore was the talent behind “Adventure,

Reprints of Boody Rogers’ syndicated super-hero satire Sparky Watts joined the Big Shot Comics line-up with issue #14. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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appeared as a back-up feature in a pair of one-shots Columbia released this year. Skyman #1 bore a July cover date, The Face #1 a November. Both books offered four episodes of their title characters, backed by Sparky, The Face (in Skyman), and Marvelo (in The Face), all by their regular Big Shot creative teams. Columbia gave its two most popular original characters, “Skyman” and “The Face,” a shot at solo stardom in 1941. TM and © respective copyright holder.

The creative stability and quiet competence of the Columbia line stood in vivid contrast to the freewheeling sensationalism of the expanding line of comics managed by Lev Gleason, now published by New Friday Publications, a division of Friday, Inc., a small magazine line owned by David Gilmor that bought out Morris Latzen and Arthur Bernhard’s Your Guide Publications at the start of the year. Page 2, panel 1 of the January issue (#7) of Silver Streak Comics captured the personality of the line in a single breathlessly hyperbolic caption:

sidekicks, preferring to focus on the mobsters, mad scientists, super-tech, lost worlds, and occasional monster that typified his work at other companies. There were a few concessions to the headlines—The Face confronting Axis spies, Skyman heading off an Italian invasion force—but the war largely remained in the background. There was one significant change. In Big Shot #15 (July), FBI agent Jeff Cardiff, the lead of “Spy Chief,” adopted the costumed identity of The Cloak, “Warning!! You are about to a legendary mystery-man of coloread one of the most astoundnial America, and from then on caring tales ever portrayed in a ried out his counter-espionage duties comics magazine! If from behind a mask. Elsewhere in you have a weak heart, the magazine, “Tom Kerry” and Creig we advise you NOT to Flessel’s kid strip “Jibby Jones” were venture further! - The replaced by “Captain Devildog of the Editors” U.S. Marines” and reprints of “Sparky Watts,” a Markey newspaper strip by Gordon G. “Boody” Rogers launched the previous year. Sparky was a college student selling magazines door to door who made the mistake of trying out his sales pitch on Dr. Static. The eccentric scientist offered to buy the boy’s entire stock if he would submit to an experiment. Exposure to cosmic rays turned the bespectacled lad into “the strongest, fastest, most indestructible man of Earth” with comically catastrophic consequences. One of the earliest super-hero parodies, Rogers’ geeky goliath seemed more at home in comic books than newspapers, and it was in comic books that “Sparky five-issue battle between a recolored Daredevil Watts” enjoyed its greatest The and the monstrous Claw set a new standard with its spectacular scenes of mass destruction. success. The character also TM and © respective copyright holder.

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The scene then shifted to a young couple enjoying a picnic in the park. The woman was Tonia Saunders. The man was her fiancé Bart Hill, a.k.a. “Daredevil,” now in the hands of editor Jack Cole, who ignored the hero’s traumatic muteness, changed his costume’s color scheme to a more vibrant blue-and-red, and pitted him against The Claw in a series of epic skirmishes that ran through Silver Streak #11 (June). This meant carnage on a monumental scale, as the monstrous master of magic declared open war on the United States, destroying major portions of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia before being declared dictator of America. Daredevil was captured and burnt at the stake. But no, that was the hero’s brother standing in while the original was out of the country. Vengeance was had. The Claw’s conquest was overturned, his armies of demons and mind slaves defeated, his grandiose plans foiled. The villain himself seemed to perish in a fall from a cliff during a showdown with Daredevil, but we’d seen him survive the very same fate a few chapters earlier, so…

Charles Biro was unhappy at M.L.J. Feeling himself underpaid and unappreciated, he was looking for greener pastures, as was his friend, freelancer and sometime Funnies, Inc., staffer Bob Wood. Twenty-seven years later, in his only appearance at a comics convention, Biro recounted what the duo did about this discontent: “Bob and I heard that there was a possibility of connecting with a fellow named Gleason. And Gleason said, ‘Here’s my problem—I have a book that isn’t doing well, and it’s going to go. And if you fellows can show me a way to bring this to life, I’ll buy you.’ And so Bob and I, for about a week, prepared a [proposal. Gleason] liked it. So he ran it, and the first issue … was animated enough to get a rise, so he had a small percent jump in sales, and that excited him. He lost less on the first issue than he did on the last issue of Silver Streak Comics.” (Cox 19-21) Biro and Wood’s proposal became Daredevil Battles Hitler #1, produced between Silver Streak #6 and #7 but not released until after issue #10 (June). The 54-page story therein began with a continuation of the Daredevil/Claw duel that quickly escalated into all-out war between the spike-belted super-hero and the dictator of Nazi Germany. Aided by Silver Streak, Dickie Dean, Lance Hale, and his other Silver Streak co-stars, Daredevil crushed Der Führer’s military machine around the globe. Even The Pirate Prince materialized out of time long enough to scuttle Admiral Roeder’s flagship. It was pure fantasy, a feast of action and spectacle on a par with, if not topping, contributing artist Cole’s efforts in Silver Streak. It was also pure propaganda: the issue concluded with a short biography of Hitler, scripted by Biro and illustrated by Bob Davis, evocatively entitled “The Man of Hate.”

Dick Briefer snuck some provocative-for-the-times political commentary into the usually lighthearted “Pirate Prince” strip. TM and © respective copyright holder.

It was apocalyptic storytelling that made even the Human Torch vs. Sub-Mariner brouhaha look like a schoolyard dustup, the gargantuan Claw inflicting horrifying amounts of death and destruction on the nation only to be brought down in the end by a man without super-powers, related with an operatic energy and a knowing wink over how absurd it all was. That this storyline is not considered Jack Cole’s masterpiece says less about its quality than about the greater successes that lay ahead of him. Cole’s distinctive touch—what one biographer defined as “feverish imagination, verve, and a cheerful streak of perverse violence” (Spiegelman 14)—could be seen throughout the early issues of Silver Streak. He had given the title character a new sidekick in the September ‘40 issue (#6), a hunting falcon named Whiz who flew at super-speed thanks to an injection of Silver Streak’s blood, and recolored his costume in the following issue. “Dickie Dean, Boy Inventor” starred a teenage scientist whose recurring clashes with Professor Skinn, a blind man who wired his brain to a camera in order to see, showcased the cartoonist’s flair for satirical sci-fi. Silver Streak #7 also debuted Cole’s “The Pirate Prince,” a tongue-in-cheek swashbuckler he immediately handed off to Dick Briefer, who continued in much the same vein. Briefer had a second career producing cartoons and comics for The Daily Worker, the American Communist Party newspaper, but rarely brought his politics into his commercial work. Nonetheless, he took a break from the strip’s usual playfulness in issue #9 (April) to make a statement. Confronting a sadistic slavemaster at sword point, the Prince snarled, “You seem to dislike my dark friends. Y’know, I used to think we’re all equal, but now I think they’d be insulted to be put on a par with you.” Powerful words for the times that, because said in an overlooked back-up feature, flew under the radar of those distributors and retailers who would have found this sentiment objectionable, even inflammatory.

Gleason was impressed enough by their efforts to hire “Woodro,” as the collaborators occasionally signed their

Despite his patriotic duds, “Captain Battle” was more two-fisted scientist than star-spangled super-type. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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work, to be his co-editors following Jack Cole’s departure for a staff position with Quality. Bob Wood took over “Silver Streak” with the May issue (#9). He wrote out Whiz, replacing the bird with a boy, Mercury the Boy Streak (renamed Meteor two issues later), and gave the speedsters their first arch-foe, a robot Nazi named Iron Jaw whose defeat earned Silver Streak the Congressional Medal of Honor. Wood also handled “Dickie Dean” and “Presto Martin, Quick Change Artist” for a few issues before handing those strips off to others. The Jack Binder studio supplied a share of the title’s content. Binder himself, first with Carl Formes scripting, then his brother Otto, contributed “Captain Battle,” debuting in issue #10. Despite his name and the big white star on his chest, Battle owed more to Doc Savage than to Captain America. He was a brilliant scientist who used his ingenious inventions to oppose a magician named The Black Dragon. It took the rugged hero, who wore a patch over the eye he lost in combat during the First World War, three issues to defeat the Asian wizard and his small army of “deaglos,” human captives magically morphed into savage winged bird-men. Among the changelings, who were restored to human form, was an orphaned boy named Hale. The captain promptly adopted him and made him his crimefighting partner. New strips came and went in the back pages. The longest-lived (issues #8-12) was Walter Galli’s “Dan Dearborn, Freedom’s Son,” about a frontiersman aiding the Continental Army during the Revolution, notable for two episodes drawn by an up-and-coming talent named Bernard “Bernie” Klein. Responsibility for “Daredevil” was split between co-creator Don Rico, who took over the Silver Streak installments with issue #11, and Charles Biro himself, who handled the episodes in Daredevil Comics (as the title was renamed with the second issue). Rico did a respectable job, matching the boomerang master against a series of horror-tinged menaces like The Werewolf, The Serpent,

Writers Charles Biro and Bob Wood, with the help of the Silver Streak art staff, made the comic book industry’s boldest anti-Nazi statement yet with Daredevil Battles Hitler. TM and © respective copyright holder.

The Ghoul, and The Scarlet Skull, a shameless copy of Timely’s Red Skull. Biro’s stories were tightly plotted and had more emotional depth, as in the story where Tonia was framed for murder and sentenced to death. Daredevil uncovered the real killer (spoiler: the butler did it) too late to save the girl from execution. It turned out Tonia was spared when the electric chair malfunctioned, but the hero’s despair before learning she still lived was no less powerful. Other 105

stories demonstrated Biro’s fondness for depicting the underworld in all its gruesome perversity, mowing down lawmen, innocent bystanders, and each other with equal abandon. Beginning with the August issue (#2), Daredevil Comics launched several new back-up series featuring costumed heroes, including two created by moonlighting “Batman and Robin” inkers Jerry Robinson and George Roussos. Robinson’s “London”

was Bob Wood’s revival of “The Claw” solo series. He gave the villain a new nemesis in Daredevil #5 (November), a mysterious skull-faced super-hero called The Ghost. Pleased with his new editors’ progress, Gleason added a third title, the quarterly Capt. Battle Comics, in the summer. In addition to four episodes of the title character by the Dick Briefer’s “Real American No. 1” starred The Bronze Terror, one of the Binder Brothers and othmedium’s few Native American mystery-men. ers, the book included lots TM and © respective copyright holder. of publicity for Captain was BBC broadcaster Marc Holmes, Battle’s Boy Brigade, the inevitable whose costumed identity personified flag-draped fan club. A different slate the city’s collective defiance in the of back-up series ran in each of the face of the Blitz. Roussos’ “Nightro” 1941-dated issues. Of these, only Don was geologist Hugh Goddard, renRico’s “Blackout,” starring a Yugodered snowblind after being left for slavian physician transformed in a dead in the Arctic by his greed-crazed lab accident into an ebony-skinned sponsors. Wearing special polarized superhuman, showed any promise. glasses that restored his vision, he fought crime accompanied by his seeing-eye dog, Blackie. “Real American No. 1” was a Dick Briefer series starring The Bronze Terror, a Native American mystery-man operating in the contemporary Southwest. Big-city attorney Jeff Dixon returned home to the crime-ridden town of Redfield to defend his father, Chief White Falcon, against murder charges. Helpless under the law to expose the corrupt politicians behind the framing, Dixon created the Terror identity to frighten the bad guys into making a mistake. Visually striking in his war bonnet and stylized skull mask (his horse also wore one), Briefer’s hero tried, not always successfully, to transcend the stereotypes prevalent in pop culture of the day. “Pat Patriot,” real name Patricia Patrios, was a star-spangled heroine described in the strip’s subtitle as “America’s Joan of Arc.” That’s a lot to live up to, and Pat didn’t really try, being instead just another costumed vigilante, albeit one who specialized in Axis-connected opponents. Dick Wood and Bernie Klein were the co-creators of “13,” a newspaper reporter named Harold Higgins whose life had been a series of tragedies centered on that unlucky number until he made it the theme of his masked alter ego. In his third outing, 13 acquired a boy companion codenamed Jinx. Rounding out the title

While the stewardship of Biro and Wood resulted in increased sales, too much of the line was dependent on elements borrowed from other publishers, notably Timely, for the editorial team’s liking. This was not the path that would make their mark on the industry, as the Siegel-Shuster and Simon-Kirby partnerships had. Little did they know, as 1941 came to its close, that the solution to their dilemma was just around the corner.

If It Ain’t Broke… Sound business practices and prudence in introducing new titles kept a number of mid-level publishers comfortably humming along in 1941, avoiding the tsuris surrounding Fox and others. Four comics lines, as divisions of larger publishing concerns, benefited from lower costs than the independently owned lines faced. Three others relied on the built-in appeal of the syndicated strips they reprinted. Only one of the seven cancelled a title this year, and all but one added a book or two to their line-ups. Street & Smith, like Fiction House, seemed to prefer to rely on its lineup of tried-and-true pulp stars rather than pursue the fad for costumed super-heroes, but it wasn’t above adapting those characters to changing tastes. Scripter Walter Gibson and artist Vernon Greene had launched a syndicated strip of The Shadow in 1940, and reprints of it replaced original stories by the pair with the May issue (#10) of Shadow Comics (save for an adaptation of a radio script in issue #11). Thus, when the newspaper strip gave Lamont Cranston’s cloaked alter ego the power to turn invisible as the radio version could, he gained the power in the comic book, retaining it through the end of the title’s 101-issue run. Joining The Shadow and “The Hooded Wasp” as of issue #10 were “The Dead End Kids,” with

The comic book versions of both “The Shadow” and “Doc Savage” acquired super-powers in 1941. The Shadow and Doc SavageTM and © Condé Nast. .

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of “The Fighting Fourth” in issue #3 (December) featuring two spectacular full-page panels, the title was a ragtag collection of stray episodes of Street & Smith standbys like “The Avenger,” “Iron Munro,” and “Nick Carter” running alongside a constantly changing assortment of uninspired aviation, detective, and boys’ adventure strips.

Wain Sutton and Lafe Thomas adapting the lowbrow film series, and “Danny Garrett,” a teen detective co-created by artist Jack Binder and writer Carl Formes. “Doc Savage,” no longer drawn by Henry Kiefer, underwent an even more radical change. In the September issue of Doc Savage Comics (#5), the Man of Bronze crash-landed in Tibet, where a council of wise lamas found him worthy to wield the magic of their sacred jewel. Thenceforth, Doc wore a hooded cape, on which the gem was mounted, and functioned as a full-fledged superhero. Monk and Ham were still on hand, but otherwise the strip jettisoned all the trappings of Savage’s pulp incarnation. With war in the air, the titular star of Bill Barnes, America’s Air Ace, required no such tinkering. Save for the futuristic “Rocket Rooney,” the entire title was devoted to aviation strips. “The U.S. Air Warden Cadets,” sometime sidekicks to Barnes, received their own series in BBAAA #3, opening their doors to readers an issue later with a likenamed fan club. The back pages of all three titles saw series—now packaged primarily by the Binder shop— come and go with dizzying rapidity, most lasting only one episode, few of them credited or creditable, fewer still meriting a second look.

If Street & Smith seemed content to merely dabble in super-heroics, Better Publications, pulp magnate Ned Pines’ small line of comics, embraced them, adding at least one new costumed crusader to each of its anthology titles over the course of the year, all created by head writer and de facto editor Richard Hughes. The monthly Thrilling Comics still spotlighted “Dr. Strange” (now routinely billed as “Doc Strange”) and “The Woman in Red,” both characters adding Nazis to the mix of baddies they trounced, while “The Ghost” monotonously battled the same foe, power-hungry time machine inventor Dr. Fenton, in the twelve 1941-dated issues. All three strips were scripted by Hughes, as was the new superhero who bumped Strange from the cover spot as of the August issue (#19). “The American Crusader, Defender of Democracy” was really bespectacled astronomer Archibald Masters, who gained super-strength, invulnerability, and as of the second episode, the power of flight after being irradiated by an atom smasher. Despite his starspangled duds, the Crusader was a bush league Superman whose secretary sneered at soft, unpatriotic Professor Masters but idolized his alter ego. Max Plaisted illoed the series, which the title made room for by omitting one of its other features on a rotating basis.

A third Street & Smith quarterly, Super-Magic Comics, was added in the early spring, its first issue bearing a May date. Retitled Super-Magician Comics with issue #2, the book starred Harry Blackstone, the famed vaudeville illusionist who invented the “sawing a person in half” trick. Despite the implications of the The addition of “The Black Terror” and “The Fighting Yank” to Ned Pines and Ben Sangor’s comics finally gave the line comic’s title, the editors resisted the the breakout characters it needed. TM and © respective copyright holder. temptation to turn the aging prestidigitator into a Mandrake-style super-sorcerer. As scripted by fellow stage magician WalAnother Hughes creation, debuting in Exciting Comics #9 ter Gibson, a personal friend, Blackstone was portrayed as (March) with art by D. (for David or Don, depending on the a globetrotting adventurer, using his skills and intellect to source) Gabrielsen, made a much bigger splash. Pharamadebunk and defang Thugees, voodoo cultists, and the like. cist Bob Benton, with the aid of teenage orphan Tim Each issue featured a 38-page installment, its exotic setting Roland, discovered a chemical based on “formic ethers” and characters lavishly illustrated by Charles Sultan for the that endowed the meek druggist with superhuman prowfirst two 1941 issues, by Jack Binder in the third, both artess. Donning a snazzy black costume, a piratical skull-andists demonstrating a freedom and exuberance in layouts crossbones across his chest, Benton crushed the protection missing from their work for other publishers. Another new racketeers threatening his livelihood as “The Black Terror.” title, Army and Navy Comics, included surprisingly few feaJoined in action by the identically attired and powered tures with the military theme the title implied. Aside from Tim, the Terror thereafter occupied the pages previously Jack Farr’s “Private Rook,” a wild comedy (in one episode, alloted to “Son of the Gods.” The new character immediRook wins back all of Nazi-occupied Europe from Hitler in a ately outshone the book’s other mystery-men, “The Mask” craps game); reader-submitted gag cartoons; and a history and “The Sphinx,” Black Terror’s super-strength making 107

the Fleisher Studio’s latest animated feature released just in time for Christmas. Produced out of Florida by moonlighting Fleischer animators, the title was published under the corporate identity of Cinema Comics. Though officially never part of Pines’ publishing group, many of Cinema’s writers and artists later contributed to its comic books. Over the course of 1941, the Better titles slowly evolved, shedding much of their pulp trappings and taking on a more contemporary look, especially after Timely stalwart Alex Schomburg began providing cover art. Led by “Black Terror” and “Fighting Yank,” Pines’ comics line stood ready to claim its share of the burgeoning market for costumed crusaders.

Less successful were two new variants on the “Captain America” formula: “The American Crusader” and “The Liberator.” TM and © respective copyright holder.

for more dynamic action scenes than the title had hitherto featured. Sales increased sufficiently following the launch of the new strip to justify Exciting’s return to monthly publication with the July issue (#11). Action was also the focus of “The Liberator,” another costumed patriot series introduced in issue #15 (December). Claflin College chemistry professor Nelson Drew, called “Nellie” by his students behind his back, rediscovered the ancient formula for “lamesis,” a substance that transformed Drew into the superhuman Liberator. Like DC’s Hour-Man and Columbia’s Sparky Watts, this mystery-man had a time limit, the formula’s effects wearing off at the most inconvenient moments. Falsely accused of his own and other murders, the self-appointed champion of liberty concluded his pilot episode on the run from the law, despite rounding up the Nazi agents responsible for those deaths.

Ace Magazines, too, saw super-heroes as the key to success, adding three new titles to the line-up, one showcasing their existing characters, the others featuring patriotically themed newcomers. The stars of the bi-monthly SuperMystery Comics and Lightning Comics, “Magno the Magnetic Man” and “Flash Lightning” respectively, were now drawn by former Fox artist Jim Mooney. He and scripter Robert Turner relied heavily on recurring villains. Magno and Davey battled The Clown in the first four issues of the year, a monstrous Axis operative called The Cobra in the following two. Renamed “Lash Lightning” as of Lightning #8 (August), the result of legal action taken by All-American, publisher of “The Flash,” the electrically powered cover star squared off against The Mummy, a maniacal college professor wrapped in radium-soaked bandages, in the Febru“The Fighting Yank,” created by Richard Hughes and “Hop ary through June issues (#4-7), followed by Mastermind, a Harrigan” artist Jon L. Blummer, had a similarly salutary mad scientist who briefly allied himself with The Mummy effect on the bi-monthly Startling Comics. Indolent playboy before beginning his own three-episode duel with Lash (#8Bruce Carter, the spitting image of his namesake ancestor, 10). Turner and Mooney largely ignored current events, but a hero of the American Revolution, was given an enchanted the rest of the line began to reflect the times. Super-Mystery cloak by his ghostly predecessor that granted him super#7 (April) was an early harbinger of this change, replacpowers. Aided by his fiancée Joan Farwell, Carter used ing some of the book’s tired back-up series with “Peewee his powers to rout the usual slate of saboteurs and fifth Wilson,” starring a hulking hillbilly drafted into the Army, columnists. The new series began in the tenth issue of and “Buckskin,” Startling (SeptemAce’s first cosber), replacing tumed patriot. the increasingly Boys’ school mediocre “Capprincipal Robtain Future” in the ert Blake, raised cover spotlight. and trained by Ned Pines’ fatherhis Indian Scout in-law and busigrandfather, ness partner donned a mask Benjamin Sanand the garb, gor was also the dyed a bright brains behind blue, from which Cinema Comics he took his alias Herald, a shortwhenever enemy lived series of activity reared 4-page giveaways its head, accomavailable exclupanied by Talon, sively through his pet eagle. Cremovie theatres. ated by Turner The first of these, and artist Harry and the only Anderson, Buckissue published in skin lasted four 1941, featured Mr. Villains who returned issue after issue became a hallmark of Ace’s comic books this year. Magno the Magnetic Man issues before The Clown in four consecutive 1941 issues, the mortal foes clashing again 18 more times over the next three Bug Goes to Town, battled being replaced years. Flash Lightning had similar problems with The Mummy, though that baddie lasted only four issues. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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Ace expanded its line this year, cashing in on the patriotic hero craze with Banner Comics and Our Flag Comics. Those titles lasted less than a year, but the showcase book Four Favorites fared better. TM and © respective copyright holder.

by the banal “Foreign Correspondent.” Even “Vulcan the Volcanic Man,” who usually confined himself to crimefighting, visited Berlin long enough to burn off Der Führer’s signature moustache. Two new bi-monthlies, Our Flag Comics and Banner Comics, were almost completely devoted to the superpatriot craze, introducing five such characters. The former, debuting with an August cover date, starred “The Unknown Soldier,” a mysterious superhuman who appeared out of nowhere in England’s darkest hour to singlehandedly wipe out a Ger-

man invasion force. Art Saaf penciled the Soldier’s debut. His successor, the otherwise unknown B. Currie, redesigned the Soldier’s costume in the following issue, exchanging his colorful blue togs for a more subdued brown. Co-starring in Our Flag #1 was “Captain Victory,” alias American diplomat Jack Wilson, whose super-powers echoed the Unknown Soldier’s. If his anonymous creators had an origin in mind, they never got the chance to reveal it. The good captain lost his slot in the title (and Unknown Soldier the cover) just one issue later, replaced in both cases by “The Flag.” Left on the doorstep of “a crippled war veteran and flag maker” on Flag Day, born with a flag-shaped birthmark on his chest, Jim Courtney’s destiny seemed predetermined. On his 21st birthday, the spirits of the Founding Fathers chose Jim to serve as their champion. Instead of saying “Shazam!” to turn into the super-powered Flag, Courtney had only to touch his birthmark. Management must have had high hopes for the series, as he was given two stories per issue. Banner Comics, inexplicably beginning at issue #3 (September), starred “Captain Courageous,” essentially a revamped Captain Victory, even sharing the same ridiculous star-shaped mask. Creator credits are unknown for the strip, which consisted of page after page of crude Alex Raymond and Hal Foster swipes. Joining him in that first issue was “The Lone Warrior,” scripted by sometime “Captain America” contributor Otto Binder. Private Stan Carter and his kid brother Dicky had the same set of powers as Ace’s other costumed patriots, thanks to the chemical formula discovered by their late father. All of these series specialized in long action scenes of their heroes demolishing Axis war machines, scenes that were individually exciting but became monotonous when presented one after the other. Ace’s third new title was Four Favorites. As its name implied, the book featured Super-Mystery’s “Magno” and “Vulcan” alongside Lightning’s “Lash Lightning” and “The Raven,” all illoed by different artists than worked on their regular strips. Weird villains remained the emphasis, with Lash battling The Were-Wolf, a lupine serial killer, and Magno and Davy taking on a four-armed Japanese 109

spymaster known as Professor Octopus. Like all of the company’s titles, Four Favorites was a bi-monthly. This absence of a monthly title suggests a certain hesitance on publisher A.A. Wyn’s part, though whether dictated by finances, a lack of faith in his undeniably derivative roster of characters, or other considerations cannot be determined. Still packaged by Funnies, Inc., under the editorial supervision of David Adams, Curtis Publications’ comics imprint, Novelty Press, seemed content to maintain the high quality of its two monthlies, adding only a quarterly showcase title to its schedule late in the year. This effort was undercut by the loss of the studio’s top talents, as their duties for the better-selling lines forced them to abandon their less lucrative strips, but their characters proved sturdy enough to withstand the tinkering of later creative teams. No character suffered from this personnel shuffling more than the company’s most popular super-hero. After three issues of epic technofantasy adventures, the eponymous star of Blue Bolt bade farewell to Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, Dr. Berkoff, The Green Sorceress, and her hidden kingdom. Returning to the outside world in the May issue (#12), the costumed dynamo spent the next few issues acting as guardian angel to his younger brother, a 17-year-old RAF volunteer. Despite a valiant effort by new artist Alan Mandel, routine stories of fifth columnists and saboteurs were no substitute for the Simon and Kirby brand of excitement. This drop in quality may account for the strip losing both its lead feature status and its cover spot to Bob Davis’ “Dick Cole, Wonder Boy.” In the December issue (#19), in an attempt to revive interest in the flagging feature, Mandel and his uncredited scripter had Blue Bolt take his new friend, Lois Blake, to visit Berkoff, who gave her matching superpowers and a feminized version of his costume. Replacement cover star Dick Cole spent much of the year contending with a new nemesis in the person of ill-mannered, hot-tempered bully Simba Karno, an amoral superboy whose origin paralleled Dick’s. It took five issues and Dick saving his life for Simba to turn his back

him with a mustachioed mystery-man named The Red Seal. White Streak was MIA for one issue before returning in issue #20 (October) with his original inhuman features and costume restored. He and the non-powered Seal were now a team. Tarpé Mills, having placed her comic strip The Black Fury (later rechristened Miss Fury) with the Bell Syndicate, handed her “Fantastic Feature Films” gig over to Harold DeLay, who used an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island as a showcase for his illustrative skills. Basil Wolverton’s “Spacehawk” brought its hero to contemporary Earth and pitted him against a series of Hitler analogs, one of the few Novelty Press series to mention the war (albeit metaphorically). In an attempt to forestall cancellation, Bob Davis turned his master-of-disguise sleuth “The Chameleon” into a costumed vigilante. Jack Warren’s beautifully designed “Calling 2-R” series concluded in Target #15, yielding its page allotment to “The Cadet,” a sports-centered strip about military academy student Kit Carter written by Art Gates and illustrated by George Harrison, later by John Jordan. There was a big editorial push for the newcomer, who replaced The Target as the cover feature on the September and October issues (#19-20). “The Cadet” was also chosen, along with “The Target,” to represent Target Comics in the new quarterly title 4Most, sharing its pages with Blue Bolt’s “Dick Cole” and “Edison Bell,” a Ray Gill and Harold DeLay feature about a boy scientist.

on his evil foster father and come over to the side of the angels. Creator Malcolm Kildale continued to explore the afterlife in “Sergeant Spook,” as the phantom patrolman and his ally, the spectral detective Dr. Sherlock, took on the evil ghosts of Captain Kidd, the pharaoh Tut-Ankh-Amen, a tribe of cavemen, and a cyclops. “Sub-Zero Man,” drawn by John Daly as of issue #13 (June), acquired a sidekick a few issues later, an Eskimo boy named Freezum with the same powers as the titular hero. Most of the book’s other features retained their original creators or transitioned to new artists without a lot of fuss. Paul Gustavson’s railroading strip “Runaway Ronson” was replaced in issue #13 by “The Twister,” alias Bob Sanders, a direct descendent of Odysseus who gained command of the winds after being caught in a cyclone as a boy. Co-created by Ray Gill and an unidentified artist, Twister was cleverly introduced through cameo appearances in the issue’s other features before his back-of-the-book origin story. Target Comics went through similar transitions. Bob Wood scripted and drew “The Target and the Targeteers” through issue #18 (August), his Bob Kane impression sharpened by Kane assistant George Roussos’ inking, until his editorial duties for Gleason led to Sid Greene taking over at the drawing table for an anonymous scripter. Both teams stuck with the tried-and-true themes of crime and espionage for their plots, relying on recurring villains like midget mobster The Mighty Mite and Princess Hohohue, a seductive spy, to provide the seasoning. Carl Burgos walked away from “The White Streak” following the May issue (#15), leaving the fate of its android lead in the hands of writer Ray Gill and artist Emil Gershwin. The new team stirred things up three issues later, apparently killing off Manowar and replacing

One of Novelty Press’ lesser-known innovations was the inclusion of a page devoted to readers’ letters in every comic beginning with those issues cover-dated December 1940. There had been precedents of a sort: several titles ran pen pal requests, and King Comics devoted a page to items about readers’ pets. Street & Smith’s Shadow Comics and Fiction House’s Wings Comics had similar forums, but only Novelty Press featured letter columns throughout its entire line.

Harold DeLay’s beautifully illustrated adaptation of Treasure Island was a highlight of Target Comics this year. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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Eastern Color editor and art director Stephen A. Douglas ran one of the smoother operations in the industry, anchored by the dependable appeal of Famous Funnies. Big draws “Buck Rogers” and “Scorchy Smith,” along with fifteen other syndicated strips, appeared in every 1941-dated issue, but many of their “top strips” (the secondary feature that traditionally ran across the top of a strip’s full-color Sunday page) were dropped over the course of the summer and fall to make room for original material. Jack Kirby’s discontinued “Lightnin’ and the Lone Rider” was replaced in the May issue (#82) by “Invisible Scarlett O’Neil,” Russell Stamm’s newspaper strip about a plainclothes super-heroine that premiered the previous June. In Famous Funnies #89 (December), the post-apocalyptic science fiction strip “Speed Spaulding” ceded its spot to an original super-hero series by editor Douglas and H.G. Peter. “Fearless Flint, the Famous Flint Man” was actually Jack Bradley, a pneumatic drill jockey working on Mount Rushmore who gained strange powers after saboteurs caused his drill to short out and his body was riddled with flint shards. Thereafter, whenever Jack was struck by metal, his skin glowed red-hot and threw off sparks, and he became invulnerable and gained the strength of ten men. Peter was also the artist of the similar “Man O’Metal,” which debuted

five months earlier in the July issue (#7) of Reg’lar Fellers Heroic Comics. Foundry worker Pat Dempsey, caught in a shower of molten steel, didn’t die but instead “through an inexplainable chemical reaction of the skintexture” could thereafter transform into a being of living metal whenever exposed to or touched by sufficient heat. Recruited more-or-less on the spot by the FBI, Man O’Metal was sent to prevent a revolution in the South American nation of Bogadero, a task that kept him occupied through the rest of the year. Someone in the front office thought enough of the new character to have him join Bill Everett’s “Hydroman” on the covers. Everett’s continued presence on the latter, and that of Tarpé Mills on her strips “The Purple Zombie” and “Mann of India,” suggest that either The team of Stephen A. Douglas and H.G. Peter added two new super-heroes, “Fearless Flint” and “Man o’ Metal” to the Eastern Color line-up. TM and © respective copyright holder. Funnies, Inc. considered Eastern Color a top priority or that the two bearing a ‘41 cover date, two collecting “Blondie” and one artists had built up a sufficient backlog to sustain all three each devoted to “Flash Gordon,” “The Lone Ranger,” and series through year’s end. These four features together “Prince Valiant.” occupied about a third of Heroic Comics, syndicated strip United Feature Syndicate’s Tip Top Comics and Comics on reprints took another third, and plugs for Gene Byrne’s Parade likewise continued to offer reprints of that service’s abortive youth movement claimed the remainder. The most popular newspaper strips, with Tip Top including a Eastern Color roster was rounded out by two issues each few minor league super-heroes like “Iron Vic” and “The Mirof the all-reprint Buck Rogers and a similar title devoted ror Man.” CoP now alternated among “Li’l Abner,” “Tarzan,” to Coulton Waugh’s adventure strip Dickie Dare. The line’s “Nancy,” and “The Captain and the Kids,” each strip enjoyonly casualty in 1941 was Gulf Funny Weekly. The 4-page ing an entire issue to itself every fourth month. The latter giveaway was discontinued with the May 23 edition after three (and a handful of other strips) gave up their berths a 418-issue run. in Tip Top following issue #62 (June) to anchor a new title, The line of comics from David McKay featuring the King Sparkler Comics, a revival of the previous year’s short-lived Features Syndicate galaxy of stars saw few changes in 1941, series having only the title in common with its predecessor. its three monthly anthologies—King Comics, Ace Comics, The new book’s cover star was “The Spark Man,” an electriMagic Comics— offering the same line-up of features in cally powered mystery-man created by Fred Methot and every issue. Aside from “The Phantom” replacing “King of Reg Greenwood. Ordinary in most respects, the series did the Royal Mounted” as of King #61 (May) and the addition give the super-hero genre a fresh twist: readers were left to all three titles of Carl Anderson’s “Henry,” a sometimes in the dark concerning Spark Man’s true identity, told only surreal kid strip about a bald-headed mischief-maker who that he was either philanthropist Val Hall, concert violinnever spoke, changes were restricted to filler material like ist Omar Kavak, or crusading journalist Quill Davis. Those gag cartoons and pages of odd facts. McKay also released hoping for a quick reveal were disappointed, the question five issues of the irregularly published Feature Comics remaining unresolved as of the December issue (#5).

The comics published by David McKay and United Feature were dependable sellers throughout the year thanks to their rosters of syndicated strip reprints. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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Dell Goes Hollywood

gerous. To call them out as murderers and traitors, even in the pages of a comic book, was brave, perhaps too brave for Dell executives. “Dr. Hormone” was gone following issue #60, his storyline interrupted mid-cliffhanger.

The line of comic books packaged by the Western Printing subsidiary Whitman Publishing and distributed by Dell Publishing was growing increasingly less reliant on reprinted newspaper strips to fill the pages of its anthologies. Aside from Super Comics and the two showcase titles Large Feature and Four Color, original material now predominated, with licensed properties becoming increasingly important.

Popular #60 also introduced the book’s newest super-hero series, “Professor Supermind and Son,” illustrated by Maurice Kashuba for an unknown writer. It starred brilliant Professor Murray, inventor of the “televisioscope,” which could display live images from anywhere on the globe, and the “ultra frequency energizer” with which he endowed his son Dan with electrically based super-powers. Able to generate an impenetrable force field and fly at incredible speed, the masked and costumed youth stood ready to travel anywhere on earth at a moment’s notice. The altruistic Murrays followed the lead of their fellow mystery-men “The Voice” and “The Masked Pilot” in tackling opponents tied to the totalitarian nations, while “Martan the Marvel Man” and his wife Vana continued to aid humanity against the robot army and giant animals sicced on them by alien invaders. Professor Supermind and Son claimed the cover spot through issue #66 (August), when they were displaced by “Smilin’ Jack.” Zack Mosley’s dashing pilot was one of several syndicated strips that moved to Popular Comics mid-year, claiming the pages previously occupied by “The Sky Hawk.”

Dell’s eldest title, Popular Comics, began 1941 with an act of sheer chutzpah. The January and February issues (#5960) featured “Dr. Hormone,” a scientific genius whose adventures had been running since issue #54, facing the real-life menace of the Ku Klux Klan. Uncovering evidence that the Klan was serving as a fifth column for “Nazia,” Hormone and his wisecracking granddaughter Jane wound up lashed to giant crosses, soaked in kerosene, and set afire. Rescued by the Five Fleamen, volunteers transformed by Dr. H into supermen via injections of flea cells, the doctor had the satisfaction of seeing the “Kluckers” (as the captions scornfully labeled them) and their Grand Kleagle die in the very fire they set. Though down to approximately 30,000 members in 1941 (from a high of 4,000,000 a decade and a half earlier), the Klan and its sympathizers, many of them in positions of prominence, were still dan-

Another well-known aviator joined the cast of The Funnies in its July issue (#57). Radio favorite “Captain Midnight,” created by Robert M. Burtt and Wilfred G. Moore in 1938, had recently gone national over the Mutual Network. The comic book series, drawn primarily by Dan Gormley, followed the program’s continuity faithfully: World War I flying ace Jim Albright was chosen to head the Secret Squadron, a paramilitary air force answerable only to a high-ranking government official code-named “Mr. Jones.” Alongside his teenage ward Chuck Ramsey, Midnight and the Squadron opposed the machinations of criminal mastermind Ivan Shark and his beautiful but wicked daughter Fury. Joining him an issue later was “Philo Vance,” starring the prickly amateur sleuth first seen in 1926’s The Benson Murder Case by S. S. Van Dine, pen name of Willard Huntington Wright. Like the “Ellery Queen” series running concurrently in Crackajack Funnies, the strip did a fine job of capturing the feel of Van Dine’s novels in condensed form. Replacing “The Sky Ranger” in issue #61 (November) were the adventures of “Andy Panda,” star of a series of animated cartoons produced by Walter Lantz. Unlike the character’s unsold newspaper strip, reprinted in Crackajack #39-40 (September-October), the new series took a different approach from the theatrical shorts. Set in what was intended to be the real world, the strip depicted Andy, drawn in the animated style, as a strange anomaly, an intelligent speaking animal. Discovered in the bamboo jungle of China by botanist Marion Allen and her kid brother Tommy, the naive little creature eagerly agreed to accompany them back to America, while unscrupulous trappers plotted to snatch the invaluable Andy away from his new friends. Scripted by Dell workhorse Gaylord DuBois and initially illustrated by James A. “Jim” Pabian, it was an interesting, albeit surreal, take on the funny animal genre. E.C. Stoner’s “Phantasmo” remained the title’s cover star, his fantastic powers all too often squandered on

This confrontation between “Dr. Hormone” and the Ku Klux Klan may have proven too controversial for Dell executives. TM and © Company Info

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‘41, was its last. On the other hand, Super Comics— featuring Chicago Tribune headliners “Little Orphan Annie,” “Dick Tracy,” and “Terry and the Pirates”—remained a top seller. The title included only two original series, Ken Ernst’s ersatz Tarzan “Magic Morro” and Ed Moore’s “Jack Wander, War Correspondent,” the latter replaced by the Albert Micaledrawn “Lightning Jim,” a contemporary western based on a radio series, in issue #41 (October).

Radio super-star “Captain Midnight” joined the Dell line-up in 1941. TM and © respective copyright holder.

mundane crimes like cattle-rustling and counterfeiting, though in one story the Master of the World saved said world from a doomsday meteor in spectacular fashion. Crackajack Funnies dropped the majority of its newspaper strip reprints, including “Red Ryder” and “Wash Tubbs,” following the May issue (#35). Their pages went to “Cyclone,” the adventures of a circus stunt rider and his little person partner set in contemporary Australia, and Jim Chambers’ “Clyde Beatty,” starring the famed animal trainer and circus star. Despite its lead’s superficial resemblance to Batman, cover feature “The Owl” had a different vibe thanks to its running as a serial rather than in discrete episodes. Belle Wayne, reporter girlfriend of Owl’s other self, private eye Nick Terry, adopted the identity of Owl Girl in Crackajack #32 (February). No shrinking violet, Belle made herself invaluable to the costumed detective through her courage and her ability to think on her feet. The duo, first of the new breed of he-andshe partnerships, spent the rest of the year in a series of multi-issue duels with such opponents as The Pantherman, The Spectre, and the Mad Modespos, a family of homicidal maniacs with a pet gorilla. Unfortunately for The Owl, Owl Girl, and their co-stars, time was running out for Crackajack Funnies. The January 1942 issue (#43), on the newsstands in November

The syndicated strips dropped from Crackajack didn’t disappear due to a plunge in popularity. Their absence was due to the launch of Red Ryder Comics, packaged by Whitman for Steven Slesinger’s Hawley Publications. Five issues (#3-7) bearing a 1941 cover date were released before Slesinger, too busy with other, better paying work to give the company the attention it needed, dissolved Hawley.

had been touching on the conflict for years, while original series such as “Stratosphere Jim” and “Rex, King of the Deep” featured Axis-themed villains as a matter of course. A few strips were significantly influenced by current events. Popular Comics’ “Wally Williams, American Boy” saw its collegiate hero graduate in, fittingly, the June issue (#64) and join the Army Air Corps the following month. “Speed Martin, Newsreel Photographer” also climbed into uniform around the same time. But Dell was one of the few major publishers not to foist a “Captain America” lookalike on its readership. With a dozen issues apiece released with 1941 cover dates, Large Feature Comic and Four Color served in effect as monthlies (though in fact they were released unpredictably, some months seeing multiple issues on the stands, some seeing none). All but two issues of Four Color collected syndicated strip reprints from previous issues of Super Comics, Crackajack Funnies, and the other anthologies, including issues devoted to “Dick Tracy,” “Captain Easy,” “Don Winslow,” “Moon Mullins,” “Bringing Up Father,” and “Mickey Mouse.” Two issues adapting feature films from Walt Disney, “The Reluctant Dragon” (issue #13) and “Dumbo” (#17), were the first of the series to contain original material. The black-and-white Large Feature

The cancellation of Crackajack Funnies was not a reflection on editor Oskar Lebeck nor on the quality of the content produced under his supervision. Though the Dell titles had their share of unexceptional genre strips, even the least of them featured the crisp scripting and competently executed art required to meet Lebeck’s exacting standards. Western didn’t shy away from using action and violence to keep its readers’ attention— the gunplay that made “Gang Busters” riveting on the radio was frontand-center in the comics version— but these elements were depicted without the excesses and sensationalism of other comics groups. Never one to chase fads, Lebeck steered clear of the patriotic hysteria that gripped so many of his competitors. Not that the war was ignored. Many of the syndicated strips like “Terry and the Pirates” The Owl and new partner Owl Girl were the first of many and “Don Winhe-and-she super-teams to debut in 1941. slow of the Navy” TM and © respective copyright holder. 113

Adaptations of two Walt Disney feature films, Dumbo and The Reluctant Dragon, were the first issues of Four Color to feature original material instead of reprints. TM and © Disney Enterprises Inc.

offered a similar mix of newspaper strips and original series culled from the other books. “Donald Duck” and “Smilin’ Jack” appeared twice, “Dick Tracy,” “Popeye,” “The Nebbs,” Clyde Lewis’ “Private Buck,” the gag strip “Nuts and Jolts,” “Gang Busters,” and “Phantasmo” (the only Dell superhero to get a solo tryout) once each. The year’s most unusual issues were #19-20, the “Dumbo Comic Paint Book” (reprinting the lead story from Four Color #17) and “Donald Duck Comic Paint Book.” Unlike Whitman’s usual coloring books, which were printed on a heavier paper stock and featured a single picture per page, these used regular newsprint and standard comic book layouts with the occasional enlarged panel. Yet another version of the story about the baby elephant who could fly, Walt Disney’s Dumbo was an oddly proportioned 8½” x 5½” giveaway with black and white interior pages. Buoyed by the popularity of the three King Features newspaper strips— “Mickey Mouse,” “Donald Duck,” and “Silly Symphonies”—it reprinted, Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories had quickly risen up the sales charts. Now edited by Whitman staffer Alice Nielson, WDC&S remained the only Dell title produced out of Western’s Poughkeepsie printing plant. Other animation studios were sitting up and taking notice of the value regular exposure in comic books added to

their brands. To take advantage of this new interest, and to facilitate licensing other popular properties, Western opened a satellite office in Los Angeles headed by Eleanor Packer, a former MGM publicist who had been ably handling licensed properties for other arms of the Whitman publishing octopus since 1936 (and who, not incidentally, authored some of the best-selling Big Little Books). Though nominally under the editorial supervision of Oskar Lebeck, who visited the West Coast every few months to stay abreast of the work coming out of her office, Packer enjoyed considerable autonomy. The first Dell-distributed title produced by the California contingent was Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, featuring the stars of the cartoons produced by Leon Schlesinger and distributed through Warner Brothers. Loosely patterned after the Disney comic, Looney Tunes #1 (October) offered a similar blend of comics and illustrated short stories starring “Bugs Bunny,” “Porky Pig,” and “Elmer Fudd.” Many of these were direct adaptations of Warner cartoons, such as the first issue’s “A Wild Hare,” which looked as if it had been taken directly from the storyboards for the 1940 short that introduced Bugs and Elmer. The problem was that gags and character bits that broke audiences up in the context of a lightning-paced cartoon felt ponderous and flat when 114

translated to comics, a lesson the Disney comics had learned early on. The one strip that avoided this shortcoming from the outset was “Sniffles and Mary Jane.” A minor Schlesinger player first seen in 1939’s Naughty But Mice, Sniffles was a mouse notable for his cloyingly cute voice and incessant stream of inane chatter. In the comic, drawn by Roger Armstrong and scripted by studio storyman Wingate C. “Chase” Craig (who named its female lead after his wife), he was shorn of those annoying traits, instead sharing adventures with a little girl able to reduce herself to his size thanks to a bag of magic sand borrowed from The Sandman. Tailored to appeal to younger children, the series had a gentle charm that contrasted well with the more manic antics of Sniffles’ better-known co-stars. With the addition of Looney Tunes to the schedule, Dell was now publishing six monthly comic books (eight, if you count the erratically released Four Color and Large Feature). Despite that workload, the two editorial offices found themselves also producing a number of one-shots and giveaways. Among them was a fourth issue of War Comics. Featuring essentially the same line-up as its 1940 issues, the book seemed almost like an afterthought, a way to use up inventory and gauge whether the public was now more receptive to its themes. Crackajack Funnies’ “Magic Morro”

Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies was the first Dell comic produced through the publisher’s Los Angeles office. TM and © Warner Bros.

and Popular’s “Hurricane Kids” got extra exposure this year thanks to receiving their own 7” x 5¼” minicomic premiums (though for what product is obscured by time). Morro also appeared as a back-up series in two issues of The Adventures of Little Orphan Annie, a 16-page giveaway for Quaker Sparkles cereal. Western Printing also put together several 32-page premiums for Buster Brown Shoes featuring reprints of “Dick Tracy,” “Smilin’ Jack,” and “Red Ryder,” as well as a 16-page tie-in to the “Terry and the Pirates” radio program that required the reader to solve a puzzle on each page in order to advance the story. Strangest of all was Key Ring Comics, a 16-pager printed in monotone that had two holes punched along the spine, apparently so the buyer could keep them in a binder. Sold in a pack of five for a dime, they featured War Comics’ “The Sky Hawk,” “Greg Gilday,” and “Sleepy Samson,” plus two series exclusive to Key Ring, one of them starring a super-hero called “Radior.” A failed experiment, only the one set is known to have been produced. It is among the rarest of comic book oddities. Dell occasionally published comics not packaged by Western. The oneshot U.S.A. Is Ready was one such title. Edited (and possibly written) by Albert Delacourte, eldest son of publisher George, and lavishly illustrated by Harry Anderson, Jay McArdle, J. P. Ronan, and Mark Schneider, the comic was sheer propaganda, a glorification of the American fighting man and the weapons and machines he would wield in the coming war with the dictator nations. Sections on the Army, Navy, Coast Guard, Marines, and Army Air Corps each began with a page of text outlining the command structure and wartime role of each service branch, with a dash of patriotic braggadocio for seasoning: “This is a sketch of the mighty, draft-swollen force that the United States is whipping feverishly into shape—to defend its shores [and] the American way of life against a new and ugly system of slavery. Where it will meet its hard and bitter baptism of fire and steel no one can safely guess. But it will be prepared.”

That the U.S. military was, in fact, seriously underprepared for war was irrelevant. Magnificent fullpage scenes of the German military crumbling before the onrush of superior American ships, planes, tanks, and soldiers were no more realistic than scenes of Captain America and Bucky defeating whole platoons of Nazis with their bare hands but served the same purpose: to rally citizens, especially those fated to fight on future frontlines, around the cause of crushing Hitler, Mussolini, and their armies. Japan was never mentioned.

Comics That Are Good for You “[T]here are many comic magazines. Originally the comic strips in newspapers and the comic magazines tried to be funny, and in a few cases succeeded. But nowadays most of the comic magazines don’t even try to be funny. They consist largely of exciting picture stories which everyone recognizes as not only untrue but utterly impossible. We are happy to present herewith a new and thoroughly different comic magazine. Lord Byron wrote many years ago: ‘‘Tis strange but true; for truth is always strange—Stranger than fiction.’ We have adopted as the slogan of True Comics, ‘Truth is stranger, and a thousand times more interesting, than fiction!’” With those lofty words, educator and philanthropist George J. Hecht, founder of the prestigious Parents’ Institute and publisher of Parents’ Magazine, launched a line of comic books meant to rehabilitate a medium that despite its unsavory reputation held an enormous potential for education and moral instruction. The March 1941 issue of Parents’ included both a reprint of Sterling North’s “A National Disgrace” and a refutation by the magazine’s editor Clara Savage Littledale arguing that: “[A] suitable substitute for trashy comics magazines needs to be provided—a new magazine patterned closely after the comics, a magazine that shall be very like yet very unlike the comic magazines as we now know them. … [F] aith in children is the inspira115

Dell’s U.S.A. Is Ready one-shot was the first American comic book overtly devoted to political propaganda. TM and © respective copyright holder.

tion for this new magazine, since those who are responsible for it believe that boys and girls immediately recognize and want what is worth while [sic], and if, as in the case of the cheap comic magazines, they seem to have gone astray, it is only because we have given them nothing better.” (Jacobs) Edited by David T. Marke with the advice of historian and radio personality Dr. Hendrik Willem Van Loon, the bi-monthly True Comics was packaged by Funnies, Inc., and featured such familiar artists as Bill Everett, Ed Smalle, Henry Kiefer, Harold DeLay, and John Daly. Much of the title’s emphasis was on biographies of contemporary public figures (Winston Churchill, George C. Marshall, Fiorello LaGuardia), warriors of history (Simon Bolivar, Stephen Decatur, Genghis Khan), entertainers (Annie Oakley, Gene Autry), captains of industry (oil exec Edwin L. Drake, General Motors chairman Big Bill Knudsen), and scientists (Robert Koch, Luther Burbank), augmented by filler features on such topics as baseball, the Red Cross, and circuses. Many of these stories featured scenes of death and destruction as graphic as those offered up by those other “trashy” publishers, but True got a bye in the name of his-

torical accuracy. How accurate they actually were is open to debate: the life stories presented were carefully whitewashed; bios of Chiang Kai-Shek, Sacajawea, and Joe Louis were rife with demeaning stereotypes; and every panel on every page of every feature accepted the superiority of the white man, democracy, capitalism, and Western culture over all alternatives as a given. Using comics for didactic purposes was hardly new. Pages of odd facts had been a fixture of comic books almost from the beginning, and titles like Dell’s War Comics and Fiction House’s Wings Comics depended in part on fillers recounting famous historical battles or identifying different makes and models of airplanes for their appeal. Street & Smith’s Sport Comics, the first comic book devoted entirely to nonfiction, had beaten True Comics onto the stands by more than half a year. But those comics had neither the cachet of association with a pillar of the national community like the Parents’ Institute, nor publishers with the talent for publicity and promotion of its founder. Imitations of True began popping up almost immediately. Better’s Real Life Comics and Centaur’s World Famous Hero Magazine were close copies, covering many of the same topics and employing many of the same artists, while Pioneer Picture-Stories and Trail Blazers, packaged by the Jack Binder studio for Street & Smith, focused on figures and events from American history. These books were presented as straightforward entertainment without George Hecht’s self-importance or paternalistic condescension, not a bad tactic considering how much children, then and now, hate being talked down to. Hecht himself tried to duplicate his success with a second title, the quarterly Real Heroes. The new title covered much the same ground as the first, but with even more emphasis on biography. Appearing the same month was Calling All Girls, edited by Frances Ullman (no relation to Ultem co-owner Isaac) and self-described as “the first magazine of its kind for girls and sub-debs.” Split 50-50 between comics, some fictional, some not, and articles like “Make the Most of Your Looks” and “13 Ways Girls Can Help in the National Defense,” the title was a sincere attempt to address an underserved demographic, though to modern eyes it is undeniably, if quaintly, sexist in its portrayal of gender roles.

Half comic book, half magazine, Calling All Girls was the first newsstand comic specifically tailored for a female readership. TM and © respective copyright holder.

academic credentials, but he was concerned about his children’s preference for comic books over the great literature he grew up reading and still loved. Forming a partnership with financial backers Raymond Haas and Meyer Levy, Kanter commissioned Funnies, Inc., to produce a new bimonthly comic book to be distributed through Irving Manheimer’s Publishers Distribution Corp. As explained in the editorial in the inaugural issue, cover-dated October, of Classic Comics: “It is not our intent to replace the old established classics with these editions of the ‘Classic Comics Library,’ but rather we aim to create an active interest in those great masterpieces and to instill a desire to read the original text. It is also our aim to present these editions to include all of the action that is bound to stimulate greater enjoyment for its readers. It is our sincere belief that men and women, including junior men and women have attained a finer taste in literature, and they will welcome these highly interesting, concise editions of the established works of the masters.” (Jones 471-478)

Big business had glommed onto comics as a promotional tool even before Eastern Color created the modern format. One-shots like Bob and Betty and Santa’s Wishing Whistle, a Christmas ‘41 gift to Sears shoppers, had become common. The emergence of non-fiction comics like True Comics and U.S.A. Is Ready led one firm, the Pocahantas Coal Company, to take the next step. Packaged by the Binder studio, The Exciting True Adventures of Pocahantas featured more than just the sanitized history lessons implied by the title. Interspersed among biographies of John Smith, Powhatan, and the title maiden were fillers extolling the benefits of coal in general and the virtues of Pocahantas Coal in particular. Able to offer page rates exceeding what even the biggest comics publishers were willing or, in many cases, able to pay, such giveaways soon became a key influence on many packaging services’ bottom lines.

As with non-fiction, the comic book industry was no stranger to literary adaptations. Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson’s earliest comics had included adaptations of Gulliver’s Travels, Ivanhoe, and The Three Musketeers. Adaptations of The Count of Monte Cristo, begun by Jack Kirby and completed by Lou Fine, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Dick Briefer had been long-running fixtures in Jumbo

Albert Kanter, a salesman for Elliot Publishing, purveyors of the infamous Double Comics, didn’t have George Hecht’s 116

Comics. Harold DeLay’s version of Treasure Island in Novelty Press’ Target Comics ran concurrently with Jack Farr’s broader interpretation in Street & Smith’s Doc Savage Comics. All of these adaptations ran as serials in installments of four to ten pages per issue. Classic Comics was the first to attempt adapting complete works into a single 64-page comic. The two issues dated 1941 featured “The Three Musketeers,” scripted and drawn by Malcolm Kildale, and “Ivanhoe,” drawn by Edd Ashe with Kanter himself at the typewriter. Both told their stories in a straightforward style, hitting all the significant plot points of the originals. Action and swordplay were emphasized over romance and long passages of dialogue, with characterization and atmosphere sacrificed for the sake of keeping the narrative moving on its headlong rush to page 62 (the last two pages were reserved for biographies of the original authors). The art in these early issues lacked detail and authenticity, falling short of the spectacle and pageantry such classics required, even in those battle scenes given a full-page spread. For all these faults, Classic Comics did no worse by, and often stayed far more faithful to, their source material than many bigbudget Hollywood productions. Ever true to his self-appointed mission, Albert Kanter fine-tuned his innovation over the next few years, confident that he could arrive at a package that both met his personal standards and earned the respect of educators and critics.

A Warning from Uncle Sam Will Eisner, like George Hecht and Albert Kanter, believed that comic books had potential to be more than what the industry seemed willing to settle for. Eisner, however, was more interested in the legitimization of the medium as a vehicle for sophisticated storytelling. As one of Eisner’s biographers explained: “Like the Walt Disney Studio or any other, there was a creative philosophy characteristic of Eisner’s shop. Eisner insisted on stories that made sense— even in a comic book reality—and had a beginning, a middle, and end. He believed in continuity of characters

and their features, as well as keeping them similar to real people in speech and behavior when appropriate. His love of adventure and short stories gave him a grounding that less wellread competitors lacked.” (Andelman 32) Nowhere was this editorial vision better realized than in the pages of The Spirit, the Sunday supplement distributed by the Register and Tribune Syndicate. All three series within—“The Spirit,” “Lady Luck,” “Mr. Mystic”— featured briskly paced, well-constructed stories with likeable leads, quirky characters, and considerable humor. All three featured thoughtfully composed, expressive art that did more than merely illustrate the script. And all three were

“The Three Musketeers” and “Ivanhoe” were the first in a long line of literary works adapted in the pages of Classic Comics. TM and © respective copyright holder.

noticeably better in both aspects than they were when they began. The playful experimentation of “The Spirit” in 1941 proved again and again it is not the story that matters but how the story is told. What other strip of the era would have related the account of a murderous thug’s comeuppance entirely in rhymed couplets? Or depicted an episode’s events from the perspective of archaeologists who dig up a copy of the comic in 2141? Or limited its cast to a walk-on at the end of the series’ annual Christmas story? Even when telling a straightforward crime drama, Will Eisner executed it with enthusiasm, style, and a gen117

erous dose of his signature wit. His masked sleuth moved in a world of urban shadows and casual brutality where unctuous civic reformers denounce the police as incompetent while pocketing dirty money and callous crimelords laugh at a crippled old man pushed down a flight of stairs, a world later labeled “noir” when postwar Hollywood adopted a similar style. Across this seedy backdrop paraded an array of characters astonishing in both variety and vitality: improbable heroes like the lonely middle-aged office drone who sacrificed his life to prevent an invasion from outer space only he knew was impending, and the meek newspaper cartoonist shanghaied by the father of a faithful fan into solving the boy’s kidnapping; macabre villains like the immortal Oldest Man in the World, and the homicidal Dusk and Twilight, married serial killers who spent almost as much time trying to kill each other as they did their victims; shady ladies like Marta, an art forger hurrying before she went blind to kill the ex-partner who sent her to prison, and Sylvia “Silk” Satin, a beautiful jewel thief—later recruited by British Intelligence—who claimed a hold on Spirit’s affections to rival that of Ellen Dolan; and the occasional outright eccentric like Ellen’s grandfather Dead Duck Dolan, the octogenarian sheriff of Borderville, Texas. Even the minor characters shone, Eisner populating his background players with affectionate caricatures of the Jewish, Italian, Irish, and other first- and second-generation New Yorkers he grew up among. Combined with Eisner’s ear for dialogue, eye for dramatic panel and page composition, and faith that his audience could keep up without being buried in exposition, these elements made every episode an object lesson in graphic storytelling. The one jarring note for modern audiences is Ebony White, the Spirit’s right-hand man and the only person besides Commissioner Dolan in on his true identity. In later years, Eisner defended his portrayal of the character, citing Ebony’s courage and loyalty, noting that the white characters never treated the diminutive African-American taxi driver as an inferior, but there is no escaping the grotesque “inner tube” lips or exaggerated minstrel show dialect the cartoonist, a product of his time despite

his good intentions, used for all his black characters.

later serial found Mr. M and Chowderhead back in Tibet trying to save the Seven Lamas from the depredations of a rival temple led by the mysterious Jewel. The struggle was still ongoing by the December 28 episode, in which Spirit, Lady Luck, Ebony, and Peecolo dropped by to wish Mystic and the readers a merry Christmas.

At four pages apiece per issue, “Lady Luck” and “Mr. Mystic” lacked the elbow room for narrative experimentation enjoyed by “The Spirit.” Continuing storylines became more frequent. Original artist Chuck Mazoujian left “Lady Luck” following Perhaps the most amazing thing the April 6 issue. Replacing him was about the weekly Spirit is that it was Nick Viscardi, a better draftsman who produced at the same time as the improved with each new episode. Eisner Studio’s work for the Quality Dick French and Toni Blum provided Comics Group also published by Everscripts. Lady L got a new sidekick ett “Busy” Arnold. The shop shared in the May 18 issue, a likeable hulk responsibility with the in-house staff named Peecolo, whose ready fists, overseen by editor Ed Cronin for the insatiable appetite, and broad accent contents of the line’s five monthly (a bizarre patois of Italian and Spananthologies Feature Comics, Smash ish) served the green-clad mysteryComics, Crack Comics, Hit Comics, and woman as welcome help and comic National Comics, with two additional relief. Her adventures in South Amermonthlies plus two quarterlies added ica on behalf of her father’s business to the schedule by summer. Arnold interests led to Lady Luck receiving a ended the awkward arrangement in special commission in the U.S. Army which Eisner subcontracted portions with the rank of “majorette.” Thereof his workload to the S.M. Iger Studio, after, she and Peecolo spent much of signing a six-month contract with the their time globetrotting and foiling shop in January, then renegotiating Axis espionage. Aware of its initial with the reorganized Roche & Iger in shortcomings, Bob Powell took the June. Sales on Hit and National, never trouble to make “Mr. Mystic” stand robust to begin with, began to slip out from the crowd of comic book sorbadly, a downturn Arnold blamed on cerers so that by January 1941, his turblown deadlines and the substandard baned wizard had a sardonic sense of work he chastised Iger for in the lethumor and a fiancée, FBI agent Penny ter quoted earlier in this chapter. His Douglas, with whom he shared bandecision to add Military Comics and ter of the William Powell-Myrna Loy kind. Penny and Mystic got separated for a time, and the magician fell in love with an accused witch named Harriani. Torn between two loves, he settled in the August 31 issue for a comic sidekick, a dimwitted lump named Chowderhead who spoke with an inarticulate loquaciousness straight out of Damon Runyon. Powell built a detailed mythos around his hero, much of it centered on his sometimes friendly, sometimes adversarial relationship with The Shadowman of Death, a faceless Grim Reaper in a snap-brim fedora and shabby suit that could have come from The Spirit’s closet. Shadowman was a major player in a five-part story (March 30-April 20) that pitted Mystic against the demon Mestopholes and his band of henchmen, each the personification of a sin: Intoxication, Temptation, Theft, Arson, and Murder. He walked amongst the gods as well, helping recover the hammer of Bob Powell created an elaborate mythos around “Mr. Mystic.” Thor, stolen by the satyr god Pan. A TM and © Will Eisner Studios Inc. 118

Police Comics to his roster despite his financial woes proved a sage one, as each title introduced a strip that together would propel Quality to the pinnacle of success. With “Doll Man” and reprints of the Register and Tribune Syndicate’s best newspaper strips to anchor sales, Arnold and Cronin were free to tinker with the back pages of Quality’s flagship title Feature Comics. The sci-fi super-hero series “Ace of Space” got the boot following the February issue (#41), its pages given over to Maurice Gutwirth’s “USA the Spirit of Old Glory.” After completing the first American flag, Betsy Ross gave a locket containing a few leftover threads to a young acquaintance who died just a few days later. When a Philadelphia gravedigger found and opened the locket in 1941, he freed the little girl’s spirit. Now in a superhuman adult body and armed with the Torch of Liberty, USA spent the next seven issues battling menaces to America. With no real personality and no supporting cast, the ghostly heroine simply wasn’t interesting. Taking her place in Feature #49 (October) was Phil Martin’s “Swing Sisson,” a well-written detective strip about a crime-solving bandleader. Already a favorite with readers, Doll Man became even more so with the assigning of the series’ art duties to Reed Crandall as of issue #44 (May). Though Crandall confessed decades later that he held no affection for the strip’s tiny protagonist, citing the difficulties of designing sequences incorporating the foot-tall Doll Man and his full-size opponents, the work itself displayed no such ambivalence. Even more than the artist’s mastery of anatomy and perspective, the lush detail of his backgrounds, or the beauty of his pen technique, it was the sheer exuberance he brought to the comics page that turned a good strip into a great one, an exuberance reflected in the wide smile his wee lead wore when performing his impossible feats. Doll Man was having fun, and readers found it contagious. The January issue of Smash Comics (#18) featured the Quality debut of Jack Cole on a series personally commissioned by Busy Arnold. Concerned that Will Eisner might be drafted and subsequently killed in combat, which would put an end to the Eisner-owned “Spirit,” the

publisher asked several freelancers to concoct new heroes closely modeled on the masked detective as a precaution. Copying successful characters was de rigueur for the industry, but the request made Cole uncomfortable. Eisner recalled many years later: “Jack Cole came to see me in my studio in Tudor City. Jack said, ‘I got a problem, Will. Busy wants me to create a character just like The Spirit.… I feel it’s not morally right.’ Actually, what Jack wanted was for me to give him a benediction and say it’s all right. I said, ‘Well, Jack, I can’t tell you not to do it because it’s your livelihood and, frankly, I don’t think I can sue Busy over a thing like this. He has the right to create characters for his magazines if he wants to.’ … We joked around about it for a while, and I don’t know if it was Jack or me that got the brilliant idea to make him a funny character. That way, Jack could satisfy Busy Arnold and it’d be a totally different character.” (Kooiman 19) “Midnight” did indeed look exactly like The Spirit, but the resemblance ended there. Dave Clark led a double life: announcer for radio station UXAM by day, masked Robin Hood of Big City by night. In the first few episodes, his shtick was to rob crooks and grafters, whose illicit gains he donated to charity, at the stroke of midnight, but this proved too limiting for the wild imagination of Jack Cole. Just how wild things could get was demonstrated in Smash #21 (April) as Midnight acquired a sidekick, the talking monkey Gabby, the result of a radical new surgical technique developed by a beautiful scientist who took its secret with her to the grave. Two issues later, a crackpot scientist named Doc Wackey joined the cast, his outré inventions giving “Midnight” a delightful science fiction flavor missing from the other Spirit take-offs.

“Midnight,” meant to be a knock-off of “The Spirit,” became far more thanks to creator Jack Cole’s satiric storytelling sensibilities. TM and © DC Comics.

insistence of Ace Magazines), his place going to a new Gustavson creation. “The Jester” was really rookie policeman Chuck Lane, who donned his medieval ancestor’s motley to bedevil the underworld and befuddle his superior, the eversputtering Inspector Mulligan. Also debuting in Smash #25 was “Wildfire,” a feminized Human Torch created by the team of Robert Turner and Jim Mooney. Trapped in a forest fire as a little girl, Carol Vance so impressed the godlike Lord of Flame with her courage that he gave her power over all flame. She used this gift to combat the standard mix of crooks and subversives but her appeal lay not in her super-powers or her rogues’ gallery. As lovingly limned by Mooney, Wildfire’s luxurious ankle-length crimson hair and scandalously revealing costume made her hands down the sexiest super-hero of 1941.

The star of Smash remained “The Ray.” Scripter Toni Blum had a tendency to give her hero whatever power was most convenient in a specific circumstance, but otherwise she delivered exciting scenarios for Lou Fine to illustrate, stories featuring grotesque villains and exotic locales made to order for the artist’s energetic design sense and ornate brushwork. The Ray gained a boy companion in issue #21 (April), an orphaned plane crash survivor named Bud (Jackie in his first appearance only), though Blum and Fine had the good sense not to give Bud powers or a costume. His new responsibilities as a father figure curbed Ray’s tendency to electrocute the bad guys, as he did the evil Seven Dwarves in issue #18. When a Spirit daily strip was launched, Fine was asked to help out on the weekly version penciling pages for the title feature over Eisner’s detailed layouts. Reed Crandall stepped in on “The Ray” beginning with the July issue (#24). The readership’s enthusiasm for super-heroes was not lost on editor Ed Cronin, and more costumed crusaders cropped up during the year to join Midnight, The Ray, Art Pinajian’s “Invisible Justice,” and George Brenner’s “Bozo the Robot.” Both of Vernon Henkel’s strips flirted with the genre, “Chic Carter” adopting the masked identity of The Sword in Smash #24 after being framed for murder by a gangland lookalike, while “Wings Wendall” wore a costume taken from a captured henchman for two chapters before returning to his standard aviation gear. “Magno,” now drawn by Paul Gustavson, was dropped following the April issue (possibly at the legal

Lou Fine and Toni Blum took “The Black Condor,” cover feature of Crack Comics, down a new path. In the March issue (#11), the high-flying mystery-man assumed a new secret identity, that of Senator Tom Wright, a lookalike politician assassinated on the orders of corrupt industrialist Jasper Crow. The switch was known only to the Condor’s friend Dr. Foster, who hid the truth from his daughter Wendy, the late senator’s fiancée. This remained the status quo for the rest of the year, as Condor and Crow dueled again and again, any hint of monotony assuaged by Fine’s breathtaking depiction of the avian avenger in action. Still in the hands of their creators, the title’s other super-types— George Brenner’s “The Clock,” Paul Gustavson’s “Alias The Spider,” Henry Kiefer’s “The Red Torpedo,” and Art Pinajian’s “Madame Fatal”— stayed on an even keel, notable only for the introduction of the Torpedo’s arch-enemy The Black Shark in Crack #10 (February) and Madame F’s encounter the same issue with a costumed criminal named The Jester dressed exactly like the Smash Comics hero of the same name debuting two months later. Joining the line-up in issue #10 was “Tor the Magic Master,” another of Fred Guardineer’s super-sorcerers, this one mirroring his earlier creation, DC’s “Zatara,” in speaking his spells backward. Some sources credit the apparently inexhaustible Toni Blum with writing virtually every feature running in Hit 119

a storyline in which the legendary lumberman enlisted in the military was brought to a premature end. Two issues later, Fred Guardineer took on both script and art for “Merlin the Magician,” turning him into a doppelganger of Crack Comics’ “Tor.”

As designed by Jim Mooney, “Wildfire” was unusually provocative by 1940s standards. TM and © DC Comics.

Comics, save for the children’s fantasy strip “Tommy Tinkle.” While Blum likely wrote individual episodes of all these series at some point during the year, other scripters like Will Eisner, assistant editor Gwen Hanson, and Ruth Roche may also have contributed, though barring further analysis of their styles this must remain conjecture. Regardless of who was providing the scripts, none of the book’s characters caught on with readers the way Doll Man, The Ray, or The Black Condor did (though the art on most of these strips, provided by the lesser lights of the Roche & Iger shop, was surely a mitigating factor). The title’s only real highlights in 1941 were Henry Kiefer’s taking over “Lion Boy” in issue #9 (March) and Reed Crandall’s arrival on “Hercules” with the May issue (#11). National Comics faced similar challenges despite the popularity of its headliner “Uncle Sam.” Here, too, Blum produced the bulk of the title’s scripts, though more of them enjoyed good art than their Hit counterparts. Nick Viscardi remained the primary artist on “Quicksilver” and “Wonder Boy,” with Jack Cole, Paul Gustavson, Chuck Mazoujian, and newcomer Al Bryant (soon to become a mainstay of the Quality line) filling in when his weekly “Lady Luck” deadlines took precedence. Reed Crandall assumed the art chores for “Paul Bunyan” in National #10 (April), shortly after

Two new monthlies debuted in June with an August cover date, one edited by Will Eisner, the other by Ed Cronin. While the war in Europe and Asia had played a role in many strips, if only by providing Busy Arnold’s roster of super-heroes with appropriately scurrilous villains to fight, the Eisnerhelmed Military Comics was the first Quality title to make the expanding conflict its centerpiece. The book’s star from the very beginning was “Blackhawk.” Reportedly co-created by Eisner, Bob Powell, and artist Chuck Cuidera, a dyed-in-the-wool aviation buff (who in later years would claim sole creative credit for the feature), the series featured a band of fearless pilots, each from an Axis-conquered or Allied nation, led by the title character, a Polish expatriate avenging the family he lost to a merciless Luftwaffe officer. Clad in Gestapo-like uniforms of black leather, the Blackhawks lived together on Blackhawk Island, where their distinctive planes, modified Grumman F4F Skyrockets, stood fueled and ready to carry the brotherhood of freedom fighters to their next adventure. Unidentified background characters at first, the team members soon acquired names, backstories, and personalities. The brawny Stanislaus, named for co-creator Powell, was Blackhawk’s stoic second-incommand. After him came Andre, the suave Frenchman; Olaf, the acrobatic Swede; Hendrickson, a portly German, later a Dutchman, older than his fellow fliers; Zeg and Boris, nonentities of indeterminate nationality who faded away after a few issues; and, as of issue #3 (October), Chop-Chop, the island’s Chinese cook, an embarrassing caricature complete with buck teeth and queue who spoke in mangled pidgin. There had been teams of aviators in comic books before, but none of them possessed the wow factor that made the Blackhawks resonate with readers. Even in these early stories, “Blackhawk” was indisputably cool. The back pages of Military offered an assortment of features that, if not the ready-made hits “Blackhawk” 120

proved to be, were still entertaining. Jack Cole’s “The Death Patrol” starred another team of pilots, this one consisting of escaped convicts convinced by their future leader, canned airline pilot Del Van Dine, to redeem their criminal pasts by fighting alongside the RAF. Though chock full of Cole’s comedic touches, the strip had an inescapable air of fatalism. Dave Berg took over with issue #4 (November), making his mark by killing off charter member Butch. “The Blue Tracer” wasn’t a super-hero but a super-machine created by engineer Wild Bill Dunn, sole survivor of a British expedition into Fascistcontrolled Ethiopia. Pieced together from wrecked tanks and airplanes, the heavily armed Tracer was capable of flying at amazing speed and performing other incredible feats. Creator Fred Guardineer was enthused enough about the series that he provided a detailed half-page diagram of the Tracer in the fourth episode. Reporter Joan Dale was chosen by the living spirit of the Statue of Liberty to serve as “Miss America,” the statue’s super-powered champion. Original artist Elmer “Red” Wexler kept his heroine in street clothes, but by issue #4 his replacement, Tom Hickey, had outfitted her in a flattering red-whiteand-blue ensemble. The title’s most unusual feature began in the second issue. Written by Tex Blaisdell, “The Military Comics Award for Youth Bravery” was a text piece honoring the achievements of heroic young people, offering $5 to readers whose suggested subjects were spotlighted. The other new title, Police Comics, was more typical Quality fare, divided about equally between super-heroes and detectives. The original cover star was “Firebrand,” an average mysteryman strip elevated by the art of Reed Crandall. Playboy wastrel Rod Reilly had no superhuman powers in or out of costume, but his hand-to-hand combat skills made up for it. More formidable was “The Human Bomb,” created by Paul Gustavson. Forced to swallow the miraculous explosive “27-QRX” to keep it out of the hands of enemy agents, chemist Roy Lincoln discovered he could now trigger explosions with a touch of his hand. Unable to control the effect, Lincoln was forced to don a special outfit of “fibro-wax” to protect others from his devastating power. Debutante

Sandra Knight first donned the yellow one-piece and green cape of “The Phantom Lady” to prevent the assassination of her senator father. She carried a darkness-inducing “black light” ray as her only weapon, which apparently also prevented even her closest friends from realizing that Sandra and the maskless mysterywoman were one and the same. As drawn by original artist Arthur Peddy, this early version of Phantom Lady lacked the exaggerated anatomy that made her infamous during the anticomics crusades of the early ‘50s. Fred Guardineer’s “The Mouthpiece” was, like “Midnight,” one of Busy Arnold’s insurance policies against the loss of “The Spirit,” but fell short of being anything other than a generic masked vigilante. George Brenner’s “711,” by contrast, broke new ground by having its hero operate from within a prison, which he exited and re-entered at will courtesy of a secret tunnel. His adventures leaned towards typical crime melodramas, though his foe in issue #5, The Brick Bat, must’ve raised a few eyebrows over at DC: his cowl was an exact duplicate of Batman’s! Tucked away inside Police Comics #1, about two-thirds of the way in, was a new strip from Jack Cole destined to become not only that cartoonist’s magnum opus but the most popular super-hero in the history of Quality Comics. “Plastic Man,” rechristened at Busy Arnold’s suggestion from Cole’s less catchy “India Rubber Man,” was actually Eel O’Brian, a career criminal until the day an experimental acid entered his bloodstream through bullet wounds incurred during a botched robbery. Nursed back to health by the kindly brothers of a remote monastery (a borrowing from the 1940 Edward G. Robinson film Brother Orchid), the petty crook discovered he now had the power to change his own shape at will. Determined to atone for his past misdeeds, O’Brian assumed the new identity of Plastic Man and proceeded to round up his old gang, leading them into a trap as Eel before corralling them as his elastic-limbed alter ego. Though the early episodes only hinted at the heights Cole would achieve over the life of the series, his imagination, vibrancy, and unique humor were apparent in every panel. His first major antagonists, an overthe-hill bodybuilder named Madame Brawn and her platoon of larcenous female athletes, told readers that

“Plas” was not going to be just another super-serious super-doer. By the December issue (#5), Plastic Man had taken over the cover spot on the express order of Arnold, who knew a hit concept when he saw one. No one has explained the magic of “Plastic Man” better than Pulitzer Prizewinning graphic novelist Art Spiegelman does in his definitive biography Jack Cole and Plastic Man: “Cole successfully performed the one magic Comics readers had never seen anything quite like Jack Cole’s act at the heart of the shapeshifting “Plastic Man” before. TM and © DC Comics. craft: believing so profoundly in the realthe same playfulness he employed ity of the world conjured on “The Spirit” to the adventures of up with lines on paper that, Sam and Buddy, including a dazzling against the odds, the marks two-page spread of the idyllic Everygain enough authority to town in one story, and bringing in become a real world for the The Black Condor, The Ray, Hercules, reader. … While Cole’s work is Neon, and Quicksilver for a one-panel often overloaded with ideas, fantasy cameo in another, the only the drawing is never overtime any of Quality’s male superwrought; the art displays a heroes appeared together prior to the Midwesterner’s laconic mas1970s. tery. What remains most remarkable is Cole’s abilIn his National Comics series, meanity to be so fully present in while, new scripter Toni Blum and his comic book work from a rotating lineup of artists includmoment to moment, always ing Fine, Crandall, and Berg kept following his lines of thought Uncle Sam busy facing off against with the same curiosity the a plethora of spies, saboteurs, and reader might have—as astonsubversives. Entertaining as these ished as any reader by where stories were and are, it is the one in they take him.” (37) the December issue (#18), released in early October, that gives the modern Within a year, “Blackhawk” and “Plasreader pause, for it foretold the event tic Man” would become Quality’s that would finally bring America into biggest hits. In the interim, the comthe war: the Japanese attack on Pearl pany decided to give two of its current Harbor, Hawaii. (Busy Arnold would stars their own solo titles. Doll Man claim decades later that this predicQuarterly #1 (Autumn) featured five tion brought the FBI to his door, but stories of the foot-tall crime-crusher this may have been the retired pubsquaring off against costumed villisher indulging in some retroactive lains The Phantom Swordsman, The mythmaking.) The scene, confined to Vulture, and The Black Gondolier. a single panel of page 1, was not espeDrawn by Roche & Iger second-stringcially accurate, and readers probably ers John Cassone, Anthony “Tony” Di took it no more seriously than they Preta, and Rudy Palais, the book was did The Claw’s attack on Boston. Still, a cut above much of its competition, one can’t help wondering how many though the absence of Reed Crandall of its young readers recalled this must have disappointed fans of the comic when word reached them on Feature Comics version. By contrast, the afternoon of December 7 of that Uncle Sam Quarterly fielded the A morning’s treachery… and how many team: Will Eisner as writer (and probof them, and their fathers and brothably layout artist) and Lou Fine as ers and friends, would be consumed artist, backed by Dave Berg and Dan in the conflagration it ignited. Zolnerowich. Eisner brought some of 121

Comic Books Go To

War

“Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the empire of Japan. The United States was at peace with that nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its government and its emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific. … [T]he distance from Hawaii to Japan makes it obvious the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time, the Japanese government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace. … [A] lways will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us. No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.” With those words, spoken to Congress in emergency session and, by radio, to the nation, Franklin D. Roosevelt asked the assembled legislators to declare war on the Japanese Empire. The outrage and defiance in the president’s voice that Monday morning echoed the reaction of the nation’s citizenry. Isolationism was off the table now, rendered irrelevant by Pearl Harbor and the subsequent declarations of war on America by Hitler and Mussolini. On January 1, 1942, the United States stood with Great Britain, China, the Soviet Union (now an ally since the Third Reich’s attack on its erstwhile treaty partner the previous summer), Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, three Caribbean nations, five Central American countries, and the governments-in-exile of Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Norway, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, and Greece in issuing the Declaration By United Nations, each signatory pledging “to employ its full resources, military and economic, against … the Tripartite Pact [i.e., the Axis powers]” and “not to make a separate armistice or peace with the enemies.” Even as the Allies concentrated their individual and collective war efforts, Nazi Germany was implementing the “Final Solution,” the systematic extermination of Jews and other peoples Der Führer deemed “inferior.” The names of the concentration camps in which they died— Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald, and too many more— survive down to the present day as synonyms for genocide. Seven decades of accumulated hindsight have made the outcome of the Second World War seem inevitable, but 122

victory was by no means certain. The attack on Hawaii was only the first strike in Japan’s all-out bid for military supremacy in the Pacific. By New Year’s Day, 1942, the Japanese had seized Guam, Wake Island, and Hong Kong and soon launched invasions of Burma and the Philippines. In the latter, a joint force of American and Filipino troops held off Tokyo’s troops until April, the surviving defenders afterward forced to endure the living hell of the Bataan Death March. The war was going badly for the United Nations on other fronts as well. Over the previous six months, the Germans had penetrated hundreds of miles into Soviet territory and, despite a counteroffensive by the Russians and their fabled ally “General Winter,” now threatened Moscow and Stalingrad, simultaneously striking at the Crimean peninsula. In Libya, Rommel’s Afrika Korps retook all the ground lost the previous winter and continued its relentless advance on Egypt and the strategically critical Suez Canal. Could America harness its resources in time to save her allies? The nation had 2.2 million men and women already in uniform at the time of Pearl Harbor. Over the next four years, they were joined by 6.3 million volunteers and 11.5 million draftees. To keep them armed with the guns, ships, tanks, and airplanes they would need, American industry converted to war production, creating an enormous demand for factory workers. This push for mobilization had unexpected consequences, changing the societal status quo. Women entered the workforce in unprecedented numbers, taking on jobs previously deemed too strenuous for “the weaker sex” - a myth they quickly debunked, at least for those who had eyes to see. The final wave of an African-American emigration from the agrarian South that began in the 1920s filled industrial jobs in the Rust Belt and on the West Coast. Even the nation’s disabled citizens did their part, with the deaf manning unbearably loud machinery and little people laboring in spaces too tight for a fullsize worker. The unemployment rate plunged, the burgeoning defense effort raising the lingering fog left by the Great Depression, though hardship was by no means at an end.

The Roosevelt administration made it clear from the start that Americans would have to make sacrifices if victory was to be assured. Production of automobiles, radios, household appliances, and similar consumer goods was suspended for the duration. A national speed limit of 35 mph was imposed. To ensure that our fighting forces had everything they needed to win, the government encouraged citizens to recycle—a term coined in the ‘20s but not yet in vogue—their used metal, rubber, lard, and paper, and ordered strict rationing of coal, firewood, tires, gasoline, sugar, coffee, meat, butter, prepackaged (canned, bottled, frozen) food, and other items whose availability had come to be taken for granted. Most citizens complied, but a black market in rationed goods sprang up practically overnight, an underground economy that endured until the postwar lifting of restrictions. The mass media, which had been beating the war drums steadily if guardedly prior to Pearl Harbor, was now encouraged to go all out. Movie theaters offered up patriotic pictures like Yankee Doodle Dandy, Casablanca, Mrs. Miniver, Across the Pacific, Flying Tigers, Saboteur, the oddball gangsters-vs.-Nazis thriller All Through the Night, and Prelude to War, first of the “Why We Fight” documentaries directed by Academy Award-winner Frank Capra with animated sequences provided by the Walt Disney Studios. War-themed songs like “American Patrol,” “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition,” “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree,” “This Is the Army, Mr. Jones,” “I Left My Heart at the Stage Door Canteen,” and Spike Jones’ mocking “Der Fuehrer’s Face” ruled the airwaves. The syndication services vied to see which could get more of its comic strip characters into uniform. Among those serving were Terry and the Pirates’ Terry Lee and Pat Ryan, Scorchy Smith, Smilin’ Jack, Captain Easy, Joe Palooka, Mickey Finn, Flash Gordon, Little Orphan Annie’s Government-issued propaganda posters were everywhere in the weeks following Pearl Harbor, urging men to enlist in the military, women to join the workforce, and all Americans to do their part by buying war bonds and stamps.

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TIMELINE: 1942

March 18: President Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9102, which creates the War Relocation Authority, responsible for the relocation and internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. By 1944, 120,000 Japanese-Americans will have been placed in internment camps.

A compilation of the year’s notable comic book history events alongside some of the year’s most significant popular culture and historical events. (On sale dates are approximations.) January 1: In Washington D.C. representatives from the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and China sign the Declaration by United Nations which formalizes their military alliance. The next day 22 other nations—including Australia and Canada—join them.

April 18: Led by Lieutenant Colonel James “Jimmy” Doolittle, sixteen U.S. bombers conduct an air raid on Tokyo, the first strike on Japan since the Pearl Harbor attack.

March 12: With Japanese forces approaching, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur, under orders from President Roosevelt, leaves the Philippines. Eight days later, after being flown to Australia, MacArthur declares, “I shall return.”

JANUARY

FEBRUARY

May 29: Yankee Doodle Dandy—a musical starring James Cagney as Broadway star George M. Cohan—premieres at a New York City theater before gaining wider release a week later. The film will earn nine Academy Award nominations, winning for Best Actor, Best Musical Score, and Best Sound Recording.

April 4: The first chapter of Spy Smasher—a twelve-part film serial produced by Republic Pictures and starring Kane Richmond as Fawcett Comics’ caped vigilante—is released to movie theaters.

MARCH

June 7: Considered one of the turning points of World War II, U.S. naval forces win the Battle of Midway, severely damaging the Japanese fleet and halting their advance in the Pacific.

APRIL

March 6: Comic book publisher Victor Fox declares bankruptcy. To settle part of his printing bill debts, Fox relinquishes publishing rights to the Blue Beetle to the Holyoke Publishing Company. January 20: At a meeting of Nazi officials in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee, Germany, “The Final Solution to the Jewish problem” is implemented. It calls for all European Jews to be deported to camps in Poland where they will be exterminated.

May 13: Edward Hopper’s oil on canvas painting Nighthawks— which portrays late-night patrons at a city diner—is sold to the Art Institute of Chicago for $3000. It will become one of the most famous paintings in the history of American art.

January 30: Joe Simon and Jack Kirby’s first work for DC Comics appears in Adventure Comics #72 as they take over and revamp the “Sandman” feature, providing the masked crimefighter with a new setting and modus operandi.

M AY

April 29: With its 22nd issue, Lev Gleason’s Silver Streak Comics is retitled Crime Does Not Pay. Created by Charles Biro and Bob Wood, the “True Crime” series will soon become one of the industry’s bestselling (and most notorious) comic books.

JUNE

June 24: The lead story in Detective Comics #66—produced by Bill Finger, Bob Kane, Jerry Robinson and George Roussos—introduces Batman’s latest villain, Two-Face.

April 9: After 76,000 American and Filipino soldiers surrender to Japanese forces at the conclusion of the Battle of Bataan, a brutal 60 mile “Death March” begins, resulting in the deaths of over 20,000 prisoners of war.

Captain Marvel, Captain Marvel Jr., Mary Marvel, Starman, Two-Face TM and © DC Comics, Bambi TM and © Disney Enterprises Inc., Pogo TM and © Okefenokee Glee & Perloo Inc.

Daddy Warbucks, Gasoline Alley’s Skeezix Wallet, Tailspin Tommy, Harold Teen, Barney Google, Snuffy Smith, and Tillie the Toiler, who joined the new Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps. The pulps, too, put their best foot forward despite an alarming downturn in sales. Paperback books, which offered recent bestsellers and classic literature in editions the working class could afford, had been eating away at the pulps’ core audience since Simon & Schuster introduced its Pocket Books line in 1939. Ironically, many of the most popular paperback titles reprinted the work of pulp authors like Edgar Rice Burroughs, Erle Stanley Gardner, and Zane Grey.

where servicemen could enjoy free food, entertainment, and a dance with their favorite film ingénue. If the war seemed to bring out the best in the American people, it sometimes triggered the worst as well. The armed forces remained strictly segregated, with AfricanAmericans relegated to supporting roles and subjected to discrimination, verbal abuse, and the occasional act of brutal violence in the towns near their bases. Riots broke out in Detroit in February when an angry white mob attacked black industrial workers and their families attempting to move in to the new Sojourner Truth housing development. A long-simmering hostility towards Japanese-Americans had blossomed into open displays of bigotry even before President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9102, ordering more than 125,000 people, over half of them U.S. citizens, removed from their homes and businesses on the West Coast and relocated to internment camps in the interior, where they were kept behind barbed wire under armed guard despite little or no credible evidence of espionage or subversion. This action remains an indelible blemish on FDR’s progressive legacy.

For some entertainers, onscreen heroics were not enough. Movie stars Clark Gable, James Stewart, Tyrone Power, Henry Fonda, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and Gene Autry volunteered for military duty, several later distinguishing themselves in combat. Those who could not serve threw themselves into volunteerism or participated in war bond drives that took them around the nation, offering a brush with Tinseltown glamor in exchange for Americans’ dollars. Bob Hope launched the first of his legendary USO tours, bringing live comedy, music, and a bevy of screen beauties to homesick soldiers and sailors, at times performing near the frontlines. Back home, actors Bette Davis and John Garfield (classified 4-F due to a congenital heart defect) organized the Hollywood Canteen, a nightclub

Rallying Round the Flag The comic book industry, which more than any other branch of pop culture had been agitating for a showdown with the Axis, reflected this dual nature of America in 124

August 8: Six German saboteurs are executed two days after a military tribunal finds them guilty of conspiring to attack various targets throughout the United States. Two other Germans are spared the death penalty for their help in exposing “Operation Pastorius.” (They are released from prison in 1948.)

November 11: DC Comics debuts Boy Commandos, a series created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby about a group of orphaned boys who are trained to fight in World War II. The first issue sells over a million copies, the bestselling DC comic book of the year.

August 14: After treating the Timely Comics and Funnies, Inc. staffs to a screening of Bambi, Timely publisher Martin Goodman announces he is ending his business relationship with the Funnies, Inc. packaging service. September 8: Dell’s Animal Comics #1 opens with a fivepage story written and drawn by Walt Kelly that introduces a group of anthropomorphic swamp creatures that will become featured in Pogo, Kelly’s syndicated comic strip that will run from 1948 to 1975.

November 13: Written by Otto Binder and drawn by Marc Swayze, the lead story of Captain Marvel Adventures #18 introduces Billy Batson’s long-lost twin sister, Mary Bromfield, who upon saying the magic word of “Shazam” turns into the super-powered Mary Marvel.

August 7: The first major American offensive, the Battle of Guadalcanal, begins as Allied amphibious forces land on the strategic island of Guadalcanal in the South Pacific.

J U LY

AUGUST

December 2: As part of the Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb, physicist Enrico Fermi and his team initiate the world’s first self-sustaining chain nuclear reaction at the University of Chicago.

SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER

NOVEMBER

DECEMBER

October 30: After boarding the German submarine U-559 as it sinks in the Mediterranean Sea, British sailors retrieve an Enigma machine and codebooks which help the Allies decipher German radio transmissions.

November 26: Casablanca—a romantic drama starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman—premieres at a New York City theater before gaining wider release in early 1943. Considered one of the greatest films in cinematic history, Casablanca will earn eight Academy Award nominations, winning for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Writing, Screenplay.

August 13: Walt Disney’s fifth full-length animated film, Bambi, premieres at a New York City theater before gaining wider release later in the month. The movie will earn three Academy Award nominations, including Best Sound, Best Song, and Best Original Music Score.

wartime. On the one hand, it reminded its young readers of the country’s history and values, encouraged them to aid the war effort whenever and however they could, and reassured them that victory and peace were possible if everyone did his or her share. On the other, it demonized the enemy. In his study Comic Art Propaganda, Fredrik Strömberg observes:

November 28: A fire breaks out at the packed Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Boston, Massachusetts, killing 492 people, the deadliest nightclub fire in history.

shared by all Germans and Italians. No such distinction was made for the Japanese, depicted in and out of uniform as treacherous, degenerate subhumans. Captions and word balloons teemed with references to “slant-eyed dogs,” “yellow monkeys,” and similarly derogatory terms emphasizing their otherness. A few lone voices insisted there were also “good Japs,” at least in America, and even questioned the justice of Executive Order 9102, but they were drowned out in the howl of the mob.

“Looking through the covers of superhero comics from the war years, it is evident how much they resemble official propaganda posters from the era. The same rhetorical techniques and strategies were used in order to attract readers. The ideas represented in [these] comics were simple, often supporting the myth of American superiority and the enemy’s inferiority, and depicting imminent victory. The official doctrine of President Franklin D. Roosevelt was that the makers of popular culture should contribute with a form of propaganda that informed rather than inflamed. But comics writers were soon responding to the angry mood of the American people, and comic books became more hate-filled, depicting the representatives of the Axis as stereotypical villains.” (42)

There were surprisingly few 1942-dated comics devoted to overt propaganda, most publishers preferring to insinuate it into their existing titles and features (if and when they indulged in it at all). One of the first was Remember Pearl Harbor, a one-shot from Street & Smith released in February and thus prepared in the immediate aftermath of the attack. Its 45-page lead story by writer Otto Binder and artist Jack Binder recounted the raid and the double-dealing diplomacy leading up to it in vitriolic detail, backed by shorter pieces from Jack Farr and Winsor McKay, Jr. There was also War Victory Comics, sponsored by the U.S. Treasury Department and edited by Lt. Alfred Harvey (U.S. Army). A collection of one-pagers extolling the virtues of recycling, it starred Superman, Dick Tracy, Blondie, Li’l Abner, Joe Palooka, The Green Hornet, and other characters from public-spirited comics publishers and syndication services, some reprinted from other comics. Buyers could

This animus was not distributed equitably. Nazis might be portrayed as crude thugs and Fascists as inept cowards, but there was little suggestion that these attributes were 125

Parents’ Magazine Press partnered with the Department of War Information to produce How Boys and Girls Can Help Win the War, while its other titles continued the reverential treatment of America and her fighting men that marked its pre-war output. TM and © respective copyright holder.

congratulate themselves on their patriotic sacrifice in paying 15¢ for a 32-page comic. Fittingly, few copies survived the scrap paper drives that claimed so many comic books of the 1940s.

ambitious new series, “The Story of America,” scripted by historian and “advisory editor” David S. Muzzey. So consistent were the contents of these titles that there was little sign of the editorial turnover behind the scenes. William L. Allen, who had replaced original editor David Marke the previous autumn, was gone following the April issues. His duties fell on G.G. Telfer, who substituted a letters column for Hecht’s editorials. This was undone as of the October issues, by which time the editor’s chair was occupied by Elliot Caplin, scripter of the King Features strip Dr. Bobbs and younger brother of Li’l Abner cartoonist Al Capp. Funnies, Inc., continued to package the contents, though studio owner Lloyd Jacquet was no longer co-credited with Ralph Ellsworth as Art Director in the masthead once Telfer took the reins.

How Boys and Girls Can Help Win the War was a 52-page one-shot published by Parents’ Magazine Press at the behest of the Department of War Information. The government could not have picked a better partner for the project, as not even the orneriest cynic could question the Parents’ Institute’s respectability or doubt where publisher George Hecht and his editorial staff stood. Most issues of the nowmonthly True Comics and the bi-monthly Real Heroes led off with a respectful, even worshipful biography of a major player in the American military hierarchy, including Douglas MacArthur, Dwight D. Eisenhower, WAAC director Oveta Culp Hobby, Jimmy Doolittle (“He Bombed Tokyo!”), Flying Tigers commander Claire Chennault, and the top dogs of the Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard. Readers were reminded of the sacrifices made by warriors and civilians alike in the name of freedom through stories culled from history (including a multi-issue account of George Washington during the French and Indian War) or torn from the headlines (“Three Men on a Raft,” “Breaking the Caribbean Spy Ring,” “1 Yank Against 18 Japs”). Sports stars in uniform like boxer Gene Tunney and baseball pitcher Bob Feller were spotlighted, as were medical pioneers (Louis Pasteur, Sister Elizabeth Kenny), aviators (test pilot Alma Heflin, airline pioneer Jack Knight), scientists (Thomas Edison, Sir Humphrey Davy), and entertainers past and present (Sabu, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, Houdini, vaudevillian Eddie Foy). Pages were regularly set aside for coverage of the history and contemporary political leadership of Canada, Mexico, and other neighbors. As the war progressed, the line became more international in scope, adding biographies of Allied heroes like Chinese resistance fighter Ma Ma Mosquito, Yugoslav guerilla leader Draja Mihailovich, and a martyred Soviet partisan known only as Tanya. The November issue of True (#18) premiered an

Sister title Calling All Girls displayed a similar consistency. Still edited by Frances Ullman, fewer pages were set aside for comics than in earlier issues in favor of longer articles, more photo features, and a serialized mystery credited to “Nancy Drew” author Carolyn Keene (actually a house name used by many writers over the decades). What comics remained were typical Funnies, Inc., offerings. Biographies of heroines like French journalist Eve Curie (daughter of Nobel medalists Marie and Pierre) and Red Army sharpshooter Lt. Liudmila Pavlichenko appeared alongside regular features “Judy Wing,” about an air hostess earning her pilot’s license, and “The Youngtown Younger Set,” starring a squeaky-clean band of civic-minded teens. Parents’ was not above reusing material to enhance its bottom line. The first post-Pearl Harbor issue of Real Heroes, for example, featured bios of FDR, Churchill, Chiang KaiShek, George C. Marshall, and others reprinted from earlier issues of True Comics. The publisher also released Comics Digest and True Aviation Comics Digest, both one-shots collecting stories from the standard format titles. The 16-page Extra, a giveaway issued late in the year, spotlighted the wartime contributions of corporate giants such as 126

nobody would notice the absence of Jack and Joe. Action-packed though these stories were, they inevitably fell short of the promise of the epic cover art of Alex Schomburg, on which Timely’s triumvirate of super-stars, enlarged to gargantuan proportions, waded through detailed scenes of combat, German and Japanese troops swarming around their ankles like so many ants to be stepped on. The symbolism was inescapable. Captain America Comics, Goodman’s top-selling title, began the year with a final bow from Simon and Kirby. With the February issue (#12), the scripting

chores were divvied up among editor Lee and freelancers Otto Binder, Ed Herron, and Manly Wade Wellman, with Al Avison handling the art. Joe and Jack had established a firm yet flexible formula for the strip that their replacements could readily imitate, often quite successfully. The star-spangled sentinel and kid sidekick Bucky faced a steady stream of bizarre villains like The Hooded Horror, The Crocodile, The Vampire, The Eraser, The Yellow Claw, The Mad Mikado, The Vulture, Dr. Crime, and arch-foe The Red Skull. Two stories in Captain America #19 (October)

Inspiring stories like that of aeronautical engineer Elsie McGill were what Parents Magazine’s comics did best. TM and © respective copyright holder.

Bethlehem Steel, RCA, and Westinghouse, stories running concurrently in early 1943-dated issues of True. For all their patriotic fervor, the Parents’ line avoided outright jingoism. There was little of the sensationalism or racial hostility other publishing houses were indulging in. If their presentation of history and current affairs remained simplistic and parochial, George Hecht’s comics had sincerity on their side. At their best, they presented inspirational portraits of people overcoming extraordinary challenges, people like polio-stricken aeronautical engineer Elsie McGill and Morris Frank, the first American to use a seeing-eye dog. But sincerity and good intentions did not necessarily translate into sales. Parents’ Magazine Press remained a minor player within the industry.

Martin Goodman Cuts the Cord It was sometimes difficult in the first days of the war to tell the difference between patriotism and opportunism. Timely Publications owner Martin Goodman, never one to shy away from milking a trend, straddled that line. His decision to fire editor Joe Simon and art director Jack Kirby rather than pay them the royalties they were promised cost his line the industry’s hottest creators. The publisher and Simon’s teenage successor Stan Lee filled their pages with violent fantasies of Captain America, Sub-Mariner, The Human Torch, and their other super-heroes besting hordes of Axis opponents in the hope

The cover art Alex Schomburg created for Martin Goodman’s comics bore a deliberate resemblance to the government’s propaganda posters. TM and © Marvel Characters Inc.

127

Exciting action scenes like this double-page spread by Al Avison helped “Captain America” fans get over the loss of Simon & Kirby. TM and © Marvel Characters Inc.

tryouts, the third slot was filled by alternating episodes of “The Human Torch” and “Sub-Mariner.”

stood out from the pack. The first, “Your Life Depends on It,” was four pages of Cap lecturing reader surrogate Bucky that “it is the duty of every American to buy war stamps and bonds” if they were to end “the menace of hate and oppression, of tyranny and evil which is sweeping over the world!” In the second, “On to Berlin!,” the flag-draped duo led a combined force of British commandos and American Rangers behind enemy lines to rescue a captive general, one of the rare times this year Cap entered the war zone and easily the most exciting. This was the capstone of Avison’s run. Shortly after completing the issue, he was drafted. Stepping in was the title’s longtime inker Sydney “Syd” Shores, who drew a handful of episodes before he too received his orders. It was neither the first nor last time the military laid claim to Timely’s creative talent.

The fire- and water-themed stars of Marvel Mystery Comics and its quarterly spin-offs Human Torch and Sub-Mariner Comics also faced the loss of their creators, as Subby’s Bill Everett and the Torch’s Carl Burgos, both now working directly for Goodman following a falling out with Lloyd Jacquet, were called up by the Navy and Army, respectively. Everett’s last story ran in Marvel Mystery #31 (May), Burgos’ in #34 (August). Don Dixon and the Hidden Empire artist Carl Pfuefer took over the art on “Sub-Mariner,” with scripts by Mickey Spillane and Jacquet himself, writing as “Elvy Jay.” Colorful foes like The Ghost, The Fox, and The Flying Dutchman were deemphasized after Everett’s

The back pages of Captain America Comics saw more radical changes, as “Hurricane,” “Father Time,” and “Headline Hunter” were all discontinued in the early spring. Their places were filled by “The Secret Stamp,” a strip commissioned by the Treasury Department about a teenage paper carrier who donned cape and identity-concealing helmet to oppose black marketeers while nattering endlessly about purchasing war stamps, and “The Imp,” starring a cute little genie who lived in his master’s left ear until summoned. Created and drawn by Chad Grothkopf and told entirely in greeting card-style doggerel by Stan Lee, the adventures of the adorably antennaed magicmaker were clearly aimed at younger readers. Following a handful of unsuccessful

For his final “Human Torch” story before entering the Navy, creator Carl Burgos wrote himself, Martin Goodman, and other Timely staffers into the strip. TM and © Marvel Characters Inc.

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departure, as Prince Namor’s war on the Axis nations took center stage. Harry Sahle, among others, stepped in to draw the “Human Torch” strip, which focused on Japanese and German baddies while still making room for civilian super-villains like The Metal Mobsters and the transvestite Madame Crime. Burgos himself guest-starred, along with Martin Goodman, in his last pre-service episode wherein the Torch and Toro invaded Germany in a failed bid to kill or capture Hitler. “The Tough Kid Squad Comics never Angel,” too, bade farewell to his made it past its first issue. Miss Fury Comics, reprinting Tarpé Mills’ creator, Paul Gustavson leavnewspaper strip, ran four years. ing to devote himself to his staff TM and © respective copyright holder. work for Quality. The February Marvel Mystery (#28) saw the last of the Simon and Kirby installments of “The Vision.” Syd Shores handled the art thereafter, spelled on occasion by Al Plastino or Ramona Patenaude. Ben Thompson’s jungle strip “Ka-Zar” ended with issue #27 (January), replaced by “Jimmy Jupiter,” a children’s fantasy strip by Ed Robbins about a boy who fell out of an airplane, landing in an Oz-like fairyland in the clouds. His quest to return home provided the strip’s central plotline. Jimmy was the only Marvel Mystery character to not face an Axis enemy in 1942. Captain America, The Human Torch, and Sub-Mariner remained the headliners of All Winners Comics, backed by “The Destroyer” and “The Whizzer,” the latter ceding his space—for the Autumn issue (#6) only—to “The Black Avenger,” Ed Robbins’ reworking of “The Thunderer.” Over in USA Comics, the super-speedster with the mongoose blood received a new costume and a sidekick named SlowMotion Jones, patterned after African-American character actors Lincoln “Stepin Fetchit” Perry and Willie “Sleep ‘n’ Eat” Best. The title’s other original features “Jack Frost,” “The Defender,” “Rockman,” and “Major Liberty” were dropped after USA #4 (Spring), replaced by a slate of forgettable characters like “The American Avenger,” “Roko the Amazing,” “The Fighting Hobo,” and “The Blue Blade,” none of them appearing more than once. “Captain America” took over the cover spot as of issue #6, backed by warthemed strips such as Mickey Spillane and Dennis Neville’s jingoistic “Jap-Buster Johnson,” starring a naval aviator, and “Jeep Jones,” a military humor strip by Charles “Chic” Stone. Other back-ups came and went, the most notable being “Captain Daring and His Sky Sharks,” featuring a rare interior art job by Alex Schomburg, and Basil Wolverton’s wacky private investigator “Disk-Eyes the Detective.” Cap and the Torch also made regular cameos in Young Allies, where writer Stan Lee perpetuated the Bucky-Toro rivalry while pitting his boy heroes against fearsome foes like The Owl, The Khan, and a vengeful Red Skull.

a series of mishaps á la Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper, the siblings were reunited, joining Westfield High School footballers Butch, Derrick, and The Chief (a Native American sporting a feather on his helmet and speaking in broken English) in thwarting the sinister designs of Nazi mastermind Dr. Klutch. Al Gabriele, Charles Nicholas, and inker George Klein illustrated for an unidentified scripter. The book failed to attract buyers and was cancelled after a single March-dated issue. More successful was Miss Fury Comics, a quarterly debuting late in the year that reprinted the Tarpé Mills syndicated strip starring Marla Drake, a socialite who donned a skintight costume of black leather to counter crime and subversion. The anthology titles Daring Mystery Comics and Mystic Comics, plagued from their inceptions by low sales, irregular publication, and a paucity of standout characters, fared no better in 1942. Mystic eked out three issues (#8-10) before it was cancelled, taking “The Black Marvel,” “The Terror,” “The Challenger,” and “The Blazing Skull” down with it. Daring Mystery published a final issue (#8, January) before it was retitled Comedy Comics. The decision must have been made at the last minute, as Comedy #9 featured the last hurrahs of Bill Everett’s “The Fin,” “The Silver Scorpion,” and Ben Thompson’s “Citizen V,” the saga of a British soldier reported killed at Dunkirk who donned mask and costume to inspire and assist the German underground. A whopping 33 different features were thrown at readers over the following three issues, including funny animal strips, kid strips, the Don Rico swashbuckler “The Fourth

A new title, Tough Kid Squad Comics, tried to duplicate the success of Young Allies. Its title band of Nazi-thumping kids was led by The Danger Twins, costumed brothers separated in early childhood, one raised by the benevolent Professor Moxon, the other by the criminal Wong Chee. After 129

Musketeer,” a new bigfoot version of Ed Winiarski’s “The Vagabond,” and “Splash Morgan,” another Wolverton space opera. Nothing seemed to stick.

Powerhouse had superhuman strength he sometimes employed as a prizefighter, but the resemblance ended there. There was rarely anything as cumbersome as a plot to the strip, Wolverton being content to fill its panels with bizarre characters, throwaway sight gags, rapidfire wordplay, and other sorts of nonsense.

A new companion title, the bimonthly Joker Comics, had no such problem. Four of its strips ran in all five 1942-dated issues, with an additional seven joining them as of Joker #2 (June). It was an Both humor titles Followers of Daring Mystery Comics could be forgiven for not recognizing its ninth issue, interesting assortwere manned by rebranded Comedy Comics, on the newsstands. TM and © respective copyright holder. ment of genres Goodman and and styles, with Lee’s growing many strips formatted like a syndicated Sunday page. Highbullpen of in-house writers and artists. Tired of paying a lights included “Dippy Diplomat,” a surreal, often downmiddleman to supply his line’s contents, the publisher had right incomprehensible pantomime strip by Guy Blythe been steadily luring away the Jacquet shop’s top talents. best described as The Little King on drugs; “Tessie the TypOn August 14, after treating the Timely and Funnies, Inc., ist,” first of the career girl strips that became a Timely spestaffs to a screening of the new Disney feature Bambi, cialty toward the end of the decade; and “Squat Car Squad,” Goodman announced over dinner that he was ending the a slapstick series about a pair of bumbling patrolmen by business arrangement between his publishing house and newcomer Allan “Al” Jaffee, best known today for creatthe packaging service. ing the ingenious “fold-in” interior back covers of MAD. It was a hard blow, especially as it followed on the heels of Best of all was “Powerhouse Pepper,” a delightful screwanother client’s desertion. Classic Comics publisher Albert ball comedy by Basil Wolverton. Like Elzie Segar’s Popeye, Kanter had severed his ties to the slightly unsavory Elliot Publishing, persuaded by partner Raymond Haas to assume the corporate identity of The Gilberton Company, a bankrupt manufacturer of children’s chemistry sets recently purchased by Haas for a song. Kanter broke it off with Funnies, Inc., hiring the Roche & Iger studio’s Louis Zansky to serve as the title’s art director. The quality of the draftsmanship under Zansky stayed about the same but layouts became more lively, with varied camera angles in place of the monotonous medium shots and eye-level perspectives the Jacquet shop had been providing. Of the five issues released with a 1942 cover date, two were prepared before the switch. Issues #3-4 featured “The Count of Monte Cristo” and “The Last of the Mohicans,” both illustrated by Harry “Ray” Ramsey. “Moby Dick,” “A Tale of Two Cities,” and “Robin Hood” filled the other issues, with Kanter himself scripting “The Twinkle Twins” could be surprisingly violent for a strip built around a pair of goody-two-shoes. the Herman Melville adaptation and TM and © respective copyright holder. 130

Iger staff writer Evelyn Goodman (no relation to Martin) handling the balance.

issue #17, all four strips focused primarily on Axis-related villainy with an occasional costumed criminal or magical menace to relieve the monotony.

But the worst of Funnies, Inc.’s troubles came in the fall when reservist Lloyd Jacquet was called up to active duty. He left the shop in the care of his wife and business partner Grace Jacquet. Despite the loss of its biggest client and virtually all of its founding fathers—only Ben Thompson remained of the original crew—the studio carried on under her stewardship.

After a final digest-sized issue (#16, January), Speed Comics reverted to the standard format. Its cover star in both versions remained “Captain Freedom,” one of the better Captain America imitations to be found on the newsstands, thanks largely to the dynamic art of the RiceCazeneuve studio. Aided by The Young Defenders, a gang of newsboys and their gal pal Joanie, Freedom tackled a string of Kirby-flavored antagonists like Doctor Deemon [sic], The Fearful Four, and The Hermit of Strange Island. Elsewhere in Speed, “Shock Gibson” wielded his electrical might against a plethora of enemy forces both before and after his military enlistment in issue #21 (August), including a Nazi spy who snuck into the hero’s lab and accidentally gave himself identical superpowers. The Army also gained “Pat Parker, War Nurse,” the flag-draped mysterywoman receiving a captain’s commission in the June issue (#19). Original artist Jill Elgin handed the art chores over to “Black Cat” co-creator Barbara Hall with issue #22 (September). An issue later, Pat became the leader of The Girl Commandos, a Blackhawk-style band of feminine freedom fighters that included British, Russian, and Chinese members. The Cat herself, homeless following the cancellation of Pocket Comics, joined the Speed roster in the first new standard format issue. The change did the strip some good, finally giving Linda Turner’s feline identity something to do besides stalk her treasonous film director. The October issue (#23) found Black Cat teaming with co-stars Shock Gibson, Captain Freedom, The Girl Commandos, and Ted Parrish, Man of 1,000 Faces, to foil a Japanese invasion of California, an all-too-real fear in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. To many readers’ disappointment, this one-off team-up did not lead to a Justice Society-style feature.

Keeping It All in the Family Before enlisting, Alfred Harvey took steps to ensure the survival of his little comic book empire in his absence. Consolidating all his titles under the corporate name Family Comics, Inc., the publisher brought in his twin brother Leon as art director and their older brother Robert as business manager, both under the watchful eye of financial backer Irving Manheimer (with Alfred, stationed stateside throughout the war, available by telephone or telegram when big decisions needed making). In a 2009 interview, longtime Harvey staffer Warren Kremer recalled the only downside to the arrangement: “Alfred Harvey in those days was a dynamo, you know, he was really okay. His brother Leon was a nice guy, but he was a man with no ideas. In other words, when Alfred went to war in the Army, Leon stayed home and minded the store, as it were. He didn’t expand anything; he never came up with any ideas, no new books or anything; he just minded the store.” (Benson 45) Despite the failure of the digest line the previous year, Manheimer retained enough faith in Harvey’s vision to not only greenlight the promotions of Champ Comics and Speed Comics to monthly publication but to obtain the rights to the defunct Green Hornet Comics. With a wellknown media tie-in as anchor and cover art provided by old friends Simon and Kirby to lure buyers, the Harvey Brothers faced the year with confidence. Champ Comics #17 (January), the last to credit Leo Greenwald as publisher and editor, featured the final bows of several long-running strips, including “Johnny Fox,” “Jungleman,” and “Neptina, Queen of the Deep.” Their page allotments went to reformatted reprints of Stanley Armstrong’s screwball syndicated strip “Slim Jim and the Force;” “The Adventures of Padlock Bones,” a Sherlockian farce by Ed Wheelan; and “The Twinkle Twins,” in which wholesome high-schoolers Dan and Diane Twinkle solved mysteries under the guidance of crusading newspaper publisher Elijah Truth. The strip contained a surprising amount of action, its vanilla teenage leads demonstrating an unexpected facility with the martial arts. Credits are unknown for the early episodes, with Al Bryant manning the drawing board as of the October issue (#22). Henry Kiefer continued to draw the transmogrified “Liberty Lads,” but responsibility for the other strips dating back to the Worth Publishing days—“The Champ,” “The Human Meteor,” “Dr. Miracle”—had long since passed out of their creators’ hands. Aside from a final showdown between the Meteor and his arch-foe, the gargantuan Genghis Khan, in

When Barbara Hall took over “Pat Parker,” she had the mystery-woman, now a captain in the U.S. Army, join forces with other like-minded women from the Allied Nations as “The Girl Commandos.” TM and © respective copyright holder.

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Conscious of the growing number of servicemen buying comic books, Alfred Harvey made sure that all his titles included military-themed adventure strips (“Devil Dog Dugan,” the long-running “Crash, Cork, and the Baron”), humor strips (“Biff Bannon,” “Mighty Midgets”), and gag cartoons, many by the prolific Art Helfant. He also gave his line a distinctive look, adding a film strip running down the left edge of the cover art with headshots of the book’s stars in the individual frames, a design element the publisher used off-and-on well into the 1960s. It helped distinguish his titles from Timely’s, which in most other ways they strongly resembled, particularly in their use of slavering, fanged Japanese baddies. The war was also the central focus of Hillman Periodicals’ Air Fighters Comics, revived after nearly a year off the newsstands. The cover of the first new issue (#2, November) proclaimed it the “greatest comic book yet!!” and assured potential buyers there was “nothing like it!” Now helmed by former Quality editor Ed Cronin, the resurrected book featured an all-new line-up of characters, all either wearing colorful costumes, flying specialized aircraft, or both. “The Bald Eagle” was USMC flight instructor Jack Gatling, who lost his hair saving a fellow pilot from a fiery wreck. His airplane “The Flying Coffin” was instrumental in preventing yet another Japanese invasion of the West Coast. British aristocrat Sylvia Lawton led a double life as “The Black Angel” right under the nose of her snooty aunt. Clad in a leather outfit similar to that of Miss Fury, the Angel flew a solid black fighter into combat against her Nazi counterpart, the beautiful but lethal Baroness Blood. Shot down over France, the aptly named RAF flier Captain Britain sought shelter in the home of Dr. LaFarge, last living descendent of a legendary paladin of Charlemagne’s court. To avenge his benefactor’s death at the hands of the Nazis, Britain donned the armor of his ancestor. As “The Iron Ace,” he piloted a special plane covered in bulletproof plates of “fabrikoid micro iron,” a miraculous material created by the late LaFarge. “The Flying Dutchman,” a nameless ace whose family was wiped out in the German invasion of Rotterdam, struck terror in the hearts of the Luftwaffe whenever it caught a glimpse of his distinctive orange Aerocobra. The writers of these series have yet to be identified, but the visuals were provided by Harry Sahle, John Cassone, Fred Kida, and Robert “Bob” Fujitani, respectively.

The Black Cat teamed up with her Speed Comics co-stars Shock Gibson, Captain Freedom, and Pat Parker to repel a Japanese invasion of California. TM and © respective copyright holder.

Pocket Comics refugees “The Spirit of ‘76” and “The Zebra” found a new home in the back pages of Green Hornet Comics. Though continuing its numbering from the Helnit series, the title gave its eponymous star a new look and a more overtly super-heroic feel while retaining the radio program’s supporting cast, urban setting, and the hero’s supercar The Black Beauty. The Hornet and Kato faced an assortment of generic costumed villains (The Clown, The Mummy), oddball criminals (Charlie the Midget, The Cane Killer), and an occasional enemy agent. Pierce Rice and Arthur Cazeneuve supplied the art for one or more uncredited writers. Other features in the revived book included “The Blonde Bombshell,” the Barbara Hall-illoed adventures of fearless newsreel photographer Honey Blake, and “Robin Hood,” in which one Dr. Fairbanks assumed the identity of the legendary outlaw to fight crime alongside his modern-day Merry Men. Jerry Iger created and scripted the swashbuckling strip, drawn by the Pierce-Cazeneuve team and, as of its fourth episode, by Roche & Iger mainstay Alex Blum. While its back-up features were a mixed bag in quality, the exciting action of its lead made the four 1942 issues (#710) of Green Hornet the best comics The art supplied by the Rice-Cazaneuve studio brought a visual published by Family Comics that dynamism to the Harvey “Green Hornet” that had been missing from Helnit’s version. TM and © The Green Hornet, Inc. year. 132

The two strips that led off the revamped Air Fighters were what resonated most with readers. Scripted by a moonlighting Charles Biro and Bob Wood with art by “Black Hood” co-creator Al Camy, “Airboy” began on an oddly supernatural note. The spirit of

The revamped Air Fighters Comics finally produced the hit character that publisher Hillman needed: “Airboy,” here flying his bat-winged plane, Birdie, for the first time. TM and © respective copyright holder.

Capt. Colin Kelly, a real-life fighter pilot killed in action three days after Pearl Harbor, arrived at “the last landing field,” where he was greeted by the shades of Amelia Earhart, Gen. Billy Mitchell, Wiley Post, and other deceased fliers. This ghostly gathering looked on as the scene then shifted to the monastery of Capestrano, where Father Martier and his ward, an orphan named Davey, were building an experimental airplane with serrated wings that flapped like a bird’s. Borrowing money from gambler Kress Sessler to complete the prototype, the inventive friar died in the ship’s first test flight, sabotaged by Sessler as the linchpin of his scheme to convert the monastery into a casino. Hiding the wreckage in a friendly farmer’s barn, Davey repaired the plane and, as the costumed Airboy, exacted a fitting—and fatal—vengeance on the gangster. With an eye-catching wonder plane, nicknamed “Birdie” in the second installment, and a young hero readers could identify with, “Airboy” quickly became Hillman’s signature feature. blood of anything unlucky enough to get in the ambulatory compost pile’s way. Its origin seemingly pinched from “It,” the classic horror story by Theodore Sturgeon first published in the August 1940 issue of Unknown, The Heap was like nothing readers had ever seen, simultaneously horrifying and sympathetic.

The other important series premiering in Air Fighters #2 was “The Sky Wolf,” from the team of writer Harry Stein and artist Mort Leav. The otherwise anonymous title character, who wore a white wolf’s head over his leather helmet, led a four-man fighter squadron that included The Judge, a flier rejected by the RAF as too old for air combat; The Turtle, a Pole whose tongue was cut out by the Gestapo; and brash Cocky Roche from the London slums. Their aircraft of choice was the twin-fuselaged “semi-plane,” which could split into two independently piloted fighters, making for some unique scenes of air combat. Sky Wolf’s arch-nemesis was Luftwaffe officer Colonel Von Tundra, known as Half-Face for the metal prosthetics that made up the left side of his head. A character introduced in the second episode gave the “Sky Wolf” series its significance: The Heap, comic books’ first swamp monster. A grotesque creature of decaying vegetable matter animated by the amnesiac spirit of Baron Von Emmelman, a Ger“The Heap,” introduced in the man ace of the previous World second “Sky Wolf” story, proved War infamous for his utter lack so popular with readers that the swamp creature was eventually of mercy, it wandered the Eurogiven its own series. pean countryside feeding on the TM and © respective copyright holder.

From the graphic close-up of a Japanese pilot being riddled with bullets that graced the cover of issue #2 to the scores of enemy troops felled by its colorful cast, Air Fighters Comics exploited current events as openly and eagerly as Timely and Family. It proved a sound strategy. Air Fighters, with Airboy in the pilot’s seat, finally gave the Hillman line the boost it needed to make itself noticed in an increasingly crowded marketplace.

Life After Eisner In the spring of 1942, the fears of publisher Everett “Busy” Arnold were realized when Will Eisner was inducted into the Army. When the notice had first arrived, Arnold tried to get his talented partner a deferment. The draft board wasn’t having it, but, because the livelihoods of others were dependent on his business, Eisner was granted a three-month extension to put his affairs in order. He closed the Tudor City studio in Manhattan, generously footing the relocation costs to move his staff to Stamford, the Connecticut headquarters of Arnold’s Quality Comics, where they continued to ply their trade under the oversight of new Quality editor Gilbert “Gill” Fox. As for Eisner himself, he did not share his publisher’s trepidation: 133

“The horrific, despicable Nazis were slaughtering Jews— my people—and I was given the opportunity to kill some of them for what they were doing to the Jews. All of those feelings were in effect for me. But to be perfectly honest, I was overwhelmed by a secret feeling—and I remember it so clearly—that wow, this is my opportunity to really see the world.” (Andelman 46-47) It wasn’t, as it turned out. His reputation as creator of the weekly Spirit section preceding him, Eisner was deemed too valuable a resource to waste on the frontlines. The success of a series of Eisner-created posters starring hapless “Pvt. Joe Dope” promoting the concept of preventative maintenance of weapons and vehicles led to the cartoonist’s assignment to the Pentagon and the staff of the Army’s Chief of Ordnance. There, an opportunity presented itself. TMs, an ongoing series of technical manuals, was struggling to find a way to convey complex instructions to sometimes barely literate recruits. Eisner had a suggestion. “I believed that comics were a valid teaching medium,” he remembered decades later, “which had a future in this environment” (51). Despite the skepticism of higher-

Will Eisner’s “Pvt. Joe Dope” posters taught Army recruits to take care of their equipment, proving the value of comics as an educational tool.

ups who grumbled about their irreverent humor, the instructional comics he created combining easy-tointerpret diagrams with instructions written in simple, colloquial English proved highly effective. Eisner continued to script and lay out The Spirit newspaper section and its companion daily strip while in basic training, but it wasn’t long before his military duties made that impossible. Staff writer Toni Blum and freelancers Manly Wade Wellman and William Woolfolk stepped into the breach. To keep the meticulous Lou Fine on schedule, Fox and Arnold assigned Bob Fujitani to provide layouts and Alex Kotsky, John Belfi, and Joseph “Joe” Kubert, already an industry veteran at 16, to help with the inking. During his run, Eisner introduced recur-

“Spirit” fans came to miss Will Eisner’s innovations in storytelling after his Army duties took him off the series, but could still take delight in new artist Klaus Nordling’s inventive take on “Lady Luck.” TM and © Will Eisner Studios Inc.

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ring villains The Squid and Diana the Huntress, brought back the sultry Silk Satin, and experimented with new narrative approaches, relating one story entirely in alliteration, each page devoted to words beginning with one of the six letters constituting the word “murder,” and building another around his own struggles to make his deadline. His successors also turned out good material, work superior to most of what was appearing in newsstand comics, but there was none of the innovative storytelling that had become an Eisner trademark. The master himself was less than pleased with the results, but his discontent was mollified by the residuals checks he regularly received as part of his deal with Busy and the Register & Tribune Syndicate. In the section’s back pages, “Lady Luck” bid adieu to artist Nick Viscardi following the February 22 edition. Klaus Nordling took over, also assuming the scripting assignment two issues later. Nordling had a cartoonier style than Viscardi, a broader sense of humor, and a playful streak not unlike Eisner’s (one episode was narrated by a gangster’s pet goldfish!). He introduced a second comic relief character, a pugnacious pint-size merchant mariner named Pinky Binnacle who had a love-hate relationship with the hulking Peecolo, and added a veil to Lady L.’s costume that covered the lower half of her face, a nice visual touch of dubious value as identity concealment. Bob Powell, meanwhile, kept a

steady hand on the tiller of “Mr. Mystic” despite a rancorous split with Will Eisner. Busy Arnold had offered Powell a staff position but Eisner, still miffed over the publisher’s poaching of Lou Fine, persuaded him to withdraw the offer. An embittered Powell accused Eisner of sabotaging his career. Cutting his ties to Tudor City, Powell continued to produce “Mystic,” and a few minor Quality features, on a strictly freelance basis. The imposition of paper rationing meant trouble for those comics lines not affiliated with a larger publishing house (e.g., Dell, Fawcett, Novelty Press) or printing outfit (DC/AA, Eastern Color). Quality proved no exception. Four monthly titles were demoted to bi-monthlies for six months, Military Comics and National Comics alternating with Smash Comics and Police Comics on the newsstands. The concurrent reduction in frequency for Hit Comics and Crack Comics, however, was for keeps. Neither book would ever be monthly again. The quarterlies were also affected, Uncle Sam skipping its Spring issue, Doll Man its Autumn. Only Feature Comics continued uninterrupted, possibly due to contractual obligations to the syndicates whose strips it reprinted. Shrewd businessman that he was, Busy Arnold saw an upside to the situation. According to the publisher’s son, Dick:

It was inevitable that Doll Man tackle villains his own size. The first was an otherwise anonymous wrestler code-named “the Japanese Doll Man.” TM and © DC Comics.

“Mickey Finn” and “Lala Palooza” may account for Feature Comics keeping its monthly schedule, but it was “Doll Man” who remained the title’s star. Much of the toy-sized mystery-man’s time was spent countering enemy agents. Notable nemeses included Mademoiselle De Mortire, alluring inventor of the mind-draining “hydrocatharsis ray;” Dr. Thirteen, a mace-wielding serial killer haunting the thirteenth floor of the Jinks Building (on Friday the 13th, no less), and “the Japanese Doll Man,” a professional wrestler shrunk to the hero’s size by the fiendish Dr. Hoto. Reed Crandall was at the drawing board through Feature #61 (October), with Bob Fujitani and Rudy Palais handling the following two episodes. Crandall also contributed to Doll Man Quarterly #2 (Spring). Later issues contained a mix of various Iger staff artists, none with drawing chops comparable to Crandall’s. Doll Man #2 also premiered “The Dragon,” a war series by Fred Guardineer starring Red McGraw, an American soldier of fortune leading a ragtag band of Chinese guerillas. Axis villains appeared in nearly every Feature series regardless of genre, menacing contemporary cowboy “The Fargo Kid,” jungle lord “Samar,” “Reynolds of the Mounted,” mystery-solving bandleader “Swing Sisson,” and “Rusty Ryan and the Boyville Brigadiers,” a former boys’ adventure series converted by creator Paul Gustavson into an ersatz Young Allies. Only “Zero, Ghost Detective” ignored the headlines, confining himself to the supernatural realm. The Harry Francis CampbellHenry Taylor espionage strip “Captain Bruce Blackburn, Counterspy” was dropped following the May issue (#56), replaced by “The Spider-Widow, Grandmother of Terror,” a strange series created by Frank Borth. Fed up with feeling helpless in the face of crime, socialite Dianne Grayton disguised herself as a hideous, green-skinned crone and used her trained black widow spiders to terrorize the underworld. Beginning with issue #60 (September), the unlikely heroine was joined in action by The Raven, a mysteryman in purple and lime green who couldn’t fly despite his costume’s large wings.

“My father was on some sort of board in Washington, DC, that allocated paper to different publishers. All the publishers were screaming that the government wouldn’t let them have enough paper. My father went to the meetings and said, ‘You guys are absolute fools. It’s the greatest thing that ever happened to you. You’re virtually guaranteed to sell out of anything you print… no matter how bad it is.’ … This was the heyday of heydays.” (Kooiman 23)

Frank Borth’s already strange “Spider Widow” got even stranger with the addition of The Raven in the fourth episode. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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of “Midnight” and “The Ray” and to add “Yankee Eagle” to the line-up, an aviation strip unrelated to the costumed hero of the same name whose series in Military Comics had been dropped shortly before. It was only natural that “Uncle Sam,” star of National Comics, should face Axis foes, but so did co-stars “The Kid Patrol,” “Sally O’Neil, Policewoman,” Klaus Nordling’s pugilistic “Kid Dixon,” and “Quicksilver.” The costumed speedster, whose series was still credited to Nick Viscardi but ghosted by Paul Gustavson, acquired a sidekick in the October issue (#25). Pussy-Foot O’Brian managed to be even more of an insulting caricature than The Whizzer’s similar Slow-Motion Jones, if such a thing is possible. “Paul Bunyan” and the private eye strip “Jack and Jill” took their final bows in issue #22 (April). Their spots went to “Destroyer 171,” a war series by Al McWilliams, and “The Unknown,” writer Theodore “Ted” Udall (nee Yigdoll) and artist Bernie Klein’s strip about the costumed leader of the Comitajis, a band of Austrian resistance fighters, who struck fear into Nazi hearts at the mere mention of his name. As happened in Smash Comics, the November issue of National (#26) brought three long-running features—“Wonder Boy,” “Prop Powers,” and “Merlin the Magician”—to an end, once again in order to expand the page counts of more popular series. As for Uncle Sam himself, his adventures here and in his quarterly solo title were produced by the Eisner studio staff before and after the relocation to Stamford. Eisner himself scripted the year’s earliest episodes for artists Lou Fine, Reed Crandall, Bob Fujitani, and other, less assured hands, with later installments written by Toni Blum and Otto Binder. George Tuska drew the Summer and Autumn issues (#3-4) of Uncle Sam Quarterly, which pitted the Living Symbol of America and Buddy against opponents like The Ant Men, a squad of Japanese soldiers reduced to insect size; The Mongrol [sic] Men, a trio of mindless monsters bred by a misanthropic geneticist; and King Killer, a returning enemy from the 1941 issues who attempted to establish his own nation populated entirely by criminals on American soil.

Reed Crandall replaced the drafted Chuck Cuidera at the drawing board, bringing the “Blackhawk” series into its classic period. TM and © DC Comics.

Smash Comics followed much the same formula, filling its pages with a similar mix of Axis operatives and macabre criminals. “The Ray” lost original artist Lou Fine, whose “Spirit” duties took precedence, following the May issue (#33), but with Reed Crandall filling his shoes readers could hardly complain. Issue #33 also saw Witmer Williams cede the art for “Espionage” to Eisner studio regular Alex Kotzky. Three Smash super-types remained firmly in the hands of their creators. George Brenner’s “Bozo the Robot” and Paul Gustavson’s “The Jester” were entertaining if predictable. Cover feature “Midnight” was another story. Jack Cole was many things, but “predictable” was not one of them. In issue #36 (October), he killed his masked lead. Turning down his place in Eternity, Midnight asked to be sent to Hell instead so he could “take a crack at the worst criminal of all!!.. The Devil!!!” After inspiring the condemned to rise up against Satan, who turned out to be pathetically henpecked, Midnight was magically resurrected in time to save his pals Gabby and Doc Wackey from German infiltrators. Art Pinajian’s “Invisible Justice,” was cancelled, replaced in Smash #33 by “The Marksman.” The hooded archer was really fugitive Polish patriot Baron Povalsky who hid in plain sight as German intelligence officer Major Hurtz, using the information that passed across his desk to facilitate his activities in costume. Created and scripted by former editor Ed Cronin with art by “Fargo Kid” illustrator Alex Koda, “Marksman” was a dark strip befitting its assassin protagonist. Three more series were dropped after the November issue (#37): Vernon Henkel’s “Wings Wendall,” Robert Turner and Jim Mooney’s sexy “Spitfire,” and “The Purple Trio,” a cliché-ridden mystery strip by Jerry Iger and Alex Blum. Their space was used to expand the page counts

The Eisner shop was also responsible for much of the material in Military Comics, which became Quality’s bestselling title in 1942 thanks to “Blackhawk.” The strip settled into its classic form, adding American aviator Chuck (named for artist and co-creator Chuck Cuidera) to the team of black-clad flyboys and giving them their own theme song composed by scripter Dick French. Though “heard” mostly in short snippets, the full lyrics could be read on the sheet music included in the March issue (#8): “Hawk-aa! We are the BlackhawksHawk-aa! We’re on the wing Over land and over sea We will fight to set men free And to ev’ry nation liberty we’ll bring Hawk-aa! Follow the Blackhawks Hawk-aa! Shatter your chains Seven fearless men are we Give us death or liberty We are the Blackhawks, remember our names” Among a string of gritty thrillers crafted by French and Cuidera, one stood out. Andre, the French Blackhawk 136

seemingly killed in action in Military #3 (October ‘41), returned six issues later as the mysterious Man in the Iron Mask, his ravaged features surgically restored to normal at story’s end. The creative team was just hitting its stride when Cuidera received his draft notice. It could have proved a fatal blow to the series had not Reed Crandall come aboard with issue #12 (October). A better draftsman than his predecessor, with a more dramatic visual sense, Crandall was to become the definitive “Blackhawk” artist. Writer William Woolfolk joined him an issue later, the new team introducing Tondelayo, the first of many shady ladies to simultaneously threaten and woo the handsome but unmovable Blackhawk.

for what became one of the funniest, most fondly remembered hero-sidekick partnerships of the era. The duo’s first assignment: bring in Eel O’Brian! The rest of Police’s features enjoyed more stability than the other Quality titles, the biggest change being the swapping out of the private eye strip “Steele Kerrigan” for “The Spirit,” reprinted from the Sunday sections beginning with issue #11 (September). Paul Gustavson’s “The Human Bomb,” Fred Guardineer’s “The Mouthpiece,” George Brenner’s “711,” and Arthur Peddy’s “Phantom Lady” each foiled their (mostly) Axis antagonists in their individual styles. “Firebrand” took it a step further in Police #8 (March), enlisting with his pal Slugger Dunn in the U.S. Navy. A new mysteryman took his initial bow in the same issue. “Manhunter” was the masked alter ego of rookie Empire City policeman Dan Richards, forced to turn vigilante to clear a fellow cop of corruption charges. His partner in adventure was Thor, a big dog of indeterminate breed the bad guys seemed to fear more than Manhunter himself. Co-creators Tex Blaisdell and Alex Kotzky chose to restrict their blue-clad star to battling gangsters and the like. “Firebrand” (now without original artist Reed Crandall), “Mouthpiece,” and the Witmer Williams aviation strip “Eagle Evans” were dropped following the November issue to expand the page allotments of “Plastic Man” and others.

Even grittier than the cover feature was Dave Berg’s “The Death Patrol,” which killed off its cast members and added new ones with head-spinning regularity. Busy Arnold didn’t like the direction the series was taking and insisted Berg reveal that the slain Death Patrollers had, however improbably, survived. This may have taken the fun out of the strip for Berg. Both it and he were gone after issue #12, the artist moving on to work for other companies. Fred Guardineer’s “The Blue Tracer,” “The Sniper,” and Bob Powell’s tongue-in-cheek “Loop and Banks” experienced no such editorial interference, but the overtly super-heroic “Miss America” and “Yankee Eagle” were ousted in favor of “X of the Underground,” starring a beautiful French freedom fighter, and “The Phantom Clipper,” the Fred Kidadrawn saga of a modern warship camouflaged as a relic of a bygone era. “Inferior Man,” a super-hero parody by Al Jaffee, ran for seven episodes before ceding its space to “Private Dogtag,” a more thematically appropriate humor strip. With that switch, all of Military’s features reflected the premise implicit in its title.

Why Crack Comics and Hit Comics did not return to monthly status with their October issues, as Smash, National, Military, and Police did, is open to debate. Both comics featured similar line-ups of super-heroes, war strips, and humor fillers produced by the same mix of staff artists and freelancers—Gustavson, Henkel, Nordling, Williams, Guardineer, McWilliams—that populated the other titles. Both comics threw a constant barrage of enemy troops, spies, and Axis-sponsored costumed villains at their protagonists, again just like the other titles. Neither, however, had that one feature that brought a loyal readership back issue after issue. Crack had “The Black Condor” but the avian adventurer was simply not the attraction that Blackhawk, Plastic Man, Midnight, Uncle Sam, or Doll Man were, even with Lou Fine at the drawing table. Fine was also the artist on “Hack O’Hara,” a new strip starring a wise-ass cab driver with a nose for trouble. It replaced Henry Kiefer’s “The Red Torpedo” in the February issue (#21). Even a double shot of the company’s top artist didn’t boost sales, and neither

Police Comics, the fifth Quality “monthly,” ranked just behind Military in sales, buoyed by the growing popularity of Jack Cole’s “Plastic Man.” With each new episode, Cole refined his signature blend of broad comedy, brutal violence, and imaginative absurdity. Now deputized by Police Chief Murphey, who had no idea the stretchable sleuth was really wanted mobster Eel O’Brian, “Plas” tackled a unique assortment of menaces, including Hairy Arms, a grotesque freak whose limbs grew directly out of his neck; Cyrus Smythe, a 17th-century scientist whose immortal brain was transplanted into a paralyzed veteran, healing his new body’s injuries and granting him the power to grow to King Kong size; a giant remote-controlled 8-ball capable of destroying entire cities; a pair of disembodied hands on a murderous rampage; and the United Crooks of America, who put a bounty on the hero’s head. Plastic Man finally met his match in Police #13 (November) when he faced off against Woozy Winks, a petty thief granted the protection of “the forces of nature” by a grateful sorcerer whose life Winks had saved. Unable to decisively defeat the rotund rapscallion, Plas offered him a job as his assistant in The morally impaired Woozy Winks, Plastic Man’s reluctant new partner, wasn’t your typical comic relief sidekick. the following issue, setting the table TM and © DC Comics. 137

a pair of unique takes on Captain Marvel-style super-heroics. Paul Gustavson’s “Bill the Magnificent” was a smalltown newspaper reporter who became an invulnerable superman whenever he exclaimed “Jeepers creepers!” but retained no memory of the transformation once the effect wore off. It was the other new strip that caught on big with readers. Borrowing liberally from the 1941 Columbia Pictures supernatural fantasy Here Comes Mr. Jordan, “Kid Eternity” starred a boy who returned to the tongue-in-cheek exploits of “Hack O’Hara” provided a showcase mortal realm after dying The for Lou Fine’s mastery of characterization through facial expression before his time accompanied and body language. TM and © respective copyright holder. by the invisible Mr. Keeper, Williams, Bob Powell, and Al Bryant the angel whose clerical error also contributed several series each. was responsible for his untimely Arnold began cutting his ties to Roche death. Able to switch between his & Iger, cancelling several strips promortal and ethereal form, Kid (he was duced by the studio just before the never called anything but “Kid”) also production cutback in the spring and had the power to transform himself again following the November-dated into any figure from history, myth, issues. This second, wider round of or legend by saying the magic word cancellations coincided with Busy “Eternity!” Writer Otto Binder gave Arnold’s moving his editorial team the new series a hard, contemporary back to New York City, leaving only edge—Kid died after his ship was the executive offices behind in Stamtorpedoed by a U-boat ford. Despite the cutback imposed on when the sub crew the line and the draft board sweepmachine-gunned the ing up Eisner, Cuidera, McWilliams, survivors—enhanced Blaisdell, and Devlin (whose many by the sombre art of humor strips were seamlessly taken Sheldon Moldoff. over by Bernard Dibble), the publisher With the closing of the finished the year with five monthlies, Eisner shop and the two bi-monthlies, and three quarterassimilation of staffers lies on the newsstands, all of which Toni Blum, Tex Blaislived up, or at least tried to live up, to dell, Alex Kotsky, John the Quality label. Belfi, and Joe Kubert, most of the contents Of Amazons and Angels of the Quality line Though some thirty super-heroines were now produced inand mystery-women, about a third of house. Staff artists Lou them part of a he-and-she team, had Fine, Jack Cole, George appeared in comics by January 1942, Brenner, Vernon Hennone had yet captured the fancy of a kel, Paul Gustavson, wide readership. That changed with Reed Crandall, and the launch of “Wonder Woman” in Johnny Devlin each the premiere issue of Sensation Comworked on multiple ics, the newest monthly from Allfeatures, all but Fine American Comics. and Crandall writing their strips as well. A Shortly after his appointment to small group of reliable the AA Editorial Advisory Board, Dr. freelancers including William Moulton Marston, whose Klaus Nordling, Fred many accomplishments included Guardineer, Witmer Crossing supernatural fantasy with super-heroics, “Kid Eternity” proved the inventing a key component of the

did George Brenner’s revamp of “The Clock.” In issue #21, comic books’ first masked mystery-man was wounded nigh unto death by gangsters. He was nursed back to health over the course of several months by Butch, an orphaned tomboy who replaced Pug as Clock’s sidekick. Brenner gave his hero a new look in that story, replacing Clock’s original drape mask with a simple white eyemask. Hit’s cover feature “Stormy Foster, The Great Defender” showcased crisp, snappy dialogue and superlative art by Max Elkan and Reed Crandall, but the hero himself, yet another pharmacist gaining superpowers thanks to a chemical formula, lacked the originality that made Quality’s star characters click. The book also had a higher percentage of material produced by the Roche & Iger shop than the others, much of it cancelled toward year’s end to make room for more timely series such as “The Swordfish,” a Fred Guardineer offering about a superscientific one-man submarine, and “Captain Flagg, Leatherneck,” a bythe-numbers Marine strip by Toni Blum and Alex Koda. These newcomers lasted all of three issues. Replacing them in Hit #25 (December) were

breakout feature Hit Comics had needed. TM and © DC Comics.

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By the end of 1942, Wonder Woman had eclipsed The Flash and Green Lantern as All-American’s most popular and profitable super-character. TM and © DC Comics.

board member Josette Frank objected to the potential conflict of interest. To illustrate “Wonder Woman,” Marston chose his old friend H.G. Peter. The 61-year-old artist had a long career in newspapers and magazines, notably his editorial cartoons for Judge in the 1910s publicizing and supporting the suffragette movement. Much of the iconography of the new series derived from those cartoons of three decades past, which frequently depicted women bursting the chains of patriarchy. Peter’s art for “Wonder Woman” recalled the drawings on ancient Greek pottery, providing a conceptual unity of word and picture to a strip with one foot in classical mythology and the other in the headlines.

polygraph and acting as consultant to Universal Pictures during production of the classic horror films Dracula and Frankenstein, began pitching the idea of a female superhero conforming to the feminist ideal the psychologist had been promoting for decades. In a letter to All-American publisher M.C. Gaines, Marston explained: “A male hero, at best, lacks the qualities of maternal love and tenderness which are as essential to a normal child as the breath of life. Suppose your child’s ideal becomes a superman who uses his extraordinary power to help the weak. The most important ingredient in the human happiness recipe is still missing—love. It’s smart to be strong. It’s big to be generous. But it’s sissified, according to exclusively masculine rules, to be tender, loving, affectionate, and alluring. ‘Aw, that’s girls’ stuff!’ snorts our young comics reader. ‘Who wants to be a girl?’ And that’s the point; not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, power. Not wanting to be girls they don’t want to be tender, submissive, peaceloving as good women are. Women’s strong qualities have become despised because of their weak ones. The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman.” (Lepore 187)

Hippolyte, queen of the Amazons, desiring a daughter, fashioned a statue of an infant out of the clay of Paradise Island. Brought to life by the magic of the goddess Aphrodite, Princess Diana grew up unaware of the harsh realities of what Amazonian tradition referred to as “man’s world.” When U.S. Army Air Corps Captain Steve Trevor crash-landed offshore, he brought with him word of the war being waged against totalitarianism. A great tournament was held to determine which Amazon would accompany Trevor back to the United States to aid the war effort. Forbidden to compete, the headstrong princess, as smitten with the soldier as he was with her, entered in disguise and won handily. Dressed in a colorful costume incorporating American patriotic imagery, equipped with an enchanted lasso that compelled those wrapped in its coils to tell the truth and a mentally controlled invisible airplane, the

Gaines agreed to try the proposed series for a year on the condition that Marston write it himself. The doctor gladly signed on, resigning from the Advisory Board after fellow 139

newly christened Wonder Woman bought the identity and credentials of lookalike Army nurse Lt. Diana Prince in order to work alongside Capt. Trevor in Army intelligence. Much like Lois Lane, Steve was unable to see past the glasses, uniform, and dowdy hairstyle of Prince to recognize his “angel” underneath. Their commanding officer, Colonel (later General) Darnell, on the other hand, was infatuated with the bogus lieutenant, creating additional romantic complications.

hero genre to create “Wildcat.” Ted Grant, a contender for the heavyweight crown, donned the jet-black outfit with its unforgettable cat’shead cowl and clawed boots to clear himself of murder charges. By the fourth episode, Wildcat had acquired the Cat-o-cycle, his custom motorbike, and a sidekick, an impossibly skinny hillbilly named Stretch Skinner who fancied himself a “deetecatif.” Gardner Fox and Howard Purcell’s “The Gay Ghost” was the spirit of Keith Everet, Earl of Strethmere, an Irish nobleman of The world of Paradise Island the 17th century slain by as imagined by Marston and Personality clashes between the principals didn’t stop “Wonder Woman” from highwaymen. Returned to Peter was a peculiar blend rocketing to the top of the sales charts. L to R: William Moulton Marston, Earth by the Council of the H.G. Peter, Sheldon Mayer, and M.C. Gaines. of science and magic. The Dead to aid the Allied war Amazons worshipped the effort, Lord Strethmere possessed the body of murdered goddesses of Olympus, rode giant kangaroos into battle, American airline pilot Charles Collins, fiancé of Deborah and lived amidst an Edenic evocation of their ancient Wallace, a descendent and twin of the woman he loved Greek homeland. They also used futuristic technology like in his own time. In Sensation #4 (April), Collins enlisted in the invisible plane, the healing “purple ray” that saved the Army Air Corps, allowing him to wreak havoc behind Trevor, and the “mental radio” Diana used to telepathically enemy lines as the Gay Ghost. Child prodigy, Olympic athcommunicate with Hippolyte. In Sensation #2 (February), lete, and millionaire businessman Terry Sloane had everythe creators expanded their supporting cast, introducing thing he wanted except a reason to live. He was standing Etta Candy, a plump co-ed with an annoying catchphrase on a bridge contemplating suicide when the plight of (“Woo! Woo!”), and her sorority sisters from Holliday ColWanda Wilson, whose despair over a local mobster’s influlege as Diana’s helpmates. They also gave Wonder Woman ence over her kid brother led to her own suicide attempt, a memorable rogues’ gallery, beginning with Doctor Poisnapped him out of it. Adopting the alternate identity of son, alias Princess Maru of Imperial Japan, the first of “Mr. Terrific,” Sloane showed up the gangster as the ignomany villainesses to pose as a man. Baroness Paula Von rant thug he was, persuading Billy Wilson and his pals Gunther, a sadistic Nazi spymaster who kept a harem of to instead champion “fair play” - the motto was written slave girls, crossed swords with the heroine several times. on his costume’s belly. Despite this dark beginning, coWonder Woman’s greatest challenge in 1942 came from creators Charles Reizenstein and Hal Sharp’s Man of a the Greco-Roman war god Mars, arch-foe of the Amazons, and his three sinister servitors Lord Conquest, The Earl of Greed, and The Duke of Deception. Despite editor Sheldon Mayer’s pronounced dislike for both Dr. Marston and his character, “Wonder Woman” quickly became All-American’s most popular feature. By year’s end, the Amazing Amazon had earned her own quarterly solo title and become the first female member of the Justice Society of America. This breakthrough was muted by Diana’s almost immediate relegation to the role of “recording secretary,” ostensibly because of the rule regarding JSAers with their own books. Mayer probably made the move in response to Marston’s insistence on rewriting the Wonder Woman segments of Gardner Fox’s scripts, which the psychologist claimed mischaracterized his superwoman, complicating and slowing down the editorial process. No solo segment, no Marston, no problem. The back pages of Sensation Comics featured four new superhero strips and a revamped refugee from DC. Scripter Bill Finger and artist Irwin Hasen combined the atmospheric prizefighting films of Warner Brothers with the costumed

Bill Finger and Irwin Hasen’s “Wildcat” meets hillbilly Stretch Skinner, soon to be the cat-costumed mystery-man’s partner in crimefighting. TM and © DC Comics.

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Thousand Talents was just another masked mysteryman, his eclectic repertoire of skill and knowledge largely ignored in favor of acrobatics and fisticuffs. “Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys” featured the lighthearted adventures of Tommy Rogers, young son of the Big City district attorney, and his chums Toughie and Tubby. This costumed kid gang’s crusade against crime was illoed by Jon L. Blummer. Rounding out the book was “The Black Pirate,” the Sheldon Moldoff swashbuckler last seen in Action Comics #42. Shelly gave Jon Valor a makeover, dressing him in a superheroic cape and cowl, marrying him off, moving the series’ historical setting forward a dozen years, and giving him a boy companion, his own son Justin. Wonder Woman was not the only JSAer to put on a uniform in 1942. In All-Star Comics #11 (June-July), the first issue to reflect the new post-Pearl Harbor reality, the team unanimously voted to disband so they could enlist in their civilian identities (all but The Spectre, that is, whose nature as a reanimated corpse would be revealed by a physical). When their individual deeds on the frontlines led to an unseemly interservice rivalry in the upper echelons, the Society was ordered to reunite as the Justice Battalion, an elite squad answerable only to the top brass. Curiously, they were not sent back into combat but remained stateside, where they countered such menaces as the Black Dragon Society and a German rocket scientist who managed to temporarily exile the heroes to outer space. The membership’s brief time in the military was not reflected or even mentioned in their individual solo series except for “Johnny Thunder,” which kept its scatterbrained namesake in the Navy beyond the formation of the Battalion. In the wake of Pearl Harbor, the Justice Society voted to disband and enlist in their everyday guises, only to be reunited on the orders of the War Department.

On August 31, All-American Comics’ resident flyboy became the first AA character to appear in another medium with the debut of the Hop Harrigan radio series starring Charles Stratton as Hop and Ken Lynch as his pal Ikky Tinker (rechristened “Tank” to avoid confusion with Captain Midnight’s similarly named sidekick). Since the radio version was serving in the Army Air Corps, Jon Blummer’s boyish aviator (now billed as “America’s Ace of the Airwaves”) followed suit in the comic book, earning a battlefield commission in the December issue (#45). Harrigan’s

TM and © DC Comics.

All-American co-stars, save for the military-centered “Red, White and Blue,” stuck mostly to fighting crime and the odd costumed villain, only occasionally tackling Nazi or Japanese opponents. “Dr. Mid-Nite,” “Sargon the Sorcerer,” and “Scribbly,” featuring The Red Tornado, retained their creative teams throughout the year, but “The Atom” lost writer Ben Flinton and artist Bill O’Connor to the armed forces following issue #41 (August). Neither man would return to comics after their time in uniform. Replacing them were AA assistant editor Ted Udall and Joe Gallagher, both veterans of the small packaging service run by Emanuel Demby that Sheldon Mayer outsourced several back-up features to mid-year. Gallagher’s fluid cartooning, while hardly earth-shattering, was nevertheless a step up for the Mighty Mite after O’Connor’s stiff, generally crude art.

“Green Lantern” and Doiby Dickles joined the Army, but “The Flash” stayed stateside to deal with homegrown menaces like The Rag Doll, sometimes aided (if you can call it that) by new pals The Three Dimwits. TM and © DC Comics.

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As for cover star Green Lantern, he and sidekick Doiby Dickles spent much of the year fighting ordinary criminals. So loyal did the feisty little cabbie prove that GL revealed his true identity to Doiby in All-American #35 (February). A skirmish with the criminal army of mobster Nick Bonaparte three episodes later foreshadowed Alan Scott and Doiby’s enlistments in the Summer issue (#4) of Green Lantern Quarterly. This development may have run counter to the wishes of writer Bill Finger, as there is evidence—including a slew of variants of GL’s oath, some slightly rewording it, most completely

different—that someone else wrote those issues of the solo book. Moreover, the enlistment was never mentioned in the Finger-authored episodes running concurrently in AllAmerican, not in 1942 or later. Co-creator Martin Nodell and Irwin Hasen continued to split the art duties in both titles. Thanks to his government-sponsored research, chemist Jay Garrick received a deferment, leaving his alter ego “The Flash” free to pit himself against homefront threats like The Rag Doll, a master contortionist gone bad; The Shade, inventor of a machine that created a blanket of darkness over the city allowing his gang, armed with “cosmoray” guns that penetrated the gloom, to loot at will; and Alphonse Peckabit, a pulp writer with the power to literally bring his characters to life. Writer Gardner Fox and artists E.E. Hibbard and Hal Sharp kept humor front and center in the Scarlet Speedster’s exploits, as when a trio of Peckabit’s nastiest villains—Muscleman, Pegleg, and The Great Hot Stuff (a Human Torch parody)—somehow ended up performing in vaudeville dressed as babies. Beginning with the Summer issue of All-Flash Quarterly (#5), Flash’s life became triply complicated by Winky, Blinky, and Noddy a.k.a. The Three Dimwits. Loosely patterned after filmdom’s Three Stooges, the Dimwits began as the bumbling henchmen of that issue’s villain but soon reformed and became the speedster’s unwanted sidekicks. Their propensity for creating wacky inventions (like the “personality ray” that swapped the minds of Jay’s ladyfriend Joan and tough street kid Little Red) and their perpetual search for fruitful employment (at various times, the boys were restaurateurs, private tutors, lawyers, stagehands, firemen, elevator operators, house painters, radio repairmen, night watchmen, swing musicians, bakers, and even the parole board at “Sing-Song” Prison) made the slapstick threesome frequent catalysts for The Flash’s adventures.

Scenes like this may make modern-day readers cringe, but any defense of Japanese-Americans in 1942 was both unusual and courageous. TM and © DC Comics.

Watts” as of Flash Comics #29 (May). Created by Emanuel Demby and Ted Udall with art by Frank Harry, the trio of Fred, Slim, and Pedro were spectral aviators who continued their fight against the Axis from beyond the grave. Despite the grim origin, the strip was largely played for laughs. The addition of Sensation Comics and Wonder Woman to its roster at a time when major competitors like Quality were being forced to cut back was due to All-American’s share of Detective Comics executive Harry Donenfeld’s generous paper quota. This also allowed AA to increase Mutt and Jeff from once a year to quarterly status and to launch Comic Cavalcade, a showcase title in the 15¢ 96-page World’s Finest format starring Wonder Woman, The Flash, and Green Lantern, backed by various series from the three monthly anthologies. All-American was one of the few comic book lines willing to defend the rights of Japanese-Americans. In All-Star #12’s JSA story, an otherwise anonymous “Yankee Jap” tipped The Atom off to a Black Dragon Society scheme, telling the pint-sized powerhouse that to muse, “I’d like to have that fellow alongside me to show those other Japs that there are some of them who do love the United States that sheltered them!” The “Whip” episode in the August Flash Comics (#32) took a similar approach in presenting a Nisei willing to sacrifice his life to stop a Nazi spy ring, explaining from his hospital bed, “My parents escaped the Japanese terror long ago — I was born in America — It’s American blood in my veins.” Although neither depiction was especially enlightened by today’s standards, they demonstrated an uncommon willingness to stand up against the racist backlash that characterized much of pop culture in the months following the attack on Hawaii.

The Fastest Man Alive continued to alternate with “Hawkman” on the covers of Flash Comics. Though required to tone down the strip’s violence by the Editorial Advisory Board, Gardner Fox and Sheldon Moldoff maintained its noirish mood, confronting the Winged Wonder and partner Hawkwoman (rechristened Hawkgirl in the February issue) with such daunting challenges as an invasion of monstrous Plant-Men from the ocean depths; an occultist named Father Time whose “wisdom elixir” increased his intelligence to superhuman levels; The Sea Orm of Olaus Magnum, a robotic sea serpent created by Johnny Law, a malevolent toymaker who also fashioned a duplicate Hawkgirl; and the bizarre Lola Darling, a beautiful nightclub chanteuse who inexplicably turned herself into a beefy, goateed man after taking up crime. Joining “Johnny Thunder,” “The Whip,” “The King,” and Ed Wheelan’s Written by the publisher himself, the 4-page giveaway “Minute Movies” in the back pages was “The Minute Man Answers the Call” displayed M.C. “The Ghost Patrol,” a new series displac- Gaines’ patriotic side, while Picture Stories from the Bible displayed his devotional side. ing Don Cameron’s teenage sleuth “Les TM and © respective copyright holder. 142

M.C. Gaines was a sincere patriot who revered the values for which America was fighting. The former schoolteacher, who believed in the educational possibilities of the medium every bit as much as Will Eisner or George Hecht, had begun to promote those values as early as the August 1939 issue (#5) of All-American Comics with a five-part adaptation of the George S. Kaufman-

Moss Hart drama The American Way, which traced the fortunes of a German-American family from its patriarch’s immigration to the United States in 1898 through his grandson’s confrontation with Bundists forty years later. Gaines and Sheldon Mayer continued in this vein in 1942, adding war-themed fillers like the exotically named Falcon Matthieu’s “How to Spot the Planes in the Sky,” John M. Jenks’ flag trivia feature “Flying Colors,” and “The Minute Man Answers the Call,” a 4-page propaganda piece illustrated by Shelly Moldoff and scripted by Gaines himself that the publisher not only included in issues of Sensation, All-Flash, and Mutt and Jeff but also distributed to schools as a standalone giveaway. Gaines was also, beneath his blustery exterior, a man of faith who gave generously to Jewish charities. It was this side of his complicated personality that led to Picture Stories from the Bible, a quarterly title debuting in the autumn of 1942. In an editorial appearing in the second issue, the publisher declared that “In all lands, the history of the Bible has been closely linked with the human struggle for freedom and democracy. Today, as every American man, woman, boy and girl is engaged in the worldwide struggle of the United States, it is not strange that our government thinks the Bible so important that every man in uniform is given a copy of that section of it applying to his faith. The Bible in wartime is a powerful source of national unity.” Prepared under the nominal oversight of an advisory council of religious authorities such as The Power of Positive Thinking author Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, New York University’s Religious Education department chairman Professor Samuel L. Hamilton, and Dr. Robert Ashworth of the National Council of Christians and Jews, the book adapted the stories of Noah, Joseph, Moses, David, Solomon, Ruth, Esther, Jonah, and other Old Testament figures. Scripted by freelancer Montgomery Mulford and drawn by Don Cameron, Picture Stories was aimed at younger readers, emphasizing narrative and spectacle over theology, carefully avoiding anything that could result in controversy. Despite Gaines’ typically brusque handling of its subject matter— “I don’t care how long it took Moses to cross the desert,” he is supposed to have said to Mulford, “I want it in three panels” (Jacobs 60)—it was a groundbreaking attempt to expand the comic book medium.

The care put into the Cincinnati-based Standard Publishing’s The Life of Christ Visualized was apparent on every page. TM and © respective copyright holder.

running around in bathing suits [a reference to the tee shirts and gym shorts the Holliday Girls habitually wore].” (Quattro) Since no other comic title was so proscribed, the bishop relented and removed Sensation from the list. It would not be the last time the comic book industry and the Catholic Church butted heads. Not long after the first issue of Picture Stories from the Bible went on sale, the Rev. Louis A. Gales of the Catechetical Guild Educational Society, publisher of Catholic Digest, launched Timeless Topix, a comic book distributed through the church’s parochial schools. Published monthly (except during July and August, when its audience was on summer vacation), each issue presented uplifting stories of faith and courage, many drawn from history (including an unofficial “saint-of-the-month” series), backed by innocuous funny animal strips and humor fillers. Father Gales seems to have hired his creative staff from outside the industry, as there is no evidence of any of the known packaging services contributing to the title. This cannot be confirmed, however, as very few of these early issues have survived.

It may also have been, in part, a reaction to Sensation Comics being placed on the National Organization for Decent Literature’s list of condemned publications. In a letter to Gaines dated March 13, 1942, the Catholic organization’s leader, Rev. John F. Noll, Bishop of Fort Wayne, Indiana, defended his stance: “Practically the only reason for which SENSATION COMICS was placed on the banned list of the N.O.D.L. was that it violated Point Four of the Code. … Wonder Woman is not sufficiently dressed nor are many of the characters with whom she deals. There is no reason why Wonder Woman should not be better covered, and there is less reason why women [who] fall under her influence should be

Around the same time, the Standard Publishing Company of Cincinnati (no connection to Ned Pines’ Standard Magazines), publishers of the evangelical Christian Standard, released the first of three issues of what is arguably the most upscale comic book of the 1940s. The Life of Christ 143

Visualized was a 48-page giveaway printed on glossy paper. The first issue (#1051, renumbered 2051 for its second printing) covered the life of Jesus from the Annunciation to the Calling of the Twelve, the second his ministry, the third the entry into Jerusalem through the Ascension. The artwork was stunning, each panel beautifully composed and executed, the watercolor coloring reproduced with all its subtleties intact. Like Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant, the unknown creators avoided the use of word balloons and sound effects, preferring to embed the typeset text—all either directly quoting or paraphrasing the Gospels—into the panels. Distributed to Sunday schools and available through mail order, Life of Christ must have proven popular, as Standard would periodically publish similar comics over the next five years.

A Winning Combination of Winning Combinations Uptown at Detective Comics, AA co-owner Jack Leibowitz and partner Harry Donenfeld were celebrating the arrival of the red-hot team of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. Freed of the editorial responsibilities they bore under Martin Goodman, the duo’s already-stellar work got even better. The strips they turned out for DC featured tighter plotting, better scripting, livelier characterization, and more humor and charm than their Timely and Novelty Press material while retaining the elements that made them superstars of the medium: lightning-fast pacing, grotesque villains, exciting fight scenes, and Kirby’s dynamic figure work. Their first assignment at Detective was to take over two Adventure Comics series, beginning with “The Sandman” in issue #72 (March). Jack and Joe tweaked the new costume recently given Wesley Dodd’s masked alter ego, gave him a sleek roadster inevitably dubbed The Sandmobile, reset the series in fictional York City, and built their stories on the twin themes of sleep and dreams. Sandman no longer used sleeping gas or sprinkled sand as a calling card. Now he left a poem: “There is no land beyond the law Where tyrants rule with unshakeable power, It’s a dream from which the Evil wake To face their fate… their terrifying hour” The earlier gas-masked Sandman had fought mostly banal gangster types and an occasional masked mastermind. Simon and Kirby opted to have the Master of Dreams and his teenaged ward Sandy square off against colorful antagonists such as Professor Hiram Gaunt, a.k.a. The Human Calculator, who found a way to unlock the untapped potential of the human brain; Thor, actually a rogue metallurgist named Fairy-Tales Fenton armed with a “magic hammer” that was a marvel of electronic engineering; Mr. Noah, a doomsday prophet with his own ark and a crew of talking animals; and the green-skinned Nightshade, whose forest of monstrous plants nearly meant the end of the goldencostumed crimebusters. While comics fans since the 1970s have preferred the original pulp-flavored version, audiences of the ‘40s went nuts over Simon and Kirby’s reboot. By Adventure #74 (May), this new Sandman had reclaimed the cover spotlight from “Starman” and earned a regular berth in World’s Finest

When Simon & Kirby took on the recently redesigned “Sandman,” they gave his adventures the same breathless pacing that took “Captain America” to the height of popularity. Their rethink of “Manhunter” was less successful. TM and © DC Comics.

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Comics. Joe and Jack also drew their hero’s solo segment of the “Justice Society” strip in All-Star Comics #14 (December-January). The team’s overhaul of a second Adventure Comics strip was less inspired. With creator Ed Moore called up by the draft, his crime-solving big game hunter “Paul Kirk, Manhunter” was converted into a costumed hero in issue #73 (April). To avenge the death of a trusted friend at the hands of The Buzzard, Kirk—renamed Rick Nelson in the first S&K episode only—dressed himself in red tights and a spooky blue false face to track down the killer. The series had the usual Simon and Kirby touches but the hunting theme they chose to use lacked the versatility Sandman’s had. After eight solid if unspectacular episodes, they handed the creative duties off to others. No one at either DC or Quality seemed to notice or care that each now had a super-hero series called “Manhunter.”

Drawing on his own experience, Jack Kirby gave “The Newsboy Legion” a gritty urban authenticity. By contrast, “The Boy Commandos” was a work of pure imagination, though Kirby would see his share of real combat before the war was over. TM and © DC Comics.

more. Detective Comics #64 (June) introduced Alfy Twidgett of England, Andre Chavard of France, Jan Haasen of Holland, and the irrepressible Brooklyn, a tough-talking product of Flatbush clad in turtleneck and derby who carried his machine gun in a violin case. They weren’t playing at being soldiers. They were the real deal. Captain Eric “Rip” Carter, equal parts father figure, big brother, schoolmaster, and drill sergeant, led the team into the heart of combat, their fantastic exploits carrying them to every theater of the war. The strip walked a

The third series Jack and Joe created for DC did considerably better. “The Newsboy Legion” debuted in Star Spangled Comics #7 (April). Handsome Tommy, bespectacled Big Words, belligerent Scrapper, and blabbermouth Gabby were orphans living on the streets of Suicide Slum. Nabbed for petty theft, the boys were about to be sentenced to a reformatory when rookie patrolman Jim Harper stepped forward and offered to serve as their legal guardian, promising the court he would put them back on the straight and narrow. Unbeknownst to the Newsboys, their benefactor was also the blue-and-gold clad vigilante known as The Guardian. It didn’t take long for them to put the pieces together and suspect that Officer Harper and the mystery-man, who carried a golden shield shaped like a police badge, were one and the same despite both men’s denials. What made this kid gang strip shine was its setting. There was an authenticity to the urban squalor it depicted that no comic book feature had yet achieved, a whiff of reality that could have come only from experience. Decades later, Jack Kirby explained that: “I spent all my early life drawing on the sidewalks of the lower East Side. In my kid strips, I was only duplicating the atmosphere I knew. The city was my only experience. I tried to communicate its essence to those who weren’t familiar with it. I knew all the kids in my comics; I’d grown up with them. I wore the baggy pants and the turtle neck sweaters myself.” (Steranko 79) “The Newsboy Legion” proved the salvation of the struggling Star Spangled, replacing “The Star-Spangled Kid” as its cover feature and boosting its sales. But it was their next creation, “The Boy Commandos,” that solidified Simon and Kirby’s reputation as hitmakers. At first glance, they were simply the Newsboys in khaki, repeating the “four orphans and adult mentor” formula of the earlier strip, but The Boy Commandos were far

Her place in the back pages of the bestselling Boy Commandos #1 brought the debut of “Liberty Belle” to the attention of a million readers. TM and © DC Comics.

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The Superman syndicated strip gave a shaky justification for the Man of Tomorrow sitting out the war, but his faithful fanbase went along. TM and © DC Comics.

Flying Tigers three issues later, “Boy Commandos” was the only DC series to tackle the war head-on. Although most of the company’s twenty-odd super-hero series encountered Axis spies or saboteurs at least once, super-villains, costumed criminals, and plainclothes crooks predominated. Given the zeal with which the competition wallowed in shows of sanguinary jingoism, it seemed a counterintuitive choice unless one considered Detective’s ongoing quest for respectability, the same quest that had led to the formation of the Editorial Advisory Board. Stories like the “Zatara the Magician” episode in the March Action (#46) that would have seemed an acceptable exercise in wish fulfillment before Pearl Harbor—the mustachioed mage used his sorcery to create a fleet of warplanes for Britain out of thin air, turn the Third Reich’s own planes and tanks against them, and overthrow Hitler in a single afternoon— might be thought in poor taste now that real flesh-andblood Americans were fighting and dying overseas.

delicate line, carefully balanced between humorous scenes of schoolboy hijinks and harrowing action scenes of the kids battling hardened Axis troops. The excitement and drama of both story and art—Kirby depicted war with a chaotic realism, his panels filled with the dirt, dust, smoke, debris, and death of combat—made “The Boy Commandos” an instant hit. By year’s end, it was also running in World’s Finest and had earned its own title. Boy Commandos #1 (Winter) sold over a million copies, making it the single bestselling DC comic book of 1942. That issue also premiered a new strip from writer Don Cameron and artist Chuck Winter. Radio commentator Libby Lawrence was secretly the costumed mystery-woman known as “Liberty Belle” whose belt buckle, made from a piece of the real Liberty Bell, somehow amped her fighting prowess whenever Independence Hall guard Tom Revere rang the iconic bell. Visually striking with her peekaboo hair style borrowed from actress Veronica Lake, Liberty Belle was one of DC’s most physical heroines, but all the judo throws and karate chops in the world couldn’t hold a candle to the Simon and Kirby brand of action.

DC also had a larger audience to consider, those who knew their most popular and profitable property, not from comic books, but from newspapers, radio, and the movies. An article in the April 13, 1942 issue of Time articulated the problem:

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“As the mightiest, fightingest American, Superman ought to join up. But he just can’t. In the combat services he would lick the [Japanese] and Nazis in a wink, and the war isn’t going to end that soon. On the other hand, he can’t afford to lose the respect of millions by failing to do his bit or by letting the war drag on.” (Wells 6)

Puzzler, a self-declared “genius at solving puzzles [who] decided to utilize the principles that win games to launch a crime campaign unrivalled in history,” and The Prankster, an odd-looking little fellow whose crimes involved practical jokes and elaborate publicity campaigns. The biggest threat to Superman in 1942 came from arch-enemy Luthor in a story illoed by Shuster ghost John Sikela that began in Action #47 (April) and concluded in Superman #17 (JulyAugust), a two-parter many consider the best Superman story of the war years. Giving himself electrical superpowers, the brilliant madman kidnapped Lois Lane, forced his costumed nemesis to steal the mystic Powerstone from its hidden temple, then used the enchanted gem to give himself sufficient might to humble the Big Red S. Unable to best his opponent physically, Superman was forced to outwit him. It represented a turning point for a hero who could no longer depend on sheer muscle for victory. Superman #17 also introduced the Secret Citadel, the hero’s Adirondack hideaway carved from the side of a mountain where he could hone his powers, conduct potentially dangerous scientific research, or simply relax away from the hustle and bustle of life in Metropolis.

The Superman syndicated strip offered a convenient, if questionable, out: Clark Kent was classified 4-F after failing his physical. It seemed the hero had inadvertently used his x-ray vision to read the eye chart in an adjacent examination room instead of the one in his. “Perhaps I can be of more use to my country right here at home,” the disappointed reporter told himself back at his desk at the Daily Planet, “battling the saboteurs and fifth columnists who will undoubtedly attempt to wreck our production of vital war materials!” The comic books didn’t bother to explain even that much, at least not in any 1942-dated issue. The Man of Tomorrow did tangle with some Axis analogs early in the year, fighting “Hapkanese” troops and the Hitleresque Raskal, dictator of Oxnalia, in Superman #15 (MarchApril), but these stories were likely prepared prior to Pearl Harbor. For the most part, co-creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster preferred to keep their hero away from the war zone.

DC managing editor Whit Ellsworth continued to oversee Superman’s use in other media. Joining the syndicated strip, animated cartoons, and radio program in 1942 was The Adventures of Superman, a juvenile novel by George W. Lowther. Expanding on Siegel and Shuster’s origin sequence that launched the newspaper strip, Lowther was the first to stage a confrontation between the Science Council of Krypton and the alien super-hero’s father, Jor-El (Jor-L in the syndicated strip) and the first to show Clark Kent growing up on a farm, elements that became a permanent part of the character’s backstory. An eight-page giveaway comic for Py-Co-Pay toothpaste was just one of

Superman’s powers, though nowhere near their eventual levels, had nonetheless become so potent and so varied that the world of urban crime and corruption Siegel had hitherto favored in his plotting no longer offered sufficient challenges. Those stories never went entirely away, but super-villains and other fantasy elements cropped up with increasing frequency. The Man of Tomorrow bested such evildoers as Metalo, a renegade “robot” unmasked as a scientist wearing sophisticated armor; Funnyface, a failed newspaper cartoonist (and dead ringer for one Jerome Siegel) who created a machine that could bring comic strip characters to life; Akthar, cruel dictator of a race of mermen; The Lightning Master, a robed and hooded extortionist who used electricity as his weapon; and The Emperor of America, whose will-deadening ray allowed him to seize control of the American government without firing a shot. Two became recurring foes: The

A super-powered Luthor provided Superman’s greatest challenge in 1942, but the wily Prankster gave the hero his share of trouble too. TM and © DC Comics.

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dozens of licensed products bearing the Metropolis Marvel’s likeness this year, cementing his position as Detective’s chief moneymaker.

and “Larry Steele.” Don Lynch’s stalwart district attorney “Steve Malone” also came to an end, yielding his space to a new super-hero strip with the February issue (#60). “Air Wave” was yet another Mort Weisinger brainchild, though he scripted only the first episode before handing it off to Murray Boltinoff. The team of Lee Harris and Charles Paris illustrated the exploits of Assistant District Attorney Larry Jordan, who assumed his costumed identity to bring down those criminals he couldn’t prosecute. The new hero’s powers were radio-based: his belt was a power generator, his helmet allowed him to send and receive soundwaves through any metallic object, and his boots were equipped with retractable roller skates allowing him to travel atop power lines at high speed. In his fifth episode, Air Wave acquired a sidekick, Static the Proverb Parrot, whose running commentary on a story’s events could be amusing or annoying depending on the scripter. Only “Slam Bradley,” now drawn by Howard Sherman, and “Spy,” which Ed Moore ceded to the Cazeneuve Brothers as of issue #61 (March) remained of the title’s original line-up of features. Detectives no longer ruled Detective.

When Mort Weisinger received his draft notice in early January, he recommended an old friend to fill in for him as story editor while he was away. Jack Schiff had worked alongside Weisinger at Ned Pines’ publishing house editing his sci-fi pulps. For a short while after taking the reins, Schiff wrote scripts for “Batman and Robin,” among others, until art editor Murray Boltinoff was also drafted and his duties, too, fell to the new guy. It was Schiff who introduced the Bat-Signal, the searchlight atop police headquarters with which Commissioner Gordon summoned his masked ally, in Detective Comics #60 (February). This was the first time since 1939 that anyone other than co-creator Bill Finger wrote the Dynamic Duo’s adventures. Don Cameron, Joseph Greene, and future Science Fiction Hall of Famer Edmond Hamilton all contributed scripts, though Finger still wrote the majority of the “Batman” material, including the three-episode saga of Two-Face begun in Detective #66 (August). District attorney Harvey Kent, “Superman” was the main nicknamed “Apollo” by the attraction for Action ComGotham press corps for his ics buyers, but “The Vigimovie star looks, went insane lante” also justified spending after a gangster hurled acid that dime. The energetically in his face. The left side of expressionistic art of Mort his head reduced to a mass Meskin was a big part of of horribly scarred green the strip’s charisma, but the flesh, the crazed lawyer went snappy repartee between on a rampage, committing “Vig” and his new boy pal crimes revolving around the didn’t hurt. Stuff the Chinumber two and deciding natown Kid was a refreshthe fate of his victims on a ing change from the usual flip of the two-headed coin antiquated stereotypes of he carried as a lucky charm. Chinese-Americans, since he The Masked Manhunter and spoke perfect, albeit slangThe compositional sense and flowing action of artist Mort Meskin made Boy Wonder also clashed filled English and acted like “The Vigilante” a treat for the eye. TM and © DC Comics. anew with The Catwoman, any other red-blooded AmerThe Penguin, and The Joker, who appeared eight times in ican kid sidekick. The duo tackled the likes of The Shade 1942. The June Detective (issue #64) saw the green-haired (not the Flash foe), The Scorpion, The Lash, and The Rainghoul die in the electric chair, only to be resuscitated by a bow Man, who appeared three times this year, the last corrupt prison doctor. A judge ruled that Joker, having paid accompanied by the grandiloquent Shakes the Underworld in full for his crimes, was no longer liable for his previous Poet. “Mister America” and Fat Man spent much of the year deeds. From this point on, the villain no longer killed (not battling costumed villains like The Thunderbolt, The Pied that he didn’t try to off B&R from time to time), a semiPiper, and the beautiful Queen Bee. When Joseph Greene reformation dictated by the DC Editorial Advisory Board. replaced Ken Fitch at the typewriter in the September The art for the strip remained primarily the responsibility Action (#52), he renamed Tex Thomson’s costumed alter of Bob Kane and his assistants Jerry Robinson and George ego “The Americommando.” Two issues later, Greene sent Roussos, though Jack Burnley and Fred Ray each penciled him behind enemy lines in the guise of Gestapo agent Otto an installment or two. Riker, leaving Fat Man stateside. Neither Fat Man nor his other self Bob Daly was seen in a comic book again until Detective Comics made room for “The Boy Comman1993. dos” by dropping the private eye strips “Cliff Crosby” 148

(nee Stanley Rawinis) starring a boy genius who took to wearing a homemade costume and calling himself The Answer Man while foiling the schemes of Nazi agents.

The humorous adventures of “Genius Jones” were scripted by future Science Fiction Hall of Famer Alfred Bester. TM and © DC Comics.

Ever since the horror-adverse Editorial Advisory Board stripped More Fun Comics stars “The Spectre” and “Doctor Fate” of their spookier elements, the magic-based JSAers had taken a back seat to more colorful heroes like “Green Arrow,” “Aquaman,” and “Johnny Quick”—not coincidently all Mort Weisinger creations, though the newly drafted editor had stopped scripting all three series by mid-year. The January More Fun (#75) saw Jim Corrigan’s mortal form resurrected and able to change at will into The Spectre, the costumed ghost aiding the headstrong Percival Popp against strange menaces like The CryBaby, Maligno, and The King of Color. Bernard Baily was still at the drawing table, but the series had lost its pizzazz. Doctor Fate, his powers now reduced to flight and super-strength, was just another costumed bruiser. In issue #85 (November), Fate’s civilian self Kent Nelson entered, finished, and graduated from medical school in a single page, the narration assuring readers the hero now had “even more understanding of mankind — more dignity — more humanity!” Aquaman spent much of his time countering the machinations of his arch-enemy Black Jack, the two clashing five times in 1942. Co-creator Paul Norris gave up the art chores following More Fun #81 (July) when his work on the syndicated strip Vic Jordan took precedence. Louis Cazeneuve took over. The team of Cliff Young and Steve Brodie was brought in to draw Green Arrow after original artist George Papp was drafted, beginning with issue #85. Mort Meskin devised a new way to

“Sandman” and “Manhunter” were not the only Adventure Comics features to go through changes. In the February issue (#71), “Hour-Man” co-creators Bernard Baily and Ken Fitch gave their hero a new method of activating his powers, substituting a “black light ray” for the Miraclo pills he used previously. They also promoted Jimmie Martin, plucky leader of the Minute Men of America, to full costumed-kid-sidekick status. This lasted all of two issues before new scripter Joseph Greene swapped out Jimmie for Thorndyke, another Minute Man whose face was perpetually hidden by the collar of his oversized turtleneck and functioned primarily as comic relief even in costume. “Starman” and “The Shining Knight” spent the year battling assorted costumed criminals and bidding farewell to their original artists. Creig Flessel drew the adventures of Sir Justin and Winged Victory through issue #72 (March) while Jack Burnley remained with the Astral Avenger through issue #81 (November). Louis Cazeneuve took over for Flessel, the team of Mort Meskin and George Roussos for Burnley. The long-running “Federal Men” was cancelled following the January issue (#70). Jack Lehti’s “Steve Conrad, Adventurer” hung on a bit longer but, despite attempts to generate reader interest with a time travel story and a junior Tarzan named Tiger Boy, was gone after issue #76 (July). Its pages went to “Genius Jones,” a Though it owed much to Otto Binder’s 1939 short story “The Trial of Adam Link,” also concerning a mechanical man’s quest for identity, Jerry Siegel’s “Trial of humor strip by Alfred Robotman” was among the best stories published by DC in 1942. TM and © DC Comics. Bester and Stan Kaye 149

depict Johnny Quick in motion, using multiple figures of Quick in a single panel instead of the blur of speed lines used for other comic book superspeedsters. Writing assignments for all three strips, as well as the police series “Radio Squad,” were shared by freelancers Joseph Greene, Don Cameron, Joseph “Joe” Samachson, and Manly Wade Wellman. “The Newsboy Legion” may have taken the cover of Star Spangled Comics and a big chunk of their page allotment away from The Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy, but their feature remained one of the title’s most entertaining. Jerry Siegel and Hal Sherman fed their teen super-hero and his grown-up sidekick a steady diet of super-villainy. Moonglow, The Needle, King Midas, and the cadaverous Mr. Ghool joined Dr. Weerd in the duo’s rogues gallery, several of them ganging up on our heroes in issue #7 (April) and again two issues later. The February Star Spangled (#5) had Stripesy modifying their custom car, The Star Rocket Racer, giving it retractable wings that allowed it to fly. “Captain X” and “Armstrong of the Army” were replaced in the spring by “Penniless Palmer,” a humor strip by R. L. Ross about a luckless private eye, and three more super-heroes. “Robotman” was the latest creation of an uncredited Jerry Siegel. After gangsters fatally shot inventive genius Bob Crane, his loyal assistant transplanted his living brain into the marvelous metal body that was the focus of their

research. John Sikela illustrated. Crane’s struggle to adjust to his lost humanity culminated in a civil trial arranged by a shifty shyster in which Robotman, after revealing his true identity in open court, was declared fully, legally human. It was one of the best, most heartfelt stories of Siegel’s career. “T.N.T. and Dan the Dyna-Mite,” created by Mort Weisinger and an as yet unidentified artist, debuted in World’s Finest Comics #5 (Spring) before transferring titles. It featured high school teacher Thomas N. Thomas and student Danny Dunbar, who gained superpowers after exposure to certain “radioactive salts.” The series had potential but consistently fell flat, limited space and unimaginative writing its chief problems.

Seven Soldiers of Victory,” which gave rival super-team The Justice Society a run for its money by offering thrilling confrontations with gangs of villains organized by The Black Star and The Sense-Master. With the Autumn issue (#4), Shuster shop regular Ed Dobrotka assumed the art chores, replacing the Seven Soldiers’ regular artists on the characters’ solo segments as well as drawing the opening and closing sequences. By the end of 1942, DC had given itself over almost entirely to super-heroes, with only Action Comics’ “Congo Bill” and “Three Aces,” Detective’s “Spy” and “Slam Bradley,” and More Fun’s “Radio Squad” surviving the purge. Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz were the kings of the costumed hero genre, but they sat on their thrones uneasily, for one of their competitors threatened to snatch their crowns away.

The quarterly World’s Finest still included a handful of minor All-American features (“Red, White and Blue,” “The King”), but DC super-stars Superman and Batman remained the big draws. “Lando, Man of Magic” and “Drafty #158,” the only strips exclusive to the title, were cancelled to make room for episodes of “Green Arrow” and “The Boy Commandos.” Leading Comics continued to spotlight “The

Marvels, Marvels Everywhere The success of The Adventures of Captain Marvel the previous year led to further collaborations between Republic Studios and Fawcett Publications. A new 12-chapter Republic serial, Spy Smasher, hit theaters on April 4, 1942. Starring Kane Richmond as the costumed aviator, Marguerite Chapman as Eve Corby, and Hans Strumm as The Mask, the series was more faithful to its source material than the Marvel project, though budgetary restrictions meant Alan Armstrong had to do without his Gyrosub. Jungle Girl, a one-shot released in the autumn, was a sequel to Republic’s 1941 serial Nyoka the Jungle Girl. Nominally based on a 1932 Edgar Rice Burroughs novel (which had no character named Nyoka or even one resembling her), the chapter play introduced Nyoka Meredith, the daughter of an altruistic American doctor working in sub-Saharan Africa. More a female Jungle Jim than the cinematic equivalent of Fiction House’s Sheena, Nyoka spent fifteen episodes trying to avenge her father’s murder at the hands of his evil twin brother and a hostile witch doctor. The comic, scripted by Rod Reed and illustrated by Harry Anderson, found Nyoka in the Middle East racing Vultura, a beautiful bandit leader, and Count Torrini, a Fascist spy, to recover the fabulous Golden Tablets of Hippocrates. It was unusual for a movie studio to license a property that had finished its theatrical run more than a year earlier. Jungle Girl was possibly an attempt to nail down Republic’s claim to the character ahead of Burroughs.

The partnership between Fawcett Publications and Republic Pictures continued in 1942 as “Spy Smasher” starred in his own serial and Nyoka, a character created for a Republic production, appeared in her own comic book. TM and © DC Comics.

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Joining Gene Autry Comics, published just twice this year, was another well-known radio character. The cover art for the first issue (September) of the Captain Midnight comic book made it clear that changes had been made to bring the intrepid aviator in line with the rest of the Fawcett oeuvre. There was the costume, for starters. Midnight’s appearance no doubt varied in the minds’ eyes of his show’s young audience, but surely few had envisioned him in red-and-gray tights that included built-in glider wings. Radio’s best-known pilot could now fly, or at least glide, without an airplane. There was also a noticeable absence of Ivan Shark, the captain’s arch-nemesis from the program. Writer Joe Millard and artist Jack Binder instead sicced Midnight and his Secret Squadron on German and Japanese nogoodniks like Baron Von Togo and

joining Captain Marvel’s supporting cast were Professor Edgewood Smith, a crackpot nicknamed “Edgewise” by his fellow scientists, and Cissie Sommerly, the niece of Amalgamated Broadcasting boss Sterling Morris and eventually Billy’s girlfriend. The teenage radio reporter and his adult alter ego also befriended the Trolls of Wonderland, helping the little men overthrow the evil dictators Adolfpuss and Blabbermouth Musso, who had turned their peaceful subterranean home into a war-ravaged wasteland.

“Captain Midnight” flew from Dell to Fawcett, acquiring his own solo title, a new costume, and the power to glide in the process. His pal Icky, meanwhile, assumed the alternate identity of Sgt. Twilight. TM and © respective copyright holder.

The Mad Mikado. Sidekick Ichabod Mudd followed his leader’s example and adopted his own costumed identity in the November issue (#2) but Sergeant Twilight was strictly comic relief and did not become Robin to Midnight’s Batman. Intended as a bimonthly, Captain Midnight #1 sold so well that the title went monthly with its third issue. But it was that other captain in crimson whose adventures kept the Fawcett family’s coffers filled. Comics readers could not get enough of Captain Marvel and his costumed kin. The World’s Mightiest Mortal headlined two monthlies, Whiz Comics (which published two October issues again this year) and Captain Marvel Adventures (which released two May issues), plus the 96-page showcase title America’s Greatest Comics, which upgraded from quarterly to bimonthly status as of issue #4 (October). The studio run by co-creator C.C. Beck provided the lion’s share of the art, with scripts by Ed Herron, Alfred Bester, Rod Reed, William Woolfolk, Joe Millard, and the prolific Otto Binder, who wrote the bulk of the year’s stories not only for Captain Marvel but for virtually the entire line. It was Herron who contributed Steamboat, a former street vendor (and, alas, another minstrel show caricature like The Spirit’s Ebony White) who became Billy Batson’s valet. Also

Confronted with the same dilemma DC faced with Superman—how to handle a hero with godlike powers during wartime without trivializing the sacrifices of our real fighting men—Fawcett met the challenge directly. When war was first declared, Billy enlisted in the Army in his Captain Marvel form, alongside his pal Whitey Murphy, until Shazam himself intervened. Marvel was “more valuable as a free agent,” the wizard told Billy, adding that “there are many splendid soldiers, but only one Captain Marvel!” It was still a cop-out, but at least a more credible one than Superman’s overseers had managed. Nonetheless, Marvel, like all of Fawcett’s heroes, faced his fair share of Axis troops, spies, and the like, but most of his time was spent opposing super-villains, costumed crooks, monsters, and, of course, Dr. Sivana. Several foes debuting in 1942 plagued the Big Red Cheese for years to come, like Mr. Banjo, the traitorous mastermind of an espionage ring who hid in plain sight as a street musician, and Nippo the Nipponese, a cunning Jujitsu master promised rule over California by Hirohito himself in exchange for killing Captain Marvel. So effective did the scarlet-clad super-hero prove against menaces like The King of Storms, Skullface, The Wendigo, The India Rubber Man, and The Triton that Lucifer himself decided to create his own mighty champion. Stinky Printwhistle, a physically underwhelming specimen of petty criminality, could transform into a hulking, mohawked brute in black toreador pants whenever he said the magic word “Ibac,” an anagram for Ivan the Terrible, [Cesare] 151

Borgia, Attila the Hun, and Caligula. Those villains of history granted Ibac the superhuman strength and endurance needed to oppose Marvel but not the intelligence to prevent the hero from tricking him into saying his own name and turning back into the puny Printwhistle. For all his wisdom, Shazam was mistaken: there was more than one Captain Marvel and by the close of 1942 there were two more. The Lt. Marvels appeared twice this year, in the May and first October issues (#s 28 and 34) of Whiz, but it was Captain Marvel, Jr. who truly came into his own. The World’s Mightiest Boy got his own strip in Master Comics #23 (February), claiming the pages formerly devoted to “Zoro the Mystery-man” and “Cap’t Venture.” Co-creator Mac Raboy illustrated, his classically constructed, cleanly rendered figures populating a shadow-drenched world of urban crime and poverty that contrasted vividly with the sunny environs of the elder Marvel. In these early episodes, Freddy Freeman, now permanently lame as a result of the attack

Unlike Superman, Captain Marvel successfully joined the Army until Shazam persuaded him his talents were better suited to defending the homefront. TM and © DC Comics.

The August issue of Whiz Comics (#33) found the original Captain Marvel and Spy Smasher teaming up to prevent The Phantom Foe, an Axis agent planted aboard the “mighty super-dreadnaught” Alaskizona, from destroying the American Pacific fleet. It was just another day for the green-clad alter ego of Alan Armstrong, who encountered a procession of vile villains loyal to the Third Reich and the Land of the Rising Sun this year, here in Whiz, in America’s Greatest, and in his solo title, which went monthly with its seventh issue (October). His foes included the likes of Dr. Blizzard, The Golden Wasp, Baron Grimm, Herr Zero, The Devil Dragon, The Condor Master, a troop of miniaturized GerIn Captain Marvel Adventures #18 man soldiers, and his evil opposite, (December), Billy Batson discovered the iron-fisted America Smasher. he had a long-lost twin sister, Mary Scripted primarily by Otto Binder Bromfield, living in suburban comwith art by Emil Gershwin, Alex fort with her wealthy adoptive parBlum, Al Camy, and others, the ents. Learning her brother’s secret “Spy Smasher” strip no longer after Marvel and Junior rescued adhered to the graphic simplicity her from kidnappers, the tweener of the Beck Studio. Gershwin in tried out his magic word (in her case particular brought an illustrative the acronym signified the grace of polish that enhanced his stories’ Selena, the strength of Hippolyta, believability, especially “The Crime the skill of Ariadne, the fleetness of of Pearl Harbor” in Spy Smasher Zephyrus, the beauty of Aurora, and #4 (April), which explained how the wisdom of Minerva) and turned the hero, learning of the coming into Mary Marvel. Created by Otto attack, was prevented from warnBinder and Marc Swayze, whose ing Hawaii in time on December skirted variant of Captain Marvel’s 7th. Elsewhere in Whiz, “Ibis the costume gave the World’s Mightiest Invincible” largely ignored current Girl a visual distinction and winevents, instead combatting magisome appeal, Mary was a clever bid cal threats such as The Headless to give Fawcett’s female fans their Horseman, The Flying Dutchman, own fantasy figure to identify with. The Black Witch, The Sphinx, a resurrected Attila the Hun, and The other addition this year to what recurring nemesis Trug. The westeventually came to be known as The ern “Golden Arrow,” now drawn by Marvel Family was far and away former “Samson” artist Al Carreno, the strangest. “Hoppy the Marvel earned its own one-shot, while Bunny” was the star of Fawcett’s vagabond sailor “Lance O’Casey” Funny Animals, a new monthly. set aside his wandering ways Meek, clumsy Hoppy, distressed over The Captain Marvel franchise expanded late in the year, (and Mr. Hogan, his monkey “first being snubbed by his girl Millie, took with Mary Marvel and Marvel Bunny both premiering in TM and © DC Comics. December-dated comics. mate”) to thwart Japanese intrigue comfort with the latest issue of Capin the South Seas. “Doctor Voodoo,” tain Marvel Adventures. When he which had sent its jungle-based hero into the far future, read aloud the magic word, Hoppy, too, became a Captain was cancelled following Whiz #34 (September), replaced Marvel just in time to save the city of Funny Animalville by “Colonel Porterhouse,” a humor strip from George Storm from “der bearers uf der New Order”: a dachshund named about a prevaricating windbag much like Our Boarding Hermann, a chimp named Muss, and a mouse named Zero. House’s Major Hoople. Subtle it wasn’t. The Marvel Bunny wasn’t the first funny animal super-hero, but the expressive art of Chad GrothCaptain Marvel, Jr. may have bumped “Bulletman” off kopf, perfect for depicting the slapstick action that made the covers of Master Comics, but the Flying Detective and the new strip so much fun, and the cachet of the Captain his partner Bulletgirl continued to deliver cover-worthy Marvel brand translated into superior sales. that killed his grandfather, lived alone in a tumbledown shack in the slums and eked out a meagre living selling newspapers on street corners. Junior’s running battle with the detestable Captain Nazi dominated the series, but he somehow found time to tackle other evildoers like Mr. Macabre, a murderous mastermind whose skin was permanently dyed green by the chemical he used to fake his own death in his first appearance, and Captain Nippon, Nazi’s Japanese counterpart. Readers responded to the new series enthusiastically enough to justify the launch of a monthly solo title, Captain Marvel, Jr. #1 appearing on the stands bearing a November cover date.

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excitement courtesy of the Jack straightforward war strip. Mickey Binder studio and writers Otto Malone, an underage volunteer Binder and William Woolfolk. Their rejected by the Army Air Corps, specialty remained weird villains, adopted the costumed-but-notwith a rogues’ gallery that included secret identity of “The Phantom The Hunchback (no relation to the Eagle” and, piloting a super-swift Wow Comics hero), The Undertaker, fighter of his own design, earned Mr. Murder, The Headless Horror, the respect of his fellow fliers with The Ghost of Hamlet, The Gorgon, his uncanny air combat skills. The Murder Prophet, and a pair of Dave Berg’s “Spooks” told a differrecurring villains. The Weeper, who ent ghost story in each episode. It shed crocodile tears for the victims was a fun series that proved Berg of his crimes, and The Black Rat, had picked up a trick or two from a costumed murderer feared by his time with Will Eisner when it the law-abiding and lawless alike, came to imaginative storytelling. fought the gravity-helmeted Jim “Mr. Scarlet” remained the cover Barr and Susan Kent several times star of Wow. The masked vigieach this year, as well as teaming lante stuck with the urban crime up with The Murder Prophet as The milieu that had marked the strip Revenge Syndicate in Bulletman from the beginning, battling cos#7 (September), the first monthly tumed criminals such as The Fire issue. A new twist was added three Fiend, The Black Sphinx, and The issues later with the debut of BulPhantom of Marston Manor. Good letdog, the Kent family pooch, who action-filled art by Phil Bard and earned the right to wear his own Jack Binder helped disguise the gravity collar and fly into action obvious: that Scarlet and his little Bulletman and Bulletgirl found a new crimefighting alongside his masters after fearpal Pinky were really just another companion in Bulletdog. TM and © DC Comics. lessly attacking The Weeper. “MinBatman and Robin. ute Man,” meanwhile, seemed unable to shake his status Five Fawcett super-heroes headlined their own one-shot as a secondhand Captain America, despite competent Kirgiveaways published by Samuel E. Lowe & Co., a subsidbyesque art by Phil Bard and colorful opponents like The iary of Whitman Publishing headed by its namesake, a Toymaker, The Ghost of Francis Drake, Professor Stinkchildren’s book author rumored to be the prime mover baum, and Pelee, Goddess of Fire. His solo title was the only behind the first books of paper dolls. These 4” x 5” 32-pagcomic book cancelled by Fawcett ers, known collectively as “Mighty in 1942, ending with its third issue Midget Comics,” reprinted sto(Spring). Several Master strips ries of Captain Marvel, Captain came to an end this year, including Marvel Jr., Bulletman, Ibis, and “Companions Three,” “Buck Jones, Spy Smasher in black and white. Frontier Marshal” (cancelled short Details about why these comics weeks before the real Jones died in were assembled and how they got the horrific Cocoanut Grove nightinto readers’ hands are obscured by club fire), and “El Carim,” who time. They may have been cereal turned his pages over to “Balbo the premiums, but this is only a guess. Boy Magician.” Created by former “Green Hornet” artist Bert WhitThe sheer size of the Fawcett man, Balbo was not a true sorcerer publishing empire guaranteed it like El Carim but a teenage sleuth enough paper under the wartime who used his prestidigitation skills quota system to allow its comic to solve mysteries. book line to grow at a rapid clip. The launches of Captain Midnight, CapThe Spring issue of Wow Comics tain Marvel Jr., and Fawcett’s Funny (#5) was the last to feature “The Animals were one manifestation of Hunchback,” “Atom Blake, Boy this good fortune. The promotions Wizard,” “Rick O’Shay,” and “Jim of Bulletman and Spy Smasher Dolan.” Taking their place were a to monthlies late in the summer pair of patriotic mystery-men and were another. This expansion proa horror strip. “Commando Yank” ceeded so smoothly that had it was an anonymous American not been for the changing editor leading a fearless squad of British credit in the line’s indicia, readcommandos, his baggy blue-anders would have had no hint of the brown costume being the only Despite their costumes, new Wow Comics features “Commando uproar going on behind the scenes fantastic element in an otherwise Yank” and “The Phantom Eagle” were otherwise straight war strips. at Fawcett. On March 1, Ed Herron TM and © DC Comics. 153

was fired as the line’s executive editor for “double-dipping,” collecting freelance rates for scripts he wrote on company time. Otto Binder and John Beardsley filled in for a few weeks until Rod Reed was named to replace Herron. Reed, a former columnist and reporter for the Buffalo Times, took a different approach to editing comics than micromanagers like Mort Weisinger or Sheldon Mayer, who insisted on co-plotting every story written on their watch:

its Winter edition. Only the monthly Pep Comics and the quarterly Jackpot Comics stayed on schedule, thanks to the feature appearing in both. Superheroes were still the main focus for editor and head writer Harry Shorten and his in-house creative crew, but it was the rapidly growing popularity of Bob Montana’s teen humor strip “Archie” that would keep the line afloat through these hard times, leading to the bucktoothed carrot top receiving his own monthly solo title.

“A giraffe is a horse put together by committee. If I hire a real pro writer … I know I’d be wasting my time and his if I sat down with him and went over panel by panel, word by word, what he was expected to write. My motto was to turn the writer loose and let him put his talent, ingenuity, and imagination to work without any interference.” (Lage 55)

With the addition of a few key members to his supporting cast, America’s Typical Teen completed the web of interpersonal dynamics that made the strip work. Dark-haired “Boston sub-deb” Veronica Lodge moved to Riverdale in Pep #26 (April), giving blonde girl-next-door Betty Cooper competition for Archie’s affections. Her father, wealthy U.S. Senator Hiram Lodge, followed four issues later. Reggie Mantle, son of the city’s Highway Commissioner, had no lines in his first four-panel appearance in Jackpot #5 (Spring). It was the following issue that established his sometimes-not-so-friendly rivalry with

In December, Fawcett released not one but three oversize reprint collections in time for Christmas. Xmas Comics #2 and Gift Comics #1 were 324-page giants selling for 50¢. The one-shot Holiday Comics offered 196 pages for half that. These stocking stuffers were a great way for the publisher to share a creatively and financially rewarding year with its young fans.

Archie for the girls’ attention. To pay for his first car, a dilapidated jalopy held together with chewing gum and prayer, the enterprising Andrews boy started his own taxi service, much to the regret of his first fare, new Riverdale High principal Mr. Weatherbee, he of the portly frame, pince-nez glasses, and poorly attached toupee. Creator Bob Montana was feeling his oats now, no longer dependent on Vic Bloom or Harry Shorten to supply the strip’s dialogue. His comedy sense had matured. Each episode built around a believable premise readers could readily see themselves in, then descended into hilarious anarchy as its hero, through bad luck and his own thoughtless impetuosity, created chaos all around him. Montana didn’t worry much about keeping the details consistent—Miss Grundy taught whatever subject a particular gag required— but readers didn’t care. From getting himself unintentionally elected class president to dressing in drag to avoid being caught in a girls’ summer camp after hours to voting in the halls of Congress as Senator Lodge’s accidental proxy, Archie could be counted on to deliver big laughs.

The Kid Makes Good 1942 was less than a stellar year for Maurice Coyne, Louis Silberkleit, and John Goldwater, as paper rationing put the brakes on any expansion of their M.L.J. comic book line. Together with low sales, the restrictions killed Blue Ribbon Comics, the line’s pioneering title, and led to a change in format for Top Notch Comics. The monthly Zip Comics had no June issue, while the quarterly Shield-Wizard Comics missed its Spring issue. Special Comics, retitled Hangman Comics with its second issue, did have a Spring issue but then lay dormant until

Joining the cast of “Archie” in 1942 were Veronica Lodge, Reggie Mantle, and Principal Weatherbee. TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

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When Montana received his draft notice late in the year, Herbert “Red” Holmdale and Harry Sahle stepped in. Though professional enough, their work lacked Montana’s skill for conveying character through facial expression and body language or the small-town atmosphere of his backgrounds. That the publishers okayed the launch of a solo title despite Montana’s departure spoke volumes about their confidence in the character’s staying power. Archie Comics #1, cover-dated December, hit the newsstands mid-autumn, its back pages filled with four funny animal strips by Joseph “Joe” Edwards, a Demby Studio alumnus with animation training. “Cubby the Bear,” “Squoimy the Worm,” “Bumbie the Bee-Tective,” and “Judge Owl’s Fables” were aimed squarely at undemanding youngsters content with cute characters with rudimentary personalities performing

Galileo, Beethoven, and Leonardo da Vinci. Three strips came to an end: “Rang-a-Tang” and “Captain Flag” were gone for good; “The Fox” would have to wait until the super-hero renaissance of the 1960s to see print once more. The remaining Blue Ribbon features lived on in other books, “Corporal Collins” consigned to guest appearances in Pep Comics’ “Sergeant Boyle,” “Tales from the Witch’s Cauldron” (a horror anthology debuting in issue #20) moving to Zip Comics, and “Mr. Justice” retaining his spot in Jackpot Comics. His takedown of the dictator of Mittleuropa complete, Joe Blair and Sam Cooper’s caped phantom returned to battling horrortinged menaces like The Gargoyle, The Mad Monk, and the undead spirits inhabiting Pandora’s Box.

The popularity of “Archie” justified adding a solo title to the MLJ line-up. TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

slapstick antics or gently teaching a moral lesson. They weren’t bad, but they paled before Dell’s battalion of licensed cartoon stars. The innocence of Edwards’ work was a far cry from the violence and brutality permeating M.L.J.’s super-hero series. The influence of the Simon and Kirby team across the line was obvious, not only in the frenetic mayhem of the fight scenes but also in the villainy on display. Every hero occasionally clashed with Axis troops, saboteurs, or fifth columnists, but costumed antagonists were the preferred alternative, especially if they were Nazis. Baron Gestapo, Count

Berlin, The Hun, and Captain Swastika returned again and again only to be slapped down once more in a symbolic cycle that bordered on ritual. Though comparable in quality to what was coming out of the Timely offices, this material wasn’t selling at Timely levels, as became obvious over the course of the year. The cancellation of Blue Ribbon Comics with issue #22 (March) meant the end of some series dating back to its earliest issues and the emigration of others. “Loop Logan” and “Ty-Gor” had already disappeared following the January issue (#20), replaced by biographical one-offs featuring 155

“Steel Sterling,” lead feature of Zip Comics, also began taking on monstrous opponents such as The Hyena, The Werewolf of France, and The Creeper. Artist Irv Novick and scripter Joe Blair gave their Man of Steel his first recurring enemy in the July issue (#27). With his blonde crewcut, monocle, and black tights emblazoned with a blood-red swastika, Baron Gestapo bore a superficial resemblance to Fawcett’s Captain Nazi, but the huge fangs he sported and his savage demeanor made him a lowbrow echo of the coldblooded, aristocratic ubermensch. Able to go toe to toe with the super-strong Sterling, the baron returned for more the following issue, then again in Jackpot Comics #6 (Summer). The villains who plagued “Black Jack” all reflected the hero’s playing card motif: Pokerface, Deuces Wilde, The Queen of Hearts, Fan Tan, and so on. Tiresome though the gimmick threatened to become, it did give the feature a unique hook that set it apart from its peers. Co-creator Al Camy drew the year’s first five installments before handing it off to Warren King and Red Holmdale, who alternated episodes thereafter. The title’s back pages underwent a rethink, beginning with the discontinuation of the western “Nevada Jones” as of issue #26 (May) to make room for the retitled Blue Ribbon refugee “Tales of the Black Witch.” It lasted all of three issues before being replaced in turn by “Zoom O’Day,” a war strip centered on a Marine Corps fighter pilot. A new

“The Web” was the last major MLJ hero introduced in the 1940s. TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

super-hero displaced “Captain Valor” and “Dicky in the Magic Forest” with issue #27. Criminology professor John Raymond led a double life as “The Web,” a mystery-man in green-andyellow whose costume included a unique cape of webbing, his secret known only to his prize student Rose Wayne. Scripting credits for the strip are lost, while several hands contributed to the art beginning with John Cassone. A generic costumed hero apart from his distinctive garb, The Web got a big push from management, joining Steel Sterling and Black Jack on the covers. The conversion of Top Notch Comics to Top Notch Laugh Comics with its June issue was an early harbinger of a turn away from the super-hero genre. “The Wizard,” “The Firefly,” “Bob Phantom,” “Keith Kornell,” “Wings Johnson,” “The St. Louis Kid,” and “Fran Frazer” were all unceremoniously dropped, replaced by a variety of humor strips. Only “The Black Hood” and “Kardak the Mystic Magician” survived the transition, though Kardak was to last just three issues in the new format. The title’s intended star was “Pokey Oakey,” a strip by Don Dean about a hillbilly lawman borrowing shamelessly from Al Capp’s Li’l Abner without that strip’s biting social commentary. Dean also contributed “Señor Siesta,” about a pint-size peasant grandly billed as

“the South American Charlie Chaplin.” Both features were amusing, though modern readers may take umbrage with the clichés and stereotypes they perpetuated. Other strips of note were “Suzie,” starring a scatterbrained blonde who inadvertently wreaked havoc wherever she went; “Percy,” a new Bob Montana strip following the misfortunes of pampered, wealthy teenager Percival Plummer who longed to be considered just one of the boys; “Gloomy Gus,” a fantasy about a homeless ghost searching for someplace to haunt; and “The Three Monkey-teers,” a funny animal strip centered on three simian brothers named Sassafras, Yahudi, and Small Fry who run away to the big city. Falling under the unwholesome influence of a sewer rat named Fagin, the trio were saved from a life of crime in the December issue (#31) by Stupidman, a delicatessen counterman (counterrodent?) turned costumed vigilante. As for Black Hood, artist Al Camy and writer Harry Shorten steered him clear of Nazi and Japanese threats. Costumed villains like The Fly, The Aztec, The Mold, and The Son of The Skull (offspring of the Hood’s arch-nemesis) were the order of the day. Later episodes were drawn by Sam Cooper and others. Losing his berth in Top Notch wasn’t the end for The Wizard, who still held down his half of the quarterly

Shield-Wizard Comics, but the mobsters and spies Harry Shorten and Paul Reinman threw at the Man with the Super-Brain lacked the visual appeal of the foes his co-star faced. Topping Steel Sterling, “The Shield” added not one but two super-Nazis to his rogues’ gallery. The Hun, who carried a shield like Captain America, took on the costumed FBI agent several times, both here and in Pep Comics. The Strangler was more of the same but had one of the genre’s more unusual henchmen, a cocaine addict known only as Snowbird. Shield had to face these new dangers at a disadvantage, because co-creators Shorten and Irv Novick had stripped their flag-draped brainchild of his powers in Pep #29 (July), a move considered so significant that it was heralded on the cover. Solo series for the leads’ kid sidekicks Dusty the Boy Detective and Roy the Super Boy rounded out Shield-Wizard. Billed as “The Boy Buddies” in the back of Hangman Comics, Roy and Dusty enrolled in military school, a development ignored in their appearances elsewhere. “The Hangman” itself remained one of the most violent super-hero strips of the era, its episodes loaded with scenes of sadism and torture. Bob Dickering’s grim alter ego dueled with enemies who tended to die gruesome deaths, though a few hung on to return in later episodes. Captain Swastika was the most persistent, appearing

The conversion of Top Notch Comics to Top Notch Laugh Comics signaled a turn away from costumed crusaders to humor that in time took hold across the entire MLJ line. TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

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five times in ‘42, once teamed with The Executioner, another murderous product of the Third Reich. Harry Lucey and Irv Novick handled most of the art for “Hangman,” with William Woolfolk writing a majority of the scripts. The fantasy strip “Danny in Wonderland” took its own dark turn in Pep #31 (November) with the death of Snapper, the titular character’s beloved dog. Any resulting trauma was short-lived, however, as the pup was magically resurrected the following issue. A pair of lesser series, “Kayo Ward” and “Jolly Roger,” got the axe mid-summer, replaced as of the August Pep (#30) by “Captain Commando and the Boy Soldiers,” a blatant rip-off of “The Boy Commandos” by Jerry Iger and Alex Blum (it even included a kid named Flatbush!). It was unusual for Harry Shorten to look outside the M.L.J. bullpen for new series. Whatever his motive for doing so at this juncture, it certainly wasn’t founded in the originality or quality of the material.

Pulped The imposition of paper rationing hit some pulp publishers’ comic book lines harder than others, their quota determined by market share and other esoteric data. Street & Smith, one of the few houses to stay profitable in the face of competition from paperbacks, had the luxury of nearly doubling its output. The cancellation of the Ledger Syndicate’s Shadow newspaper strip as of June 13 meant the end of reprints in the pages of Shadow Comics, new episodes of the title character beginning with the first monthly issue (#18, September). Writer Walter Gibson fell back on a previous strategy, adapting stories from the pulps stripped to the bone to fit into 10 pages or less, with Jack Binder succeeding strip artist Vernon Greene at the drawing board. The title’s back pages remained chaotic, with only the detective series “Nick Carter” and “Danny Garrett” appearing with anything approaching regularity. Resident super-hero “The Hooded Wasp” disappeared for three issues (#15-17), yielding his pages to the premiere of a new character. Koppy McFad, “the boy with the most comic books in America,” created his own costumed identity

to protect his bucolic hometown of Yapburg. As “Supersnipe,” the masked and caped boy drove his family and the local authorities crazy with his daring deeds, for the menaces he combated existed only in his imagination. In the first episode, for example, Supersnipe dashed around town looking for the fifth columnists he was sure were behind an outbreak of German measles. Cartoonist George Marcoux, whose previous credits included a long stint ghosting Percy Crosby’s kid strip Skippy, was the creative talent behind The wholly derivative “Captain Commando and The Boy Soldiers” this sly take on the costumed answered the burning question “What if Captain America led The hero. Reader response was Boy Commandos?” TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc. so strong that the struggling tives with names like “Caligari, King Army and Navy Comics was of Conjurers” and “Mnemo the Mind retitled Supersnipe Comics as of issue Wizard” parade through its pages. #6 (October), its former line-up gutted Two noteworthy features appeared in to make room for Marcoux’s chaosthe November issue (#8): “Abbott and creating boy hero. Costello,” cartoonist Al Bare’s interThe quarterlies Doc Savage Compretation of the #1 box office stars ics and Super-Magician Comics were of 1942, and “That Men May Live,” promoted to bi-monthly status with a two-page tribute to those Street & their ninth and fifth issues, respecSmith staffers serving in the military. tively. Aside from its eponymous star All of the publisher’s titles, including and his fellow super-hero “Ajax the the bi-monthly True Sport PictureSun Man,” Doc Savage Comics was Stories (formerly titled Sport Comics) a hodgepodge of filler material that and the quarterlies Bill Barnes and rarely lasted beyond a single installTrail Blazers, were packaged by the ment, a never-completed adaptation Jack Binder studio, as were Remember of Robert Louis Stevenson’s adventure Pearl Harbor and two other one-shots. novel Kidnapped illustrated by Jon Devil Dog Comics was dedicated to the Small being the notable exception. U.S. Marine Corps, its long lead story a The adventures of “Blackstone the history of that service branch. It also Magician” as envisioned by Walter included several shorter features, Gibson and Jack Binder remained the some historical (“Rogers’ Rangers,” highlight not only of Super-Magician “How We Got Alaska”), some fictional Comics but of the entire Street & (“Red Rogers of the Rangers” and “The Smith line. The plots stayed reasonBoy Rangers,” starring a patriotic kid ably close to plausibility as a rule, and gang), all scripted by Walter Gibson. every issue incorporated a two-page The most unusual Street & Smith propanel that put the series’ exotic setduction for 1942 was How to Draw for tings to good use. In issue #5 (July), the Comics, which combined biograBlackstone acquired a traveling comphies of Binder Studio personnel with panion, a young American named rudimentary art instruction cribbed Rhoda Brent whom the stage conjurer from the Famous Artists School rescued from Malay pirates. Their mail-order cartooning course. What relationship was a platonic, nigh prompted this one-of-a-kind comic is paternal one (as it had to be, given unclear. Perhaps it was a bid to jumpthe real, married Blackstone). There start a new generation of comic book were no regular back-up features in artists in hopes of restocking the talthe title, which instead saw a series ent larder before the military could of fictional magicians-turned-detecempty it. 157

Max Plaisted, George Mandel, and Elmer Wexler, respectively. Other strips were not so lucky. The first to go was “Nickie Norton of the Secret Service,” replaced as of issue #25 by “Hale of the Herald,” a gender-reversed Invisible Scarlet O’Neill starring a meek newspaper reporter who launched a second career as a plainclothes super-hero after a dying scientist entrusted him with a stash of invisibility pills. “The Woman in Red” and “The Rio Kid” were also casualties, bumped to make room for “Lucky Lawrence, Leatherneck,” a so-so strip about a Marine. Sales champion of the Better roster, Exciting Comics owed its success to its lead feature. “The Black Terror” and his identically costumed boy pal Tim had by now so thoroughly deposed “The Mask,” the title’s original lead, that Tony Corby’s hooded alter ego disappeared from its pages completely following the August issue (#21). Captain America wannabe “The Liberator” was the only series besides “Black Terror” to run uninterrupted throughout the 1942-dated issues. “Jim Hatfield, Texas Ranger” and “Ted Crane, Adventurer” were cancelled late in the year, while the military strips “Sergeant Bill King,” “Larry North, USN,” and “Crash Carter, Air Cadet,” the latter drawn by new Sangor Studio art director Bob Oksner that debuted in issue #16 (January), appeared intermittently. Replacing the cancelled features were “Pepper Swift,” an Oksner-illustrated adventure series centered on a boy archaeologist and his two-fisted guardian, and “The American Eagle,” a series that debuted in the second issue of America’s Best Comics, a new quarterly showcase title, before settling into its berth in Exciting. A lab accident involving a serum and a black light ray endowed timid Tom Standish with superstrength, invulnerability, and the power of flight which he used to counter Nazi subterfuge as the costumed hero of the title. Billed as “democracy’s champion” and aided by Bud Pierce, who adopted the alias and costume of The Eaglet in the second episode, this cross between Superman and Captain America was created by Richard Hughes and Kin Platt.

It’s uncertain how many would-be comic book artists bought Street & Smith’s How to Draw for the Comics or how many of them actually broke into the field as a result. TM and © respective copyright holder.

The Binder Studio had also been contributing art to Ned Pines’ Better Publications comics line, but by mid-year almost all of Better’s contents were being supplied by the packaging service managed by Pines’ partner Benjamin Sangor. Though technically a separate business entity, the Sangor art shop functioned as an in-house bullpen. The monthlies Exciting Comics and Thrilling Comics released just nine issues each in 1942, Exciting skipping its January, May, and September editions, Thrilling its April, August, and November ones. The third Better monthly, Startling Comics, was demoted to a bi-monthly with its April issue (#14). Super-heroes still ruled the roost in the three anthologies, virtually all of them scripted by editor Richard Hughes, who balanced their opposition between costumed criminals and Axis-sponsored threats.

At the same time Startling Comics was being demoted to a bi-monthly, its cover star was receiving his own quarterly solo title. The Fighting Yank #1 hit newsstands midsummer bearing a September cover date. The “Doc Strange” team of Richard Hughes and Jack Binder produced the

“Doc Strange” reclaimed the cover of Thrilling Comics from “The American Crusader” as of the February issue (#25). One of the few heroes still drawn by Jack Binder’s outfit, Doc had picked up a kid sidekick in the previous issue. After Strange rescued Mike Ellis, young heir to a large fortune, from a catastrophe of his own making, the boy abandoned his willful ways and, after spending months training himself physically and mentally, joined his idol in action against The Emperor, a Ming the Merciless lookalike whose twisted science created an army of zombies, a horde of “fire apes,” and a fantastic subterranean vehicle capable of drilling through solid rock. Though he didn’t have Doc’s alosun-derived superpowers, Mike proved invaluable to the intrepid adventurer. “The American Crusader,” “The Ghost,” and “The Lone Eagle,” an aviation strip, retained their places in the back pages of Thrilling, still illoed by

Mike Ellis earned the right to join “Doc Strange” and gal pal Virginia in action by rescuing the duo from the clutches of the evil Emperor. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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though Richard Hughes is a likely suspect. Fighting Yank #1 was the first Pines comic published under the alternate corporate identity of Nedor Publishing. Later issues of America’s Best Comics and the quarterly Real Life Comics, which was bumped up to bimonthly status with issue #5 (May), were also released with the Nedor imprint. Whether this was done for the usual tax reasons or to somehow skirt rationing rules is uncertain.

Though his name and the blurb on the cover of Startling Comics #18 implied “Pyroman” had fire-based powers, the new hero actually used electricity as his weapon. TM and © respective copyright holder.

adventures of Bruce Carter and his bulletproof cloak in both books. The Yank acquired an arch-nemesis in Startling #13 (February), a disfigured scientist named Mavelli who hated all mankind for his own ugliness. The misanthropic madman returned three more times following Fighting Yank’s defeat of his Faceless Legion. Co-stars “Captain Future” and “Don Davis, Espionage Ace” appeared in every ‘42 issue, but the October issue (#17) saw the final episodes of “Mystico,” “The Masked Rider,” and “Biff Powers, Big Game Hunter.” “Detective-Sergeant Burke” and “G-Man Dalton” preceded them into oblivion a few months earlier, replaced by “The Four Comrades,” a kid gang dressed in matching red-white-and-blue costumes. Maurice Gutwirth manned the drawing board. Startling #18 (December) premiered “Pyroman,” a new super-hero series. Framed for murder by a master saboteur named Dizazta, electrical engineering student Dick Martin was sentenced to die in the electric chair. Thanks to an earlier laboratory accident, the lethal device didn’t kill Dick but gave him astonishing electrical powers. Escaping in the confusion, the condemned man dug up a red-and-blue costume and, as Pyroman (a name more suggestive of fire than electricity), exonerated his civilian identity and began a crusade against crime, injustice, etc. His creators’ identities are lost,

A fourth Nedor book, Coo Coo Comics, was a funny animal title packaged by the Sangor shop, which by mid-1942 consisted of two units. The first, made up of the same crew that produced the Cinema Comics Herald theatrical giveaways, relocated to New York City following Paramount Pictures’ buyout of the Fleischer Studios and subsequent closure of its Miami facilities. The other operated out of Los Angeles and was manned primarily by veterans of the Disney Studios. Former Disney animator and Sangor staffer James F. “Jim” Davis (no relation to the Garfield artist) later recalled the studio’s genesis: “[Fellow animator] Jay Morton, in Miami, somehow made contact with Ben Sangor, and had lots of us who worked at the Fleischer Cartoon Studios draw comics for Sangor.… We were all young and the magazine work was a way to make an extra

Coo Coo Comics was the first of many funny animal titles produced by Ben Sangor’s packaging service. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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Kin Platt’s “Supermouse” was the first funny animal super-hero created for comic books. TM and © respective copyright holder.

buck to help pay the costs of raising families. At the outset the rates were only $5 per page for scripts and $10 per page for art work.… [Most of the artists and writers] were there as a kind of stepping place—a first stop to either, hopefully, become a syndicated cartoonist for the newspapers or going into book illustration. Those who started never dreamed, including myself, that they would [be remembered] as a comic book artist.” (Vance 12-13) The new quarterly’s most important contribution to the medium, and the title’s only recurring character, was “Supermouse,” the first funny animal super-hero created for comic books. A wedge of cheese soaked in “a liquid distillate of lightning, thunder, concentrated sun atoms and a teaspoon of sugar” gave the power-packed rodent “the strength of 14,376 men and a boy,” which he vowed to use in “a war on crime—and cats!” Created by Kin Platt with tongue firmly in cheek, “Supermouse” appeared on the newsstands two months ahead of the premiere of The Mouse of Tomorrow, an animated short from Terry-Toons, a studio notorious for its bargainbasement production values, starring Super Mouse. Though the cartoon was in production long before Platt’s story saw print, studio head Paul Terry chose to rename his character Mighty Mouse in future installments rather than take Ned Pines to court. Other Sangor artists contributing to early issues of Coo Coo Comics included Jim Mooney, Art Gates, Bob Naylor, and Reuben “Rube” Grossman. Though the rest of the Better/Nedor line was dumping its old genre strips to clear space for more super-heroes, the

descendent of the infamous Hun chieftain, was defeated through the combined efforts of Magno and the villain’s own mother, her patriotism stronger than her feelings for her treasonous son. Over in Lightning Comics, the electrically powered Lash Lightning matched wits with supercriminals The Vulture, The Eel, and The Toad, only occasionally tackling Axis enemies like Professor Grosskop or The Teacher. It was while dealing with the latter in Lightning #13 that Lash acquired a new partner. Injured in an explosion, Lightning imparted some of his powers to Isobel Blake, the daughter of an accused traitor, who proceeded to foil The Teacher’s dastardly plans and exonerate her father as Lightning Girl. By year’s end, paper rationing had reduced the Ace comic book line to a single title, the showcase book Four Favorites. TM and © respective copyright holder.

addition of Coo Coo was evidence that Pines, Sangor, and Hughes were not blind to a growing market for titles outside that omnipresent genre, even as they hedged their bets with the creation of Supermouse.

The wave of cancellations and suspensions meant the end of many of Ace’s second-stringers. “Vulcan the Volcanic Man,” “The Raven,” “Buckskin” (briefly revived in SuperMystery #12), “Dr. Nemesis,” “Marvo the Magician,” “The Flag,” and “The Lone Warrior” were all gone by the October issue of Four Favorites (#7), along with newcomers “The Sword,”

in which sickly teenager Arthur Lake discovered he was the rightful heir to Excalibur, the legendary sword that granted him superhuman powers, and “Mr. Risk,” a private eye strip from George Mandel. “The Unknown Soldier” and “Captain Courageous” hung on as the bottom half of that title’s bill. Publisher A.A. Wyn had never displayed much confidence in his comic books, none of which ever achieved monthly status, but he must have seen some value to them to keep them visible on the newsstands in spite of the harsh restrictions under which they labored. Nor could Crestwood Publications escape the realities of war: its sole title, the monthly Prize Comics, had no April, June, or August dated issues. Its super-heroic stars “The Green Lama,” “Doctor Frost,” “The Black Owl,” and “Yank and Doodle” divided their time between rounding up Axis spies and tackling costumed crooks, with the Owl focusing largely on the latter. His foes included charmers like The Dark Terror, The Green Mummy, Chief Skull-Face, The Tiger Lady, and The Laughing Head. One

Paper rationing proved brutal for two other pulp publishers’ comic book divisions. Ace Magazines, which began 1942 with five titles, finished the year with one. The first to feel the axe were Banner Comics, retitled Captain Courageous Comics and cancelled as of issue #6 (March), and Our Flag Comics (#5, April). The senior Ace titles, Lightning Comics and SuperMystery Comics, lasted the longest, not suspending publication until their June (#13) and July (#14) issues, respectively. Only the showcase title Four Favorites remained to keep its best-known super-heroes “Lash Lightning” and “Magno the Magnetic Man” in the public eye. Ace managing editor Frederick “Fred” Gardener, nee Onofrio Giaculli, used the same blend of Axis villains and costumed baddies that Better did, with the patriotically themed heroes like Captain Courageous and The Flag more likely to face the former. Thus in Super-Mystery Comics, Magno and Davey battled their arch-foes The Clown and The Cobra as well as new antagonists The Hook, The Puma, and Hans Attila, costumed Nazis one and all. Attila, a German-American

Like several other heroes this year, “Lash Lightning” took on an identically powered female partner, in this case Isobel Blake a.k.a. Lightning Girl. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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villain, a clever and ruthless saboteur named Funnibone, wasn’t content with getting stomped by Black Owl, turning up two issues later to let Yank and Doodle have their turn. America’s Fighting Twins also got a chance this year to take their revenge on the Nazi spy who killed their mother when they were babies. The title’s most exciting feature remained Dick Briefer’s “Frankenstein.” The murderous monster’s sworn enemy, Bulldog Denny, succeeded in turning the creature good in the September issue (#24) thanks to a friend’s experimental formula, but it didn’t last. In the following issue, Denny recruited Yank and Doodle, The Black Owl, The Green Lama, Doctor Frost, and Ken Browne’s “The General and the Corporal,” stars of a slapstick military strip introduced in issue #20 (March), to aid him in ending the menace of Frankenstein once and for all. They didn’t. A well-meaning scientist named Dr. Ullrich succeeded where Denny’s once-in-a-lifetime team failed by creating a mate for the monster in return for his promise to cease threatening mankind. But an angry mob bearing the requisite torches and pitchforks ruined it all by burning Ullrich’s lab to the ground, taking the good doctor and Mrs. Frankenstein with it. The horror continued.

Last Gasps and Second Chances “If they had had paper quotas then,” Busy Arnold observed in 1970, “even Victor Fox and Harry Chesler would have made big money during the war years (Kooiman 23).” Perhaps so, but that boat had sailed. Though both men’s enterprises released issues bearing a 1942 cover date, they were already out of business by the start of the year. The same held true for Jerry Iger’s Great Comics. Fox Publications put on a good show to the last. Nothing in the twelve ‘42dated comics gave any indication of the financial pit its owner had dug for himself. The debut of a new title, V…Comics, in fact suggested the opposite. Composed mostly of leftover episodes of “The Black Fury,” “The Banshee,” and other series from the defunct Fantastic Comics, the new book also debuted two related strips. Shot down behind enemy lines, American fighter pilot Jerry Steele sustained terrible

injuries while escaping from a POW camp. Nursed back to health by Father Duroc, secret leader of the dreaded resistance fighters known as the V-Group, Steele was selected to receive the miraculous serum that transformed him into the superhuman “V-Man.” Returning to the States, the Captain America clone teamed with “The V-Boys,” a nationwide organization of kids more than a little suggestive of the Sentinels of Liberty, who also starred in their own strip. Like most of the comics produced under editor Abner Sundell’s supervision, these latecomers featured clean, actionpacked art from the Rice-Cazeneuve studio. V...-Comics only lasted The last title added to the Fox Publications roster before the company went belly up, V...- Comics starred yet another “Captain America” rip-off. until its March issue TM and © respective copyright holder. (#2). It was the last of tributions from freelancers George the pre-war Fox comics, with the JanTuska and Art Pinajian. For reasons uary-dated Wonderworld Comics #30, past recalling, Chesler published an Weird Comics #20, The Flame #8, Big 3 undated third issue of Lev Gleason’s #7, The Eagle #4, and U.S. Jones #2 and cancelled Captain Battle Comics under March-dated Mystery Men Comics the corporate name Magazine Press. #31, Blue Beetle #11, and Green Mask This oddity reprinted stories from #9 preceding it into limbo. that publisher’s Silver Streak Comics All four titles of Harry Chesler’s interspersed with new filler material Dynamic Publications line were off by Madden. the stands by mid-winter, Dynamic By contrast, Great Comics PublishComics and Punch Comics ending ing went out kicking and screaming, with their February issues, Yanchanging the rosters of Great Comics kee Comics and Scoop Comics with and Choice Comics with every issue in their March issues. Only one new hopes of finding a feature that grabbed series was introduced in these final buyers’ attention, retaining only the months. Bill Madden’s “Rocketboy” super-heroes “Kangaroo Man,” “The was a spin-off of “Rocketman and Great Yarro,” and “Madame Strange” Rocketgirl,” who gave young Billy to the end. Scripted by editor Ruth Woods a cut-down version of their Roche or publisher Jerry Iger and flying rigs to aid him on his quest for illustrated by studio regulars Alex his long-missing father. Otherwise, Blum, Pagsiland Isip, Victor Pazmiño, the contents remained the same Rudy Palais, Mort Leav, and Sy Reit, originality-challenged mix of superthe new material was a dull olio of hero, detective, military, and space adventure, science fiction, kid gang, opera strips, some dating back to the crime, fantasy, and animal strips. publisher’s original late-1930s outOnly the Palais-drawn “Futuro,” in put. Edited by Phil Sturm, the four which the mysterious time traveler books were cranked out by Dynamof the title led his squad of U.S. Futuic’s in-house creative staff with conrians—superhuman agents named 161

printer based in Holyoke, Massachusetts, that counted among its clients several past and present comic book publishers. Holyoke’s owner, newspaper heir Sherman Bowles, took over two titles formerly published by Frank Temerson’s Helnit Publications, which owed Holyoke thousands of dollars in delinquent printing fees. Both Cat-Man Comics and Captain Aero Comics continued to be produced under the editorial guidance of Charles M. Quinlan. Paper rationing did ultimately have its effects: the monthly Cat-Man skipped its August issue and Captain Aero was reduced to bi-monthly status with its eighth issue (September).

The giveaway C-M-O Comics was the last hurrah for the publisher formerly known as Centaur. TM and © respective copyright holder.

Faith, Freedom, Truth, Courage, and Justice—against an alliance of Hitler and Satan, showed any promise. Sales remained moribund, and Iger was forced to abandon his dream of his own successful line of comics. It was only the military humor digest Khaki Wacky that kept Comics Corporation of America, the former Centaur, on the newsstands into the summer of 1942. The January Amazing-Man Comics (#26) and Man of War Comics (#2) were the last appearances of their title stars and the line’s other super-heroes, while the nonfiction World Famous Heroes hung on through its April issue (#4). The company’s collapse was a harbinger of the string of misfortunes to befall packager Funnies, Inc., later in the year. CCA’s final comics were two issues of C-M-O Comics, a giveaway for the Chicago Mail Order company featuring a handful of original strips, including a trio of derivative super-heroes: “The Invisible Terror,” “‘Star-Spangled’ Branner,” and the shapeshifting “Plymo the Rubber Man.” It is unclear if Funnies, Inc. had a hand in the title, as the only contributor identified to date is Bob Lubbers, who drew the teen detective series “Jack and Judy Alden” in C-M-O #2. A new player entered the comic book marketplace in 1942 with a pair of familiar titles. The Holyoke Publishing Company was an offshoot of a

The change in publisher notwithstanding, Cat-Man Comics carried on as if it had never been off the newsstands. Editor Quinlan kept the title’s roster of super-heroes focused on combatting the Axis, with an occasional costumed criminal or monster thrown in for variety. Quinlan himself drew the exploits of “The Cat-Man and The Kitten” from scripts provided by his teenage son Charles M. Quinlan, Jr. The high school student, who had been quietly collaborating with his father since his days with Worth Publishing, had a good if uninspired grasp of plot, story structure, and characterization. Their most interesting story for the year ran in Cat-Man #11 (June), which teamed Lt. David Merrywether’s feline alter ego with Matzi Nogi, a Japanese-American

There was little in his “Volton the Human Generator” strip to indicate that 16-year-old creator Joe Kubert would become one of the biggest names in comics. TM and © respective copyright holder.

G-2 agent. The Quinlans gave Kitten her own series in the March issue (#8), teaming her with Mickey, boy pal of “The Deacon,” as “The Little Leaders.” The series, set in a summer camp, focused almost as much on the awkward relationship between its teenaged stars as on their adventures, with Kitten rarely appearing in

The father-and-son team of Charles Quinlan Sr. and Jr. put kid sidekicks The Kitten and Mickey as “The Little Leaders.” TM and © respective copyright holder.

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costume. Later episodes were entrusted to other hands, including newcomer Solomon “Sol” Brodsky. “The Deacon,” along with fellow mystery-men “The Rag Man,” and “The Hood” (a generic masked avenger in primary-colored tights) appeared in every 1942 issue, but many of the title’s features disappeared from its back pages over the course of the year. “The Pied Piper,” “Hurricane Harrigan,” “Lance Rand,” and “Lucky Landers” were replaced by Allen Ulmer’s espionage strip “Black Friday” and three costumed heroes. “The Phantom Falcon” was your standard masked aviator (no ties to Fiction House’s “Phantom Falcons” series), “Blackout” a Gestapo-blinded newspaper reporter able to see with special glasses, and “Volton the Human Generator” was an electrically powered hero created and illustrated by sometime Eisner Studio staffer Joe Kubert. No relation to Quinlan’s earlier character of that name, Volton was considered important enough that he appeared alongside Cat-Man on the cover of issue #8 (March). The other Holyoke title inherited from Helnit, Captain Aero Comics, offered a similar combination of old and new series. Cover feature “Captain Aero” and “The Flag Man” were the book’s stars, their stories produced by the Quinlans and Ulmer. Aero got a kid sidekick in the May issue (#8), an orphan named Buster Mason. Flag Man’s little buddy Rusty

briefly teamed with Mickey as “The Pals of Freedom” before The Deacon’s pal threw him over for The Kitten. Two characters from the defunct Captain Fearless Comics, the plainclothes super-hero “Alias X” and the patriotic “Miss Liberty,” were also played up. Later additions to the line-up included “Hammerhead Hawley,” a Navy strip by 15-year-old high schooler Russell “Russ” Heath, and “The Red Cross,” an American doctor turned costumed crusader who specialized in missions of mercy behind enemy lines. Cocreated by Charles Nicholas and Sol Brodsky, he was deemed worthy of cover exposure alongside the title’s eponymous star. At the time Victor Fox declared bankruptcy on March 6, 1942, he too owed thousands in printing bills to Holyoke. As part of the settlement, Fox turned over publishing rights to the Blue Beetle title along with the unused inventory of his liquidated comics line. The first two Holyoke issues (#12-13) used up those leftovers, which included not only the last few “Beetle” episodes but also installments of “V-Man,” “The Black Fury,” and “Spark Stevens.” Charles Quinlan and his staff began producing new content with the September issue (#14). In the following issue, Quinlan gave Blue Beetle a costumed kid sidekick, a street waif named Sparkington J. Northrup a.k.a. Sparky, without bothering with an origin or any other justification. The boy simply stripped off his outer clothes to reveal a bare-legged variant of his mentor’s chain-link togs and waded into action against such menaces as Madame Fang, The Torch, and The Vampire. Quinlan and Phil Bard handled the art for the main feature while Sol Brodsky, Joe Kubert, and others took over the back-up features. Quinlan’s art aside, none of the material was as good as the Fox versions, but Blue Beetle nonetheless became Holyoke’s best-selling comic.

A Milestone Reached

Printer turned publisher Holyoke took over the Blue Beetle comic book as part of its deal with the bankrupt Victor Fox. TM and © DC Comics.

The war caught up with the Columbia Comic Corporation on two fronts in 1942, as its small roster of characters began regularly facing Axis enemies while rationing left the tiny comic book line scrambling to stay alive, only its ties to the McNaught 163

Gardner Fox and Fred Guardineer’s “Raja the Arabian Knight” was the first Islamic super-hero. TM and © respective copyright holder.

and Markey syndicates entitling it to what paper it got. The monthly Big Shot Comics had no March or May issues. Strained circumstances notwithstanding, editor Vin Sullivan, head writer Gardner Fox, and the artistic trio of Ogden Whitney, Mart Bailey, and Fred Guardineer continued to deliver a consistently entertaining product. Comic strip favorites “Joe Palooka,” “Dixie Dugan,” “Charlie Chan,” and “Sparky Watts” remained the title’s big draw. “Skyman,” the most popular of Big Shot’s original characters, was the only Columbia hero to regularly battle costumed villains like The Black Lama, The Scarlet Scourge, The Prophet, and yet another Red Skull, this one not affiliated with the Third Reich. “The Face” switched mid-year from fighting crime to countering Japanese spies. Soldier of fortune “Rocky Ryan,” a reservist, was called up to active duty. A new series by Fox and Guardineer, “Raja the Arabian Knight,” debuting in the January issue (#21) featured comic books’ first Islamic superhero. Possessing no powers beyond his keen intelligence, athletic prowess, and masterful swordsmanship, Raja bested crime bosses and enemy forces alike. Despite a big build-up— he was given the cover and lead-off slot of issue #21—the series ran for just five issues. Two other series were cancelled following the August Big Shot (#27). “The Cloak” (formerly “Spy

cake, editor Stephen Douglas treated Famous Funnies #100 (November) like any other issue, offering the usual slate of newspaper strip reprints plus the Harry Peter-drawn “Fearless Flint,” who spent three episodes battling the subterranean Lava Men before moving on to the menace of mad scientist Dr. Lee Fung and his army of living gargoyles.

Chief”) and “Captain Devildog of the U.S. Marines” were replaced by reprints of the syndicated strips “Bo,” Frank Beck’s gag strip about an oversized dog, and Frank Tinsley’s “Captain Yank,” the exploits of a Marine aviator. Despite the focus on the war, Sullivan and Fox shied away from using the distorted racist caricatures seen in other comics lines for its Japanese villains.

The bi-monthly Reg’lar Fellers Heroic Comics displayed far less stability, as Funnies, Inc., mainstay Ben Thompson took over the long-running “Hydroman” from creator Bill Everett, and more than half a dozen features, including Tarpé Mills’ “The Purple Zombie” and “Mann of India,” were cancelled to make room for new super-heroes. Everett’s last artwork for Eastern Color was the pilot episode of “The Music Master,” alias violin virtuoso John Wallace, who had “become attuned to the frequency of musical sound waves” after exposure to the enchanted melody of the Pipes of Life. Music Master devoted his new sonic powers to opposing evil. In Heroic #15 (December), he picked up a boy companion, musical prodigy Penrod “Downbeat” Hunter. Another tyro hero, “Rainbow Boy,” took his initial bow in the “Hydroman” series before moving to his own strip farther back in the book. Teenage science student Jack Walton, discovering how to turn himself into a sentient rainbow at will, opted to climb into costume and fight crime. Both new heroes were co-created by Stephen Douglas.

Unable to release anything beyond the nine issues of Big Shot under its own name, Columbia turned to its printer, Eastern Color, for help. As one of the country’s largest printing companies, Eastern had a paper quota far larger than what it needed to print its own titles. The two companies reached an accord. Eastern Color released a new issue of the Skyman solo book crediting itself as publisher, along with three issues of Dixie Dugan, two of Sparky Watts, and one of Joe Palooka. Packaged by Vin Sullivan and company, these comics included new episodes of Columbia’s original series amidst reprints of their title characters’ syndicated strips. The arrangement with Columbia was not Eastern Color’s only cause for celebration in 1942. The pioneering publisher’s flagship title, Famous Funnies, became the first newsstand comic book to reach the one-hundred-issue mark, an event momentous enough to rate full-page ads in every Eastern Color and Columbia title. Aside from the cover showing the cast gathered around an enormous birthday

The same bountiful paper quota that let Eastern Color come to Columbia’s rescue also allowed the publisher to launch a pair of semi-annual titles to join the Buck Rogers and Dickie Dare solo books on the schedule. Mickey Finn collected episodes of Lank Leonard’s genial beat cop previously published in Quality’s Feature Comics, while Big Chief Wahoo reprinted the syndicated strip by Allen Saunders and Elmer Woggon about a medicine show Indian and his friend, hard-nosed newspaper reporter Steve Roper. Also on the newsstands in 1942 were all-reprint one-shots featuring bumbling knight-in-armor Oaky Doaks and the dog strip Napoleon and Uncle Elby. As a major publishing house, the David McKay Company had no problem accessing enough paper to sustain its modest line of monthly comic books. King Comics, Ace Comics, and Magic Comics, all featuring reprinted King Features Syndicate strips, never missed an issue. The only noteworthy change to their contents was the discontinuation of “Redman” following King #78 (October), one of two Jimmy Thompson strips that constituted the line’s only original material. Five undated issues (#30-34) of the more-or-less bi-monthly Feature Book were released in 1942, two starring “Blondie,” two starring “The Katzenjammer Kids,” and one collecting Clayton Knight’s “The Romance of Flying,” featuring stories drawn from aviation history. For reasons not altogether clear, King Features also authorized Dell Publishing to release issues of their anthology titles Four Color and Large Feature Comic reprinting KFS stars “Popeye,” “Flash Gordon,” and “King of the Royal Mounted” in addition to their regular appearances in the McKay titles. The comics from United Feature Syndicate enjoyed a similar lack of woes. Its two monthly titles, Tip Top Comics and Sparkler Comics, experienced no trouble maintaining their presence on newsstands. Both books showcased various

Famous Funnies was the first newsstand comic to reach its 100th issue. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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adventure series “Speck, Spot and Sis” saw its share of swastikas. Most Target features saw no art changes this year, Basil Woverton staying with “Spacehawk,” Sid Greene with “The Target,” John Daly with “Bull’s-Eye Bill,” and John Jordan on “Kit Carter, The Cadet” through all twelve 1942 issues. Harold DeLay continued his beautifully illustrated interpretations of classic novels, the conclusion of “Treasure Island” and the opening chapter of “Gulliver’s Travels” bracketing a ten-part adaptation of “The Last of the Mohicans.” Writing credits for those strips not scripted by their artists are spotty, with only Mickey Spillane’s work on “Kit Carter” identified to date. The Harry Francis Campbell aviation strip “Lucky Byrd” was permanently grounded as of Target #26, replaced with “Al T. Tude,” a slapstick series about an inept aviator who eventually adopted the costumed identity of Gooperman. It was exactly as funny as it sounds. Save for the loss of Bob Davis, Blue Bolt also weathered the year unscathed, all of its features appearing in every issue. Only “Old Cap’n Hawkins” changed hands, with Ogden Whitney replacing Henry Kiefer at the drawing board in issue #28. Prior to joining the Army, Blue Bolt had a return engagement with his old foe The Green Sorceress and participated in a wildly metatextual romp in which a pack of gangsters tried to take over the strip in order to write their costumed nemesis out of it. Fred Parrish’s azure alter ego was not the only character in the title to serve. Naval Intelligence signed up the crew of “The Phantom Sub,” while “The White Rider and Superhorse” joined the Texas Rangers. “Sergeant Spook,” his fate no longer left up to creator Malcolm Kildale, abandoned the fascinating mythos Kildale built around the character and stuck the ghostly beat cop back in the dull urban crime setting he started with. No longer rubbing elbows with his fellow spectres every issue, Spook at least acquired a boy pal named Jerry whose

United Feature Syndicate responded to America’s entry into the war by having all their resident super-heroes join the military. TM and © respective copyright holder.

UFS syndicated strips, as did the quarterly Comics on Parade, still rotating among “Li’l Abner,” “Nancy,” and “The Captain and the Kids,” and two 1942-dated issues of the irregularly published Single Series, one featuring “Jim Hardy,” the other split between “Ella Cinders” and “Abbie an’ Slats.” The stars of United Feature’s original series enlisted in the military – “The Mirror Man” and the costumed siblings known collectively as “The Triple Terror” in the Army, “Iron Vic” and “The Spark Man” in the Marines. Pearl Harbor put a sudden end to the mystery of Spark Man’s true identity. In the May Sparkler (#10), he was unceremoniously outed as Omar Kavak, already a Marine and serving in the Pacific at the beginning of that issue’s installment. Novelty Press, the comic book arm of Curtis Publishing, took a similar tack with its star super-heroes. “The Target and The Targeteers” all enlisted in Target Comics #29 (July), one in the Navy, another in the Marines, the third in the Army Air Corps, which also gained the eponymous star of Blue Bolt in issue #28 (September) of that title. Blue Bolt used his powers secretly while serving, but otherwise capes were out, khakis in for the duration. This new direction may have been due to a change in the front office, David Adams having yielded the editor’s chair to Stanley Beaman as of the line’s May-dated issues, rather than coming from Funnies, Inc. (with the Jacquet shop down three clients by year’s end, the two Novelty Press monthlies and the quarterly 4Most were now its most reliable source of revenue, so rocking the boat without approval up front seemed unlikely), or it may have been a cold splash of reality that spurred the more somber approach. Bob Davis, creator of “Dick Cole, Wonder Boy” and “Pete Stockbridge Alias The Chameleon,” was killed in a car crash on November 28, 1941, his last work appearing in Blue Bolt #20 (January). Al Fagaly, at first using Davis’ byline, stepped in to continue both features. No one could accuse the rest of the Target Comics cast of slacking off. There were more than enough Japanese and Nazi villains to go around. Even Jack Warren’s children’s

Like United Features’ heroes, Novelty Press’ big names, “The Target and The Targeteers” and “Blue Bolt,” enlisted following Pearl Harbor. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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House, which had never done more than dabble in the genre in the first place, cancelled Jumbo Comics’ “Lightning,” Jungle Comics’ “The Red Panther,” Fight Comics’ “Super-American” and “Captain Fight,” and Planet Comics’ “The Red Comet;” washing its hands of the mystery-man craze. Always more comfortable with the genres that had kept the publisher’s pulp line selling for two decades, Fiction House added a touch of horror to its existing blend of jungle, science fiction, aviation, western, animal, military, and espionage strips. As one of the largest pulp houses, the firm was entitled to enough paper under the quota system to not only keep its three monthly and three bi-monthly titles on schedule but also add a pair of quarterly solo titles, Sheena Comics and Wambi Comics, to the line-up.

psychic abilities let them communicate. John Daly made a bold move in the September episode of “Sub-Zero,” having the icy hero’s Eskimo sidekick Freezum mistaken for Japanese and sent to a relocation camp. Though the story stipulated there were subversives among the prisoners, it was a self-described “American Jap” who thwarted their sinister plans. Daly didn’t protest the camps overtly, but he did have a guard express regret that the Army couldn’t tell the traitors from the loyalists. Novelty Press continued to be the only comics publisher that seemed genuinely interested in maintaining a rapport with its audience, running reader mail and providing lighthearted “thumbnail sketches” of the creative staff in every title. The line expressed the usual patriotic sentiments, awarding letter writers who got published war stamps instead of the dollar previously given, and dabbled in the same stereotyping of the Japanese as the competition but without the grotesque dehumanization some indulged in. Like Columbia, Novelty Press dealt with the war with greater subtlety, a maturity exemplified by its putting its big names in uniform.

Behind the scenes, editorial responsibility for the Fiction House comics shifted from Malcolm Reiss, who joined former editor John “Jack” Byrne as co-publisher following the medically dictated retirement of Thurman T. Scott, to Larabie Cunningham. Most of the contents continued to come from the Roche & Iger shop, but a small in-house bullpen began to take shape this year as artists like Dan Zolnerowich, Bob Webb, and Nick Viscardi accepted the security of a staff position over the vagaries of shop or freelance work. Jerry Iger and Gene Fawcette split production duties for the line between them, Iger overseeing Jumbo, Fight, Sheena, and Wambi, Fawcette handling Jungle, Wings, Planet, and Rangers of Freedom. With the exception of several strips written by their artists and Fawcette’s non-fiction aviation fillers, no writing credits are available for the 52 Fiction House comics dated 1942, though it is reasonable to assume that Ruth Roche and studio staff writers Dana Dutch, Eleanor Brody, Harry Stein, Jean Press, and Martin Smith contributed scripts. Quality staffer Toni Blum did some writing for the line in the early part of the year before ghosting The Spirit for former Iger partner Will Eisner left her with no spare time to freelance.

Swimming Against the Tide While Eastern Color, United Feature, and Novelty Press were sending their super-heroes off to war, one publisher did away with its costumed crusaders entirely. Fiction

The onset of war did not appreciably affect the kinds of stories appearing in Jumbo Comics beyond a small increase in Axis foes for some of its characters. Cover star “Sheena, Queen of the Jungle” did cross paths with the occasional Nazi but mostly dealt with strange Burroughsian menaces like The Laughing Cannibals, Lai the Snake Goddess, and hidden races of Leopard Men, Vampire Men, and Amazons. Artist Bob Webb put the strawberry blonde heroine through her paces both in Jumbo and in Sheena Comics, loading every episode with cheesecake shots of Sheena and her ofttimes equally exposed opponents. The jungle queen’s solo title was issued first as a Spring-dated oneshot, then, when the sales figures were in, moved to quarterly status with issue #2 (Winter). Jumbo’s other major features enjoyed a full year of artistic consistency, Mort Leav drawing “ZX-5: Spies in Action,” Alex Blum illoing “Midnight the Black Stallion,” “Inspector Dayton,” and the aviation strip “Tom, Dick and Harry.” Time traveler “Stuart Taylor” was the exception, as the art chores for his encounters with Cleopatra, Genghis Khan, Aaron Burr, Simon Bolivar, Erik the Red, Ali Baba, and other heroes and villains of history passed from Sy Reit to Lee Ames to Al Camy. The days of recycling old Will Eisner art for “The Hawk” came to an end this year, with many Roche and Iger regulars taking a hand. A new strip, “The Ghost Gallery,” replaced the

“Sub-Zero” took a brave stance by depicting the Japanese-Americans sent to relocation camps as willing to risk their lives to prove their loyalty to the U.S. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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super-hero series “Lightning” in Jumbo #42 (August). Bob Hebbard illustrated the exploits of private investigator Drew Murdoch, who specialized in hauntings, werewolves, and other supernatural phenomena. Two long-running characters in Jungle Comics received makeovers at the hands of new artists. “Fantomah” went from “Mystery Woman of the Jungle” to “Daughter of the Pharaohs” when George Appel took over the feature’s art in issue #27 (March). Her superpowers long forgotten, the blonde in the Despite paper rationing, Fiction House tattered one-piece became a added two quarterlies to its schedule redhead dressed in the garb of in 1942, giving “Sheena, Queen of the Egyptian royalty after discover- Jungle” and “Wambi, Jungle Boy” their own solo titles. Sheena TM and © Galaxy ing she was the rightful queen Publishing and Valdoro Entertainment. of the lost city of Khefre. The of the Lost Empire” changes to “Tabu, Wizard of the Junwent through mulgle” when artist Saul Rosen took over tiple changes at the for George Carl Wilhelms were only drawing table before slightly less drastic: the white savage Nick Viscardi picked with the short blonde hair now had up the assignment long black hair tied with a red headwith the September band, his cape was gone, and his wizissue (#33), giving the lost world strip ardry reduced to an ill-defined “sixth the best art of its run. The cancellasense.” Cover star “Kaänga” was safe tions of “The Red Panther” and “Roy from such tinkering, his Tarzanesque Lance” following Jungle #26 (Februadventures still illustrated by Dan ary) meant more pages for Kaänga, Zolnerowich, occasionally spelled by Tabu, and “Wambi, Jungle Boy.” The various Iger staffers. “Camilla, Queen Henry Kiefer-drawn feature, consistently the highlight of the book, was awarded its own title late in the year after sales on a Spring-dated Wambi Comics one-shot proved there was an audience to support it.

a cowardly desk jockey by his men despite fighting alongside them as the no-longer-masked Wings. “Jane Martin” gave up nursing in Wings #27 (November) after being recruited by British intelligence, dropping the “War Nurse” part of the series’ title. “The Parachute Patrol” and “The Phantom Falcons” were replaced by a pair of strips drawn by Pagsilang Isip, “Calhoun of the Air Cadets” and the non-fiction “Yank Aces of World War II.”

The third Fiction House monthly, Wings Comics, continued to suffer from the same incessant artistic turnover that had plagued it the previous year, though the built-in appeal of a war title in wartime kept readers coming back regardless. Only Joe Doolin’s “Suicide Smith,” Arthur Peddy’s “Skull Squad,” and Al Walker’s “Greasemonkey Griffin” were immune to the syndrome. With mystery-men out of fashion, “Captain Wings” got a new backstory in the July issue (#23). Now he was Capt. Adam Boggs, an RAF ace grounded after a bout of altitude sickness. Put in command of the HellDiver Squadron, he was considered

Planet Comics, too, seemed unable to keep artists on the same strips for more than three or four months at a stretch, with “Flint Baker,” “Reef Ryan,” and “Gale Allen and the Girl Squadron” the chief victims. The scifi jungle series “Auro, Lord of Jupiter” changed hands as of the July issue (#19), Rafael Astarita replacing Sy Reit, while George Appel settled in on “Star Pirate” two issues earlier. Only Al Walker, artist of “Norge Benson,” stuck out all six 1942-dated issues. The January Planet (#16) premiered a new series. “Mars, God of War” was set in the future, where the titular deity tried to foment war between Earth

A new feature in Planet Comics, “Mars, God of War” combined classical mythology with space opera. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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The espionage strip “Señorita Rio” frequently found its sultry star in her unmentionables, an enticement for the older readership Fiction House hoped to attract. TM and © respective copyright holder.

and its colonies on other planets. Joe Doolin, using the pen name Ross Gallun, illustrated, relying heavily on swipes from Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon. It was joined at year’s end by “The Lost World,” about humans struggling to survive in a dystopian 33rd century. Drawn by Rudy Palais, it claimed the pages formerly occupied by the size-changing “Red Comet.” Much of the title’s appeal stemmed from its reliance on “good girl” art, especially in “Gale Allen” and on the covers, to sell what was otherwise a mediocre aggregation of space opera clichés. In addition to its two super-patriots, Fight Comics also dropped “Strut Warren” and the boxer biographies from its roster, only “Kayo Kirby,” “Shark Brodie,” and “Chip Collins” making the cut despite all three strips constantly changing artists. Replacing the ousted strips were “Dusty Rhodes,” a boy’s adventure series by Lee Ames; two war strips, “Rip Carson, ‘chute Trooper,” and “True War Stories By Walter T. Grant” (a house name from the publisher’s pulp line); and Rafael Astarita’s “Hooks Devlin, Special Agent,” starring a Naval Intelligence operative. Two new features

by Nick Viscardi signaled a growing awareness of the servicemen among Fiction House’s readers. “Blackout” featured Viscardi’s toothsome women in Vargas-style pin-up poses making mildly salacious innuendos that would have gone straight over the heads of the kids in the audience. More substantial was “Señorita Rio,” starring former film actress Rita Farrar, modeled after real life movie star Rita Hayworth. After faking her own suicide at sea, Rita went undercover in Rio de Janeiro on behalf of American intelligence. Viscardi found plenty of opportunities to depict the glamorous spy in various stages of undress, and his gift for creating vivid, often comedic supporting players and bad guys also raised the espionage strip several notches above its competition.

plified Ranger Comics, a change that epitomized a growing willingness to cater to more adult sensibilities across the Fiction House line. Another publisher also pursued a more mature readership this year but took a different path to get there. In December ‘41, Lev Gleason bought the rights to his titles from David Gilmor’s defunct New Friday Publishing. With the backing of several investors (including Bella Kimelfeld, who brought some much-needed fiscal discipline to the line as its new business manager), he consolidated his trio of comic books under a new corporate identity as of their February issues. As Comic House, Inc., Gleason and the editorial team of Charles Biro and Bob Wood didn’t go as far as abandoning their line-up of superheroes, but they did discard all but a handful in the process of reworking Silver Streak Comics and Captain Battle Comics into new titles. The super-hero was alive and well in the monthly Daredevil Comics, though rationing dictated a reduction to bi-monthly frequency as of the August issue (#12). Readers got a glimpse into the title character’s past in Daredevil #9 (April) courtesy of writer/artist Biro. Daredevil first met Tonia Saunders early in his costumed career, rescuing her from a mysterious thief called The Bolt, a one-time decathlon champion who had beaten high school newspaper photographer

Rangers of Freedom Comics underwent an overhaul more severe than the one that befell Fight. Most of its original line-up of features vanished following issue #4 (April)—all but “Rocky Hall, Jungle Stalker” and the military humor strip “Private Elmer Pippin and the Colonel’s Daughter.” New series included “Glory Forbes, Vigilante,” about an amateur spy taking on an Axis agent codenamed The Scarlet Crab; “The Sea Devil,” featuring a supersubmarine; the western “Tex Ranger;” and Wings Comics refugees “The Phantom Falcons.” The transformation of the title feature from a super-hero strip drawn by Joe Doolin to a gritty war strip with art by the team of Rudy Palais and Max Elkan must have taken readers by surprise. With issue #8 (December), both series and comic were retitled, the strip becoming “U.S. RangThe first encounter between “Daredevil” and The Little Wise Guys, the kid gang that changed the course of the series. TM and © respective copyright holder. ers,” the book the sim168

Bart Hill nearly to death years before. No mention was made of the hero’s childhood trauma or subsequent muteness. Such melodramatic details were no longer relevant to the more realistic crime dramas and morality plays Biro wanted to tell. In the following issue, Daredevil enlisted in the Army Air Corps, thereafter alternating between costume and uniform. The October Daredevil (#13) introduced a group of characters who would change the strip forever. Jock, a millionaire’s lonely son, befriended runaway orphans Meatball, Scarecrow, and Peewee just in time to help the costumed boomerang master take down the German-American Cult, a conspiracy of Nazi sympathizers in KKK-style hooded robes. Known collectively as The Little Wise Guys, the kids did triple duty as sidekicks, as comedy relief, and as surrogates for the young readers Biro was tailoring his stories for. Elsewhere in Daredevil Comics, “The Claw” continued his duel with his costumed nemesis The Ghost, taking a Nazi genius named Kloglo sent by Hitler as an ally for two issues (#9-10). Bob Wood gave the monstrous sorcerer an origin in issue #12, revealing Claw as the mutant offspring of two evil Tibetan freaks, a giant and a saber-toothed woman, who committed suicide rather than face life with their horrific offspring. “The Claw” and “13 and Jinx” were the only back-up features to appear in every 1942 issue. “Nightro” and the boxing strip “Whirlwind” were retired after Daredevil #8 (March), their pages going to “Sniffer,” a Biro and Wood-scripted “Daredevil” spinoff drawn by Carl Hubbell starring a good-hearted hoodlum with a superhuman sense of smell, and “Houdonnit the Great,” a tongue-in-cheek strip about a mystery-solving magician by Bob Montana. Montana also contributed “Times Square,” a series of gritty slice-of-life vignettes set on the mean streets of Manhattan that ran for three issues (#11-13). “London,” “Pat Patriot,” and “Real American Number One” starring The Bronze Terror were cancelled as of issue #11 to make room for Silver Streak Comics refugees “The Pirate Prince,” “Dickie Dean, Boy Inventor,” and “Scoop Scuttle,” a Basil Wolverton romp about a screwy

reporter that debuted in Silver Streak #20 (April). Boy Comics, the renamed Captain Battle, offered an all-new slate of features in its first issue (#3, April), all of them starring teen or preteen protagonists. Dick Wood scripted “Bombshell, Son of War,” the prepubescent son of Mars sent to Earth to combat the Axis powers with his superhuman physique and “a sword to destroy the machines of war but which cannot take human life!!!” Credit for the pilot episode’s art is unknown; the ensuing installments were the work of 16-yearold newcomer Created by Charles Biro, “Crimebuster” wasn’t the sort of boy hero comic book Norman Maurer. readers were used to, nor was his arch-foe Iron Jaw your typical Nazi nogoodnik. “Young Robinhood TM and © respective copyright holder. [sic]” was a dashthe stuff it takes to get along ing young costumed archer intent on in life! Honestly, I’ve never cleaning up the slums to improve its enjoyed doing a strip as much denizens’ lives. George Mandel drew as Crimebuster!” the first two episodes, followed by his With that enthusiastic sentiment, brother Alan. Dick Briefer’s “Yankee Charles Biro introduced Chuck ChanLongago” featured a time-traveling dler, a cadet at Custer Military Acadteenager whose adventures turned emy and the son of a staunchly history on its head. Bart Tumey drew anti-Nazi diplomat. When his father two episodes of “The Little Wise and mother were murdered to preGuys,” a kid gang predating and vent them relating news of German unconnected to Daredevil’s betteratrocities, the boy vowed vengeance known boy pals. Two series were flip on their killer, a hideous spymaster sides of the same coin: “Boy Comics named Iron Jaw. His face blown apart Hero of the Month” told true stories of by a shell while saving Hitler’s life young men at their best, an untitled during World War I, the lower half strip depicting fictitious accounts of of Private Von Schmidt’s skull was juvenile delinquency showed them replaced by a metal prosthetic that at their worst. But the breakout star resembled a bear trap. Crimebuster’s of Boy Comics was a costumed hero origin echoed a score of other heroes, who, in his own way, challenged the but he approached his crusade with genre’s usual trappings as cheekily as an endearing naiveté: his costume Street & Smith’s “Supersnipe.” consisted of his school hockey uni“He’s not a super boy! He form with his dress uniform’s cape can’t dodge bullets or tune thrown over it, and his sidekick was in BBC on his wisdom tooth! an organ grinder’s monkey named He’s just an average boy with 169

cal makeover and a new title, Crime Does Not Pay.

Squeeks that Chuck bought from his abusive former master. The duo spent the rest of the year on the trail of Iron Jaw, save for a one-issue encounter with a saboteur codenamed The Leper. “Crimebuster” had all the punch of Biro’s “Daredevil” plus the audience identification factor of a noble boy hero and the appeal of a cute and impossibly smart animal companion. Though paper quotas kept Boy Comics a bi-monthly for the time being, its cover feature quickly became a bona fide hit.

Created by Biro and Bob Wood over dinner following the latter’s chance encounter in a bar with a pimp arrested the next day for kidnapping an heiress, Crime Does Not Pay was the first comic book devoted to the true crime genre. Jack Cole, among others, had been dabbling in such tales since the early days of the industry, but this was something different, as noted by comics historian Mike Benton in his The Illustrated History of Crime Comics:

Gleason’s third title, Silver Streak Comics, had been struggling for some time, especially after “Daredevil” jumped ship. The monthly hung on until its May issue (#21). That was the end of old favorites “Silver Streak” and “Captain Battle,” as well as two new strips launched three issues earlier: the espionage strip “Ned of the Navy” drawn by Irving “Irv” Watanabe, and “The Saint,” adapted by Leslie Charteris from his novels about a suave gentleman thief and ably illustrated by Edd Ashe. Set in Europe, the strip found Simon Templar, “the world’s gayest buccaneer,” foiling Nazi and Fascist troops with the aid of girl Friday Patricia Holm and loyal ex-con Hoppy Uniatz. Not even the cachet of a Hollywood connection—George Sanders played Templar in six films between 1939 and ‘41—could upright the floundering Silver Streak. Retaining its numbering, the book was given a radi-

“Billing itself as ‘The First Magazine of Its Kind,’ Crime Does Not Pay was the first comic book to target the adult audience. At the same time, however, the simply drawn stories of cartoon murderers and bad men were eagerly read by children. Stories of brutality, sadism, and depravity could be published under the guise of moral docudramas (‘Crime does not pay’). Since the crime stories were ‘all true,’ the violent lives of homicidal psychopaths could be excitingly depicted as long as they ended in punishment. It was like buying a ten-cent ticket to a public execution.” (21) The first issue included a few leftovers from Silver Streak, but by year’s end the book was crime from cover to cover. Each issue led off with “Crime Kings,” spotlighting a different infamous gangster like John Dillinger, Louis Lepke, or Legs Diamond. As counterbalance, there was “Cop Hero of the Month.” Crime stories from around the world and across history filled out the rest of its pages. Biro or Wood scripted all the early contents, with art by Bob Montana, Harry Lucey, Norman Maurer, Dick Briefer, Carl Hubbell, and the authors themselves. Like the old Police Gazette and other true-crime pulps (and many modern true-crime television programs), Crime Does Not Pay’s recreations were sensationalized, with historical accuracy and plausibility sacrificed for the sake of visceral thrills and the inevitable last-minute moral reckoning. With the title now a bimonthly, it would be some time before Comic House knew how this venture into mature content was received by its intended audience.

Another bid for the dimes of servicemen was Camp Comics, a short-lived title from Western Publishing distributed through the PX system of stateside military bases. Behind the pin-up photography gracing the covers were contents occasionally naughty but otherwise harmless. “Rusty O’Riley” was an adventurous young American who stumbled onto Axis intrigue while on a cruise with her best friend Betsy Saunders. Credits are uncertain for the strip, which injected tame cheesecake shots of the girls into the otherwise straightforward international intrigue. The book’s other original series included “Rimshot Ferguson,” a western handsomely illustrated by John Hampton; Frank Thomas’ “Hank and Lank, the Super Sweeps,” an exercise in absurdity about two streetsweepers who gained superpowers from the magic word “Xntz!” given them by The Spirit of All the Comics Avengers; and “Seaman Sy Wheeler,” a slapstick series featuring a sailor as quick to get into a brawl as he was to fall in love with a pretty girl. This last was the work of a cartoonist newly returned to comic books after working as an animator for the DisSilver Streak was transformed as of its 22nd issue into Crime Does Not Pay, the title ney studio during the productions of Pinocchio, Dumbo, fated to make Comic House rich—and notorious. TM and © respective copyright holder. 170

and Fantasia, one Walter Crawford “Walt” Kelly, soon to become a superstar of the Dell line. Rounding out the title were such odds and ends as stray episodes of “Philo Vance” and “Bugs Bunny,” a drastically abbreviated adaptation of Mark Twain’s Roughing It, reprints of George Lichty’s syndicated panel Grin and Bear It, and a centerspread of good girl gags from editor and future New Yorker cartoonist Charles “Chuck” Saxon similar to Fiction House’s “Blackout.” Its first issue released under the Whitman imprint, the second two credited to K.K. Publications, Camp Comics was a unique and ultimately unsuccessful venture into new territory for a company better known for comic books targeting a much different, much younger demographic.

Funny Animal Kingdom For Western and its publishing partner Dell Publications, 1942 was a year of transition. One by one, Dell dropped its super-heroes this year until only The Owl and Owl Girl were left to carry on. With the cancellation of Crackajack Funnies as of its January issue (#43) and the conversion of The Funnies to a kid-friendly format, only two of the line’s original monthly titles continued to feature syndicated strip reprints alongside original series. Funny animals, mostly licensed animation characters, ruled five titles, with back-up features starring storybook favorites like Raggedy Ann and The Brownies adding to their appeal. A few titles deviated from this trend, including a pair of quarterly war titles and a revival of Hawley Publications’ Red Ryder Comics, but by year’s end, Dell had effectively cornered the market on comic books for small children. Popular Comics began the year by cancelling “Martan the Marvel Man,” “Professor Supermind and Son,” and “Wally Williams” following issue #71 (January), with “The Voice” and “The Masked Pilot” joining them in oblivion a few issues later. Several features relocated from the cancelled Crackajack Funnies took their places, three reprinting newspaper strips Terry and the Pirates, Don Winslow of the Navy, and Smokey Stover, the others the original series “The Crusoes,” “Cyclone,” and “The Owl.” Three epi-

Though an increasingly larger share of Dell Publications’ comics were aimed at young children, it also added several new titles targeting other demographics. TM and © respective copyright holder.

sodes of “Captain Midnight” originally scheduled for The Funnies ran in Popular #76-78 before Dell ceded the license to Quality. Replacing it was “The Return of Robin Hood,” a medieval swashbuckler from Dell workhorse Gaylord DuBois and artist Jon Small. Much less turmoil marked this year’s run of Super Comics, its roster of syndicated strip reprints headed by “Dick Tracy” and “Little Orphan Annie” keeping the book flying off the shelves. The title’s only casualty was “The Sky Ranger,” one of several Dell aviation strips cancelled following creator Robert “Bob” Jenney’s induction into the Navy. Jim Chambers’ “Clyde Beatty,” homeless after the axing of Crackajack Funnies, joined the roster in issue #47 (April). Other series from that title and The Funnies were not so fortunate. “Phantasmo,” “Mr. District Attorney,” “Philo Vance,” “The Robinsons,” and “Stratosphere Jim” were all cancelled. War Comics, retitled War Stories, returned to newsstands with its undated fifth issue. That first new issue ran the final installments of the title’s previous line-up, including mystery-men “The Night Devils” and “The Whistler.” Issue #6 (also undated) introduced a new roster of more realistic military strips. “Ghost of the Coral Sea,” about an old rumrunner turned tramp steamer refitted for naval duty; “Yankee Dillon,” the adventures of an American soldier stationed in Australia and his pet kangaroo; and “Tigers with Wings,” the fictional escapades of Gen. Chennualt’s Flying Tigers, were all scripted by Worth Carnahan with art by Jim 171

Chambers, Tom Hickey, and Bob Jenney respectively. Carnahan was also at the typewriter for a companion title, War Heroes. This second book specialized in true war stories, most pulled from the headlines. Chambers, Jenney, and Dell regulars E.C. Stoner, Bill Ely, Dan Gormley, and Will Rowland were among those contributing art. Both quarterlies treated the topic of war with a solemnity commensurate with America’s entry into the real conflict, eschewing the sciencefiction and super-hero elements that typified the earlier incarnation of War Comics. Another new title attempted to compete with Gilberton’s Classic Comics. Famous Stories copied the other title’s format faithfully, featuring a full-length adaptation of a classic novel backed by brief biographies of the original authors. Only two issues appeared, the first featuring yet another version of “Treasure Island,” this one illustrated by Robert Bugg, the other adapting “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.” Writing credits are unknown, with Gaylord DuBois and East Coast editor Oskar Lebeck the likeliest suspects. Faithful adaptations only slightly sanitized, they were better scripted and better drawn than their Gilberton counterparts but, for whatever reasons, failed to attract readers. Tucked away amidst reprints of “Red Ryder,” “Captain Easy,” “Alley Oop,” “Boots,” and other favorites from NEA and the Chicago Tribune, the first Dell issue of Red Ryder Comics introduced the Worth Carnahan-scripted war strips “The Fighting Yanks,” the globetrotting exploits of an elite Army Air

Corps squadron drawn by Bob Jenney, and “Rookie,” starring a young enlistee recruited by Army Intelligence, with Tom Hickey providing the visuals.

Joe,” and “Alley Oop,” two featured new material. Four Color #5 debuted “Raggedy Ann and Andy,” adapted from the popular children’s books by Gaylord DuBois and artist George Kerr, who did a superlative job capturing the charm of creator Johnny Gruelle’s original illustrations. Fans of the Toy Story films would feel right at home in these stories of a little girl’s doll collection that came to life at night. All the familiar Gruelle characters were present, including the Scottish Uncle Clem, the French baby doll Babette, and the ever-faithful Old Horse. DuBois and Kerr crafted adventures for their rag doll heroes brimming over with fantasy that included a fair degree of genuine menace, with Ann and Andy’s unfailing optimism and affection for their fellow playthings winning over any obstacle. The strip continued in New Funnies #65 (June), settling in for a long run.

Syndicated strip reprints had been the stock-in-trade of the black and white Large Feature Comic. Not this year. Alongside collections of “Dick Tracy,” “Moon Mullins,” “Terry and the Pirates,” “Peter Rabbit,” “King of the Royal Mounted,” and “Tillie the Toiler” among others, were two issues of allnew content. “Pluto Saves the Ship” in Large Feature Volume 2, issue #7 (the series reset its numbering following issue #30) was the first comic book featuring a full-length, original story starring one of the Walt Disney characters. The narrative, which depicted a shipboard encounter between the usually playful pup and Nazi saboteurs, was written by veteran Disney storymen Jack Hannah, Nick George, and Carl Barks for an unknown studio artist. The following issue spotlighted “Bugs Bunny,” making the wisecracking rabbit the first Leon Schlesinger character to star in a solo book. Co-starring Porky Pig, his girlfriend Petunia, and Elmer Fudd, the comic’s two 24-page stories were based on animated cartoons as adapted by Chase Craig and Carl Buettner.

The other key 1942 issue of Four Color was the ninth. Loosely based on a proposed but never greenlighted animated feature, the story within followed the ever-irascible Donald Duck and his lookalike nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie as they raced the pirate Black Pete, usually Mickey Mouse’s mortal enemy, to recover a lost treasure and save their endangered seaside inn. Carl Barks and Jack Hannah were back, this time as the artists illustrating a script by Bob Karp, writer of the King Features Donald Duck strip. Years later, Barks described the unusual way in which “Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold” was produced:

Four Color underwent a similar reboot to Large Feature’s, a new #1 following hard on the heels of issue #25. Although most of its twelve 1942-dated issues reprinted newspaper strips like “Flash Gordon,” “Popeye,” “Smilin’ Jack,” “Little

“When we began, we were only given four or five pages of script, while Bob was working on other pages. I took a couple of pages and Jack took a couple, and by the time we got those done, there was much more of the script done, and we had a little talk together as to which we enjoyed or felt either of us could draw better than the other. We decided that I would take much of the outdoor scenes and [Jack] would take the indoor ones.” (Barrier 95) Despite this seemingly haphazard approach, the end result was seamless. More widely distributed than Large Feature #7 and in full color, Four Color #9 was a sales colossus, becoming far better known than its predecessor and thus often incorrectly cited as both the first all-original Disney comic book and Barks’ first work in the medium. A jack-of-all-trades whose résumé included farming, lumberjacking, cowboying, and editing a risqué men’s humor magazine, Barks had been with Disney since 1935 and was growing restless. Hard of hearing and with sinus problems aggravated by the studio’s air conditioning, he’d been considering other career options when the “Pirate Gold” assignment came along. The work suited Barks and, as he would prove again and again over the next two decades, Barks was made for comics. Several months were to pass before sales figures came in for Four Color #9. In the meantime, Disney executives played it safe. The only title not produced by either Oskar Lebeck’s Manhattan-based bullpen or the Los Angeles offices of West Coast editor Eleanor Packer, Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories was already Dell’s bestselling title despite and due to its continuing reliance on reprints of the Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Silly Symphonies syndi-

Four Color #9 featuring “Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold” introduced the art of Carl Barks, known to his fans only as “the good duck artist” during the years he drew the Disney characters. TM and © Disney Enterprises Inc.

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cated strips, so there was little incentive for editor Alice Neilson to tamper with what was clearly a winning formula. “Bucky Bug,” the first character featured in the Silly Symphonies newspaper strip back in 1933, made his comic book debut when that sequence was reprinted in WDC&S #20 (May). Scripted by Ted Osborne and drawn by Earl Duvall and Al Taliaferro, the strip revolved around the adventures of Bucky, his girl June, and their friend Bo. Life among the insect citizens of Junkville, all of whom spoke in rhymed couplets, could be trying for older readers, but the tots loved Bucky. Later issues saw a few original pieces appear, including “The Flying Gauchito,” a charming fantasy by Walt Kelly about a boy gaucho and his winged burro based on an unproduced segment of the animated omnibus feature Saludas Amigos. Disney may have been reluctant to let Dell create new stories with their characters, but other animation studios were far less conservative, especially after seeing what Packer and her squad of moonlighting animators had done with Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. Any awkwardness early issues had exhibited was gone. Those strips featuring Warner Brothers stars “Porky Pig,” “Bugs Bunny,” and “Elmer Fudd” had found the key to transitioning from movie screen to comics page. Where the cartoons were fluid as to setting, the comic had the trio living in the same city, allowing them to seamlessly guest star in each other’s strips. The humor now derived from the interplay of the principals’ well-known personalities and their reactions to the situations they found themselves in rather than the rapidfire sight gags and extreme action of the animated shorts. Elmer Fudd and Bugs shared equal billing in Elmer’s strip for its whole six-issue run (#3-8, January-June), while Porky similarly imposed on Bugs for three episodes of his. In Looney Tunes #5 (March), Bugs Bunny appeared in a dream sequence as Super Rabbit, making him officially the first funny animal super-hero (the comic had no connection to the 1943 Bugs short Super-Rabbit beyond the name). The back pages featured “Sniffles and Mary Jane” and a rotating roster of others, none of them

Schlesinger characters, alternating “The Robin Family,” “Chester Turtle,” “Ringy Roonga,” and “Adventures of Charlie Carrot,” the last with a cast of anthropomorphic produce. The stand-out among these back-ups was Walt Kelly’s Originally reprinting Silly Symphonies continuity from 1933 before new episodes “Kandi the Cave took over, “Bucky Bug” ran in Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories for eight years. TM and © Disney Enterprises Inc. Kid,” a prehistoric fantasy turned up to date. about a fearless toddler constantly When The Funnies was renamed putting his older brothers in jeopardy New Funnies with its 65th issue with his attempts to befriend dino(June-July), it marked the last stage saurs, sabretooth tigers, and the like. of a metamorphosis that began with While Looney Tunes generally ignored the addition of “Andy Panda” to the current events beyond the occasional bi-monthly’s line-up the previous pop culture reference, it did lend its year. An issue earlier, Andy’s Walter big names to the war effort, starring Lantz studio stablemates “Oswald them in a pair of propaganda pieces, the Rabbit” (guest-starring Woody “Tin Cans and Defense” and “Old RubWoodpecker, still in the genuinely ber Roundup” in the August and Octocrazy phase of his long career) and ber issues (#s 10 and 12). “Li’l Eight Ball,” a kid strip filled with The Looney Tunes menagerie also figegregious caricatures of Africanured in Famous Gang Book of Comics, Americans, replaced “Phantasmo,” a one-shot Christmas giveaway for “Philo Vance,” and “The Rocket Boys.” Firestone Tires that reprinted mateIssue #65 added reprints of the Felix rial from the monthly. Other Dell the Cat and Peter Rabbit syndicated giveaways for 1942 were Red Ryder strips, the “Raggedy Ann and Andy” Victory Patrol Super Book of Comics for series launched in Four Color #5, and Langendorf Bread, and a third issue two adventure series, the Native of the undersized 20-page Quaker American western “Young Hawk” and Sparkles premium The Adventures “Keeto the Jungle Boy,” ousting “Capof Little Orphan Annie. Data as to the tain Midnight,” “Mr. District Attorsizes and specific contents of the first ney,” and other series. The adventure two named must wait until copies of strips ran only a few episodes each these rarities have been found. Loobefore they were dropped for “Mr. ney Tunes reprints also filled Porky’s Twee Deedle,” adapting another line Book of Tricks, a 8.5” x 5.5” giveaway of Johnny Gruelle books, this one released under the Western Printdrawn by the author’s son Justin C. ing imprint. Western also published Gruelle, and “The Brownies,” a fairy 18 undated issues of Super Book of tale series by George Kerr starring the Comics, a 32-page freebie distributed mischievous imps of Scottish folklore. via PanAm Oil service stations. Each Sometimes confused with the onceissue featured reprints of a top comic popular book series by Palmer Cox, strip, usually backed by episodes of Kerr’s Brownies had no connection to “Magic Morro” or “Stratosphere Jim.” the series or its comic strip adaptation “Red Ryder,” “Don Winslow,” and beyond drawing on the same legends. “Terry and the Pirates” got two issues Late summer found Dell launchapiece, “Dick Tracy” three. Evidence ing a new bi-monthly featuring the of another Western giveaway, Uncle cartoon stars of yet another movie Wiggly Comics, exists but no copy has 173

DuBois also wrote original series for Our Gang. “Flip and Dip” was a funny animal strip about a family of chimps, “King” was a more conventional animal series about an overly curious puppy, and “Jimmy Wells, Explorer” was a text series about a boy accidentally shrunk to insect size by his inventor neighbor. Two new bi-monthlies were the brainchildren of Oskar Lebeck, who saw a market for comics that adults could feel comfortable reading to their preliterate little ones. Fairy Tale Parade was a strong argument for his case. Each issue adapted an average of six classic stories from the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, Hans Christian Andersen, and the Arabian Nights. Walt Kelly wrote and drew the first issue solo, including two original tales, “The Flute o’ McTootle” and “Winkie and the Wishing Well,” alongside the familiar “Hansel and Gretel,” “Thumbelisa,” and “Little Black Sambo.” It was a dream combination of talent and subject. Kelly’s experience in animation gave his figures a weight and credibility many cartoonists could not capture; they visually worked in any pose and from every angle. His children, elves, fairies, and little animals were adorable, his giants, trolls, and witches comically menacing, his backgrounds simply but evocatively detailed, and his narrative voice held just a glimmer of wry wit, a knowing wink to the parents reading aloud. Later issues were divided between additional clever Kelly work and more straightforward adaptations written by the editor himself and illustrated by 71-year-old Arthur Jameson, Jon Small, and other unidentified collaborators. Lebeck had a gift for using simple language to tell his story without talking down to his readers that, combined with Walt Kelly’s playfulness, made Fairy Tale Parade a consistently good read for all ages. Stories from Fairy Tale Parade were reprinted in Famous Fairy Tales, a giveaway one-shot from Western Printing.

Animal Comics #1 led off with the first appearance of the swamp critters Walt Kelly would later populate his classic newspaper strip Pogo with. TM and © Okefenokee Glee & Perloo Inc.

Kelly was also a key contributor to Animal Comics, an anthology that mixed funny animals with more conventional animal strips modeled on the juvenile fiction of Ernest Thompson Seton. The first issue (December) opened with “Albert Takes the Cake,” a farce about an alligator and his friends set in a swamp somewhere in the Deep South. Those friends included a little black boy named Bumbazine and an opossum named Pogo. This was the first appearance of the stock company of swamp critters who, in their newspaper strip incarnation, were to make Kelly a celebrity and give him a bully pulpit for his ideals toward the end of the decade. Though there were glimmers of the wit and wordplay that cemented his reputation as a humorist in later years, this opening episode only hinted at the hilarious slapstick, multilayered dialogue, and inspired lunacy to come. The rest of the book was quieter, with short standalone stories like “Katonka Flies North,” “The Monarch of Panther Gorge,” and “Piggie Pranks,” all written by Gaylord DuBois, and a pair of illustrated poems from Worth Carnahan.

studio. The covers of Our Gang Comics featured the kid stars of MGM’s long-running series of shorts. With Walt Kelly depicting the antics of Spanky, Buckwheat, Froggy, Janet, and Mickey, the comic enjoyed better plotting and writing than the films, its humor unhampered by the awkward acting of some of the young cast. Though he still spoke in a mild version of minstrel show dialect, Kelly’s Buckwheat was devoid of the exaggerated features foisted on many black characters and was treated as an equal member of the gang. The title’s other major attraction was “Tom and Jerry,” the animated cat and mouse notorious for the violence of their cartoons directed by the team of William “Bill” Hanna and Joseph “Joe” Barbera for producer Fred Quimby. Writer Gaylord DuBois fleshed out the duo’s personalities (a necessity given the pantomime nature of the shorts) and added a third character, a small brown mouse in a diaper named Tuffy. Although the series’ basic premise—the mischievous Jerry’s one-sided duel of wits with the outmatched Tom—remained intact, the comics were subtler, substituting wit for slapstick. Other characters from Quimby’s production unit held regular berths in the book, including “Barney Bear” and “Benny Burro.”

The year was capped off with the first Dell issue of the annual Santa Claus Funnies. As the title implies, the 174

him a lesson. Its mix of fantasy and reality was emblematic of a slowly building shift in reader tastes.

comic featured assorted tales of jolly old Saint Nick and his North Pole supporting cast. The lead story pitted an animated cartoon-style Santa against the wicked Belinda the Ice Queen. Other highlights included adaptations of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, an illustrated version of Clement Moore’s poem “A Visit with St. Nicholas” (a.k.a. “The Night Before Christmas”), and Andersen’s “The Little Fir Tree” as interpreted by Walt Kelly. It was a cheerful “thank you” to readers who had helped make Dell the undisputed monarch of the funny animal kingdom.

The surge in funny animal titles and the successes of “Archie” and Crime Does Not Pay were the first indications that the stranglehold the super-hero genre had on the marketplace was beginning to loosen. Despite the dominance of DC, All-American, Fawcett, Quality, and Timely on the newsstands, costumed heroes were no longer a guarantor of sales. Dell, M.L.J., Fiction House, and Gleason were proving that little children, teenage girls, and servicemen all wanted comics created with them in mind, and they were ready to enrich the publishers perceptive enough to fill those needs. Propaganda and patriotism had their place, but the headlines made it clear the war was not going to be won by supermen or magic or any way other than sacrifice. As the conflict entered its second year, Americans increasingly sought escape from those headlines in their entertainment.

Caught in the Draft Dell’s success with funny animals did not go unnoticed by its competition, but with Western tying up the licensing to Disney, Schlesinger, MGM, and Lantz, pickings were slim among the remaining animation houses. Timely publisher Martin Goodman struck a deal with Paul Terry, the tightfisted animation mogul who once bragged “Disney is the Tiffany’s in this business and I am the Woolworth’s” (Markstein), to publish a monthly Terry-Toons Comics. The three 1942-dated issues (October-December) presented a blend of Terry-Toon stars “Gandy Goose” and “Dinky Duck” with original characters “Oscar” (a pig), “Frenchy Rabbit,” “Andy Wolf and Bertie Mouse,” and “Wacky Willy,” all initially scripted by Stan Lee and drawn by Ernest Huntley “Ernie” Hart. These early issues made the same mistake the first Looney Tunes did, trying to replicate the manic pace and slapstick silliness of the Terry-Toon shorts in a medium with a far different toolbox of storytelling techniques. Two strips showed promise. “Frenchy Rabbit,” a down-on-his-luck gourmet chef trying to get by as a shortorder cook in a grimy New York diner, had fun moments of clashing cultures, while “Gandy Goose,” drafted in the first issue, wound up with Sourpuss, his nemesis from the cartoons, as his drill sergeant. Much buffoonery resulted. Krazy Komics, Timely’s other entry in the funny animal sweepstakes, began as a bi-monthly, its first issue dated July. Its cover star was “Toughy Tomcat,” a feline street thug always trying to catch the clever Chester Chipmunk. Other features included Dave Berg’s “Baldy and His Brood,” Vince Fago’s “Postey the Pelican,” and two characters created by Al Jaffee, “Ziggy Pig” and “Silly Seal,” that began in separate strips but joined forces in Krazy Komics #2 (September). Early sales figures were encouraging, so the title went monthly with its November issue (#3).

The comic book industry had pushed for war without taking into consideration what price might have to be paid, not just in the cutbacks dictated by paper rationing but in the talent siphoned off by the armed forces. Will Eisner, Lloyd Jacquet, Fred Ray, Mort Weisinger, Bill Everett, Bob Montana, Mickey Spillane, Robert Kanigher, Alfred Harvey, Al Avison, Johnny Devlin, Ed Moore, Paul Gustavson, Al Jaffee, Carl Burgos, Ed Herron, Abner Sundell, Ken Fitch, Chuck Mazoujian, Bob Jenney, Lee Ames, Marc Swayze, Vernon Greene, Al McWilliams, Syd Shores, Chuck Cuidera, George Papp, Elmer Wexler, Tex Blaisdell, Murray Boltinoff, Gill Fox, Lev Gleason, and Stan Lee were all called to the colors in 1942, some drafted, some volunteering. Men with dependent children or who were their family’s only financial support were exempt from the draft for now, but that was to change, leaving the industry in the care of those too young (Russ Heath, Charles Quinlan Jr., Joe Kubert), too old (H.G. Peter, Henry Kiefer, Arthur Jameson), or too physically impaired (Joe Shuster, Lou Fine, Carl Barks) to serve, along with an influx of female artists, writers, and editors to fill those emptying positions. No one knew how many more years of war lay ahead or what the industry would look like once President Roosevelt’s promise of “absolute victory” had been fulfilled.

Even staid George Hecht jumped on the bandwagon, hiring Chad Grothkopf to put together a children’s title for Parents’ Magazine Press. Cover-dated December, Funny Book #1 took its cues from Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories, alternating comic strips with illustrated short fiction by Alice Dagliesh, Mary Elting, and Elizabeth Decker. The comics included an adaptation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the kid strip “Puffer the Great,” “The Magic Soap Bubble” starring a fairy godfather-type known as Mr. Quince, and two funny animal strips from Grothkopf, “Buggsy Bug” and “Alec the Funny Bunny.” “Alec” in particular had an interesting premise: its title character lived in a victory garden at Rockefeller Center, where the statue of Prometheus put a spell on the ill-mannered bunny to teach

Timely editor Stan Lee was one of dozens of comics pros swept up by the military in 1942.

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Relax: Read the Comics! The question of when the war would end could not yet be answered, but by the summer of 1943 it was becoming evident to all but the most dedicated pessimist which side was going to win. Costly but critical Allied victories on three fronts shattered the myth of Axis invincibility. The Japanese Empire, which claimed nearly a tenth of the planet’s surface, had banked on the United States’ commitment to the Allies’ “Europe first” strategy to delay the Yanks long enough to make its stranglehold on East Asia and the Western Pacific irreversible. Had Prime Minister Hideki Tojo and his fellow militarists known that American cryptographers had cracked the Empire’s top secret Purple Code, they would have realized the futility of that hope. A costly-for-Japan stalemate at the Battle of the Coral Sea the previous May and the Battle of Midway a month later, which cost the Imperial Navy four aircraft carriers and the 248 planes aboard them, forced the warlords to dig in their heels, switch strategies, and contest control of their conquests island by island. The Allies’ six-monthlong effort to clear the island of Guadalcanal made it clear that Japanese troops, indoctrinated to consider surrender dishonorable, would resist their advance to the last man. The folks back home got a measure of revenge on April 18 when the airplane carrying Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who planned and oversaw the raid on Pearl Harbor, was shot down, his whereabouts betrayed by intercepted code messages. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill met in Casablanca, Morocco, in January to discuss their next move following the reclamation of French Africa from its Nazi and Fascist overlords. Despite an unsettling rout at February’s Battle of Kasserine Pass, armored infantry commanded by Gen. George S. Patton teamed with British forces led by Lt. Gen. Bernard Law Montgomery four months later to trap Rommel and his Afrika Korps between them, costing Germany and Italy over a quarter million troops dead or captured. Another 300,000 German casualties fell during the five-month siege of Stalingrad, as much victims of Adolf Hitler’s delusions of grandeur—Der Führer refused to heed the warnings of his military staff—as of the Russians severing their supply lines. The Soviets desperately wanted the Allies to open a second front on Germany’s western flank, but had to settle for the strategy Churchill and Roosevelt agreed on at the Casablanca summit: a drive through the Third Reich’s underbelly by way of Italy. Meanwhile, the once-feared 176

Luftwaffe could no longer hold the Allied Air Forces back, and the German people began to pay the price for their dictator’s madness, the United States making precision bombing runs by day, the RAF carpet-bombing by night. In the wake of these military setbacks, the Axis coalition began to fracture. On July 25, King Victor Emmanuel III deposed Benito Mussolini and prepared to surrender to the invading Allied armies. Hitler had other ideas. The German Army took control of the Italian government and restored Il Duce to the illusion of power, for Mussolini was now no longer an equal partner but just another Nazi puppet like Norway’s Vidkun Quisling. The battle for Italy would be long and bloody. It also served as the proving ground for a band of heroes determined to vindicate themselves and their people in the eyes of a hostile American public: “On [January 28, 1943, Secretary of War Henry L.] Stimson announced that the Army would accept Nisei volunteers. Immediately more than 1,200 signed up, and before the war’s end 17,000 Japanese had joined … In Italy they served with great distinction in the 100th Infantry and the 442nd Infantry. No Nisei ever deserted. During the Italian campaign the 442nd alone suffered the loss of three times its original strength while winning 3,000 Purple Hearts with 500 oak leaf clusters, 810 Bronze Stars, 342 Silver Stars, 47 Distinguished Service Crosses, and 17 Legion of Merit awards. In Europe these units were a legend.” (Manchester 368-69)

By 1943, the leaders of the Axis Nations were no longer portrayed in comics as fearsome monsters but as clowns to be laughed at and humiliated. TM and © respective copyright holder.

rationed goods, doing without. They might grumble about the shortages and laugh knowingly at a radio comedian’s latest ration book joke but most took pride in their contributions to the war effort. The comic book industry, too, had to adjust its appetite for newsprint to the new reality. The temporary adjustments to their production schedules the previous year had steeled the publishers for the inevitable reductions in paper allotments to follow. Word came down from the War Production Board: publishers of all stripes were allotted 90% of their 1942 usage. Different houses met the challenge in different ways. Some cancelled titles. Others reduced the frequencies of some or all of their lines: monthlies became bi-monthlies, bi-monthlies became quarterlies, new series wound up as one-shots. The most common change was in page count. The standard comic book had until now been 68 pages (including covers) for a dime. Circumstances and the rationing board necessitated a change. By the time 1943’s December-dated issues were on the newsstands, all but three publishing outfits, Street & Smith, Holyoke, and Hillman, had converted their titles to the new 60-page standard. Some took it further, experimenting with 52-page and 48-page comics. Most publishers made the change quietly, but a few insisted on underlining their own public-spiritedness. Consider the full page announcement Comic House ran in its July issues:

It was a record to be proud of. It also seemed to make no difference: “Those who fought beside the Nisei knew what drove them. They were trusting that when word of their war records reached [the Home Front], attitudes toward their families would improve … It was a vain hope.… The Nisei themselves, returning in uniform, were rejected by barbershops and restaurants. After the San Francisco Examiner had run the headline soldiers of jap ancestry allowed to roam on coast, a Nisei who had lost a leg in the ETO was publicly beaten.” (369) To judge by their contents, comic books were also not ready to forgive their fellow countrymen for the actions of their ancestral homeland. Japanese villains continued to be a staple of the medium, though the number of slavering, fang-sporting fiends among them seems to have dropped off. Dehumanizing epithets and demeaning racial caricatures persisted, but hindsight suggests that the industry’s heart wasn’t in it anymore, given that it employed Japanese-American artists Bob Fujitani, Fred Kida, and Irv Watanabe. Hitler and his goons were regularly vilified in the comics, though they now tended to be treated as barbarous clowns, a target for whatever humiliations the cartoonist could dream up, including being tossed around by a cape-wearing, super-powered infant. Mussolini, if depicted at all, was reduced to one of Der Führer’s yapping lapdogs like Göbbels and Göring.

“The most important thing at the moment is winning the war—isn’t it? Well then, we’re going to ask you to suffer a sacrifice with us—beginning with this issue our magazines will be reduced from 68 to 60 pages! Because paper has 1,001 uses in the armed forces of our nation. Knowing you as we do, we realize it would be wasted effort to say more—you want victory—complete victory, as soon as possible—a reduction in your favorite reading matter will help bring this about. You are ready to stand with us until Hitler, Hirohito and Mussolini are brought to their knees and [our comics] once more scream their 68 pages from the newsstands of the country! Rest assured in the meantime the quality of these books shall not be changed in the least!

A year into the war, Americans were growing used to doing with less or, in the case of an ever-lengthening list of 177

TIMELINE: 1943

March 31: Oklahoma!, the first musical written by the team of composer Richard Rodgers and librettist Oscar Hammerstein, opens on Broadway. It will become the longest-running Broadway musical of its time, garnering Rodgers and Hammerstein a special Pulitzer Prize in 1944.

A compilation of the year’s notable comic book history events alongside some of the year’s most significant popular culture and historical events. (On sale dates are approximations.) January 14: President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill, among others, secretly meet in Casablanca, Morocco to plan Allied forces strategy in Europe. The subsequent “Casablanca Declaration” announces that the Allies will accept nothing less than the “unconditional surrender” of the Axis powers.

May 29: As a symbol of the millions of women who entered the workforce to replace the men who were drafted into military service, Rosie the Riveter appears on Norman Rockwell’s cover to the Memorial Day issue of The Saturday Evening Post.

February 9: Considered one of the turning points of World War II, the Guadalcanal Campaign in the South Pacific Ocean ends with the United States in command of Guadalcanal island.

JANUARY

FEBRUARY

June 20: Due to a dramatic population increase and shortage of housing, a race riot ensues in Detroit, Michigan. Federal troops arrive to suppress the rioting, but not before 1,800 people are arrested, over 400 people are injured, and 34 people are killed.

May 13: In North Africa the German Afrika Korps surrender to Allied forces.

MARCH

APRIL

M AY

JUNE

May 31: The Archie Andrews radio show, based on MLJ’s Archie comic book, debuts on the NBC Blue Network. The series will remain on the air until 1953. February 2: The Battle of Stalingrad ends with the surrender of the German 6th Army to Russian troops.

February 10: In advance of his appearance in the Batman film serial, Batman #16 introduces Alfred, Bruce Wayne’s butler, in a story written by Don Cameron and drawn by Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson.

April 19: Residents of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, Poland resist Nazi efforts to send them to concentration camps. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising will last until May 16, resulting in the deaths of 130,000 Jews and the complete destruction of the ghetto.

Batman, Robin, and Plastic Man TM and © DC Comics.

68 or 60 you’ll love them just the same! Remember we did it first!” [They didn’t.]

year for packaging services like Roche & Iger or the Sangor Studio to recruit new talent while they were still finishing high school. It was a hardship, to be sure, but Quality publisher Busy Arnold had been right about the salutary effect on sales that the cutbacks paradoxically led to. Entire print runs were selling out. 1943 was the most profitable year the comic book industry had experienced yet.

The occasional self-congratulatory message notwithstanding, the industry was more concerned with providing its young audience with a welcome distraction from the horrors of the daily headlines. Eastern Color captured this attitude perfectly in an ad in its April-dated titles:

Year of the Bat

“War is a terrible thing… We must sacrifice and work hard to produce the materials necessary for our boys to win. But in spite of it all—we can still laugh—Relax! Read the comics!”

Among the first publishers to convert to the new 60-page standard were Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz, whose Detective Comics began making the switch with the June issues of the monthly Action Comics, Detective Comics, and Star Spangled Comics and the Summer issues of the quarterly Boy Commandos and Leading Comics (with the 100page World’s Finest Comics dropping to 92). The company’s senior titles, More Fun Comics and Adventure Comics, were demoted for the duration, joining Superman and Batman on the bi-monthly schedule. Several veteran features were retired over the course of 1943, replaced largely by humor strips – a trend culminating in the launch of the first DC title devoted entirely to comedy.

The industry sacrificed a lot more than eight pages of content. The military continued to vacuum up talent, at times faster than it could be replaced. Among those called to arms this year were Joe Simon, Nick Viscardi, Bob Powell, Martin Filchock, Frank Borth, Bill Ely, Dan Zolnerowich, Odgen Whitney, Jack Lehti, Arthur Peddy, Harry Harrison, Sam Burlockoff, Pierce Rice, Mort Leav, Pagsilang Isip, Bob Lubbers, Dave Gantz, Ed Robbins, Al Walker, Bob Fujitani, and Reed Crandall. Nobody was immune, as the drafting of Jerry Siegel and Jack Kirby proved. The loss was mitigated somewhat when some of them—including Whitney, Lehti, and 1942 inductees Syd Shores, Marc Swayze, Bob Jenney, Gill Fox, and Mickey Spillane—were able to continue working even while in uniform, but it was not uncommon this

Liebowitz and Donenfeld could certainly afford to laugh, for the industry-wide production cuts dictated by newsprint rationing were offset by the revenue coming in from 178

December 29: Published by Quality Comics through Vital Publications, Plastic Man #1 arrives on newsstands.

July 4: During a “Liberty Bell” celebration in Cleveland, Ohio, Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel is honored before reporting for military service. September 8: U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower announces that Italy has surrendered to the Allies. Several days later, Prime Minister Benito Mussolini— who had been arrested in July after being ousted from the Italian government—is rescued from his prison by German commandos. July 10: Operation Husky commences as Allied forces land on the island of Sicily, opening the way for an Allied invasion of mainland Italy.

J U LY

AUGUST

December 4: President Roosevelt closes the Works Progress Administration, officially ending the Great Depression.

SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER

July 16: The first chapter of The Batman is released to movie theaters. Distributed by Columbia Pictures, the fifteen-chapter serial stars Lewis Wilson as Batman and Douglas Croft as Robin.

NOVEMBER

DECEMBER

October 25: The first installment of the daily Batman & Robin comic strip appears in newspapers. Produced by Batman’s co-creators Bob Kane and Bill Finger, the strip will last until 1946.

the multimedia use of and commercial licensing fees generated by a certain golden goose in red cape and blue tights. Joining the Last Son of Krypton in the broader public consciousness this year was the team of Batman and Robin. On July 16, the Dynamic Duo became the first DC property translated to live-action film with the debut of The Batman, a fifteen-chapter serial from Columbia Pictures. Lewis Wilson starred as Batman, Douglas Croft as Robin, and Shirley Patterson as Linda Page, the series pitting its masked leads against the fiendish scientist Dr. Daka, played by character actor J. Carroll Naish using every “yellow peril” stereotype the filmmakers could evoke. (Early production art has come to light suggesting Naish was originally cast as The Joker, a role still reflected in Daka’s clothing and pallid makeup, but the part was rewritten to be more topical.) Although the Caped Crusaders were recast as secret agents of the U.S. government rather than unsanctioned vigilantes, the serial remained relatively faithful to the source material, sometimes to its detriment:

both Batman and Robin closely followed those in the comics, but were unconvincing. In tight closeups, one could see ragged cloth edges to the eyeholes merely poked in the masks. Neither Wilson nor Croft, nor their stunt doubles, had the style and grace of the comic book version, or of the action men in the competing serials from Republic Pictures.” (Harmon 235-36) For all its faults, The Batman did make two important contributions to the mythos of its title character. It was the serial that introduced the Bat’s-Cave, the hero’s subterranean headquarters, and Bruce Wayne’s faithful butler Alfred. Though he debuted in the May-June issue (#16) of the Batman solo book, the character was created for the screen, appearing in studio story treatments months before his comic book intro was assigned. Indeed, in his initial appearances Alfred bore little resemblance to the dignified gentleman’s gentleman played by William Austin in the serial. Instead, the portly manservant—a former music hall performer bullied into entering domestic service by his dying father Jarvis, butler to the Wayne family in Bruce’s early childhood—spoke with a thick pseudo-Cockney accent and fancied himself a sleuth. He simply appeared on the doorstep of the Wayne mansion one morning and announced he was assuming his duties. Some fun was had at his expense before his caped employ-

“[The leads] were played by a pair of relative unknowns.… Wilson’s face did resemble the comic book Bruce Wayne’s, but he was too thick in the middle and very unathletic in appearance. Croft was a bit too old for the part, and looked even older when a hairy-legged stuntman doubled for the bare-legged “boy” in the fights. The costumes of 179

Kane were the obvious choices for the new venture. Management considered the syndicated strip a higher priority than the comic books, so much so that by midsummer both men’s contributions to the books had been reduced to a trickle. The slower pace of production allowed Kane to pay more attention to draftsmanship and composition than usual while retaining the familiar quirks that defined his style. Aiding this effort was Charles Paris, whose clean inks complemented both Kane’s pencils and those of Sunday page artist Jack Burnley. Years later, longtime “Batman and Robin” inker Jerry Robinson explained why he didn’t follow Kane to the McClure project: “[T]hey didn’t want to use both of us to exclusively work on [the newspaper strip].… I’d be more valuable to them doing the books. If we both left, there wouldn’t be any continuity.… The attraction [of remaining with DC] was to do stories of my own. I was still very absorbed in the iconography of the comic book work. I could do a lot of things: you weren’t restricted by size as in the strip, and it was attractive to me to be able to do my own stories and covers on Batman, completely pencilled and inked.” (Desris 7) No one could say Robinson didn’t take full advantage of his chance. Beginning with Detective Comics #76 (June), he brought a new electricity to the series. The fluidity of his figure work recalled that of Jack Kirby and his shadowdrenched backgrounds evoked Mort Meskin, but the personality he brought to his characters, particularly the villains, was all his own. The contrast to the art he produced when partnered with Bob Kane couldn’t have been plainer, yet Robinson did indeed supply visual continuity that extended well beyond the familiar Kane signature that appeared on every cover and splash panel regardless of his actual involvement.

Lewis Wilson and Douglas Croft made for a less-than-Dynamic Duo in Columbia’s 1943 serial The Batman. TM and © DC Comics.

ers let him in on their secret. Not until Detective #83 (dated January 1944, on the stands in November ‘43) would the editors slim down and smarten up the newly mustachioed Alfred to match his celluloid counterpart, a story that also introduced the rechristened Bat-Cave to the comic books.

While Bill Finger provided the occasional script after the launch of the syndicated strip, including the account in Batman #20 (December-January) of the custody battle between Dick Grayson’s unscrupulous con man uncle and Bruce Wayne, Don Cameron stepped in as lead writer of the comic book version in his absence. Cameron wrote the story introducing Alfred, as well as contributing several new villains to the Masked Manhunter’s rogue’s gallery. The Cavalier, actually Bruce’s fellow social butterfly Mortimer Drake, was a swashbuckling crook prone to unpredictable acts of gallantry, interrupting his own getaway at one point to help an old woman carry her groceries up a flight of stairs. Dumfree and Deever Tweed, better known as Tweedledum and Tweedledee, were morbidly obese cousins who used their identical appearances in elaborate schemes of deception. The Crime Doctor was respected surgeon Dr. Bradford Thorne who lent his talent for meticulous planning to the underworld for a percentage of the take. Other writers contributing episodes of “Batman and Robin” this year were Joseph Greene, Joe Samachson, sci-fi writer Horace L. Gold, story editor Jack Schiff, and Bunny Lyons a.k.a. Ruth Kaufman, who wrote three fine scripts for DC under Schiff’s tutelage before forsaking the medium.

Equally critical to the characters’ pop culture visibility was the launch on October 25 of a daily Batman and Robin newspaper strip distributed by the McClure Syndicate, followed by a Sunday page on November 7. Maintaining a separate continuity, the new strip retained all the elements that made the comic books popular while taking advantage of the more leisurely storytelling inherent in the medium to flesh out the plots (sometimes recycled from past issues of Batman and Detective), making them more palatable for the adult audience on whose devotion the strip’s survival would depend. “Batman” co-creators Bill Finger and Bob

Cameron was also called upon to take up the slack on “Superman” after Jerry Siegel, the Man of Tomorrow’s co-

Alfred entered the lives of Batman and Robin by arriving at Wayne Manor and announcing he was the new butler. TM and © DC Comics.

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far enough ahead that every 1943-dated issue of Superman contained at least one of his scripts. Schiff was also proven right in thinking that new writers might mean a fresh approach to the series. Don Cameron did what Siegel would not, having the Big Red S mix it up with Axis troops in several episodes. He also co-created with Shuster ghost Ed Dobrotka one of Superman’s classic villains. The Toyman was a seemingly harmless eccentric who used the ingenious toys he crafted to launch a crime spree that brought Metropolis to its knees before he was caught. Bill Finger’s first script for the Man of Tomorrow ran in Superman #25 (November-December), as did Sgt. Mort Weisinger’s “I Sustain the Wings,” a showcase for the Army Air Force’s Technical Training Command (loosely based on a radio program he wrote as part of his military duties) and the first mention of Clark Kent’s failed eye exam in a comic book.

With Bob Kane tied up producing the Batman syndicated strip, his longtime inker Jerry Robinson got his chance to fly solo.

Exposure in other media solidified Superman and Batman’s place at the top of the DC hierarchy. Just below them perched “The Boy Commandos,” whose top-selling quarterly, combined with their regular berths in Detective Comics and World’s Finest Comics, attested to their popularity. Month after month, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby discovered new kinds of stories to tell about their kid soldiers and new ways to tell them, from the heartwarming Christmas story in Detective #71 (January), in which the team broke a refugee boy’s father out of a concentration

creator and, up to this point, sole writer, was drafted in June. Siegel, already bitter over his and Joe Shuster’s being denied a fair slice of the merchandising pie and convinced that his bosses were trying to wrest creative control of his pen-and-ink progeny away from him, didn’t want to go. For a time, it looked like DC didn’t want him to either: “A persistent rumor in the comic book industry was that Harry Donenfeld was arranging to keep Siegel out of uniform, which was the sort of thing Harry would and could do.… Whatever kept Jerry Siegel out of the draft for all those months finally ended in 1943. The hand of … the DC public relations machine can be felt even then, however. Jerry was honored as a star inductee at a huge “Liberty Day” celebration in Cleveland on the Fourth of July. Walter Winchell got the scoop, and it played well in the Cleveland press. Jerry stood on a dais, he nodded, he took his papers, and then he was off to basic training.” (G. Jones 219) There was a germ of truth to Siegel’s paranoia. Schiff, like Mort Weisinger before him, considered Jerry’s scripting too lightweight for his own creation, preferring the intricate, gimmicky plots they oversaw in their years with Ned Pines’ sci-fi pulp line to the straightforward crime stories he favored. He wanted to try Cameron or Finger, a Schiff favorite, on “Superman.” Siegel and the Shuster studio tried hard to give him what he wanted, staging rematches with The Prankster and The Puzzler and trying out new villains like The Insect Master, Herr Fange and his army of sea monsters, The Leopard, The Robber Baron, and Adonis, an aging movie star forced into crime after being deliberately disfigured by renegade plastic surgeon Dr. Menace (you’d think that name would’ve raised a red flag). They also added a dose of humor, introducing Herman the Heroic, a bumbling would-be costumed crusader, and Lois Lane’s mischievous niece Susie, a fibber of Olympian proportions. One story included a dream sequence in which Lois acquired powers and began fighting crime as Superwoman, a forerunner of what would be known as “Imaginary Stories” when Weisinger encouraged their widespread use in the Superman titles of the 1960s. Siegel’s last pre-induction issue of Action Comics was #61 (June) but he had written

Lois Lane became Superwoman this year, proving more than Superman’s equal, but it was, alas, only a dream. TM and © DC Comics.

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as the sole provider for his family, had been given a deferment. By summer, the draft board dropped that exemption and Jack was in the Army. Known and envied for the speed with which they turned out top drawer material, the team, with the help of various assistants, left enough inventory to sustain all three series through their December-dated episodes. The exuberance of Simon and Kirby’s “Sandman” couldn’t prevent Adventure Comics from dropping to bi-monthly publication with issue #86 (July-August). Neither could the Gardner Fox-scripted “Starman,” drawn by Emil Gershwin as of the February issue (#83). In between Axis operatives, the Astral Avenger thrashed thematically apropos foes like The Moonman, The Sun, and Astra the Astrologer. Joe Samachson and Bunny Lyons supplied scripts for “The Shining Knight,” including a sly Samachson story narrated by Winged Victory, Sir Justin’s flying horse. Time finally ran out for Bernard Baily’s “Hour-Man,” replaced as of Adventure #84 (March) by “Mike Gibbs, Guerrilla,” a war strip about an American reporter trapped behind enemy lines. Twenty-one years were to pass before Rex Tyler and his hourglass were seen again. As for his replacement, “Gibbs” lasted only long enough to be axed when the title’s page count decreased. More Fun Comics, too, was demoted to a bi-monthly, beginning with its May-June issue (#91). Its only casualty this year was the police strip “Radio Squad,” long abandoned by creators Siegel and Shuster, which disappeared following issue #87 (January). For the most part, the title’s features— “The Green Arrow,” “Johnny Quick,” “Aquaman,” “The Spectre,” and “Doctor Fate”—offered super-hero thrills a cut above much of the competition in execution but little that was truly memorable. Scripter Joe Samachson and artists Cliff Young and Steve Brodie concocted an origin for cover stars Green Arrow and Speedy in More Fun #89 (March). Stranded by ruthless treasure hunters atop Lost Mesa, wealthy expedition sponsor Oliver Queen teamed with fellow archery whiz Roy Harper, a plane crash survivor raised atop the mesa by his late father’s trusted Native American friend, to stop the crooks from looting a legendary burial site. In the following issue, Gardner Fox and Bernard Baily (or Pierce Rice, who periodically ghosted for Baily) separated The Spectre and Jim Corrigan into two independent beings, sending the mortal police detective off to war while an invisible Spectre played nursemaid to the annoying Percival Popp. Joining the line-up in the November-December issue (#94) was a new humor strip from managing editor Whit Ellsworth and cartoonist Henry Boltinoff starring “Dover and Clover,” twin private eyes who eagerly bumbled their way through even the simplest cases.

The Green Arrow and boy pal Speedy finally got an origin more than a year after their debut. TM and © DC Comics.

camp, to the saga of the Rosalind K in issue #82 (December), simultaneously a tribute to the crews of the Flying Fortresses raining destruction on the Nazi war machine and a love letter to Kirby’s wife. Other highlights included a return match with Agent Axis, a visit to the Shangri-La analog called the Valley of Destiny, Rip Carter on trial for his life after being accused of treason by an incompetent martinet, and a power-packed guest appearance by Simon and Kirby’s other headliners “The Newsboy Legion” and “The Sandman.” Both series matched “Boy Commandos” in quality, their urban settings, one lower class, one upper, lending them a different flavor. The duo also continued to oversee “Manhunter,” now drawn by Pierce Rice. Rice and studiomate Arthur Cazeneuve followed the latter’s brother Louis, artist on “Aquaman” and “The Shining Knight,” to DC, their association with Jack and Joe taking up a progressively larger percentage of their workday. Simon and Kirby enjoyed unprecedented creative freedom at DC. That, and a contract that gave them among the highest page rates in the industry, caused some resentment. Mort Weisinger, for one, chafed at being denied input into their strips. Jack Schiff and his new editorial assistant, fellow Pines alum Bernard “Bernie” Breslauer, seemed satisfied to let the partners go their own way. But the war was about to bring their sweet ride to a screeching halt. Simon joined the Coast Guard in January, serving in its Public Information Division alongside comedian Sid Caesar, actor Cesar Romero, and boxer Jack Dempsey. Kirby,

Creator changes were the order of the day in the back pages of Detective Comics. A service-bound Jack Lehti handed the reins to “The Crimson Avenger” over to the RiceCazeneuve team for the September issue (#79), with John Daly taking charge the following month. George Roussos provided both line art and color for “Air Wave” as of issue #75 (May), drenching Joe Samachson’s scripts in shadows so thick it was no wonder he sometimes signed his work “Inky.” Chuck Winter was the exception, drawing all ten 1943 episodes of “Spy,” which was left out of the September 182

and October issues (#79-80). The last of the year’s turnovers came in the December issue (#82), as Howard Sherman was replaced on “Slam Bradley” by Jack Farr. Better known for zany humor strips than straight adventure, Farr was all over the DC line this year, with four page episodes of “Super-Sleuth McFooey,” “Professor Pipp,” “Vitamin Vic,” “Jitter’s Jeep,” or one-pagers of “Qwik Qwiz” or “Hectic History” appearing in every title except Adventure. The cut in page count seems to have caught the Action Comics gang by surprise. For its first three 60-page issues (#62-64, June-August), three pages of art in each “Three Aces” and “Zatara” episode were reduced in size and rearranged to fit onto two pages. It proved simpler to pull the plug on the Aces’ series. The war was front-and-center in the “Americommando” strip, as writer Joseph Greene and artist Bernard Baily gave Tex Thomson’s bewigged alter ago a new sidekick, Greek partisan Peter Popolis, and an arch-enemy, the half-Japanese, half-German Dr. Ito, better known as The Little One. The master assassin matched wits with Americommando four times before dying in Action #62 (July). Recurring villains The Dummy, The Rainbow Man, and Shakes the Underworld Poet plagued “The Vigilante” and boy pal Stuff, as did two new nemeses: The Fiddler and Dictionary, a gangster with a formidably erudite vocabulary. Mort Meskin, aided by inkers Charles Paris, George Roussos, and Joe Kubert, dynamically illoed scripts by Don Cameron, Joe Samachson, and a newcomer to the roster of DC freelancers, Alvin Schwartz (no relation to the children’s horror writer of the same name). Schwartz, the former publisher of a small literary magazine who first broke into the comics field with a script for Dell’s Fairy Tale Parade, was to become a major writer for “Superman” and “Batman” in both their comic book and newspaper strip incarnations.

The screwball humor of Jack Farr was a regular feature of DC comic books in 1943. TM and © DC Comics.

Jerry Siegel to the Army before Jimmy Thompson took the helm with issue #26 (November), beginning a six-year run on the metallic marvel. Credits are unavailable for Siegel’s successors on “The Star-Spangled Kid,” still drawn by Hal Sherman, not even for the expanded origin story featured in the March issue (#18). The Kid and Stripsey split their time in 1943 between countering Axis espionage and duking it out with old foe The Needle and new baddie Mr. Gadget. And so it went throughout the Detective line, its super-hero strips keeping their stars away from the war zone—“Americommando” excepted—to pursue costumed criminals, enemy agents, and run-of-the-mill mobsters. This mix had kept readers returning throughout 1942 and neither publishers nor editors saw any reason to modify it in 1943.

Star Spangled Comics bade farewell to “The Tarantula” and “TNT and Dyna-Mite,” the former cancelled to make room for the immigrating “Liberty Belle,” the latter axed due to the drop in page count. The “Robotman” strip flailed for a few months after losing writer and co-creator

Nonetheless, the front office was aware of the growing popularity of comedy features throughout the industry. Regular berths for humor strips in More Fun, Star Spangled, and Adventure, as well as the reams of funny filler material provided by Farr, Boltinoff, Ray Houlihan, and George Storm, attested to this. In late autumn, DC took the next logical step, launching a new quarterly bearing the awkward but honest title All-Funny Comics with Bernie Breslauer at the helm. As its cover cheerily proclaimed, the new book offered “old friends and new in brand-new stories,” headlining “Dover and Clover,” “Penniless Palmer” (now also drawn by Henry Boltinoff), and Alfred Bester and Stan Kaye’s quasi-mystery-man feature “Genius Jones.” The new friends included Tom McNamara’s “Grandpa Peters By Lefty O’Grady,” a clever strip deliberately drawn in the crude manner of a child that offered a kids’-eye perspective on grown-up foolishness; wacky inventors “Hamilton and Egbert” by 20-year-old Paul Fung, Jr., son of the artist of the syndicated strip Dumb Dora; “Two-Gun Percy,” a western burlesque illoed by Bernard Baily about a lonesome cowpoke and his talking horse; and “Hayfoot Henry,” another of those inexplicably popular series in which all the characters speak in rhyme, this one starring a perpetually befuddled beat cop. Stan Kaye drew it, with Alvin Schwartz providing the doggerel. Schwartz was also the writer on the character who became All-Funny’s break-

“Buzzy,” DC’s first foray into teen humor, was the highlight of the new All-Funny Comics. TM and © DC Comics.

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“These stories seem to satisfy the same emotional needs as do the traditional fairy tales: escape and wish-fulfillment. The fact that they combine fantasy with current, every-day life adds a satisfying element for our modern children. They undoubtedly serve many children as emotional release for feelings of aggression or frustration, and may have positive value in this respect.” (Quattro)

out star. “Buzzy” was a teen humor series à la “Archie” that chose not to simply ape Bob Montana’s strip. The title character was a would-be hepcat mad for swing music who spoke in impenetrable slang, lived to go “jooking” with his crowd of fellow jitterbuggers, carried his saxophone (later a trumpet) with him wherever he went, and was in a state of perpetual war with the determinedly unhep Homer Gruff, father of Buzzy’s “little lamb” Suzie. It was a refreshing take on the emergent genre aided immeasurably by the stylized slapstick of George Storm. The All-Funny lineup was a good one, and the executives kept their fingers crossed that it would herald a profitable new breed of comics to join the publishers’ successful super-hero line on the newsstands.

This should have been good news for Gaines, but Frank, whom Marston characterized as “an avowed enemy of the Wonder Woman strip” (Lepore 236), had made her antipathy toward the character abundantly clear, as in her February 17 letter to the publisher: “[T]here has been considerable criticism in our committee concerning your WONDER WOMAN feature, both in SENSATION COMICS and in the WONDER WOMAN magazine. As you know, I have never been enthusiastic about this feature. I know also that your circulation [numbers] prove that a lot of other people are enthusiastic. Nevertheless, this feature does lay you open to considerable criticism from any such group as ours, partly on the basis of [her] costume (or lack of it), and partly on the basis of sadistic bits showing women chained, tortured, etc. I wish you would consider these criticisms very seriously.” (Quattro)

At War Over Wonder Woman Humor had been a part of the appeal of DC’s sister company All-American Comics from its beginnings. The evidence was everywhere: the tongue-in-cheek heroics of Johnny Thunder, The Red Tornado, and The Ghost Patrol; the proliferation of comic relief sidekicks like Doiby Dickles, Etta Candy, and The Three Dimwits; the licensed title Mutt & Jeff; Ed Wheelan’s vaudevillian “Fat and Slat” fillers, and more. The artwork in AA’s titles tended toward the humorous, even on the adventure material. Sheldon Moldoff’s Alex Raymond-inspired work on “Hawkman” and “The Black Pirate,” which would have looked right at home in a DC title, seemed out of place amidst the cartoonier work of H.G. Peter, E.E. Hibbard, Mart Nodell, Jon L. Blummer, Irwin Hasen, Joe Gallagher, Frank Harry, Stan Aschmeier, and editor/art director Sheldon Mayer.

Troubled by Frank’s warnings, Gaines asked assistant editor Dorothy Roubicek what she thought. She suggested the strip downplay the Amazonian connection to avoid any whiff of lesbianism (another criticism frequently leveled at

But what was going on behind the scenes at the All-American offices was anything but funny, as co-publisher M.C. Gaines found himself caught in the crossfire between two strong personalities, each claiming the intellectual and moral high ground, over “Wonder Woman.” On one side stood its creator, psychologist William Moulton Marston, who had recently outed himself as the man behind the “Charles Moulton” byline in a magazine interview. On the other stood DC/AA Editorial Advisory Board chair Josette Frank. In the Summer 1943 issue of its house organ Child Study, the Child Study Association published the results of a comprehensive survey of the comics industry conducted by Frank and a colleague bylined as Mrs. Hugh Grant Strauss. In discussing the super-hero genre, which the article categorized as “Fantastic Adventure,” they declared that:

A sampling of the scenes of sadism, degradation, and elaborate bondage in “Wonder Woman” that divided the AA Editorial Advisory Board on the series’ suitability for a young audience. TM and © DC Comics.

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en’s hair, boots, belts, silks worn by women, gloves, stockings, garters, panties, bare backs, sweats, breasts, etc, etc. You can’t have a real woman character in any form of fiction without touching off a great many readers’ fantasies. Which is swell, I say.” (242)

Josette Frank of the prestigious Child Study Association, usually a friend of the comic book industry, led the protest against the “Wonder Woman” strip’s sexual undertones.

the feature), adding “I believe it would be to our eventual advantage to play up WW as a female SUPERMAN and give her the same kind of escapade to play around with” (Lepore 238). “Of course I wouldn’t expect Miss Roubicek to understand [the point of the strip],” Marston sneered condescendingly in his reply, “Miss R. has been in comics only 6 months or so, yes? And never in psychology” (237). Gaines next had Roubicek consult with Editorial Advisory Board member Lauretta Bender. The child psychiatrist pooh-poohed Frank’s criticisms and praised Wonder Woman and her creator for “[striking] at the very heart of masculinity and femininity and of aggression and submission” (240). Reluctant to meddle with his company’s top moneymaker, Gaines decided to do nothing. But Frank and her fellow critics weren’t altogether wrong, and he knew it. The strip was top-heavy with scenes of Wonder Woman in bondage. Sadistic villains like Baroness Paula Von Gunther did revel in whippings, brandings, slashings, beatings, and other acts of violence, primarily against women. The All-American offices began receiving fan mail from adult fetishists. Gaines was horrified. Marston was ecstatic: “[S]o what? Some day I’ll make you a list of all the items about women that different people have been known to get passionate over—wom-

In other words, Marston wasn’t about to compromise his principles for a bunch of bluenoses. It all had to do with his fervent belief that “[t]he only hope for peace is to teach people … to enjoy being bound—enjoy submission to kind authority, wise authority” (238). Another Advisory Board member, Professor W.W.D. Sones of the University of Pittsburgh School of Education, countered: “The social purpose which [Marston] claims [for the strip] is open to very serious objection. It is just such submission that he claims he wants to develop that makes dictator dominance possible. From the standpoint of social ideals, what we want in America and the world is

cooperation and not submission.” (241) Marston remained unmoved. Frank wasn’t about to back off either, and she was a friend of the industry. There were other watchdogs of public morality out there less kindly disposed, professional busybodies just waiting for a juicy crusade to go off on. The shame of it all was that in between the sequences of questionable taste, “Wonder Woman” was a strip full of invention and whimsy, freely mixing classical mythology, science fiction, fairy tales, and propaganda into a frothy brew of “fantastic adventure.” Marston and artist H.G. Peter expanded their Amazonian mythos, as in Sensation Comics #19 (July), the first story to show the heroine going berserk when her bracelets of submission were removed, and pressed their feminist agenda in Wonder Woman #7 (Autumn) with a tale of a future America in which the Amazing Amazon is elected president. Several new antagonists were added to Princess Diana’s enemies list, each given a unique quirk by their psychologist creator.

Ghost illustrator Frank Godwin did his best to replicate the spirit of H.G. Peter’s art. TM and © DC Comics.

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lifeless, primitive style that poorly served a strip whose hero was all about motion. All-Flash #9 (March-April) was the first to set the series in Keystone City. Fox and his collaborators gave the Scarlet Speedster several new villains to contend with, notably The Thinker, a former Keystone district attorney turned criminal mastermind; The Eel, a fugitive mob boss who donned a greased costume to terrorize the farming community of Pumpkin Center; telepathic gangster Johnny Bonham; Maldita toxicohedron, a malevolent mutant plant; and The Terrible Three, Axis spies who were dead ringers for The Three Dimwits. They also expanded the supporting cast, adding loquacious gambler Erasmus “Deuces” Wilde and The Liars’ Club, a social group whose members routinely disbelieved Jay Garrick’s true accounts of his “friend” The Flash’s speed tricks. Fantasy and science fiction elements began to play a larger role, with the Crimson Comet, often accompanied by girlfriend Joan Williams and the Dimwits, visiting such exotic locales as Mars, Fairyland, the planet Karma, and the Fourth Dimension, traveling forward and backward in time, and confronting a string of criminal scientists armed with exotic (and improbable) inventions.

The Cheetah was really Priscilla Rich, a schizophrenic heiress with a pathological hatred of Wonder Woman. Dr. Psycho was a misogynistic little person with psychokinetic powers who sought revenge on all womankind for the humiliation they made him feel. The high priest of the subversive Cult of the Crimson Flame turned out to be another crossdressing female. Old foes Mars, Princess Maru, and the aforementioned Paula Von Gunther all returned for a second helping of defeat. Six episodes were ghosted by an uncredited Frank Godwin, who did a superlative job of blending his own illustrative instincts with Peter’s stylistic idiosyncrasies. Despite the controversy (of which the average reader was completely unaware), the “Wonder Woman” series was thriving as the star attraction of the monthly Sensation, the quarterly Comic Cavalcade, and her solo book, which was promoted to bi-monthly with its third issue (February-March) only to be returned to four-times-a-year status when Gaines and Mayer cut pages and reduced frequencies in response to the paper shortage. Mutt & Jeff, AllFlash, and All-Star Comics also became quarterlies as of their Autumn issues (#11, #12 and #18, respectively), while flagship title All-American Comics became a bi-monthly for the duration.

“Green Lantern,” too, starred in an anthology, a solo title, and Comic Cavalcade, yet came off second best this year to Flash and Wonder Woman thanks to All-American Second only to Wonder Woman in popularity was “The Comics’ demotion to bi-monthly. The Emerald Gladiator Flash.” Like Diana, the World’s Fastest Man headlined a experienced a key creative change in 1943 as well. Origimonthly anthology, starred in a solo book, and was covernal writer Bill Finger, his duties on the Batman and Robin featured on Comic Cavalcade. Writer Gardner Fox and artist newspaper strip demanding most of his time, stayed with E.E. Hibbard produced all six issues of All-Flash, while Louis the feature long enough to muster GL and Doiby Dickles “Lou” Ferstadt replaced Hal Sharp as Hibbard’s primary out of the Army (Green Lantern #7, Spring) before handing ghost with Flash Comics #38 (February), to be succeeded in the scripting chores to Alfred Bester. The new wordsmith turn by Martin Naydel, nee Nadle, as of Comic Cavalcade #5 put his stamp on the strip immediately, giving its lead a (Winter). Naydel, writer and artist of the pioneering 1933 dramatic new oath: “In brightest day, in blackest night, one-shot The Adventures of Detective Ace King, drew in a no evil shall escape my sight. Let those who worship evil’s might beware my power— Green Lantern’s light!” He reworked the dynamic between Alan Scott’s power ring-wielding alter ego and his taxi-driving man Friday, modeling their relationship after Abbott and Costello, Alan playing the exasperated Bud to Doiby’s bumbling Lou. Bester also contributed several new villains, including Venus O’Mylo, a homely female crime boss with whom Doiby was smitten, in Green Lantern #9 (Autumn), and the sinister immortal named Vandal Savage an issue later. Drafted midyear, Irwin Hasen ceded the art assignment on the All-American and Comic Cavalcade episodes to Paul Reinman, with interim art jobs by Stan Aschmeier and The Brain Wave was the first recurring “Justice Society of America” foe, taking on that team twice in 1943. TM and © DC Comics.

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AA newcomer Jon Chester “Chet” Kozlak. Original artist Mart Nodell continued to illustrate the solo book. Paper rationing torpedoed Gaines’ plan to add a Hawkman title to the All-American roster, so the Winged Wonder had to settle for cover feature status in every other issue of Flash Comics and his role as chairman of the “Justice Society of America.” The super-team, still scripted by Gardner Fox and with solo chapters drawn by multiple artists (including the otherwise DC-exclusive Jack Burnley, Simon & Kirby, Howard Sherman, and Bernard Baily) faced the menaces of The King Bee, a deranged exterminator with an army of mentally enslaved Insect Men, and the man who became the JSA’s most relentless foe: The Brain Wave alias Dr. Henry King, a mutant psychiatrist able to create and control simulacra of living beings composed of solidified thought. He popped up twice this year, in the issues preceding and following the propaganda story “The Justice Society Fights for a United America!” in All-Star Comics #16 (April-May). The last episode to use the alternate Justice Battalion designation, it was a call to Americans to put aside their differences and stand together to defeat the dictator nations. It included one of the era’s few realistic, respectful depictions of African-Americans, without exaggerated features or Uncle Remus dialect, as well as introducing the Junior JSA, a new fan club whose members (or their four-color counterparts, anyway) would come to the team’s aid on more than one occasion. While the line-up of features in the back pages of All-American, Flash Comics, and Sensation stayed consistent (aside from the cancellations of “Sargon the Sorcerer” and “The King” in the wake of the conversion to 60 pages, though “Sargon” would soon return), editor Sheldon Mayer and assistants Dorothy Roubicek and Ted Udall oversaw a handful of significant changes in creative personnel. “Wildcat” lost co-creators Bill Finger and Irwin Hasen this year, with Paul Reinman handling the art as of the July Sensation (#19) and Finger’s final script running two issues later. That same issue saw “Johnny Thunder” and “Dr. Mid-Nite” artist Stan Aschmeier add “Mr. Terrific” to his workload, taking over for the departing Hal Sharp. Already writing “The Atom,” “Ghost Patrol,” and “Red, White and Blue,” Udall took on the “Gay Ghost” and “Black Pirate” strips as well, adding a strong dose of fantasy to the latter, with stories set in Atlantis and bringing Jon Valor face-to-face with the legendary Flying Dutchman. At Gaines’ insistence, the “King,” “Gay Ghost,” and “Atom” stories were omitted from the February issues of their respective books in favor of reprints from the publisher’s pet project, Picture Stories from the Bible. The religion-themed quarterly, as produced by Montgomery Mulford and Don Cameron, remained Gaines’ best counterargument to the tsuris surrounding “Wonder Woman.” The original series wrapped up its adaptation of the Old Testament with its Fall issue (#4), which covered the lives of the major and minor prophets. Later in the year, a 236-page one-shot was released collecting all four issues together under a cardboard cover. Priced at 50¢, the collected edition’s initial print run of 100,000 sold out, largely purchased in bulk by churches and synagogues, selling so well that it went back to press eight times over the next four years. It was also the first comic book published under the corporate name Educational Comics, Inc.

The first publication of M.C. Gaines’ Educational Comics, this 236-page edition reprinting Picture Stories from the Bible #1-4 sold out, as did eight additional printings. TM and © respective copyright holder.

No one, not even Gaines himself, could’ve known just how important that decision was to prove in the coming years. If Gaines was less than thrilled with the results of Josette Frank’s industry survey, another publisher who considered himself an advocate of uplifting comics was downright apoplectic. Feeling that Frank gave short shrift to his line of non-fiction comics, Parents’ Institute director George Hecht complained in a letter dated June 11: “In all the classifications of the comics except ‘Real Stories and Biographies’ you have printed evaluations. However, under the classification which our principal comics come there is no general evaluation of our publications as they are now. You say they have potentiality for the future, implying that if they got better they may render a greater service … I have an idea that you think our comics have not been very much of a success and that they are bought largely by parents who force them on their children.” (Quattro) Hecht then took his objections a step further, impugning Frank’s integrity: “Furthermore, this survey is published as an unbiased study and yet it undoubtedly was largely prepared by you, who are a paid adviser and propagandist for [the Detective and All-American] group 187

Overcrowded, copy-heavy cover art was just one of the impediments standing between Parents’ Magazine Press and the affections of the comic book audience. TM and © respective copyright holder.

while Funny Book and Real Heroes were downgraded first to bi-monthly status, then to quarterly with their Summer issues, then cancelled as of their December issues, all to make room for a new title on the schedule. Following a second issue of the all-reprint True Aviation Comics Digest, the series was converted to the standard format, retitled True Aviation Picture Stories, and began to feature all-new content. Originally released eight times a year, the new book became a quarterly with its last 1943-dated issue (#6, Winter). Publishing frequencies and page counts changed but what ran between the covers of the Parents’ line didn’t. All four titles packaged by Funnies, Inc. (Chad Grothkopf’s small studio continued to package Funny Book) offered the same menu of contemporary political and military biographies, torn-from-the-headlines accounts of battlefield heroics, stories from American and world history, aviation factoids, and the occasional piece of outright propaganda (as in True #25’s “How to Beat a Jap”). The art was generally competent, though it was obvious that the Jacquet shop no longer assigned its top talents to these books – nor was there much incentive to do so, for despite Hecht’s boast in his letter to Josette Frank that the average circulation of his comics was between 250,000 and 300,000 an issue, these figures were almost certainly inflated by bulk purchases from schools and other institutions. The reality was that kids simply weren’t going to plunk down their dimes for 60 pages of didacticism, well presented or not, with the same enthusiasm they showed for the blood-and-thunder of super-hero, war, and adventure comics.

of comics. This does not seem to be quite forthright[,] particularly as no mention of your association with this comic group is made in connection with this survey. And it seems to me the height of inconsistency that you should continue to have your name used as Chairman of the Editorial Advisory Board of [those] comics, some of which have scantily clad women on the front covers, and that feature stories dealing with criminals and what appear to be degenerates.” (Quattro) Had the publisher, who up to this point was cooperative to the point of sycophancy with the Child Study Association, been aware of the criticisms of the Parents’ Magazine Press titles that Frank chose to omit from her article, he might have found himself torn between anger and relief. At Frank’s request, Hecht’s former editor David Marke, now working for Donenfeld and Liebowitz in a non-editorial capacity, had reviewed recent True Comics issues and found them lacking. His report lambasted the comic, listing four paragraphs’ worth of historical inaccuracies— including a few made-up “facts”—detected in just two stories from a single issue. An accompanying memo from DC public relations man Harry Childs concluded, “Fictionalization is fully justified only when it is quite clear that it is fictionalization, but should not be presented as Gospel” (Quattro). Given the realities of comic book production such errors were probably inevitable, for despite the impressive list of “advisory editors” that ran in every issue, there was no time on the schedule for rigorous fact-checking. Editor-inchief Elliot Caplin, who scripted several syndicated strips on the side, and Calling All Girls editor Frances Ullman were not historians, nor were the artists and writers of Funnies, Inc., who were tasked with producing some 200 pages of new material each and every month. Certainly George Hecht was too busy to comb through each comic looking for mistakes (and likely rarely looked at them at all). It was just the way it was.

On the Air with M.L.J. No company’s super-heroes served up more blood-andthunder than the gang at M.L.J. Magazines. Under the management of editor Harry Shorten, the adventures of “The Black Hood,” “The Shield,” and “The Hangman” were among the most violent on the newsstands. But the tide in reader tastes was turning, and the transition to humor that began the previous year with the rebranding of Top Notch Comics as Top Notch Laugh Comics continued in 1943. The quarterly Jackpot Comics, a showcase title for the line’s most popular costumed crusaders, became a 48-page funny animal title called Jolly Jingles. A wave of cancellations beginning in the March-dated issues and

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continuing through the switch to 60 pages with the June and Summer releases rang down the curtain on “Mr. Justice,” “The Web,” and other long-running features. The publisher’s paper quota dictated more than smaller page counts. Just ten issues of the monthly Pep Comics and Zip Comics saw print this year, and only 11 of Top Notch Laugh. The quarterly Shield-Wizard Comics skipped its Winter issue so that Archie Comics could be bumped up to bi-monthly status with its fourth issue (September-October), a clear indicator of the increasing importance of comedy to the bottom line. The indisputable star of the M.L.J. line was “Archie.” Even without creator Bob Montana on hand (his final pre-induction episodes ran in Pep #36-38), buyers were clamor- The transformation of Jackpot Comics into Jolly Jingles was emblematic of a year-spanning shift in emphasis across the MLJ line from super-heroes to teen humor, funny animals, and other comedy genres. TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc. ing for more and larger doses of the hilarious doings of the Riverics, but his “Squoimy the Worm” and “Judge Owl’s Fables” dale gang. Harry Sahle manned the drawing table for most were relocated to Jolly Jingles to make room for solo stories of the year’s episodes thereafter, assisted by Zoltan Szenof “Jughead” and “Betty and Veronica.” It was a testament ics and Virginia Drury, who signed her art “Ginger.” Writto Montana’s storytelling savvy that even his supporting ing credits are scarce for the 1943-dated stories, though a players had strong enough personalities to sustain their handful were signed by staff writer Edward “Ed” Goggin. own series, something that made the strip tower over its Several new characters were introduced this year includcompetition, including Zip Comics regular “Wilbur.” Writing Oscar, the Andrews’ dog; Uncle Sam and Aunt Aggie, ten mostly by Goggin, with art by Lin Streeter, Red Holwhose farm provided plenty of opportunities for Archiemdale, Betty Hershey, and Clement “Clem” Weisbecker, style catastrophes; and Jughead’s young cousin Souphead, “Wilbur” was funny enough but lacked the intercharacter a pint-sized lookalike with an alarming propensity for dynamics that made “Archie” work. And potent they were mayhem. Joe Edwards’ “Cubby” and “Bumbie the Bee-tecproving to be, for as the covers of Archie Comics #4 and Pep tive” retained their spots in the back pages of Archie ComComics #42 (September) proudly boasted, America’s Typical Teen was now on the radio.

MLJ was not shy about using their comics to promote the new Archie Andrews radio series. TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

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On Monday, May 31, the first 15-minute episode of Archie Andrews hit the airwaves over the NBC Blue Network. This first series, which aired five nights a week, largely ignored the comic book’s supporting cast, focusing on Archie’s family life rather than his circle of friends. Without the romantic triangle with Betty and Veronica, his rivalry with Reggie, his rocky relationship with Riverdale High principal Mr. Weatherbee, or the comedic imagination of Bob Montana, however, Archie Andrews came across as just another family sitcom, a poor cousin of The Aldrich Family. A little over a month later, The Black Hood debuted on the Mutual Network starring Scott Douglas as the title character and Marjorie Cramer as love interest Betty Sutton. Much as

The Shadow gained the power of invisibility when making the jump from the pulps to radio, so too did the Hood, whose headgear here possessed magical attributes, gain superhuman prowess. It didn’t seem to make much difference. Black Hood had not been unique enough to keep his pulp title alive and the same proved true of his radio incarnation. The series ran through January 14, 1944 for a total of 120 15-minute installments. Taking its time slot was the Archie Andrews program, snatched up by Mutual, recast, and brought closer in line with the source material. The series endured until 1953.

Buddies” strip starring Dusty the Boy Detective and Roy the Super-Boy which survived the transition from Hangman to Black Hood unmolested. Writing credits for all three series are unavailable, as they are for virtually all the M.L.J. super-heroes in 1943. Harry Shorten was probably cranking out his usual flurry of script pages, but Joe Blair had dropped out of the comics scene and Fox alumnus Robert Kanigher had only written a few episodes of “Steel Sterling” and “The Web” before he entered the military. Any other contributors must remain anonymous pending further research.

The launch of his radio show likely played a role in the transformation of the quarterly Hangman Comics into Black Hood Comics as of its Winter issue (#9). It wasn’t Hangman’s fault. His adventures, illustrated both here and in Pep Comics by Bob Fujitani, were as generous with the action and violence as ever. His opposition consisted of such lowlifes as The Raven, The Snail, The Ferret, timelost pirate Captain Bombo, and The Laughing Cavalier. The Hood faced a less distinctive assortment of nogoodniks, only his battles with The Living Wish and The Gourmet demonstrating any flair. Art duties passed from Sam Cooper to Clem Weisbecker, who also drew the “Boy

Shorten was almost certainly keeping his hand in on “The Shield,” still being illustrated by co-creator Irv Novick. The dependable Novick was considered the company’s top super-hero artist, also handling Zip Comics cover star “Steel Sterling” and taking over “Captain Commando and the Boy Soldiers” with the January issue of Pep (#35), giving the Boy Commando wannabes a new origin in issue #43 (November) that hewed even closer to that of their inspirations. Among Shield and Dusty’s nemeses this year was The Son of The Hun, offspring of the shield-slinging stormtrooper seen in previous episodes. They also clashed with Marvelo and his living puppets, convinced a thrillseeking Martian named Monstro that Earth was not his personal amusement park, and helped a 200-year-old ghost rid his haunted house of unwanted gangland visitors. In addition to the Axis spies, fifth columnists, and mobsters Novick and his mystery collaborator threw at him, Steel Sterling also had an amusing run-in with the Yehudis, a race of invisible gremlins. Nazi and Imperial Japanese villains were frequent fixtures of these series, but the trend throughout the rest of the line was to turn away from warrelated plotlines. Black Hood was the only mystery man still appearing in Top Notch Laugh Comics, the rest of its pages devoted to Don Dean’s “Pokey Oakey” and “Señor Siesta,” Ed Goggins’ “Three Monkey-teers,” and Carl Hubbell’s “Snoop McGook,” all strips in place since the switch in contents the year before. Scripting duties on the book’s other two features were seldom stable, with Goggins and Gerald Kean contributing to both. Red Holmdale provided the art for “Gloomy Gus,” and most of that for “Suzie,” backstopped by Janice Valleau, Vivian Lipman, Claire Moe, and Harry Sahle. A Bob Montana-less “Percy” did not make the cut, dropped following issue #36 (July), the last 68-pager. Joining the Top Notch line-up in the February issue (#33) was “Dotty and Ditto,” a kid strip set on a dude ranch. Its lead was a pint-size cowgirl described in the opening caption as “a rootin’, tootin’, shootin’ kiddo who makes Annie Oakley look like a Campfire Girl!” Ditto was her pet parrot, but despite his equal billing he was less important to the series than Dotty’s best friend, a mohawked Indian boy named Dottum. In a story that ran through much of the year, the kids went off to Hollywood, where a producer wanted to make the rough-and-tumble tomboy “the next Shirley Pimple,” a plotline culminating in a screen test for Dotty crashed by Fred Eyestare, Katherine Heartburn, Orson Belles, the Barx Brothers, and other legends of the silver screen. This delightful feature was the creation of cartoonist William “Bill” Woggon, younger brother of Big Chief Wahoo artist Elmer. Bill’s

The launch of a radio show for “The Black Hood” led to his laying claim to the book formerly known as Hangman Comics. TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

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Zip. Written and drawn by Joe Edwards, it was a fantasy in which the title simian shared adventures with a genie he found imprisoned in a bottle. Another funny animal strip, “Woody the Woodpecker,” debuted the same month, ran just two issues, then jumped over to Jolly Jingles. How the series managed to fly under the radar of Walter Lantz’s lawyers is a mystery. Woody was not the only star of Jolly Jingles, the former Jackpot Comics, of dubious legality. The leading half of “Booboo and Butch” was a dead ringer for Walt Disney’s Goofy. It didn’t last long, nor did “Ma, Paw and Willie,” about a clan of canine hillbillies. The only strip introduced in the first issue of Jolly Jingles (#10, Summer) that proved to have any staying power was cover star “Super Duck,” a fearless fowl with a strong familial resemblance to a certain sailorsuited Disney star. S.D. (he had no other name) gained his mighty powers whenever he swallowed one of his “superduper vitamin pills.” Creator Al Fagaly depended heavily in the early stories on animation-style slapstick rather than characterization or clever plotting. There was little there to suggest that Super Duck could compete with Fawcett’s “Hoppy the Marvel Bunny” or Nedor’s “Supermouse,” both better series, let alone that he would outlive both, a familiar presence on the newsstands until 1960.

The cast of Bill Woggon’s “Dotty and Ditto” creates chaos on a Hollywood movie set. TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

previous work on the straight western “Nevada Jones” had given no hint of the charm and wit displayed here. “The Wizard,” bounced out of Top Notch the previous year but retaining his share of the Shield-Wizard quarterly, was luckier than many of his four-color compadres. “Black Jack” and “Zambini” were dropped following Zip Comics #35 (March), with “The Web” following them into limbo three issues later, while Pep axed “Sergeant Boyle” and “Danny in Wonderland” as of its April issue (#39), adding “Bentley of Scotland Yard” to the dustbin after issue #41. With the conversion of Jackpot Comics, “Mr. Justice” also found himself homeless. The sole new M.L.J. super-doer introduced this year was “Red Rube.” Debuting in Zip #39 (August), the feature starred Rueben Rueben, a runaway orphan whose illustrious ancestors granted him the power to transform into a superhuman adult whenever he shouted the phrase “Hey, Rube!” Ed Robbins was responsible for this shameless rip-off of “Captain Marvel.” Pep’s new features were “Catfish Joe,” a Li’l Abner knockoff from moonlighting advertising artist Larry Harris; former Fleischer Studio staffers David “Dave” Higgins and Theresa Woik’s “Lil Chief Bugaboo,” a cute strip starring a willful Native American boy and his “dog” Fido (actually a full-grown mountain lion); and “Marco Loco, Adventurer,” a slapstick swashbuckler created by Carl Hubbell, then quickly taken over by artist Harry Sahle and writer Ed Goggin. That duo were also responsible for three series taking up residence in Zip: “Señor Banana,” an exercise in broad ethnic humor about an always hungry, always sleepy South American layabout; “The Applejacks,” yet more hillbilly humor centered on twins Slappy and Happy avoiding the romantic overtures of the homely Measle girls (both strips laid out by Sahle for Zoltan Szenics to finish); and “Ginger,” a new teen humor strip set in Southern California. Cheerleader Ginger Snap was a female “Archie” capable of generating disaster as spectacularly as her counterpart from Riverdale. “Chimpy” was the fourth feature added to

Just as impetuous and unintentionally catastrophic, “Ginger” was created to be the female answer to “Archie.” TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

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A Tale of Two Timelys

now devoted to comedic material, predominately funny animals. Timely began the year with four humor titles and ended it with seven. The monthly Terry-Toons Comics and the semi-monthly (eight issues a year released approximately every six weeks) Comedy Comics, Joker Comics, and Krazy Komics were joined by Kid Komics, which offered both humor and costumed heroes; All Surprise, a 48-page quarterly showcasing “Super Rabbit” and other top features from the four anthologies; and Powerhouse Pepper Comics, a one-shot starring Basil Wolverton’s hilariously strange strongman. Not everything that appeared in these comics was golden, but there was a consistent tone that ran through most of the humor material and virtually all the funny animals – a joyous anarchy manifested in a steady stream of bad puns, wisecracks, ironic asides, injokes, and creator cameos. It felt subversive, as if the editors, artists, and scripters had collectively decided that as long as they had to churn the stuff out, they might as well have fun doing it.

Timely Publications debuted its own contribution to the fraternity of costumed critters in Comedy Comics #14 (February). Waffles was a timid shoeshine boy until Widjit Witch, star of her own series elsewhere in the title, appeared to him in a dream and gave him the magic ring that turned him into “Super Rabbit.” In making his hero none too bright and setting his adventures in the big city of Metrogoldwynopolis, creator Ernie Hart made the strip just different enough to be something other than a xerox of “Marvel Bunny.” An issue earlier, a more original creation took its first steps. “Super-Baby” was the infant son of an absent-minded scientist and gained superhuman powers after accidental exposure to his father’s “vita-ray” machine. Able to talk and think like a grown-up, the diapered do-gooder was a terror to the criminal element but hid his powers from his doting dad. The series’ creator has been tentatively identified as Joseph “Joe” Beck. Later episodes were drawn by Pauline Loth, who filled the void in the Timely bullpen when Al Jaffee was drafted. A funny strip full of energy, it ran two issues and then moved to companion title Krazy Komics, where Super-Baby even took on Hitler and the other Axis leaders.

Overseeing this madness as of the March-dated issues was Vince Fago, filling in as editor-in-chief and art director while Stan Lee was serving in the Army. Looking for steady work after Paramount Studios closed down the Fleischer Brothers’ Florida animation unit, Fago’s experience, talent, and temperament made him a perfect fit for Timely’s expanding operation. After months of drawing and sometimes writing such series as “Frenchy Rabbit,” “Posty and Lolly,” and Terry-Toons stars “Gandy Goose” and “Dinky Duck,” often with inks by his younger brother Alfred “Al” Fago, the cartoonist was offered the top spot by Lee himself:

Humor was now as important to the fortunes of Martin Goodman as the super-hero comics on which his little publishing empire was built. More than a third of the line was

“Stan hired me, because he got drafted. He says, ‘How would you like to take my job?’ I said I’d have to think about it. I really didn’t want to work in the office five days a week. But after a while I figured I was supposed to be doing it. It was good and I made a lot of money.… I started editing when Timely moved from the McGraw-Hill Building to the Empire State Building. I think that was in August of ‘42. [For] Christmas of ‘42, I received a $300 bonus, so I was editor by that time.” (Amash 13) Lee, billed throughout his absence as “Consulting Editor,” had established a unique gimmick in his funny animal titles that Fago chose to continue. The inside front cover of Terry-Toons, Comedy, and Krazy Komics featured a table of contents and credits extending beyond the expected editors, writers, and artists. For the first time, usually overlooked contributors like letterers got a nod. Among the names rotating through these pages were those of assistant editors Bill King and Mel Barry; staff writers Jack Grogan, Joseph “Cal” Calcagno, and “Stanley Martin” (alias Pvt. Stan Lee, who occasionally sent in a script from boot camp); and artists Hunt, Jaffee, George Klein, Mike Sekowsky, Dave Gantz, Ed Winiarski, Moses “Moe” Worth, and Kin Platt. Hired away from the Sangor Studio, Platt wrote, drew, inked, and provided layouts for less experienced artists. Even Robert “Robbie” Solomon, another Martin Goodman relative whose sole job was to hang out in the bullpen and make sure nobody was slacking off, received regular

Cameos by the Timely staff, as in this scene from “The Creeper and Homer,” contributed to the fun and spontaneity characterizing the line’s humor comics this year. TM and © Marvel Characters Inc.

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billing. Couched in lingo associated with the animation field (e.g., “script supervisor” or “special effects”), these credits can prove baffling to scholars trying to ascertain who did what and when, especially given the frequency with which talents jumped around between strips, scripts frequently being assigned on a first come, first serve basis. Sadly, these pages disappeared from later 1943 issues. Perhaps someone in the executive suite had decided too much fun was being had. Comedy Comics, eldest of the Timely humor titles, finally settled on a permanent roster of strips with its January issue (#13), only freelancer Anton “Tony” Loeb’s “Morty Monk and Buck Baboon” and Ernie Hart’s “Skip O’Hare” carrying over from previous issues. Nearly all were funny animal features. “Percy Penguin” was a prevaricating avian hobo wandering in and out of trouble alongside his pal, a bear named Fizz. The first two episodes were drawn by original “Hawkman” artist Dennis Neville, who stopped getting work from the company after his drinking began to interfere with his deadlines. The similarly footloose “Waldo and Ferdy” were a wolf and fox constantly sabotaged by their own stupidity. “Floop and Skilly Boo” spotlighted the adventures of a hunting dog and a rabbit exploring the wonders of the magical Mystery Woods. Two strips provided some welcome contrast. Stan Lee and Kin Platt used “Widjit the Witch,” a series about a scary-looking but kindly old witch longing for a friend, to lampoon the political scene, as did “Herman the Germ Man,” a peculiar one-off from the Bernard Baily studio that ran in issue #15 (May). Once “Super Rabbit” loped along, the back-up features were left in the dust. Comedy’s covers and lead-off spot belonged to the battling bunny through the AugustSeptember 1946 issue (#33). Similar line-ups graced the pages of Terry-Toon Comics and Krazy Komics. The former continued all the strips introduced the previous year: Ernie Hart’s “Wacky Willie” and “Andy Wolf and Bertie Mouse,” Ed Winiarski’s “Oscar,” the Jim Mooney-drawn “E. Claude Pennygrabber” starring a W.C. Fieldsian fox, “Gandy Goose,” “Dinky Duck,” and a solo series for “Sourpuss.” Dinky gained a co-star this year in the form of Rudy Rooster, while Gandy and Sourpuss were sometimes in the Army, sometimes civilians. The regular cast of Krazy—“Toughy Tomcat,” “Posty and Lolly,” “Silly Seal and Ziggy Pig,” and Kin Platt’s “Skinny Bones,” a redheaded Elmer Fudd lookalike who ran around in polka dot shorts and a tee shirt labeled “4-F”—were joined in 1943 by several new characters. Chad Grothkopf created and illoed the fantasy strip “Inky and The Pied Piper,” while Winiarski’s “The Creeper and Homer” was a strange farce about a cloaked criminal, first seen in Comedy #5’s “Vagabond” story, who delighted in baffling one of comic books’ most spectacularly inept police departments (Homer was its dim-witted rabbit janitor). The “Creeper” series was notable for its caricatures of the Timely staff, sometimes with identifying labels, many recognizable only by personal quirks mentioned in interviews with bullpen veterans decades later.

Kid Komics couldn’t decide if it was a super-hero book or a comedy title. By the third issue, “The Young Allies” had become the cover feature, deciding the question. TM and © Marvel Characters Inc.

Typist,” now drawn by the team of Mike Sekowsky and Violet (later Valerie) Barclay, and Wolverton’s “Powerhouse Pepper”—saw their protagonists enter the military. Powerhouse lasted just one episode in uniform, the Army determining the war effort was better off with the superstrong pugilist as a civilian. Tessie fared better, modifying her scatterbrained persona slightly after enlisting in the Marines in the November issue (#11). Creative turnover marked several features, Dave Gantz taking over Al Jaffee’s slapstick “Squat Car Squad” while hillbilly “Eustis Hayseed” went through at least six different artists, one changing the spelling of his name to Eustace, another introducing the hero’s cousin Choo Choo, a sexy mountain gal with a pet skunk. A number of lesser series were cancelled after the switch to 60 pages, with “Dippy Diplomat” relocating to Captain America Comics. Several new strips got tryouts, the best being Jack Warren’s naval farce “Star and Tar” and Gantz’s “Jump ‘n’ Jive,” starring a pair of hep kangaroos who hopped over to Comedy Comics after two episodes. A new title, Kid Komics, straddled the border between Timely’s humor and super-hero lines. Its back pages saw several funny series come and go, including Chad Grothkopf’s one-off kid strip “Trixie Trouble” and an abortive spin-off series for “Knuckles and Whitewash” of The Young Allies. The cover feature of the first two issues was

Joker Comics was the only comedy title largely devoid of funny animals. Its most popular features—“Tessie the 193

well as those episodes running in USA, All Winners Comics, and a new quarterly, All-Select Comics. A procession of costumed Nazis like Dr. Eternity, The Reaper, The Eel of Horror Harbor, and the inevitable Red Skull goosestepped through the strip before and after Cummings’ arrival, joined by such monstrous foes as The Mad Torso, The Mummy, a race of Human Bats, and the hideous Turtle Man of Swamp Sinister. With the reduction to 60 pages, back-up features “The Human Torch” and “The Secret Stamp” were dropped, leaving only the occasional filler to keep the exploits of Steve Rogers’ shield-slinging alter ego company.

“Captain Wonder and Tim,” yet another man-boy team of super-patriots who owed their prowess to a secret formula. Created by Otto Binder and bullpenner Frank Giacoia, Wonder was replaced inside and out by new episodes of “The Young Allies,” which claimed about a third of the pages as of the Winter issue (#3). Another unusual strip was “Subbie,” about an enigmatic waterbreathing teenager who sailed into battle aboard his own one-boy PT boat. He disappeared following issue #2 (Summer), whatever connection he had to Sub-Mariner left unexplained. As editor, Vince Fago was also in charge of the publisher’s super-hero titles. Here he served primarily as a traffic manager (“I let people do their jobs,” he said in a much-later interview), his only substantive input into the books being a Goodman-dictated toning down of the violence and flagwaving that characterized the line under previous editors Simon and Lee. Even with softened edges, the exploits of The Human Torch, Captain America, Sub-Mariner, and their costumed cronies continued to feature the thrilling action, grotesque villains, and patriotic posturing that first garnered them their faithful followings.

Behind Alex Schomberg’s spectacular covers, flagship title Marvel Mystery Comics saw its star features, “The Human Torch” and “Sub-Mariner,” fall into a state of organized chaos. Namor, in particular, felt the absence of his creator. Where Bill Everett had been slowly exploring the culture and politics of the amphibious anti-hero’s undersea kingdom, his successors consigned Subby’s people to the background as they focused on the tempestuous young prince’s war on the Axis nations. The Torch and boy pal Toro spent their year destroying enemy planes, ships, and tanks; foiling the machinations of foreign agents; thrashing superNazis The Claw, The Blue Diamond (no connection to the earlier Timely hero), The Rabbit, The Purple Terror, and Moonface, dealing with a string of animal-themed costumed criminals (The Eagle, The Hawk, The Kangaroo Man); and making the acquaintance of pretty Doris Horton, daughter of Torch’s scientist creator. Both series were action-packed and at the same time a bit stagnant, any one episode looking and reading much like the others. With their monthly Marvel Mystery slots, their quarterly solo titles, and regular berths in two more quarterlies, All Winners and All-Select, the demand for “Sub-Mariner” and “Human Torch” material meant that scripts were handed out to whatever bullpenner needed more work, at times with multiple hands on deck to meet a deadline. Artists working on one, the other, or both in a 1943-dated comic included Carl Pfeufer, Allen Simon, Bob Powell, Edd Ashe, Mike Roy, Allen Bellman, Harry Fiske, Harry Sahle, Al Gabriele, Jimmy Thompson, and 20-year-old Daniel “Dan” Barry, a former assistant to George and Alan Mandel whose work began appearing all over the industry this year. They illustrated scripts by John Compton, Otto Binder, Ray Gill, Bill Finger, Roy Garn, H. L. Gold, Ken Crossen, and Eric Messman, some working on staff, some freelancing. Interchangability was inevitable under such circumstances.

Captain America Comics remained Martin Goodman’s top seller more than a year after the departure of Simon and Kirby. The series still had all the elements that had first made it a hit, thanks in no small part to Syd Shores. Though in uniform, Shores was stationed close enough to the Timely offices to continue laying out and occasionally penciling the adventures of Cap and Bucky, with bullpenners Vince Alascia, Al Gabriele, and George Klein providing the finished art. Four stories were drawn by 18-year-old Carmine Infantino, who had been hanging around the fringes of the industry for several years before landing his first professional gig the previous year inking Frank Giacoia’s pencils on USA Comics #3’s “Jack Frost” story. Beginning with the April issue (#25), pulp scribe Ray Cummings took over as head writer of “Captain America,” scripting a preponderance of the solo title as

Monstrous and grotesque villains remained a hallmark of Timely’s super-hero line under new editor Vince Fago. TM and © Marvel Characters Inc.

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The back pages of Marvel Mystery saw some series remain relatively stable and others undergo changes. “The Angel,” now drawn by Gustav “Gus” Schrotter, continued to specialize in weird or monstrous menaces, while “Terry Vance, School Boy Sleuth” and his monkey Dr. Watson took on enemy spies with the same spunk and daring under original artist Bob Oksner and his successor, Frank Bolle. “The Patriot” went AWOL when the title dropped to 60 pages with its July issue (#45) but returned four issues later alongside a new flag-draped super-doer. “Miss America” was philanthropic Madeline Joyce, who

gained superhuman strength, x-ray vision, and the power of flight in the explosion of a suicidal research scientist’s laboratory. Created by Otto Binder and Al Gabriele, Miss A used her newfound might to challenge the usual Timely assortment of riffraff. She and Patriot replaced the cancelled “Jimmy Jupiter” and “The Vision.” Syd Shores had kept Aarkus’s eerie exploits going long after creators Simon and Kirby were ousted, but he no longer had the time to devote to it and no one else seemed inclined to carry on in his place. In fact, only a handful of Timely’s minor super-heroes were still in business. “The Destroyer” and “The Whizzer” still held slots in USA Comics and All Winners, but 1943 saw the last episodes of “The Black Widow,” “Captain Daring,” “The Secret Stamp,” and a new version of “Marvel Boy” illoed by Bob Oksner. It was becoming apparent that the entire line was being carried on the backs of Captain America, SubMariner, and The Human Torch. Not that Martin Goodman minded, for these were halcyon times for a publisher willing and able to flood the market with product. As Vince Fago noted more than half a century later: “The print runs [for each title] were 250,000 to 500,000 copies. Sometimes we’d put out five books a week or more. You’d see the numbers come back and could tell that Goodman was a millionaire.… In fact, we sold 90% of our print runs, because many of the comics were going to soldiers.… Goodman had a good paper allocation and diverted much of it from his pulps to the comics. That’s how we were able to out-produce much of the competition.” (Amash 14-15)

Giggling All the Way to the Bank

The colorful “Miss America” replaced “The Vision” in the pages of Marvel Mystery Comics. TM and © Marvel Characters Inc.

Pulp mogul Ned Pines, whose twin imprints Better Publications and Nedor Publishing began making the switch to the new 60-page standard mid-spring, also took advantage of wartime circumstances to enhance his bottom line. Pines and his editor/head writer Richard Hughes demoted the monthlies Exciting Comics and Thrilling Comics to bimonthly status, Exciting with its June issue, Thrilling with July. This was done to stretch the company’s paper quota enough to permit the launch of a quarterly solo book for The Black Terror; a quartet of companion titles to the funny animal-centered Coo Coo Comics; and Major Hoople Comics, a one-shot mixing reprints of Our Boarding House, Mary Worth, and other syndicated strips with “The Phantom Soldier,” a Sheldon Moldoff-drawn super-hero with a supernatural slant. All of these newcomers bore the Nedor imprint, with only the three super-hero anthologies continuing to self-identify as Better titles. Most of this new material was generated by the studio run by Pines’ fatherin-law and business partner Ben Sangor. The Jack Binder shop continued to contribute art for some of the superhero strips until the manpower shortage forced Binder to close down the converted barn that served as his Long Island studio and move to smaller quarters in Manhattan, necessitating a reduction in overall workload.

Terror, their rosters of costumed heroes facing a steady torrent of enemy troops, Axis spies, fifth columnists, and even a horde of Nazi zombies. Each of these titles dealt with its diminished page count differently: Thrilling rotated its backup features, Exciting cancelled three of its strips, and Startling dropped one series and reduced the lengths of the others while adding a new super-hero strip. Thrilling Comics cover star “Doc Strange” and his aides Mike and Virginia spent the year tackling one kind of Axis menace or another, some mundane, some exotic. Among the latter were The Human Skeleton, a sideshow freak peddling military secrets to the Japanese; a Fascist genius named Catastroffi able to fuse men with meteors to form “homets” (human comets); scientifically improbable giants called Klastians composed of ionized air pressure; and Baron Stuttsen and his “anthroxin men,” mind-controlled clones that exploded when touched. Strange and “The Ghost” were the only features to appear in every 1943-dated issue, with “The American Crusader,” “Hale of the Herald,” and “Lucky Lawrence, Leatherneck” periodically skipping an episode to make room for the returning “Woman in Red.” Still drawn by George Mandel, comic books’ first masked mystery woman sported a new costume, abandoning her floor-length hooded robe for a short skirt, cape, and high heels. A new series, “Jimmy Cole, Boy Sleuth,” debuted in the January issue (#32) but was

Hughes laid the patriotism on with a trowel throughout the pages of Exciting, Thrilling, Startling, and the quarterlies America’s Best Comics, The Fighting Yank, and The Black 195

brother titles. “The Fighting Yank,” “Captain Future,” “Pyroman,” and “The Four Comrades” appeared in each of the year’s issues, albeit with their page allotments cut following the conversion to the 60-page standard. All four series featured Axis villains, though head writer Hughes offered more variety here than in Thrilling or Exciting with colorful evildoers like the KKKish Black Boas led by the charmingly named High Priest of Hate; a hideously disfigured spymaster called The Scorpion; the mindlessly homicidal Dread Disciples; the Comrades’ recurring nemesis Black Satan, a costumed saboteur with horns growing from his forehead; and The Gremlin, a Nazi spy transformed by a chemical formula into a grotesque dwarf with the power to levitate. “Don Davis, Espionage Ace” Gimmicky Axis villains like the “homets,” a.k.a. human was cancelled in favor of “The Oracle,” comets, that plagued Doc Strange were a common elea plainclothes super-hero debuting in ment of Ned Pines’ super-hero comics this year. TM and © respective copyright holder. issue #20 (March). Drawn by Henry Kiefer, it starred Army engineer Bob The costumed heroes headlining Exciting Comics—Black Paxton, who gained the power of clairvoyance after being Terror, “The Liberator,” “American Eagle”—spent all seven exposed to an experimental gas. 1943 issues (#24-30) battling German and Japanese oppoOf the eight titles published under the Nedor imprint in nents. Only the Terror and Tim took on anything other 1943, only three quarterlies dealt in super-heroes. Amerithan spies or soldiers, tackling the Mechanons, robots ca’s Best Comics featured the titanic trio of The Black Terror, created by a treasonous techie named Macro, and a troop Doc Strange, and Pyroman backed by a rotating line-up of of Nazis transformed into olive-skinned monstrosities minor features from Exciting, Thrilling, and Startling. The known as Blitzons. The reduction in page count as of the Winter issue (#7) introduced “Thunderhoof,” a western August issue (#28) spelled the end of “Larry North, U.S.N.,” from Richard Hughes and August Froelich about a wild stal“Pepper Swift,” and “Crash Carter, Air Cadet,” replaced by lion fighting to stay free. The Terror and The Fighting Yank the tongue-in-cheek private eye strip “Crime Crushers,” a occupied the majority of their solo titles, but occasionally Richard Hughes-Al Camy creation first seen in The Black a new series took its bow in the back pages. The longestTerror #1. lasting was the aforementioned “Crime Crushers,” starring Startling Comics demonstrated more stability than its rugged Steve Barry and nebbishy Floopie Carr a.k.a. The We-Do-It-Boys, a pair of freshly minted college grads who became endearingly naive private investigators. A fourth Nedor title, the bi-monthly Real Life Comics, remained a doppelganger of the Parents’ Institute’s True Comics, offering a similar mix of military, scientific, and political biographies, true tales of war and espionage, histories of such engineering marvels as the Grand Coulee Dam and Panama Canal, and the odd bit of propaganda. discontinued when the book dropped to 60 pages. Another casualty was the aviation strip “The Lone Eagle,” replaced as of issue #36 by “The Commando Cubs,” co-created by scripter Richard Hughes and artist Bob Oksner. Ace Browning, Horace Cosgrove, Whizzer Malarkey, Spud O’Shea, and Pokey Jones were “spunky red-blooded [American] boys from every type of home sent to England to learn the effect of Old World culture on kids of different backgrounds!” Inspired by watching British commandos at a nearby base, the five secretly trained themselves for months under the nose of their tutor, the oblivious Professor Musselbound, before embarking on a series of wild adventures. Hughes gave his ersatz Boy Commandos the lead-off slot in Thrilling but despite the quality of story and art, the Cubs simply didn’t bear comparison to Simon and Kirby’s originals.

“The Commando Cubs” was one of the better “Boy Commandos” knock-offs, differentiating itself by forgoing the usual adult mentor/father figure. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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It was the growing market for comedy titles that Pines’ comics line put most of its energy into this year, with the bi-monthly Coo Coo Comics joined by four more titles, all dominated by funny animals, over the course of the year. Real Funnies, its first issue bearing a January cover date, lasted only three issues. Its final issue appeared on the newsstands alongside what turned out to be the only issue of Funny Funnies. More than seven decades later, it is uncertain why these books were abruptly cancelled only to be replaced by two nearly identical books, Goofy Comics and Happy Comics, that ran into the early 1950s. Like Coo Coo, these new titles featured a blend of material from

Nedor tried to tempt Dell’s loyal readers with a flurry of funny animal titles. Real Funnies and Funny Funnies flopped, but Goofy Comics and Happy Comics held their own on the newsstands for the next ten years. TM and © respective copyright holder.

Except for the different corporate identity listed in their indicia, Giggle and Ha-Ha were indistinguishable from the Nedor comedy titles. Nominally edited by Jerry Albert, they were actually put together by an overworked Dick Hughes (who was grateful nonetheless for the extra paycheck). The new books featured the same constantly changing line-up of creators and features, mostly funny animals, as Coo Coo and its younger siblings. Many of Sangor’s staff carved out distinguished careers in comics and/or animation over the following years, including former Elzie Segar assistant Forrest “Bud” Sagendorf, Rube Grossman, Joseph “Joe” Oriolo, William “Bill” Hudson, Woodrow “Woody” Gelman, and Otto Feuer. Other comics careers sputtered and died after only one or two jobs, including someone remembered only as Smith, whose one-off “Buddy Bigshot” starred an ostrich super-hero. Which way an artist’s career went largely depended on whether they worked out of Sangor’s Los Angeles shop, staffed by experienced animators and story men, or the Manhattan office, which sometimes filled out its ranks with newcomers, some still in high school. It was this that accounted for the varying quality of the Creston

both the New York and Los Angeles divisions of the Sangor Studio and, again like Coo Coo, few of the strips premiering in their pages got any kind of traction. Of the more than 100 features introduced in 1943, less than a fifth made it beyond their pilot episodes, and only six got as far as three. The variety on display was astonishing. In addition to the usual assortment of dogs, cats, mice, birds, monkeys, pigs, bears, wolves, foxes, and rabbits, there were strips starring horses, sheep, goats, lions, tigers, ostriches, elephants, hyenas, raccoons, weasels, skunks, whales, insects, and even an electric eel. There were funny animal westerns, funny animal detectives, funny animal swashbucklers, funny animal war series, funny animal fantasy series, and funny animal sci-fi series. More than a few featured potentially actionable lookalikes of Donald Duck, Bugs Bunny, Tom and Jerry, Barney Bear, and other established stars of the genre. In terms of quality, these series were all over the map: some were as polished as anything published by Dell or Timely, while others were clearly the work of raw amateurs. Regardless, the only star character in the Pines menagerie remained “Supermouse.” Inherited by writer Hughes and artist Milton Stein after the departure of creator Kin Platt, the series sent the title rodent adventuring through time and squared him off against the Ratzis, the animal kingdom counterparts of Hitler and his swastika-sporting misanthropes. Cinema Comics, Ben Sangor’s small independent outfit that shared office space with Pines, was dissolved early in the year following the release of the final issue of the four-page theatrical giveaway Cinema Comics Herald. Taking its place was a new business, Creston Publication Corp. Sangor’s new partners, fatherand-son pulp publishers Andrew and Gerald “Jerry” Albert, had enough paper left over from their quota to allow Creston to launch two quarterlies, Giggle Comics and Ha-Ha Comics, distributed through Harry Donenfeld’s Independent News. Donenfeld advanced Sangor, a personal friend, the funds he needed to start the presses rolling, becoming a silent partner in the company.

Produced by the same studio responsible for the Nedor humor titles, Giggle Comics and Ha-Ha Comics were actually a separate line jointly owned by studio head Ben Sangor and DC exec Harry Donenfeld. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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and Pines humor lines. That was a cause of frustration for the veterans, who resented sharing the spotlight with sub-standard material. As California shop steward Jim Davis, whose attractive cover art for the Creston titles promised a certain standard of professionalism within, explained to comics historian Michael Vance: “Hughes … chose to jumble everything together in Ha Ha and Giggle… the good, the bad, and the indifferent. Sangor was in it for the money and didn’t know the difference. All of us here kind of frowned on Ha Ha and Giggle because Hughes would make a jumble of New York City work and work from here. They didn’t equate. The stuff from here, uniformly, was better.… Disney [unlike Fleischer] trained his people very well. We used to, at the studio’s expense, attend classes to teach us the fundamentals of drawing. And that was the difference between the West Coast guys, who got that kind of training either from Disney or on their own, versus the Eastern guys, who were equally talented, but didn’t have the training.” (Vance 17) Sangor was indeed in it for the money, but neither he nor Hughes was blind to the nascent line’s flaws. The aura of amateurism these early efforts exuded gradually dissipated, as the tiny publishing house evolved over time into the American Comics Group, better known simply as ACG.

Fiction House’s Open Door Not all comic book companies were trying to wring every last dime out of their audience. Some were content with the status quo, even when rationing meant canceling a title or two, as Fiction House proved when it suspended publication of its Sheena Comics and Wambi Comics quarterlies following their Spring issues (#3 for both). By so doing, publishers Malcolm Reiss and Jack Byrne ensured that their anthology titles remained on schedule. Three of its four monthlies—Jumbo Comics, Wings Comics, Jungle Comics—never missed an

in charge. Depending on the comic, they could be jungle girls, pilots, girl detectives, or outer space heroines. Dressed in two-piece leopard skin bathing suits or ripped Army nurse uniforms, they leaped across the page in a graphic role reversal, guns blazing or knife in hand, to rescue some man. And they were likely to be drawn by women.” (71)

Lily Renée was one of a number of women cartoonists who broke in to the comic book industry in 1943 by way of Fiction House.

issue, though the fourth, Fight Comics, was demoted to the same bi-monthly status as Planet Comics and Rangers Comics with issue #26 (June). All six Fiction House books transitioned to the 60-page standard without significant cuts to their rosters, preferring to lower the page counts of each individual feature (or, in one case, teaming two previously solo characters in a single strip) rather than cancel any one of them. Ignoring the surge of comedy titles as it had largely ignored the costumed hero fad, Fiction House relied on its tried-and-true line-up of pulp genre favorites to keep readers returning, readers who were oblivious to the unique identity the publisher was forging for itself in the industry. Trina Robbins, in her landmark survey The Great Women Cartoonists, summed it up thus: “Of all the comic book companies in the 1940s, one publisher hired more women cartoonists than any of the others. That was Fiction House, [which] specialized in luridly sensationalistic stories with strong and beautiful female protagonists. Unlike comics from some of the other publishers, where the female characters seemed to exist only as foils for the hero to rescue, these women were 198

The credit for this must go in no small part to the Roche & Iger studio, which packaged much of the material appearing in Fiction House comics bearing a 1943 date. With the military constantly raiding his staff and other companies’ higher page rates luring away the best of the talent that remained, Jerry Iger opened his studio’s doors to talented young artists who couldn’t get a foot in the door at the major houses. That so many of them were female may be due to the influence of Iger’s business partner Ruth Roche, who might have seen the manpower shortage as a chance to give other women the same opportunity to succeed Jerry gave her. If any had qualms about the copious amounts of cheesecake that made the line’s comics so appealing to horny schoolboys and lonely servicemen, they kept it to themselves, happy to be earning money through their art. The consistency of its product gave no indication of the chaos behind the scenes at Fiction House, as a game of musical chairs ensued following the departure of Larabie Cunningham as editor-in-chief at the start of the year. Responsibility for the individual titles was divided between the company’s own people and Roche & Iger staffers. The co-publishers themselves each took on a title, with Byrne helming the top-selling Jumbo and Reiss editing Planet. Staff writers Claude E. Lapham and John C. Mitchell handled Fight and Jungle, respectively, while the Iger shop’s Dana Dutch and Jean Press took care of Wings and Rangers. Some swapped titles periodically. Compounding the confusion was the exodus of Gene Fawcette, art director for half the line, to Quality Comics. Later issues of his titles either credited Jerry Iger or listed no credit at all. The loss of Fawcette’s lovingly rendered Wings covers was mitigated by the

began downplaying its comedy relief TM and © Galaxy Publishing and Valdoro Entertainment. characters in favor by the Iger stuof straightforward war plotlines, dio staff for the deviated from the comfortable rut the rest of the year. others had settled into. At 55, Alex Blum Wings Comics was particularly hard was in no such danhit by the demands of the military, ger, so he was able with five features losing their artto draw every installists to the draft. In addition to “Skull ment of “Midnight the Squad” penciler Arthur Peddy, Wings Black Stallion,” as well lost Pagsilang Isip (“Yank Aces of as succeeding Bob HebWorld War II”), Saul Rosen (“Jane berd on the occult detecMartin”), Al Walker (“Greasemonkey tive series “Ghost Gallery” Griffin”), and Bob Lubbers (“Captain when Hebberd’s workload for Wings”) to the service. Before leavFawcett left him unable to continue. ing, Lubbers designed a new airplane This was fortuitous timing for Blum, for the daring aviator known as the whose “Tom, Dick and Harry” was Eagleship for its distinctive paint job, one of two features cancelled when an exciting look that was regularly the page count decreased, along with spotlighted on the covers before and Jerry Iger’s kid strip “Bobby,” recently after Art Saaf stepped in for Gene ghosted by Al Stahl and others. These Fawcette. The latter’s non-fiction were the line’s only casualties in 1943. featurette “Wing Tips” was handed Artistic stability was not exactly a to Karen Karol, who met the technibyword for Jungle Comics. With the cal challenges posed by the series exceptions of Henry Kiefer’s “Wambi with elan. Replacing Rosen on “Jane the Jungle Boy” and George Appel’s Martin” was 18-year-old Austrian revamped “Fantomah, Daughter of war refugee Lily Renée Willheim, the Pharoahs,” every strip in Jungle who left her Germanic surname off went through a minimum of four artwhen she signed her work. She was a ists each this year, often the same artists jumping from series to series and back again. Freelancer George Tuska, for example, began 1943 drawing “Käanga” and “Simba, King of Beasts,” then switched to “Camilla, Queen of the Jungle Empire” with a stop along the way for a single episode of “Tabu.” Among other participants in this uncoordinated round robin were Nick Viscardi, Bob Webb, Saul Rosen, Nina Albright, Rafael Astarita, Jim Mooney, and Richard Case. Even Reed Crandall dropped in to draw issue #42’s installment of “Käanga,” a rare appearance by the master draftsman outside the pages of Quality. Despite the profusion of peripatetic talent, the title’s features stayed relatively consistent. Only “Captain Once “Captain Wings” acquired his eye-catching Eagleship, the plane was regularly spotlighted on the covers of Wings Comics. Terry Thunder,” which TM and © respective copyright holder. Violent clashes of half-clad women were a specialty of the “Sheena, Queen of the Jungle” strip.

fine work of Art Saaf, who also took up the slack when primary cover artist Dan Zolnerowich answered his country’s call. Foremost in Fiction House’s sorority of kick-ass heroines was Jumbo Comics cover star “Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.” As she had done in 1942, the sultry savage steered clear of the war for the most part, though she did hand some German soldiers their heads in two stories published mid-year. She was much more likely to encounter traditional genre menaces like the giant animals created by a lunatic scientist or The Lake Monster, a surviving dinosaur. Sheena’s most common foes were women who sought to dethrone the jungle queen. Opponents like Thara-An, Queen of the Manji, or the Amazons inhabiting the lost city of Tigora matched the heroine in both ferocity and beauty. Their battles, as depicted by layout artist Bob Webb and finisher Ann Brewster, nee Shirley Zweifach, featured plenty of skin. Webb took over the art on the pirate strip “The Hawk” from Rafael Astarita with the June issue (#52), just in time to help introduce Cap’n Tiger and The Slasher, gorgeous but bloodthirsty buccaneers as adept at swashing a buckle as any male rogue. Astarita gave up “Inspector Dayton” as well, teaming with newcomer Nina Albright for a few issues before she went solo. She then acquired the assignment for “ZX5: Spies in Action” after Mort Leav received his draft notice. The armed forces also took Arthur Peddy, artist of the time travel adventure “Stuart Taylor,” which was handled collectively

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Hidden behind the usual house names in Planet Comics were the debuts of artists Lee Elias and Fran Hopper. Both became prolific Fiction House contributors. TM and © respective copyright holder.

The other bi-monthlies, Rangers Comics and Planet Comics, had all the same problems with holding on to artists, losing them either to the draft or to one of the better-selling monthlies. Joe Doolin’s “Mars, God of War” and the reliable George Appel’s “Star Pirate” were the only Planet strips immune to the syndrome, with the others changing hands at least once. In addition to art jobs by the usual suspects (Tuska, Webb, Peddy, Isip, Saaf, Rosen), a number of talents made their Fiction House debuts in the space opera title. Taking over “Norge Benson” with issue #23 (March) was Frances Dietrick, better remembered today under her later married name Fran Hopper. She would spend her entire comics career at Fiction House. Not so with Leopold “Lee” Elias, an emigrant from Great Britain whose work would grace many companies’ comics over the next three decades. Harbinger of a wave of devotees of Terry and the Pirates’ Milton Caniff who entered the industry in the mid-’40s, Elias contributed art to “Gale Allen and the Girl Squadron” and was at the drawing board when the “Flint Baker” and “Reef Ryan” series were fused into a new feature, “Space Rangers.” Rangers Comics, too, became a showcase for up-and-comers. Jean Levander, nee Regina Schoenberg, had been a homemaker for twenty years before she joined Roche & Iger, under whose auspices she drew “Glory Forbes, Vigilante.” Graham Ingels was the new artist on “The Sea Devil” – an appropriate choice for the strip about a super-submarine since Ingels was actually serving in the Navy during his run. His work here had none of the lovingly rendered grue that later earned him the nickname “Ghastly” while doing horror for EC in the

serendipitous choice, as few artists of the 1940s were better at drawing beautiful women. The only strips untouched by forced creative turnovers were the untitled anthology series sometimes referred to as “War Stories By Capt. Derek West,” illoed by George Appel, and Joe Doolin’s “Suicide Smith, Blitzkreig Buster,” which was renamed “Suicide Smith and the Air Commandos” in the November issue (#39) after its lone wolf hero signed on as commander of an elite fighter squadron. The only Fight Comics feature unscathed by creative turmoil was the aviation strip “Chip Collins,” handled by John Cassone throughout the 1943-dated issues. With prizefighter “Kayo Kirby” now boxing for the Army, every Fight strip dealt with the war, either through characters in uniform (“Rip Carson, ‘chute Trooper,” “Dusty Rhodes”) or through American intelligence agents (“Hooks Devlin,” “Shark Brodie”). Falling into the latter category was frequent cover star “Señorita Rio.” The demotion of the title to a bi-monthly meant that every episode of the alluring agent’s series was drawn by co-creator Nick Viscardi, though Art Saaf had to complete the art in the October and December issues (#28-29) over the other’s roughs. 200

ments of “Magno” and “Mr. Risk.” Endlessly recurring villains remained a hallmark of Ace-style super-heroics. The Clown was the antagonist in all eight “Magno and Davy” stories this year, while the Lightnings battled The Maestro, Captain Courageous contended with his Japanese counterpart Captain Nippo, and The Sword, joined in action as of Super-Mystery #15 (January) by kid sidekick Lancer, dueled spymaster Faye Morgana (actually the immortal sorceress Morgaine Le Fey who was sometimes accompanied by her vicious Nazi underlings The Hun and The Goth) in every episode. The opposition thrown at the others was balanced between costumed or monstrous Axis agents and quirky crooks. No writing credits are available for the line (though former head writer Robert Turner is known to have left the company, probably to serve in the military, sometime late in ‘42) but the Ace comic books remained remarkably consistent in look and feel. For publisher A.A. Wyn, that seemed to be good enough.

1950s, but his equal facility at depicting handsome men, pretty women, and atmospheric underwater sequences made “Sea Devil” one of the best-looking features in the line. Three more future EC stars at the dawn of their careers provided inking and other art assists to Roche & Iger’s experienced hands, showing little of the genius that would make Al Feldstein, George Evans, and Jack Kamen fan favorites. Their day in the sun lay ahead, but Puerto Rico-born Ruben Moreira made his mark then and there. A Pratt Institute alum with solid illustrative skills, he lent his talents to “Captain Wings,” “Käanga,” and other strips, including “Commando Ranger,” a patriotic mystery man who joined the ranks as of Rangers #13 (October). Moreira so impressed the higher-ups at Fiction House that he was soon being assigned covers throughout the line. With only two quarterly titles on the newstands, Ace Magazines was in no position to challenge Fiction House when it came to market share. But the tiny line edited by Fred Gardener echoed the larger publisher in providing a showcase for new talent, including a 19-year-old cartoonist from Brooklyn destined to become one of the medium’s most innovative storytellers. Harvey Kurtzman later disowned his work on such Ace staples as “Lash Lightning,” “Magno and Davey,” and “Buckskin,” calling it “very crude, very ugly stuff” (Kitchen 13), but it was on a par with the other work coming out of the small studio run by Lou Ferstadt, which acted as the primary packager for Ace. Another artist with a big future in comics was Leonard Brandt “L.B.” Cole, recently discharged from the military after being wounded at the Battle of Kasserine Pass. A former doctoral candidate in Anatomy and Physiology at the University of Berlin, Cole was one of the most impressively educated professionals in the industry, but it was his skill as a draftsman, particularly his compositional eye, that would make his reputation.

While the Cat’s Away… Simply coasting on the track record of its established titles was apparently not good enough for Family Comics, Inc., the small comics line owned by Alfred Harvey and distributed by Irving Manheimer’s Publishers Distributing Corp. In fact, the publisher’s books barely held their own in 1943, with only five issues of the bi-monthly Green Hornet Comics and Speed Comics released and Champ Comics, the line’s senior title, cancelled. And yet, Family launched two new titles this year. The key to this apparent paradox lay with Harry “A” Chesler, whose defunct Dynamic Comics had also been a PDC client. Though nominally published by Family Comics, All-New Short Story Comics and Hello Pal Comics were packaged by the Chesler Studio and printed on paper allotted to Manheimer rather than Harvey. Alas, the new titles displayed all the same failings as the Dynamic books, and only one continued past year’s end by changing its name to All-New Comics and shifting responsibility for its contents from Chesler to Family’s acting editor Leon

While the talent producing Ace’s comics included fresh faces, the books themselves featured the same assortment of costumed heroes and detectives they always had. In addition to Magno, Buckskin, “Hap Hazard,” and “The Sword,” Super-Mystery Comics became a haven for strips left homeless after the cancellations of Lightning Comics, Captain Courageous Comics, and Our Flag Comics the previous year. The refugees included “Mr. Risk,” “Dr. Nemesis,” and “Paul Revere, Jr.” Four Favorites, in turn, housed the dispossessed “Captain Courageous,” “The Unknown Soldier,” and the electrifying team of Lash Lightning and Lightning Girl, Ace Magazines did its own share of talent scouting this year, printing the first professional work of Harvey Kurtzman and L.B. Cole. TM and © respective copyright holder. in addition to install201

generated by a stolen invention as a cover for his crime spree; and a six-story-tall giant allegedly from Earth’s core exposed by the Hornet and Kato as a Nazi-constructed robot. “The Zebra” also got a break from Axis-sponsored threats, facing down a horde of giant animals in Green Hornet Comics #14 (September). A new strip beginning in the February issue (#11) introduced “Mr. Q,” a masked mystery man prone to appearing and disappearing in a burst of smoke á la Timely’s “The Vision.” But Q was no visitor from another dimension, just an FBI unit chief armed with miniature smoke bombs. Drawn by Harry Sahle, “Mr. Q” lost its spot in the back pages to the migrating “Twinkle Twins,” who added Mike the Muscle, a former circus strongman, to their supporting cast in issue #14. Much of the art in Green Hornet and Speed continued to be supplied by Arthur Cazeneuve and Pierce Rice, with freelancers Sam Glanzman, Al Gabriele, and Joe Kubert filling in when the duo’s work at Detective had to take precedence. Bob Powell took over the art on “The Black Cat” with Speed #28 (September), giving the feline spycrusher the best art her strip had yet enjoyed. Scripting credits are scarce for both titles, although Nathaniel Nitkin is known to have contributed scripts to “The Black Cat” this year. Rumors of a moonlighting Dick Hughes writing episodes of “Green Hornet” and “Ted Parrish” await confirmation.

The comic book “Green Hornet” had adventures wilder than anything his radio counterpart experienced. TM and © The Green Hornet, Inc.

Harvey. A third new title, War Victory Adventures, continued its numbering from the 1942 propaganda one-shot War Victory Comics. It, too, was quickly cancelled.

The Rice-Cazeneuve shop provided some material to the two new titles, Hello Pal Comics and All-New Picture Story Comics, but most of their content came from the Chesler Studio. A total of 43 different features appeared in their pages before the Harvey Brothers severed their ties to Chesler, including episodes of “Rocketman and Rocketgirl,” “Yankee Doodle Jones,” “The Scarlet Sentry,” “Barry Kuda,” and other series stranded by the demise of the Dynamic line. What new characters did crop up were cookie-cutter costumed crimefighters like “The Scarlet Phantom” and “The Night Hawk.” By their third issues, the books were relying heavily on aviation and military strips, true war stories, and humor fillers by Jack Farr, Art Helfant, and Gerry Jourdain to pad their page counts. Hello Pal tried to attract buyers by using photographs of celebrities Mickey

The demise of Champ Comics meant the end of several characters dating back to the title’s Worth Publishing origins. Its final issue (#25, April) was released a full four months after its immediate predecessor, apparently simply to use up the remaining inventory. “The Human Meteor,” “Doctor Miracle,” and “Liberty Lads” went through their final adventures unaware of that finality, but another strip, “The Twinkle Twins,” got a reprieve, transferred to the better-selling Green Hornet Comics. Reduced to 60 pages with its July issue (#27), Speed Comics maintained its focus on costumed heroes, sacrificing “Ted Parrish, Man of 1,000 Faces” to the new format instead. “Captain Freedom,” “Shock Gibson,” and “The Black Cat” shared the spotlight on most covers but teamed up only in issue #29’s text story. The heroic trio battled either Axis agents (including the costumed Count Cuttle, The Brain, and The Lorelei) or enemy troops (German and Japanese) in every episode, as did “The Girl Commandos.” The girls gained a new member, a French freedom fighter named Yvonne, in Speed #25 (February), an issue before leader Pat Parker abandoned her superhero garb for an Army Air Forces uniform. Aside from college jock “Speed Taylor” joining the Marines, the changes in “Girl Commandos” were the only significant developments to the book’s features in ‘43. “The Green Hornet” encountered a wider variety of foes than his friends in Speed, foes such as The Hypocrite, a ruthless mastermind who habitually double-crossed his own gang; The Half-Man, who returned half of the loot after each theft; Vic Zaza, a gangster using the strange green fog

Packaged by the Chesler studio for Family Comics, neither Hello Pal Comics nor All-New Picture Stories bore comparison to the comics Family produced in-house. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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Rooney, Charlie McCarthy, and Bob Hope on its covers, but this bait-andswitch ploy did no good. Chesler seemed incapable of packaging comics worth reading. Family cancelled Hello Pal and retitled its companion book. Now produced in-house, AllNew Comics continued to fill its pages with one-off features, mostly forgettable war strips. The art was better, but All-New failed to offer anything to entice buyers to return issue after issue. Similar problems haunted War Victory Adventures, added to the schedule mid-summer. It too relied heavily on war-themed strips and comedic fillers, though two strips, “Winnie the Welder” and “Rosie the Riveter” made a bid to attract female readers. It didn’t help. Downgraded from bi-monthly to quarterly, WVA got the axe following the Winter issue (#3). While Family struggled simply to run in place in Al Harvey’s absence, another PDC client not only kept its trio of bi-monthlies on course but successfully added a fourth book, all with Comic House, Inc. publisher Lev Gleason away serving a hitch with the Army. Gleason, a veteran of World War I, had felt free to re-enlist knowing his company was in good hands with co-editors Charles Biro and Bob Wood handling the creative side and business manager Bella Kimelfeld minding the financial. His faith was

New Crime Does Not Pay host Mr. Crime, patterned after advertising icon Mr. Coffee Nerves, took a perverse glee in the violent ends of the gangsters whose life stories he narrated. TM and © respective copyright holder.

rewarded. It was only the newsprint shortage that kept Crime Does Not Pay, Daredevil Comics, and Boy Comics from coming out monthly, something their sales would otherwise have justified. Conventional wisdom held that comic books without recurring characters generally sold less than those with, but Crime Does Not Pay was proving itself the exception, its numbers going up with each new issue. Biro and Wood, did, however, introduce a host for the “Crime Kings” segment in the first 1943-dated Publisher Lev Gleason, patriotically re-enlisting in the Army at age 45, issue (#25, Janubade a fond farewell to readers of his Comic House line. ary). Mr. Crime TM and © respective copyright holder.. was a ghostly Covers aside, Charles Biro personally figure dressed in top hat and cloak contributed to Crime Does Not Pay who looked like he spent his free time infrequently this year, concentrating tying virginal young women to railon his work for Daredevil Comics. road tracks while demanding they The costumed boomerang master’s sign over the deed to their land. Flashadventures started off 1943 with an ing a wide grin full of shark-like teeth, emotional wallop in issue #15 (JanuCrime took almost as much pleaary), as Little Wise Guy Meatball died sure in recounting the sins of Dutch of pneumonia after falling into a froSchultz or Pretty Boy Floyd as he did zen lake while rescuing Pee Wee from their bloody comeuppances, usually The Steamrollers, a rival kid gang up capping off his commentary with to their grimy necks in black markesome variation of the comic’s title. teering. His place was taken the folNew narrator aside, the editors stuck lowing issue by Curly, the remorseful with the formula of sensationalized Steamroller whose actions had inadtrue crime tales of past and present, vertently led to the tragedy. Pee Wee offering five to seven such stories per and Scarecrow remained suspicious issue scripted by Biro, Wood, Bob’s of his true motives until Curly risked brother Dick, or Milton Kramer, and his life to help expose a crooked reforillustrated by Norman Maurer, Mike matory. To complicate matters, the Roy, Dick Briefer, Sam Burlockoff, Bart May issue (#17) saw Jock’s father Tumey, George Mandel, his brother forbidding the boy to hang out with Alan, and more. Increasingly lurid the Wise Guys anymore until the covers designed and usually executed wealthy publisher was shot by a by Biro enticed potential buyers, would-be blackmailer. In gratitude especially servicemen looking for for the boys giving blood to save his something more relevant than superlife, Mr. Herendeen not only allowed heroes to pass the time with. It was them to continue living on his propthe content within, however, that erty but formally adopted them. This kept them coming back. trilogy of gut-wrenching tales proved 203

that Charles Biro was no longer just one super-hero scribe among many but a master of creating suspense and drama on the comics page. To cement the strip’s metamorphosis, he revisited Daredevil’s origin, making Bart Hill an orphan raised in the Australian outback by Aborigines. It was they who taught him the use of his signature weapon and gave him his costume, traditionally worn by the tribe’s greatest warrior. What should have been an auspicious fresh start for the red-and-blue clad crusader turned out instead to be one of the last stories in which Daredevil was the central figure in his own series, as Biro devoted more and more space to the Little Wise Guys and their gritty urban environment. If the strips occupying the back pages of Daredevil Comics lacked the daring inventiveness of the cover feature, they compensated with sheer exuberance, especially Dick Briefer’s “Dickie Dean, Boy Inventor” and “The Pirate Prince.” A two-parter in the July and September issues (#18-19) had a lot of fun with the Pirate’s continually frus-

trated attempts to marry lady pirate The Black Mask, a wedding the perpetually bickering buccaneers ultimately called off. Carl Hubbell’s “Sniffer” said goodbye to his co-stars, The Deadly Dozen, in issue #18 as he returned to civilian life. Two issues later, Black Cat co-creator Barbara Hall took over the art. The conversion to 60 pages brought bad luck to “13 and Jinx,” who took their final bows in Daredevil #17. Basil Wolverton’s “Scoop Scuttle” and Bob Wood’s “The Claw,” each outrageous in its own way, rounded out the title. Although not as innovative as “Daredevil,” Biro’s work on “Crimebuster,” cover star of Boy Comics, reinforced his reputation as one of the medium’s best storytellers. Chuck Chandler and his monkey pal Squeeks spent much of the year dueling with arch-enemy Iron Jaw, taking a break from the pursuit long enough to deal with a hermaphroditic serial killer called The He-She. Norman Maurer assumed the art chores with the October issue (#12), as Biro’s editorial duties left him no time to illustrate two major features. Maurer also drew a few episodes of “Young Robinhood” before handing it off to 17-yearold newcomer Emanuel “Manny” Stallman. Two creators made cameos in their own strips in Boy #9 (April), Dick Briefer in his “Yankee Longago,” Bob Wood in “Little Dynamite.” Not every series in the title was a winner—boy aviator “Swoop Storm” was no “Airboy”— but on the whole, Boy Comics proved itself a worthy companion to Daredevil Comics.

Comic House added a fourth title to the schedule in late summer, the quarterly Captain Battle, Jr. The title character was the hitherto unmentioned son of the colorful adventurer last seen in the oddball Magazine Press edition of Captain Battle Comics. The first issue introDespite sharing the edgier tone of Gleason’s other comics, Captain Battle, Jr. did not catch on with comics buyers. TM and © respective copyright holder. duced Junior, an officer 204

in the Army Air Corps, in a 38-page epic that sent him on a secret mission behind enemy lines to capture the claw-handed Field Marshal Von Tuefel and, if time allowed, rescue the senior Battle from the concentration camp where he was being held. Though successful on both counts, the mission cost Capt. Battle, Jr., the lives of his best friend, Sgt. Sid Kaplan, and his faithful dog Victory. With a script credited to Lev Gleason and Joe Greene and art by “Daredevil” cocreator Don Rico, it was a hard-hitting story without a whiff of the fantastical, signifying that Junior’s exploits would be more down to earth than his father’s. The following issue abandoned the long-form format, delivering three separate “Captain Battle, Jr.” episodes, none of them matching the pilot in intensity. That issue was the last. Sales did not justify further expenditure of precious newsprint. It was too bad, because the new title otherwise showed every sign of being a worthy addition to a line of comics that prided itself on the gritty, more realistic tone its editors (and, by proxy, its publisher) were setting.

Here Come the Marines When Vin Sullivan left his position as managing editor at Detective Comics in 1940 to run the Columbia Comic Corporation’s small line of comics, he was assured that his bosses at the Markey and McNaught syndicates had more in mind for the fledging company than a secondary outlet for their newspaper strips. Now, three years later, it was becoming increasingly clear that the strips were their top priority. The main Columbia title, the monthly anthology Big Shot Comics, had once featured six original series alongside reprints of “Joe Palooka,” “Dixie Dugan,” and the like, but was now down to “Skyman” and “The Face,” and even those survivors found their page counts being reduced. From a business standpoint, it made sense: where original material required writers and artists who had to be paid competitive page rates, strip reprints required no outlay beyond the minor cost of reformatting the art, a job presumably performed by salaried production staff. But that attitude was threatening the front office’s relationship with Sullivan.

Columbia’s conservatism was reflected in its executives’ decision to concentrate on syndicated strip reprints instead of the original material editor Vin Sullivan favored. TM and © respective copyright holder.

approached by the United States Marine Corps about producing a comic book for them. With the government footing part of the start-up costs, Sullivan launched Magazine Enterprises. A man who inspired admiration and loyalty in those who worked for him, he had no trouble persuading Fox, Bailey, Whitney, Creig Flessel, and Ray McGill to join him in the new venture. To edit his new line, Sullivan hired Raymond Krank, who remained with Magazine Enterprises until it closed its doors in 1958. Its first comic, the only one released with a 1943 cover date, was The United States Marines, subtitled “Authentic U.S. Marine Corps Picture Stories.” The book lived up to that claim, featuring stirring true war stories like “Saga of the Solomons,” “Victory at Gavutu,” and “Battle of the Ditch,” as well as a short history of the Corps illustrated by Flessel. The back pages included a pair of humor strips by McGill, a preview of the upcoming film Guadalcanal Diary, and “Johnny Devildog,” a cheerfully gung ho series about a young Marine who, the narration assured us, would “some day soon … march down the streets of Tokio [sic] grinning like a kid through the battle grime. Johnny Devildog? He might have been called Johnny American.” It all added up to an attractive package, respectful of the USMC’s history and traditions. The Corps responded enthusiastically. Typically, Sullivan waved away the awards and accolades his efforts earned when recalling them six decades later:

Columbia managed to claim a large enough newsprint allotment in 1943 to publish all its titles under its own corporate identity instead of arranging with printer Eastern Color to release several comics under its name, as it had the previous year. Even so, the execs erred on the side of caution, releasing only one comic featuring original content per month. To that end, they skipped the May issue of Big Shot (the Comics was dropped after issue #33) to accommodate a second issue of the Face solo title. All the rest of their output this year were reprint titles: one issue each of Joe Palooka, Sparky Watts, and Dixie Dugan (#s 2, 3, and 4 respectively), and a one-shot showcase called Columbia, Gem of the Comics. Scripter Gardner Fox and artists Ogden Whitney and Mart Bailey stuck around to produce the two surviving original strips. The Face, his exploits now set in the Pacific Theater, spent what little time he could spare from his surreptitious war on the Japanese dealing with the Army nurse who stumbled on his double identity (luckily, Nurse Maureen could be trusted). Skyman, meanwhile, had only his encounter with a swarm of giant insects in Big Shot #32 (February) to relieve the monotony as he and his wonder plane battled Axis spies and enemy troops with nary a costumed foe in sight. A third series, “Rocky Ryan,” was cancelled following the January issue (#31), replaced by yet another reprinted syndicated strip, this time “Vic Jordan,” about a war correspondent. Sullivan had had enough. He began to consider the possibility of becoming a publisher in his own right. His opportunity came in the fall, when he was

Asked by the U.S. Marine Corps to create a comic book celebrating its history, Sullivan used the opportunity to launch Magazine Enterprises, a line of comics that would be more faithful to his editorial vision than Columbia had been. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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“I went to Washington, and some brigadier general [offered] me some sort of semi-official book [to produce]. And as a result of that,

we got a plaque. I say ‘we’—I did. The company, Magazine Enterprises, got a citation; I think it was called an ‘E.’ … As a result of that, I was able to have Creig Flessel not drafted because he was doing work on a publication that was helping the war effort!” (Latino 9)

illustration above it. Credits are sketchy for this one-of-akind title, though Shuster shop regular Don Kamisarow is known to have drawn the first, undated issue. Even more innovative was the decision of Classic Comics publisher Albert Kanter to keep previous issues of the title in print. Beginning with the April 1943 issue (#10), readers could order copies of earlier Classic Comics by filling out an order form in the current issue. This was utterly unique for the comics industry:

Like Ace and Columbia, two other publishers converted their titles to the 60-page format with their August-dated issues. The three monthlies published by David McKay headlining King Features Syndicate’s top comic strips— King Comics, Ace Comics, Magic Comics—hit the newsstands without incident and with virtually no changes to their line-ups save for the addition to Ace of Sgt. Irving “Dave” Breger’s “Private Breger Abroad” with its March issue (#72). The Breger strip, which began life as a feature in the Army magazine Yank, popularized the term “G.I. Joe” as a nickname for the average foot soldier. Five issues of Feature Book were released (#35-39), “Blondie” and “The Katzenjammer Kids” occupying two issues each and “The Phantom” starring in the fifth. McKay also made a rare venture into original content this year with the launch of American Library, a unique series adapting contemporary non-fiction about the war such as Guadalcanal Diary and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo. The pages of each issue ran a chunk of abridged text on its bottom half with a relevant

“Only Classic Comics built a catalogue, keeping its earlier titles in print while regularly issuing new ones. Eventually, more than 1,200 reprint editions would appear in the American series alone, with estimated peak monthly sales of between two and four million… and foreign sales would exceed the figure of one billion.” (W. Jones, 555-562) These reprints were also available on newsstands, beginning with a reprint of Classic Comics #1 cover-dated April 1943, thanks to a discreet series of deals between the title’s publisher The Gilberton Company and whatever local printer, newspaper, or small publisher could be persuaded to use its leftover paper to print off a new run in exchange for a percentage of the sales. Another Kanter brainstorm resulted in a huge boost to the visibility of his four-color offspring: “In 1943[,] Kanter negotiated the sale of Classic Comics editions to the American Red Cross and the army post exchange for distribution to service personnel. He also introduced gift boxes containing five different titles for shipping abroad. Classics authority Dan Malan has estimated that between five and ten million copies were sent to soldiers. Raymond True, however, suggests that these widely varying figures, in the absence of firm documentary confirmation, may be ‘overstated.’ Whatever the number, it is established that Classic Comics circulated among service personnel in ‘Gift Boxes’ as well as in bulk purchases … benefited from the reading habits of GIs, who, more than any other demographic group, were responsible for the growth of the comics industry in the early 1940s.” (540-547) Perhaps because of the extra profits accrued, Kanter and Gilberton seem to have persuaded the Roche & Iger studio to assign a higher grade of talent to the nine new issues of the series released this year. The most spectacular by far was the January issue (#8), an adaptation of “The Arabian Nights” scripted by Evelyn Goodman and stunningly illustrated by Lillian Chestney. An experienced illustrator for children’s books and the slick magazines, Chestney was married to Iger staffer Stanley Zuckerberg, who signed his work Stanley Maxwell. Wartime financial troubles led Lillian to begin accepting art jobs from the studio. Her elegant and expressive figure work and the ornate detailing of her backgrounds on the “Arabian Nights” assignment were breathtaking, but Chestney quickly realized her page rate was not high enough to justify the work she put in, and her second and final job for Gilberton, #16’s “Gulliver’s Travels,” while competently drawn, showed far less effort

The David McKay Company sought to expand beyond its line of King Features reprints with American Library, which featured illustrated condensations of contemporary non-fiction rather than true comics. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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title aimed at young children and the adults who read to them. The new bimonthly included a number of enjoyable fantasy and funny animal strips, but it was “Jingle Jangle Tales,” the feature from which the book took its name, along with its occasional companion strip, “The Pie Faced Prince of Pretzelburg,” that made it one of the most delightful comics of its time. These were the creations of one of the greatest masters of nonsense the medium has ever known, a seasoned illustrator named George Carlson. In a 1970 essay, science fiction legend and lifelong comics connoisseur Harlan Ellison waxed rhapsodic about the man and his body of work:

The ornate art of Lillian Chestney made her adaptation of “The Arabian Nights” the highlight of this year’s Classic Comics. TM and © respective copyright holder.

on her part. Maxwell himself illoed Evelyn Goodman’s adaptation of “Robinson Crusoe” in issue #10. Goodman also wrote the Classics versions of “Les Miserables,” “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” That Victor Hugo’s epic novel had to be ridiculously condensed to fit into 54 pages and Robert Louis Stevenson’s horror novella had to be padded to do the same was the title’s one inescapable flaw: one size did not necessarily fit all. Other writers contributing to the series were Daniel Kushner (“Gulliver’s Travels” and “Westward Ho”) and Samuel H. Abramson (“Don Quixote”), with Allen Simon, Rolland

H. Livingstone, Arnold Hicks, and Gilberton art director Louis Zansky providing art that, if not living up to the impossible standard set by Lillian Chestney at the start of the year, was a huge improvement over the Funnies, Inc. work on display in the reprint editions. Slowly, deliberately, Albert Kanter was bringing his comic book in line with his grand vision.

Masters of the Absurd Elsewhere, a visionary of an entirely different sort was making his mark in a new title from Eastern Color under its Famous Funnies imprint. Jingle Jangle Comics was an anthology 207

“Who is George Carlson? I’m glad you asked. It’s about time someone did. George Carlson is Samuel Beckett in a clever plastic disguise. He is Harold Pinter scrubbed clean of the adolescent fear and obscurity, decked out in popcorn balls and confetti. He is Ionesco with a giggle. He is Genet without hangups. He is Pirandello buttered with dream-dust and wearing water wings. He is Santa Claus and Peter Pan and the Great Pumpkin and the Genie in the Jug and what Walt Disney started out to be and never quite made. … [Carlson] was one of the first cartoonists of the absurd, and a) how he came to develop his style in a time when cuddly animals were the going thing, b) a publishing house like Famous Funnies that trafficked in cuddly animals employed him, and c) kids like myself who really couldn’t have understood what he was about, dug him… are improbabilities too staggering to deal with.” (241-242) Signing up Carlson, whose resumé included twenty years as art director of the Girl Scouts of America’s official magazine and designing the dust jacket art for Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, was actually something of a coup for Eastern editor Stephen Douglas, who had the wisdom to let the man do his own thing without interference. Just the titles of the stories hint at the fertile imagination brought to the book: “The Youthful Yodeler and the Zig-Zag Zither,” “The Fashionable Fireman and the Soft-Boiled Collar Button,” “The Extra Salty Sailor and the FlatFooted Dragon,” and more. In George Carlson’s world, everything—the sun

Calico Fisherman’s son was pausing along with the Rich Lumbago. They both told funny stories, but as there were exactly seventeen to the inch, there was no danger. A secret entrance, which everybody knew about, suddenly came in their way… No one came to let them in so they sang another verse. Without waiting for their vacation, they opened the door and went in. A moist well-known sound came to the ears of the youth. It was his calico father chewing soup!”

Veteran illustrator George Carlson, seen here in 1939, brought his delightful sense of absurdity to the world of comic books in 1943 with the debut of Eastern Color’s Jingle Jangle Tales.

and moon, mountains, trees, buildings, furniture, appliances, tools, and every other kind of inanimate object—was alive and ready to make a wry comment or awful pun about the doings of the starring characters (or to suddenly grow legs and walk off if the mood struck them). Plots meandered through acres of tangents and non-sequiturs but always managed to find their way to their satisfying, albeit silly, conclusions. The art will remind the modern reader of Carlson’s professional contemporary Dr. Seuss rendered with a finer, tighter pen line. But it was his prose that cemented his reputation as a virtuoso of nonsense. Consider this typical passage (with dialogue omitted) from Jingle Jangle #1 (February): “Upon entering, the [Calico] Fisherman knew he was inside. And that the outside was still outside. So the waiter brought him the latest shades from Paris. Waving a fond farewell[,] the waiter closed the door as the hinges melted in sweet-sounding praise. It was a thirsty sort of dinner, so the Fisherman had some more soup instead. Night fell again. (My, how careless!) By winking loudly, the Fisherman could tell the exact time. Meanwhile, the

series like “The Friendly Fox,” “Scotty, Sleuth Dog,” and the bucolic “Frog Pond Ferry,” reviving the M.E. Brady strip that ran in the Brooklyn Eagle from 1924-34. Other features were harder to classify. “Bottleneck and Widget,” for instance, were a pair of impish what-is-its who lived in the kitchen of a typical American household and spent their nights parrying the plans of the Mad Magician living in the grandfather clock down the hall, while “Little Tommy Squawk” and “Gup and His Gremlins” hid their satirical and propagandistic intentions behind a facade of jolly fantasy. Every feature in Jingle Jangle, from one-off fillers to Carlson’s absurdist magnum opus, provided a delightful reading experience for parent and child alike.

The brilliance of George Carlson’s work left Jingle Jangle Tales’ other regular features in the shade, which was too bad because both were enterJingle Jangle Comics alternated on taining in their own right. “Bingo’s the newsstands with Heroic Comics, Frolics in Fairytale Land” concerned a formerly Reg’lar Fellers Heroic Comboy who stumbled across an entrance ics. The title dropped the first half of to the magical realm while runits name at the start of the year after ning away from home because his the publishing house severed its ties mother insisted on calling him by to Gene Byrnes and his Reg’lar Fellhis despised real name of Lancelot. ers of America. Replacing the dozen Befriended by green-skinned Glum or so pages devoted to the Gnome, Bingo applied common sense solutions from the real world to the problems of fairy tale and nursery rhyme folks like Little Bo Peep and Humpty Dumpty. “Hortense the Lovable Brat” starred a little girl, clumsy and impulsive but not actually bratty, whose impatient parents were constantly sending her to bed where she escaped her woes in dreams. Though both series’ debt to the classic newspaper strip Little Nemo in Wonderland was obvious, their broad humor and animationstyle art set them apart from their elegantly staid ancestor. Stephen Douglas scripted, with the team of Ray Willner and Allen Ulmer drawing “Hortense” and Emmanuel Demby and his studio illoing “Bingo.” Most of the back-up features rotating through the A typical page of Carlson’s inspired nonsense. title were funny animal TM and © respective copyright holder.

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the failed club were standalone true war stories, from two to five per issue. Writing credits are missing for this material, which featured artwork of varying quality by Henry Kiefer, Alexander Kostuk, Dan Barry, and Alan Mandel, among others. The balance of Heroic remained split between syndicated strip reprints and original super-heroes. Funnies, Inc., stalwart Ben Thompson continued to illustrate the exploits of “Hydroman” and “Rainbow Boy,” who occasionally guest starred in each other’s strips until Rainbow Boy lost his pages to paper rationing following issue #20 (September), while H.G. Peter supplied the art for “Man o’ Metal.” Stephen Douglas scripted all three, as well as the increasingly inane “Music Master,” throwing the super-powered foursome against Nazis, monsters, and costumed threats like The Red Scorpion, The Spider-Woman, and two different Phantoms, none of them particularly original or exciting. Eastern Color’s top seller remained the evergreen Famous Funnies. The monthly reverted to an all-reprint format after converting to the 60-page standard with its September issue (#110), consigning Douglas and Peter’s “Fearless Flint” to oblivion. Otherwise its line-up of newspaper strips remained unaltered, led by “Buck Rogers,” “Scorchy Smith,” “Invisible Scarlet O’Neill,” and “Big Chief

Painted covers by Henry Kiefer helped Heroic Comics catch the eye of newsstand browsers.

Wahoo.” Four issues (#4-7) of the Wahoo solo title were also released this year, along with one issue apiece of Buck Rogers and Mickey Finn. It was the profitably of these books that made the wonderful wackiness of Jingle Jangle Comics possible. Syndicated strips remained the main draw for the United Feature Syndicate line of comics, which was harder hit by the newsprint shortage than Eastern. Its monthlies, Tip Top Comics and Sparkler Comics, both skipped their May issues, while only two issues of Comics on Parade, one headlining “The Captain and the Kids,” the other “Nancy and Fritzi Ritz,” reached newsstands this year. A few original series still ran in Sparkler and Tip Top, all theoretically starring superheroes but in reality straightforward war strips, with nary a costume or display of superpowers to be found in “Iron Vic,” “The Spark Man,” “The Triple Terror,” or “The Mirror Man.” Only Bernard Dibble’s “El Bombo” still dealt in the fantastic, albeit humorously. A sixth series, Milburn Rosser’s “Race Riley and the Commandos,” was added to Sparkler with issue #20 (March), but offered little of interest. Novelty Press, too, kept its resident super-heroes in uniform throughout 1943. Despite its affiliation with Curtis Publications, the small line was forced to alternate its two monthlies, Target Comics and Blue Bolt, on the newsstands through the summer months, resulting in only ten issues of each reaching readers this year. They returned to their regular schedules with their August issues, the first in the new 60-page format, with the quarterly 4Most making the switch

TM and © respective copyright holder.

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Fun fantasy strips like “Bottleneck and Widget” rounded out the Jingle Jangle Tales roster. TM and © respective copyright holder.

with issue #8 (Autumn). All three titles were packaged by Funnies, Inc., under the supervision of editor Stanley Beaman. The war was a central character in all but a handful of the strips running in Target Comics. The eponymous title character and his allies, The Targeteers, spent most of the year separated, the series alternating among solo adventures of the trio, until they reunited in the October issue (#42) at the request of the top brass. New artist Edward Ryan made a cameo appearance in issue #37 (March), as The Target related to the thunderstruck illustrator how he personally witnessed Hitler being turned away from Hell as too evil even for Satan and his subsequent death at the hands of his own stormtroopers, an account that may or may not have been a fever dream. Unlike the United Feature heroes, Target and his pals got to show up in costume in most of their stories. Elsewhere in the book, contemporary cowboy “Bull’s-Eye Bill” barely got acquainted with his twin nephews, Pete and Pat, before he said goodbye to them and accepted a captain’s commission in the Army. Though not in uniform, “Pete Stockbridge, Alias The Chameleon” served his country by going behind enemy lines, using his mastery of disguise for G-2. Even the ludicrous “Al T. Tude” a.k.a. Gooperman wound up drafted into the Air Corps in #40 (June), where a certain Lt. Grem O’Lynn made his life miserable. Harold DeLay wrapped up his adaptation of “Gulliver’s Travels” in Target #39 (May), replacing it with a non-

fiction series, “Stories of the United Nations.” Beautifully drawn but blatantly propagandistic, each episode related a true story of the courage and sacrifice shown by the freedom-loving peoples of China, Norway, Holland, or the Soviet Union. Only “The Cadet,” “Speck, Spot and Sis,” and the hillbilly humor strip “Dan’l Flannel” kept their protagonists stateside. Dan’l’s handlers did, however, The propaganda in Novelty Press’ comics wasn’t always subtle, as in this story where Satan proclaims Hitler too evil for Hell. send the character on TM and © respective copyright holder. a strange trajectory, Published under Crestwood’s Ameripossessed an ingenious robot, and briefly turning him into can Boys’ Comics, Inc., imprint, acquired a pet, Windy the Talking a pseudo super-hero by giving him Headline Comics was not devoted to Dog. “Dick Cole, Wonder Boy” predicta magic ring that granted him the stories about newspaper reporting, ably ran across his share of Axis operpower of telepathy. as its title implied, but was instead a atives, here and in 4Most, but also Blue Bolt did not share the stability collection of strips in the boys’ advenfound time to complicate his friendof Target, dropping first “The White ture genre. Its cover feature was ship with Simba Karno on meeting Rider and Super-Horse,” then “The “The Junior Rangers.” Farmboy Roger his former foe’s attractive stepsister. Phantom Sub,” and finally “Sub-Zero” Ranger, Jr., left for dead alongside his He now shared the cover spot, alterover the course of the year. With “Blue murdered parents by the merciless nating with “Edison Bell, Boy InvenBolt” himself in uniform and no lonBaron Blackheart, vowed vengeance tor,” and “Krisko and Jasper,” Jack ger using his electrical powers, all the on the enemy agent and the Nazi phiWarren’s long-running humor strip title had left that resembled a superlosophy that spawned him but was about two inept sailors, until issue hero was “Sergeant Spook.” New turned down by every service branch #38 (July-August), which featured a scripters Ray Gill and George Kapitan as too young to serve. Joining forces poster-like image of the Liberty Bell returned the phantom beat cop to with Army brat Jerry Simms and captioned simply “Let Freedom Ring.” Ghost Town, where he encountered runaway street kid Smokey O’Toole, Later covers displayed battle scenes ghost pirates, consulted a council of Roger and his new pals stowed away from a new series, “I Fly for Venhistory’s greatest military strategists, on a Europe-bound troopship. Provgeance,” the true saga of a squadron ing their worth during a U-boat of Navy pilots. attack, the boys were allowed to train Despite such minor tinkering, manalongside an American Ranger unit agement at Novelty Press played and join it in action. On their first conservative with its properties. mission, Roger got his revenge on The same could not be said for tiny Blackheart with the timely assistance Crestwood Publications, which not of guest stars Yank and Doodle. In the only added a new monthly, Headline following episode, the team gained Comics, to its schedule but made suba fourth member, teenage freedom stantive changes to its existing title, fighter Chin Lee. “Junior Rangers” was Prize Comics. Paper rationing had its a product of the Jack Binder studio, as inevitable result, with Prize skipping was “Cliff Gordon, the Wonder Boy,” its May issue, Headline demoted to a the tale of an engineering prodigy, his quarterly with its fourth issue, and fantastic Autoplane (which did triple both books losing pages in the shift duty as car, aircraft, and submarine), to the 60-page standard, but it didn’t and their participation in the fight dampen the confidence of executives against the totalitarian nations. Also Mike Blier and Teddy Epstein (though appearing in Headline were “Little they did hedge their bet by releasing Johnny Doolittle,” starring a 12-yeara 324-page one-shot called Treasure old scientific sleuth; “Percy Allen,” a Comics that collected remaindered Terry and the Pirates-style adventure copies of Prize #7-12 under a cardseries set in South America; and “Tom More old-fashioned patriotism than propaganda, the board cover) or discourage editor Morgan,” a time travel fantasy about cover of the July issue of Blue Bolt quietly reminded its Reese Rosenfeld and his creative staff readers what the war was about. a young history buff befriended by an from taking some risks. TM and © respective copyright holder. 210

elderly tailor whose shop’s back door was actually a gateway to other eras. The non-fiction series “Boy’s Life,” presenting biographical sketches of top military commanders, was replaced as of issue #3 (April) by “The Invisible Boy,” in which bespectacled Dan Curtis gained the power of invisibility in an electrical accident. Amazingly, Dan resisted the urge to put on a costume and fight crime, preferring to use his new gift to help his family, friends, and occasionally himself. None of the strips in Headline Comics demonstrated the creativity or panache of Charles Biro’s or Simon and Kirby’s boy heroes but they did offer plenty of action and chuckles in return for the buyer’s dime. It was in the pages of Prize Comics that Rosenfeld and company upended audience expectations. The cutback to 60 pages spelled the end for “The Green Lama,” “Doctor Frost,” and “The Black Owl,” but the last lived on in a surprising new form. In the September issue (#34), a newly enlisted Doug Danville passed his costumed identity on to old school chum Walt Walter, scientist father of “Yank and Doodle.” The boys welcomed the new Black Owl as an ally, unaware of his true identity or that he knew theirs. It was a clever twist that revitalized both series by merging them. Two new super-hero strips joined the roster late in the year. Henry Kiefer’s “Airmale” was really Prof. Kenneth

Dick Briefer gave his “Frankenstein” feature a startling overhaul this year, but the transformation took several years to fully unfold. TM and © respective copyright holder.

The “Black Owl” and “Yank and Doodle” strips merged as of Prize #34. TM and © respective copyright holder.

Stephens, who donned the obligatory tights and cape after discovering a means of negating gravity’s effect on himself. “The Flying Fist and Bingo” were a man-boy team of washed-up vaudevillian acrobats who decided to become masked mystery-men for no apparent reason. Neither strip was particularly memorable, especially compared to the cancelled strips they replaced. If they offered no surprises, Dick Briefer’s “Frankenstein” more than made up for it. After six issues in the same vein as stories past, including a rematch with Bulldog Denny and a visit to Hell, both monster and series got an unexpected facelift. In Prize #33, kindly Professor Carroll subjected the title creature to an experiment that softened his frightening physiognomy and mellowed his misanthropic personality. Over the next few issues, the rechristened “Mr. Frankenstein” tried first to apply his superhuman strength toward defense work, then at Carroll’s suggestion began attending school, where his now-gentle nature endeared him to his fellow first-graders. Series had been revamped before, but this abrupt shift from horror to humor was unprecedented. What prompted Briefer to make the change is hard to say. Whether readers would accept it had yet to be determined.

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the envy of the industry was hardly a trade secret. The company released a whopping 120 individual comics bearing a 1943 cover date (plus two giveaways published under the Western name) – more than the outputs of Eastern Color, United Feature, Family, Comic House, Columbia, Ace, Gilberton, Novelty Press, Magazine Enterprises, and Crestwood combined. Its success, and its status as the prime purveyor of wholesome all-ages funnybooks, led to a certain inevitable conservatism. Dell was no more capable of overhauling a struggling feature the way Rosenfeld and Briefer did “Frankenstein” than it was of exploiting violence Crime Does Not Pay-style or of indulging the sexual tics of a William Moulton Marston. And much of this reserve emanated from the office of Dell vice president Helen Honig Meyer. Hired by the publishing firm as a file clerk in 1923, she had risen rapidly through the ranks on the strength of her intelligence, integrity, and impeccable taste. It was Meyer who had persuaded George Delacourte, Jr., to revisit the idea of his own line of comics after Eastern Color’s profitable gamble on making Famous Funnies an ongoing title, and Meyer who was subsequently given the responsibility for its operations. It was Meyer who oversaw the contracts for the line’s licensed titles and maintained cordial relations with the executives at Disney, MGM, and other licensors. And it was Meyer who pored over the sales charts and decided, based on what she read there, what titles to publish,

Rarely interfering in editorial matters, Dell executive Helen Honig Meyer kept the wheels turning on the publisher’s comic book juggernaut.

The Disney Studio was adept at keeping its newest properties in the public consciousness, as in the case of Bambi, which was not only adapted for an issue of Dell’s Four Color but inspired two sequels. TM and © Disney Enterprises Inc.

ture Mickey material specifically created for that medium. Issue #15 starred “Porky Pig” and introduced another Leon Schlesinger star to the comics page, the charmingly bashful, alarmingly stupid Beaky Buzzard. “Bugs Bunny” occupied the final Four Color of the year (#33), which included a hilarious showdown between Bugs and a cantankerous grasshopper named Hopalong Casserole for the title of Public Nuisance Number One. Also receiving their first solo tryouts were Walter Lantz’s “Oswald the Lucky Rabbit” (co-starring Woody Woodpecker) and “Andy Panda.” Most of the print runs for these books sold out, a fact not lost on Helen Meyer, who would continue to use appearances in Four Color as a gauge to determine the viability of the company’s stable of licensed properties as standalone attractions.

with what frequency they should be released, and when cancellation was in order. She rarely interfered in the creative side of the business, leaving those details to editors Oskar Lebeck, Eleanor Packer, and Alice Nielson, but Helen Meyer held the power of life and death over Dell’s comics, a power she began to exercise in earnest in 1943. One of Meyer’s first decisions of the year was the cancellation of Large Feature Comic following its 13th issue. The oversized black-and-white book, which required a separate print run due to its larger pages, had never been a favorite of retailers, and Meyer saw no valid reason to continue it. Instead, she ordered up more Four Color, authorizing 22 issues (none dated save for the year) of the showcase title, split roughly 50/50 between all-reprint collections of features from the monthly anthologies and new stories in the vein of the previous year’s sales leviathan “Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold.” Not surprisingly, five of those new issues starred a Walt Disney character, beginning with “Bambi” in issue #12. Adapted from the animated movie by artist Ken Hultgren, who had designed some of its characters, and scripter Chase Craig, it spawned a pair of sequels, “Thumper Meets the Seven Dwarfs” in issue #19, the first comic featuring a crossover between the casts of two Disney feature films, and “Bambi’s Children” in issue #30. Hultgren illoed the latter, with Carl Buettner at the drawing board for the Thumper story. Carl Barks delivered his first solo Donald Duck adventure in issue #29’s “Donald Duck and the Mummy’s Ring,” which found the irascible waterfowl and his nephews in Egypt on the trail of a priceless archaeological artifact. Though not a book-length story as future Barks duck tales were, it demonstrated the former animator’s superb pacing and his flair for exotic settings depicted with just the right amount of detail for authenticity. Four Color #27 starred “Mickey Mouse” in a trio of stories that also featured supporting players Minnie Mouse, Clarabelle Cow, Horace Horsecollar, and Pluto. Drawn by Ken Hultgren, this was the first comic book to fea-

Original content also began to appear regularly in the monthly Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories, Dell’s bestselling title. Starting with the April WDC&S (#31), every issue included a new “Donald Duck” story by Carl Barks. These were smaller-scale stories than those running in Four Color, domestic comedies focusing on Donald’s ongoing contest of wills with the headstrong Huey, Dewey, and Louie; his raucous relationship with the delectable Daisy Duck; and the first salvo in his war with the terrible-tempered Neighbor Jones. Ken Hultgren drew solo stories for three Bambi cast members, “Thumper” in issue #29 (February), “Flower” an issue later, and “Friend Owl” the issue after that. Saludas Amigos co-star “Panchito” also got a one-off shot at stardom, as did minor Disney player “Clara Cluck” and Clarabelle Cow’s naive country cousin “Bertie.” The December issue (#39) saw “Bucky Bug” awarded his own all-new series by Carl Buettner, while “Little Hiawatha” replaced him as the star of the Silly Symphonies reprints. One strip that earned a regular slot in the title was based on a children’s book by Roald Dahl optioned by the Disney Studio for a never-produced movie. Initially drawn by animator Vivian Risto, “The Gremlins” began in WDC&S #33 212

(June) and was taken over the following month by Walt Kelly, who stayed true to Dahl’s depiction of the impish saboteurs as mischievous but not malicious while imbuing their goings-on with his own brand of humor Kelly also assumed creative control of “Pat, Patsy and Pete,” one of the few features running in Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies not associated with Leon Schlesinger’s animation studio, which sold all rights to its characters to distributor Warner Brothers this year. Joining the strip’s cast as of issue #20 (June) was Percy the Pirate, Kelly’s reworking of an earlier character named Captain Elbert Scuttlebutt. Some of the title’s minor back-up series began being phased out in favor of new strips for minor Warner characters, swapping “Ringy Roonga” and “Kandi the Cave Kid” for “Beaky Buzzard” and “Henery Hawk.” But Looney Tunes’ main attractions remained “Bugs Bunny,” “Porky Pig,” “Elmer [Fudd],” and “Sniffles and Mary Jane,” who appeared in every issue and teamed up for issue #18’s patriotic “Our Red Cross Drive.” New Funnies, having settled on its line-up the previous year, saw no strips cancelled or added in 1943, though the “Andy Panda” series was rebooted. The strange and fascinating continuity created by writer Gaylord DuBois and artist George Kerr, which depicted Andy living in the real world, was wrapped up with the August issue (#78). The strip was brought closer to the cartoons, with Andy living once more in a funny animal universe where he shared a house with his pal, Charlie Chicken. Handling this overhaul was 29-year-old cartoonist John Stanley. A former Fleischer Studios staffer who had contributed to publications as diverse as Mickey Mouse Magazine and The New Yorker, Stanley was to prove one of the medium’s most gifted storytellers, joining Carl Barks and Walt Kelly as super-stars of the Dell line. Funny and well-drawn as his “Andy Panda” was, it was just one of several good series native to New Funnies. Among the best were the two based on Johnny Gruelle’s “Raggedy Ann” and “Mr. Twee Deedle” books, gently exciting fantasies scripted by DuBois and illustrated by George Kerr and Justin Gruelle, respectively. Walt Kelly took over another fantasy series, “The Brownies,” with issue #81 (November).

Children’s book favorite “Uncle Wiggily” joined the cast of Animal Comics with its second issue. TM and © respective copyright holder.

critter saga featuring Pogo, titled first “Bumbazine” then “Albert the Alligator,” ran in three out of the five issues of Animal released this year, and every issue of FTP contained either one of his original fairy tales or his adaptation of a classic like “The Gingerbread Man.” Two new strips debuted in the February-March Animal Comics (#2). “Uncle Wiggily” featured the dignified gentleman rabbit created in 1910 by Howard R. Garis, who wrote 79 volumes of his adventures over the course of his lifetime (including one illustrated by George Carlson). As adapted by Gaylord DuBois and H.C. McBride, Uncle Wiggily made the leap to comic books with all the warmth and wisdom that had endeared him to two generations of children intact. Justin Gruelle’s “Merry Meadows” was in much the same spirit, chronicling the lives of the animals inhabiting the woodland village of the title. The anthropomorphic critters in both strips differed from the Disney, Schlesinger, or Lantz menageries in being drawn more realistically and eschewing the exaggeration and slapstick of the animation-born characters. Other features of varying quality came and went in the back pages, some having more staying power than others. The most enduring were “Muggins Mouse,” actually a series of poems written and illoed by Marjorie Barrows; “Little Dinky,” starring the self-declared cutest kitten in the world; and “Don Bugaboo and Fatcho,” a parody of Cervantes’s Don Quixote by Frank Thomas with a cast of insects. Fairy Tale Parade, meanwhile, did what it did best, presenting adaptations of classic stories drawn

Kelly, Stanley, and Carl Barks could all be found between the covers of Our Gang Comics, the bi-monthly devoted to characters licensed from MGM, with Kelly writing and drawing the cover feature save for the story in issue #7 (September-October), which George Kerr drew over Kelly’s dialogued layouts. Barks provided the art for a single episode of “Benny Burro,” while Kelly pitched in on at least two installments of “Barney Bear,” who guest-starred with Benny in Our Gang #4 (March-April). Both strips were written by Gaylord DuBois, who also scripted the non-licensed series “King” and “Flip and Dip.” DuBois began the year at the typewriter for “Tom and Jerry,” drawn by John Stanley as of the January-February issue (#3). Four issues later, Stanley assumed complete responsibility for the strip from the overextended Dubois, a better fit than “Andy Panda” for a cartoonist later lauded for his ability to create new, and always funny, variations on a narrow theme. Two other bi-monthlies, Animal Comics and Fairy Tale Parade, showcased Walt Kelly at his very best. His swamp 213

by Arthur Jameson, Caspar Emerson, George Kerr, and others. Scripted primarily by Oskar Lebeck, this year’s offerings included “Sleeping Beauty,” “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “The Snow Queen,” and “Jack and the Beanstalk.” But sales on both books were sluggish, and Helen Meyer regretfully pulled FTP from the schedule following its undated ninth issue. Paradoxically, she also greenlit a one-shot called Tiny Tots Comics that featured adaptations by Walt Kelly and others of “The Three Bears,” “The Three Little Pigs,” “Three Blind Mice,” “Three Little Kittens,” and “The Three Billy Goats Gruff.” Meyer’s influence could also be detected in the two monthlies not populated by animated characters. Super Comics and Popular Comics dropped virtually all of their original series this year, including “Cyclone,” “The Hurricane Kids,” “Flying Fortress,” “Jim Ellis, Axis Smasher,” “The Return of Robin Hood,” and “The Owl,” last of the line’s super-heroes. Only “Gang Busters,” based on the radio drama, managed to hang on, joined briefly by Dan Gormley’s “Three Little Gremlins,” which ran in Popular #85-88 (March-June) until eclipsed by Walt Kelly’s superior effort in Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories. Replacing the cancelled series were reprints of syndicated strips “Brenda

Tiny Tots Comics was a one-shot in the same vein as the cancelled Fairy Tale Parade. TM and © respective copyright holder.

Starr,” “Etta Kett,” “Toots and Casper,” “Dr. Bobbs,” “Polly and Her Pals,” and “Olsen & Johnson’s Elza Poppin.” Since the strip reprints were the big draw in those titles anyway, it was more cost-efficient to turn the books completely over to them. The bi-monthly Red Ryder Comics, conversely, retained its two original series, the Worth Carnahan-scripted military strips “Fighting Yanks” and “The Rookie.” Dell’s quarterly war titles met different fates in 1943. War Stories was the year’s first casualty, getting the hook after its eighth issue (dated January-April). The non-fiction War Heroes, on the other hand, sold well enough to remain on the schedule. Written mainly by Carnahan with art by E.C. Stoner, Bob Jenney, Jim Chambers, Tom Hickey, and newcomer John Forte, From 1943 through 1949, Firestone Tires dealers offered Donald and Mickey Merry Christmas, an annual 20-page giveaway comic, to its customers. the book stood head and TM and © Disney Enterprises Inc. shoulders above similar Dell was the comic book house least comics from other publishers thanks affected by paper rationing. Aside to Oskar Lebeck’s exacting standards. from a single skipped issue of AniIn addition to a single issue of Gene mal Comics, none of its ongoing Autry Comics, originally packaged titles changed frequencies or othfor Fawcett (who chose instead to let erwise deviated from the schedule. the license lapse), and the annual It staggered the conversion to the Santa Claus Funnies, Dell also pubnew 60-page standard across a fourlished several giveaways. Donald and month period, beginning with the Mickey Merry Christmas was the first September issues of Popular Comics, of seven annual 20-page freebies disRed Ryder, and Our Gang. The last to tributed through Firestone Tire stores make the shift were Walt Disney’s featuring reprints of the title characComics and Looney Tunes, not coinciters’ newspaper strips, while Macy’s dentally the line’s top sellers, which 1943 holiday gift to shoppers was the held out till December. No shortage self-explanatory Flash Gordon Raids of newsprint was going to slow the Japan. The company also ran off a financial juggernaut Dell’s comics new printing of the Langendorf Bread had become with Helen Meyer’s hand premium Red Ryder Victory Patrol on the tiller. Book of Comics. Additionally, Western Printing packaged a pair of proMarvels Vs. Monsters motional comics published under its A similar strategy helped Fawcett own name: a second issue of Famous Publications delay the downsizing of Fairy Tales reprinting choice selecits monthly comic books. The October tions from Fairy Tale Parade and a issue of Wow Comics (#18) was the 36-page edition of Walt Disney’s Comfirst to make the switch, with Whiz ics and Stories that included the Carl Comics not dropping its page count Buettner-drawn “Thumper’s Christuntil issue #52 (cover-dated February mas Tree,” an original story exclusive 1944). Sales were up on the monthlies, to the giveaway. way up, on the strength of “Captain 214

What was the secret of the franchise’s Marvel,” his extended (and expanding) success? Why did these particular family, and the licensed properties Capsuper-people so thoroughly (and proftain Midnight and Don Winslow of the itably) enthrall young audiences when Navy, a newcomer to Fawcett. It didn’t most of their contemporaries were hurt that the publishing house chose lucky to rate a regular 12 pages in a sinto divert some of its allotted newsprint gle title? The answer was attitude. Lead from its magazine division, where sales writer Otto Binder, looking back on on its humor titles were sagging, to the this fertile period of his comics career comics. That didn’t save Bulletman, decades later, explained that it was all Spy Smasher, Gene Autry Comics, or the due to the sense of fun he and his col15¢ America’s Greatest Comics. All were laborators brought to a genre that all cancelled, their loss offset somewhat by too often took itself too seriously for its the debut of a quarterly Ibis solo title, own good: second issues of Golden Arrow and the 324-page Gift Comics, and a pair of one“The Captain Marvel and Marvel shots, Hopalong Cassidy and All-Hero Family stories aren’t humor in the Comics, a 96-pager starring Captain strictest sense but rather satire Midnight and the gang from Whiz. The and parody of life situations and Fawcett comic book factory now operthe doings and shortcomings of ated so smoothly that it absorbed with humans. The secret of it all was that nary a bump the transition in SeptemCap and Billy were dead serious ber from outgoing executive editor Rod and never made a joke at all. It was Reed, leaving to run the jazz magazine how we played up the slapstick and Downbeat, to William “Will” Lieber- Will Lieberson, shown here dressed for an office party puns and situation comedy that comedy skit, took over the executive editor position at son. Most of the art for the Marvel FamFawcett following Rod Reed’s departure. made it all funny. But remember ily material was provided by the studio this: young kids don’t get the joke run by Captain Marvel co-creator C.C. at all. They take it seriously, namely, Beck, with the Jack Binder shop supplythe battle between good and evil with the good ing much of the other super-hero art and Chad Grothkopf’s guy … always winning. In a sense, Captain Marvel little outfit producing Fawcett’s Funny Animals. was like Jonathan Swift’s satires of political situations [or] Alice in Wonderland which to the adult is With one or another Marvel headlining five monthly coma study of human nature, I always felt I was explorics (six, counting Marvel Bunny), there was no denying ing and exploiting human nature too, digging out that the Fawcett family’s four-color fortune flowed from its zany aspects to show that much of life was a the public’s infatuation with the various beneficiaries of joke and full of craziness.” (Schelly 1249-1256) Shazam’s magic lightning. The newest, “Mary Marvel,” claimed the cover and lead-off position in Wow Comics Binder wrote nearly every story featuring Cap, Junior, from “Mr. Scarlet,” where she introduced that loveable or Mary that saw print in 1943, managing to give each fraud Uncle Marvel. Plans to give her a solo book were in series its own identity. This was due in part to the differabeyance due to rationing. “Captain Marvel, Jr.” starred ence between Mac Raboy’s moody, illustrative approach to in his solo book and in Master Comics, while the original’s “Captain Marvel Jr.” and the simple lines and uncluttered titles, Captain Marvel Adventures and Whiz Comics, were panel composition of Beck and his acolytes, with Otto’s the line’s top sellers. brother Jack’s “Mary Marvel” art falling somewhere in the middle. But it was also due to Binder’s narrative gifts, his ability to set a tone in plotting and characterization tailored for each hero. All three strips benefited from the imagination he put into the schemes and foibles of the villains, both his own creations and those created by others. Editors Reed and Lieberson let him follow his own path, cognizant of how lucky they were to have the author of the celebrated “Adam Link” stories (a classic series of pulp tales about a sentient robot seeking acceptance by human society) on the payroll and trusting that he knew what lines not to cross. Only one other person regularly had a say in the storytelling, but Binder was fine with that: “Among artists, Beck was of course my favorite. I took great delight in his renditions of my Captain Marvel scripts and thought that he was a bit of a genius. He was the only artist allowed by the Fawcett editors to alter scripts on occasion or to insert or delete certain panels, and change wording. But Beck never took advantage of this; he simply made

Veteran science fiction writer Otto Binder was as proud of his work for Fawcett Comics as he was his pulp novels, carefully archiving the issues in which his stories appeared.

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improvements along the way. We sometimes differed sharply over a particular sequence (he would show me the roughs) but we would always come to a compromise.” (1455-1462) Not content to confine their tales to a single episode or even a two-parter, Binder and Beck launched an ambitious serial in Captain Marvel Adventures #22 (April) that ultimately ran through 25 consecutive issues – the sprawling saga of the World’s Mightiest Mortal’s Who could’ve guessed that Mr. Mind, mysterious leader of The Monster Society of Evil, would turn out to be a tiny worm? TM and © DC Comics. duel with the Monster Society of Evil. Organized by the mysgon. The settings and the cameos by prominent citizens terious Mr. Mind, this team of evildoers included past foes got a lot of attention in the local press and boosted sales Sivana, Captain Nazi, Nippo, and Ibac, plus new nasties of that issue in those locations, proving that Binder’s comlike Jorkk, a crocodile man from the planet Puncus, and the mercial instincts were the equal of his creative ones. sinister trio of Smashi, Hashi, and Peeyu, scientists of the These were only a fraction of the “Captain Marvel” stories Black Dragon Society willing to turn against Japan to help published this year. Marvel and his alter ego, boy newsthe Monster Society conquer the world. The fearsome intelcaster Billy Batson, did more than battle nefarious new ligence behind this cabal of villainy, at first depicted only foes The Black Swastika, The Mountain Mover, The Soothas a disembodied voice, was unmasked in the sixth chapter sayer, and Levram, an evil duplicate created by the mystic (CMA #27, September) as a tiny, bespectacled extraterresMirror of Pharbegor. They also prevented the hidden land trial worm, the very worm Billy had nonchalantly brushed of Utopia, where everyone lived free of want, fear, and off his shoulder the issue before. The irony of a seemingly injustice, from being despoiled by Nazis; dealt with a flock insignificant invertebrate actually being the most dangerof extra Captain Marvels, each convinced he was the origious creature on the face of the earth was a typical Binder nal, created by a duplicator machine; disrupted Sivana’s touch. improbable campaign for governor; helped Willard Batson, A second series of stories running concurrently in Captain a backwoods naif who mistakenly believed himself Billy’s Marvel Adventures as of issue #24 (June) focused on the cousin, recoup the money he lost to big city swindlers; and Big Red Cheese’s visits to various cities around the counhad a two-issue encounter with Capmarv, the hero’s timetry, where he hobnobbed with real-life politicos, media traveling 40th century descendent whose magic word was personalities, and businessmen, visited prominent landa truncated “Shaz!” marks, and battled crooks and enemy agents who threatOtto Binder’s scripts for “Captain Marvel Jr.,” whether for ened those cities’ people and property. Cap prevented The Master Comics or his solo book, were noticeably darker in Rain King from inundating Minneapolis, stopped Nazi sabtone. The blue-clad superboy’s real self, Freddy Freeman, oteurs from disrupting war production in Detroit, foiled a still lived in abject poverty and fought some of Fawcett’s raid on the Denver Mint, countered a German operative most scurrilous bad guys. Recurring foes Captain Nazi (more called The Fog Phantom in San Francisco, and performed lethal than ever after gaining the power of flight in Massimilar services for Los Angeles, Seattle, and Portland, Oreter #34), Captain Nippon, and Mr. Macabre, each a remorseless killer, were joined in 1943 by Mr. Silence, The Black Ace, the undead Eza Zombey, King Kryme, Jolly Roger, costumed Nazis Count Spectrum and The Pied Piper, and Sabbac, a bucktoothed dabbler in the occult named Timothy Karnes who gained awesome magical powers when he said his alter-ego’s name, an anagram for the demons Satan, Any, Belial, Beelzebub, Asmodeus, and Craeteis. Other stories found Junior shrunk to the Time-traveling to the 40th century, Captain Marvel met his descendent, Capmarv. The story proved popular enough that Captain Marvel Jr. and Marvel Bunny had similar encounters the following year. TM and © DC Comics. size of a microbe, exploring the 216

The dazzling cover art of Mac Raboy was a major factor in the popularity of the titles starring Captain Marvel Jr. TM and © DC Comics.

mysterious City Beneath the Sea, protecting a race of intelligent penguins, and helping the senior Marvel’s friends, the Trolls of Wonderland.

was the usual practice. His pleasing, posterized cover layouts were a welcome relief from the usual rock ‘em sock ‘em stuff.” (25)

A major factor in the character’s audience appeal was the magnificent art crafted by Mac Raboy for the covers of Captain Marvel, Jr and Master. As Jim Steranko observed,

The meticulous Raboy was also agonizingly slow. Even with the assistance of background penciler Rubin Zubofsky, he couldn’t possibly produce all the art for Junior’s strip. The duo tried cutting corners, pasting photostats of Raboy’s best figure work directly onto the pages and drawing around them, but even that wasn’t enough. Al Carreno picked up the slack, drawing the lion’s share of the solo book backed by Sheldon Moldoff, George Tuska, Phil Bard, and others, while Raboy and Zubofsky concentrated on the Master Comics episodes.

“Raboy was an expert technician with a pen and brush, often rendering his cover art almost the same size as it would appear on the printed cover instead of twice as large as

Awarded her own series in Wow Comics #9 (January), “Mary Marvel” faced foes as heinous as any of those confronting her male counterparts but bested those foes with a style all her own, performing her super-feats with a grace and delicacy the boys lacked. Her villains included Mr. Night, who threatened to usurp the throne of fabulous Rainbow City from the benevolent King Color; the witchy executives of Wickedness, Inc., who tainted the milk of human kindness and briefly turned Mary herself evil; and The Black Falcon, the ghost of an infamous buccaneer trying to prevent his descendent from going down the same piratical path. In her everyday guise of schoolgirl Mary Bromfield, the World’s Mightiest Girl enjoyed a happier home life than the male Marvels, her adoptive parents giving her the loving attention and guidance neither Billy, ensconced in an urban apartment with only Steamboat for companionship, nor Freddy, eking out a hardscrabble existence all alone in an abandoned tenement, had. Family was the centerpiece of the year’s best “Mary Marvel” story. In the October issue of Wow (#18), Mary met Dudley Batson, a con man who’d stumbled on her secret and passed himself off as her long-lost uncle. The roly-poly rascal even resorted to wearing a Captain Marvel costume under his breakaway suit to establish his bona fides, blaming his lack of superpowers on “a touch of the old shazambago.” She figured out the truth when she heard Dudley refer to the charity he proposed to run as “Shazam, Incorporated” without Mary Marvel” bumped “Mr. Scarlet” as the cover feature of Wow Comics at the beginning of 1943. TM and © DC Comics.

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Wizard, a golden-skinned madman armed with a lightning gun; The Rat Catcher, an ex-con turned ruthless bounty hunter; and The Prince of Evil, who used a bizarre energy frequency he discovered to take over a section of the city by turning everyone within range of its radiation evil. The Flying Detectives’ solo title was suspended following its February issue (#12), which launched a contest to name Bulletdog’s civilian idenThe Crime Crusaders Club, a super-team consisting of Captain Marvel Jr., tity. The winner, Tracer, was Minute-Man, Bulletman, and Bulletgirl, appeared just once. TM and © DC Comics. announced in Master #39 changing, but by then he had forgotten about exploiting (June). The Bullets and Captain Marvel Jr. guest-starred in the Marvels and sincerely wanted to help them. Mary, Cap, the August installment of “Minute-Man” (#41) in the first and Junior accepted Uncle Marvel as a member of the famand only meeting of The Crime Crusaders Club. On his own, ily, tolerating his eccentricities and excuses for the sake of the One-Man Army duked it out with the expected Nazi vilthe good he and his charity did. Mary Marvel co-creator lains (The Mummy, Hata Hari [sic], The Victory Vampire) Marc Swayze drew that story and several others while on and teamed up with Johnny Reb, a nonagenarian Civil War active duty, with Jack Binder and his studio handling the veteran (who, despite his name, had fought for the Union). remainder. Phil Bard handled the “Minute-Man” art assignment, with Otto Binder at the typewriter for most issues. Rounding Though lacking the whimsy and imagination that charout the back pages were Bert Whitman’s “Balbo the Boy acterized the three Marvel Family series, Fawcett’s other Magician” and “Hopalong Cassidy,” starring the Saturday super-heroes still offered plenty of thrills and action. Mary matinee favorite played by Bill Boyd. One of the best-drawn Marvel’s Wow Comics co-star “Mr. Scarlet” had his world westerns of its time, the adventures of the squeaky-clean turned upside down at the beginning of the year when sheriff of Twin River and his deputy, grizzled old fart Meshis other self, Brian Butler, was fired as a special prosecuquite Jenkins, were illustrated by Harry Parkhurst altertor after being caught sleeping on the job following a long nating with former “Buck Jones” night of crimefighting in cosartist Ralph Carlson. Parkhurst tume. The novelty of an unemwas also at the drawing table for ployed mystery man kept the the Hopalong Cassidy one-shot, strip intriguing. Readers learned a trial balloon to test the sales the true identity of the mystepotential of an ongoing title. rious “Commando Yank,” radio newsman Chase Yale, in the May Like Bulletman, “Spy Smasher” Wow (issue #13). Costumed avialost his solo book early in the tor “The Phantom Eagle” met Jerry year, his exploits thereafter conSloane, the daughter of a scientist fined to the pages of Whiz Comheld by the Nazis and a brilliant ics. Arch-foe America Smasher aeronautical engineer in her own was just one of the hateful heavright, who handed him the keys ies to challenge Alan Armstrong’s to the rocket-powered Cometcloaked alter ego in 1943. The plane, much to the regret of The Vulture, The Beetle, The Brazen Ace of Blades, The World Haters, Colossus, The Man Without a and other black hats. Otto Binder Flag, The King of Storms, and the wrote all three strips, with Jack’s verminous duo of Dr. Roach and shop supplying the art for “Mr. The Bug were fiends and killScarlet” and Bert Whitman illoing ers, one and all. Whiz #44 (June) “Commando Yank” and “Phantom introduced the Junior Spy SmashEagle.” ers, a trio of boys rescued by the masked pilot of the Gyrosub in Over in Master Comics, the highan earlier episode. The penulflying team of “Bulletman and timate Spy Smasher (#10, JanuBulletgirl” squared off against ary) featured a story with the weird foes like Professor D, a spinintriguing title “Why I Didn’t dly shrimp of a scientist who gave Harry Parkhurst’s “Hopalong Cassidy” artwork made the movie cowboy’s himself gargantuan strength; The series stand out from its contemporaries. TM and © respective copyright holder. Kill Hitler,” while its back pages 218

William J. “Bill” Brady, the best of them being the comedy western “Billy the Kid,” starring a gunslinging goat and his ostrich pal Oscar, the harried and incompetent sheriff (and mayor, postmaster, telegraph operator, etc., etc.) of a frontier town. Brady’s other strips, “Sherlock the Monk” and “Benny Beaver and Fuzzy Bear” were generic funny animal fare, well-drawn and entertaining but hardly groundbreaking. No credits are known for “Winkin’, Blinkin’ and Nod,” about a trio of bumBill Brady’s western spoof “Billy the Kid” was the most popular of bling fireflies modeled on Fawcett’s Funny Animals’s back-up scripts, earning his own shortThe Three Stooges, or for lived solo title in late 1945. TM and © respective copyright holder. “Gremmy the Gremlin.” introduced “The Demlins,” a fantasy The fantasy series debuted in issue strip by Tom McNamara that contin#6 (May) but by the December issue ued in Captain Marvel Jr. Louis Cazehad been downgraded to a one-page neuve handled the art on “Golden gag strip. Limited to a single page Arrow” through the October issue of from its inception, “Reddy Dough” Whiz (#47) and on the second issue of was a propaganda series in which the ace archer of the Old West’s solo the title star, a bear cub, was forever title, the assignment then falling to being reminded to buy war stamps. Kurt Metzner. The first, undated issue Fawcett’s Funny Animals was a solid of a new quarterly, Ibis, retold the seller for the publisher but whether it origin of the magic-wielding Prince would have done as well without the Amentep, adding new details and Marvel connection is up for debate. providing context for his millennialong enmity toward The Black PhaCaptain Midnight was also a reliable raoh. Among other mystical menaces seller, despite licensing fees bleeding confronting Ibis and Taia were Ignis off some of its profitability. Midnight the Fire Fiend, The Moon Monsters, and his Secret Squadron could be Zoltil the Bat God, The Genie from found in the thick of combat in most Aladdin’s Lamp, Mr. Discord, a band issues, taking on enemy troops, Axis of time-tossed Vikings, old nemesis spies, and costumed Nazis KukulTrug, and Satan himself. Otto Binder kan, The Clinger, and Der Vindbagg and William Woolfolk shared scriptwith equal fervor. Baron Von Togo, ing chores for the series, with Bob the captain’s half-Japanese, half-GerHebberd drawing most of the Whiz man arch-nemesis, turned up three episodes and a good chunk of the solo times this year, but most villains title. ended up dying in their first appearance. Writers contributing scripts for The fourth member of the Marvel Captain Midnight included Rod Reed, Family heading a monthly title was Joe Millard, Bill Woolfolk, and the “Hoppy the Marvel Bunny,” star of omnipresent Otto Binder, with art by Fawcett’s Funny Animals. Creator Kenneth “Ken” Bald, Marcia Snyder, Chad Grothkopf put his floppy-eared Clem Weisbecker, Pete Riss, Phil Bard, hero through adventures not unlike Andre LeBlanc, and other freelancers. those of his human counterparts, That the series didn’t have a steady with Hoppy—formally known as creative team suggests it was not a Captain Marvel Bunny as of FFA #2 top priority for Fawcett, as does the (January)—voyaging through time, decision to downsize it to 52 pages frustrating the plans of Axis agents, with its December issue (#15). and visiting fantastical locales like the City of Giant Bees. The rest of the Joining the Fawcett line-up in 1943 features in FFA offered more tradiwas Don Winslow of the Navy, based tional fare. Three were the work of on the syndicated strip by Frank V. 219

Martinek and Leon Beroth. The new monthly was not a reprint title, but presented all new stories of the maritime sleuth drawn by Edd Ashe. It was to write and edit Don Winslow that Will Lieberson was originally hired, and it was his exemplary work on it that led directly to his elevation to the executive editor’s chair. As Lieberman told it to Fawcett historian Matt Lage in a 1975 interview: “[S]ince comics were like a new toy to me, I decided to try something fresh. I contacted the Office of War Information for the official citations of the Navy men decorated for bravery beyond the call of duty. The stories for Don Winslow were based on these and obviously it must have impressed everyone at Fawcett.… In speaking about oneself there is always the danger of sounding overly modest or conceited. Well, I guess the truth of the matter is that Rod Reed, and in turn, Ralph Daigh and the Fawcett brothers all felt that I had a great sense of story. Also, with my playwriting background, I was an ideal choice to head the comics since I thought in terms of visual expression rather than literary expression.” (92)

His work on the licensed title Don Winslow of the Navy earned scripter Will Lieberson the position of executive editor of Fawcett’s comics line. Captain Marvel TM and © DC Comics.

Sales figures for Don Winslow, which avoided the fate that befell Captain Midnight, bore out that judgement. As 1943 gave way to 1944, the fates of the Marvel Family and the rest of Fawcett’s roster of stars remained secure under Lieberson’s editorial oversight.

including Manly Wade Wellman, William Woolfolk, Joe Millard and Harry Stein to provide competent scripts for their most popular features.” (Kooiman 21) Arnold turned to “The Clock” creator George Brenner to restore order. Brenner, who had been editing Smash Comics since its March issue, did know “all about the business.” Assisted by Gwen Hansen, Martin DeMuth, and others, he had Quality’s previously efficient operation back on track by the September-dated issues. But there was a cost. With Brenner’s new day job eating up all his time and energy, “Bozo the Robot” was cancelled and by year’s end he had passed the reins to his other strips on as well. It was, in fact, a bad year for several mysterymen and -women whose series were pulled, including “The Black Condor,” “The Ray,” “Phantom Lady,” “Alias The Spider,” “Zero, Ghost Detective,” and “Spider Widow,” as well as other long-running strips like “Kid Dixon” and “The Kid Patrol.” Some lost their creators to the military, some were done in by changing reader tastes, while others fell victim to the rapidly cooling relationship between Quality and the Roche & Iger studio, who claimed the copyright on several of these features and later found them homes with other publishers. Many of these vacancies were filled with comedy or fantasy series, though a few new super-heroes were thrown in the mix.

ilar to Better’s “Doc Strange”: red tee shirt, white jodhpurs, and brown riding boots. At first, Lance hid his secret from Michael’s fiancée, Kim Meredith, but by the second episode he’d found it simplified things to tell her. Once Biff, a circus clown who turned his back on the big top to serve as Triumph’s man Friday, joined the cast in Crack #30 (August), all the elements were in place which would see the series through the next three years. They would have to do so without Andriola, however, who left comic books behind following the December episode to launch his new syndicated strip Kerry Drake.

The most successful of the newcomers was “Captain Triumph,” who claimed cover feature status in Crack Comics as of its January issue (#27). Lance and Michael Gallant were twins, identical right down to the T-shaped birthmark on the inside of their left wrists. Michael, an Army Air Corps fighter pilot, died in an explosion set off by German saboteurs, but his vengeful spirit lived on. Appearing to Lance, the ghost explained to the astonished reporter that by pressing his birthmark, the living and unliving brothers could merge into a single, super-strong being. Created by Alfred Andriola, former writer and artist of the discontinued Charlie “The Kid Patrol” was one of several casualties of the Chan newspaper strip, Captain deteriorating business relationship between Quality editor Triumph wore a simple outfit simBusy Arnold and the Roche & Iger packaging service.

Although there was a four-issue overlap where both strips appeared, “Captain Triumph” essentially replaced the previous star of Crack Comics, the high-flying “Black Condor.” The series had been limping along for some time, its art chores passing from Charles Sultan to John Belfi to Rudy Palais, none of whom could recapture its glory days under Quality’s premier artist, Lou Fine. “Spitfire” and “Alias The Spider” preceded the Condor offstage, leaving Triumph and “The Clock” the book’s last remaining super-types. Joining “Hack O’Hara,” Klaus Nordling’s “Pen Miller, Cartoonist Detective,” and reprints of “Rube Goldberg’s Side Show” in the back pages was “Inkie,” a surreal effort from Art Stahl about “a comic character the size of your pinky who

When Quality Was Vital Editorial transition proved less serene for Quality Comics, the publishing house owned by Everett “Busy” Arnold. The year began with draftee Gill Fox continuing to carry out his editorial duties while awaiting orders. When the day came, Arnold thought he had Fox’s successor all lined up. It didn’t exactly work out that way, as recounted in The Quality Companion: “[Assistant editor] John Beardsley was given greater editorial responsibilities, but his tenure was short-lived. According to Dick Arnold [Busy’s son], Beardsley came onboard claiming to know ‘all about the business,’ but soon demonstrated the opposite. Busy himself mentioned Beardsley’s drunken state [to comics historian Jim Steranko], but credited him with bringing in good writers,

Uncle Sam TM and © DC Comics.

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Alfred Andriola’s “Captain Triumph” replaced “The Black Condor” as the cover feature of Crack Comics. Four issues later, the “Condor” series was cancelled. Captain Triumph TM and © DC Comics.

jumped off a drawing … and came to life!” full of good-natured caricatures of the Quality staff.

from Kookasaw, Iowa, who moved to the big city seeking a career as a lady wrestler, and the smoothtalking con man who managed her. Most of its humor came from the contrast between big-hearted, two-fisted Daffy and the puny, perpetually scheming Deke. Replacing George Brenner’s “Bozo the Robot” were reprints of “Lady Luck.” Arnold opted not to start the series from its earliest episodes, but cut straight to the more current Klaus Nordling version. These substitutions (and “Yankee Eagle,” sacrificed at year’s end to the drop to 60 pages) excepted, Smash’s line-up of features remained mostly intact. Many went through creative personnel changes. Fred Guardineer was now handling “The Marksman,” giving the costumed Polish archer a worthy foe in The Cross Bow [sic]. Paul Gustavson took over “Midnight” from Jack Cole, adding clueless private eye Sniffer Snoop and his pet Hot Foot, a polar bear cub, to the cast, while continuing to produce “The Jester,” which Mort Leav began illustrating with the November issue (#47). Leav also drew later installments of “Rookie Rankin.” The police strip was still being written by Toni Blum, as was “Espionage,” drawn briefly by Joe Kubert before newcomer Bernard Sachs became its regular artist. Though specifics are sketchy, it was around this time that the once-prolific Blum began scaling back her workload as she prepared for her forthcoming wedding to Bill Bossert, whom she’d met during her time at Eisner-Iger.

“Doll Man” still headlined flagship title Feature Comics, as well as his own quarterly solo book. Bill Woolfolk and Otto Binder were among those chronicling the exploits of the toysized mystery-man, which found him going toe-to-tiny-toe with fearsome foes like The Black Atom, The Toy Merchant, The Corpse, The Bearded Lady, The Talking Tiger, and The Ugliest Man in the World. Devoted fans of the series were no doubt disappointed to find definitive artist Reed Crandall, preoccupied with “Blackhawk,” replaced by a constantly changing roster of competent but lesser talents like Rudy Palais, Max Elkan, and Mort Leav. The title dropped the Witmer Williams-drawn “Zero” and Frank Borth’s “Spider Widow and The Raven,” but not before the latter strip participated in a six-episode crossover with “Phantom Lady” that ran through both Feature (issues #69-71) and Police Comics (#20-22). It was the only time two Quality heroes teamed up, and Borth spent much of it on misunderstandings and petty bickering between the ladies with a crass Raven playing both sides. “Blimpy” was a new comedy strip launched in the January Feature (#64). Subtitled “The Bumbling [or sometimes Bungling] Buddha,” the character was literally a statue of Buddha brought to life by boy sorcerer Tabby Tyler. Possessing a fun-loving, wisecracking personality rather than a philosophical Buddha nature, the blue-skinned Blimpy was constantly getting himself and Tabby in and out of trouble. Created by Sy Reit, the art chores for this funny (but undeniably offensive by modern standards) series were assumed by Al Stahl with its second episode. Genre strips like Phil Martin’s bandleader detective “Swing Sisson,” Paul Gustavson’s “Rusty Ryan,” and the aviation strip “Spin Shaw,” now drawn by Bob Powell, shared the back pages with Register and Tribune Syndicate properties “Mickey Finn,” “Lala Palooza,” and “Big Top.” Outgoing editor Gill Fox created the feature that claimed The Ray’s spot in Smash Comics as of issue #41 (March). “Daffy,” later “Daffy and Deke,” starred a champion hog caller

The six-issue team-up of “Phantom Lady” and “The Spider Widow and The Raven” was the only time Quality’s super-characters ever crossed over into each other’s strips. Phantom Lady TM and © DC Comics.

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The bi-monthly Hit Comics lived up to its name thanks to the growing popularity of its cover feature “Kid Eternity.” The heroic young ghost, aided by the angelic Mr. Keeper, put his power to transform into whatever figure from myth, history, or fiction he desired (even turning into Blackhawk in one story!) to good use against criminals like the sadistic Doctor Pain or the felonious females known as Her Highness and Silk, a not-so-sweet little old lady gangster and her slinky subordinate. The duo proved so popular with readers, they received their own series in Hit #29 (July). The title’s other super-heroes, “Stormy Foster, The Great Defender” and the farcical “Bill the Magnifi-

cent,” made it through the year without incident, as did back-up features “Betty Bates, Attorney at Law” and “Bob and Swab,” but the espionage strip “Don Glory” disappeared following the February issue (#26). A new series from Art Gates, “Woopy of Shoot’n Creek,” got its slot. Crossing the hillbilly humor and teen humor genres, this hybrid lasted just four issues before downsizing eliminated its page allotment. National Comics bade adieu this year to a pair of features dating back to its first issue. The boxing strip “Kid Dixon” was bounced to make room for Vernon Henkel’s “Chic Carter,” moving over from Police Comics, while “The Kid Patrol” was a casualty of the break with Jerry Iger despite a guest appearance in issue #26 (January) by cover star “Uncle Sam.” It was a rare failure for the Living Symbol of America, whose record for 1943 was otherwise spotless, here in National and in his solo book. Numbered among the bad guys trounced by Sam and boy pal Buddy were The Pied Piper, Blackout, Doctor Dirge, The Invisible Man, and Count Gestapo, a Nazi so nasty the duo needed the help of The Vagabond, an otherwise anonymous guerrilla leader, to end his threat. Al Gabriele drew the strip for the first half of the year, Art Seymour the second, from scripts provided by Harry Stein and Otto Binder. Toni Blum and Al Bryant’s “Sally O’Neill, Policewoman” was an oasis of stability in the back pages of National, as was “Quicksilver,” though Fred Guardineer devolved the character over the course of the year from superspeedster to generic mystery-man. The same did not hold true for “The Unknown,” “Destroyer 171,” or “G-2 of the Army Intelligence,” all three passing through multiple hands. In the absence of creator Will Eisner from “The Spirit,” the lead feature of the 16-page Sunday supplement of the same name jointly owned by Busy Arnold and the Register and Tribune Syndicate, a talented team of

Twelve years before The Seven Year Itch hit movie screens, “Lady Luck” pulled a Marilyn Monroe to the delight of supporting players Peecolo and Count Dichange. TM and © Will Eisner Studios Inc.

ghosts did their best to keep the strip faithful to the tone and, uh, spirit of Eisner’s run. Most of the 52 issues published this year (#136-187) were written by Bill Woolfolk or Manly Wade Wellman, with Joe Millard pitching in on nine episodes. It was the Sunday insert, and its companion daily strip, to which Lou Fine devoted all his energies this year. Without the distraction of other assignments, Fine no longer needed others to provide layouts. Indeed, according to Alex Kotzky, who drew the backgrounds and inked secondary figures, Fine rarely bothered with preliminaries: “He just sketched directly on the page. He knew exactly what he was doing. His penciling was always very refined. It was never rough or inaccurate. He could visualize the work in his head first. He was like John Spranger or Reed Crandall. When the pencil hit the page, it just moved by itself. … He approached his work as would a craftsman. He was in a class all by himself.” (Amash 6) The stories Fine was illustrating were thoroughly enjoyable, and better than much of what was appearing in Quality’s newsstand comics. It is only hindsight that brings them up short for a modern audience conscious of the innovative storytelling missing from The Spirit during this period. Another of the supplement’s features had to come to terms with being abandoned by its originator. It was clear Bob Powell had lost interest in “Mr. Mystic,” ignoring his small sup222

porting cast and cranking out routine plots that offered little of the snappy dialogue or supernatural weirdness that had typified the series the previous year. He finally handed it over to Fred Guardineer with the October 10 issue (#177). His long history with magician protagonists like “Zatara” and “Tor” made Guardineer the obvious choice. The Sunday section’s third star, “Lady Luck,” remained firmly in the grasp of Klaus Nordling, who added two new cast members to the four-pager. Count Dichange was a penniless European aristocrat constantly trying to wheedle money out of wealthy Brenda Banks; Helga was the Banks family’s brawny Swedish housekeeper. Both characters demonstrated Nordling’s facility for dialect humor, with the Count delivering his lines in a Yoda-like tangle of reversed and misplaced grammar that would tax the sentence diagramming skills of the most hardcore high school English teacher. Another Will Eisner co-creation was well on his way to becoming one of Quality’s most popular and profitable properties. Military Comics had started out losing money. Now, with Bill Woolfolk at the typewriter and Reed Crandall supplying the art for cover feature “Blackhawk,” Military was a sales sensation. Under their creative care, the adventures of the Poland-born pilot and his paramilitary squadron of flying aces presented an intoxicating brew of battlefield action, despicable villains, exotic settings, and even more exotic women. In a 1985 interview, Woolfolk laid the credit for the strip’s success at his

and some reason for being upset, and men would run for their lives. A Crandall female who just a moment before might have appeared soft, beautiful, and sensual, could quickly turn into a wideeyed, open-mouthed, screaming, maniacal woman whenever the script called for it.” (72-73) If these lethal ladies weren’t trying to kill Blackhawk, they were trying to kiss him, and some tried both at once. The enigmatic Mystery, known as “the Japanese Mata Hari,” was not the last sultry siren to switch sides, albeit temporarily, to aid the handsome freedom fighter. The Golden Bell was a courageous Chinese agent deep undercover as a geisha in Tokyo who gave her life for the Allied cause. Military #20 (July), introduced Sugar a.k.a. The Blonde Bomber, an expert pilot avid to become the first female Blackhawk. The boys would have none of it, products of their time that they were, and politely but firmly discouraged her despite the central role she played in a critical rescue mission. She swore to return. For those hankering for more traditional villains there was King Cobra, the first of many costumed foes the Black Knights were to face in the coming years. Would-be Blackhawk Sugar was one of many gorgeous gals, good and bad, that Crandall and scripter Bill Woolfolk threw at their leather-clad lead this year.

Several back-up features in Military ended their runs in 1943. Fred Guardineer parked “The Blue Tracer” in its hangar following the February issue (#16) to take over two Al McWilliams strips, the non-fiction “Secret War News” and an omnibus series variously titled “Atlantic Patrol,” “Pacific Patrol,” and “Arctic Patrol.” “The Phantom Clipper” also ended in issue #16, ceding its slot to the less fantastical “PT Boat.” Four issues later, Klaus Nordling’s humorous “Shot and Shell” was supplanted by the returning “Death Patrol.” Brought back to life by Gill Fox, who introduced new member Yogi, the series was continued by Al Stahl, both artists keeping the action tongue-in-cheek without the high mortality rate of the previous run. Most of these features were straight war strips, above average but nothing extraordinary. Military’s only mystery-man, “The Sniper,” at least offered an occasional weird villain or supernatural encounter for variety. None of them could match the drawing power of “Blackhawk.”

TM and © DC Comics.

collaborator’s feet: “[Reed Crandall] was out-and-out the best artist I knew at the time — and I don’t know anybody who drew more dimensional figures with more realism than Crandall did. It was a great pleasure, indeed, to write those bold words on the page and see it come out so fully fleshed.” (Hill 76) Most aviation strips fetishized the featured planes and indulged in long air combat sequences, but Woolfolk and Crandall took a different tack, using the Blackhawks’ Grummans primarily as a plot device, a way to quickly get the Magnificent Seven to whatever farflung port of call the plot required. All the important events took place on the ground, and none seemed more important than Blackhawk’s encounters with the many femmes fatales that crossed his path. Crandall biographer Roger Hill asserts that it was here that the artist flew highest: “Crandall women, with sweet smiles on their faces and eyes soft and sensuous, brought a new awareness and understanding of the feminine form to comic book readers of the 1940s. Most of the time, Crandall women conveyed a look of innocence or shyness, but give one a knife, a gun, or a whip,

The arrangement to release Plastic Man #1 through Vital Publications would inspire other publishers hampered by paper restrictions to turn to proxies to get new titles on the stands. TM and © DC Comics.

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If any feature could, it was “Plastic Man.” The stretchable star of Police Comics was the outstanding factor in that title’s success but not the only one. The year began with the startling death of “711” in the January issue (#16). Perhaps growing tired of the character’s restrictive prison setting, George Brenner introduced a new hero in his place. An anonymous drifter, learning he had the powers of clairvoyance and self-teleportation, vowed to use them for the greater good, beginning his new

a private eye comedy begun by Al Stahl and the last series Harvey Kurtzman drew before being drafted. But as with Military Comics and “Blackhawk,” none of Police’s other features could hold a candle to Jack Cole’s joyously anarchic shapeshifting super-hero. Now partnered with the morally challenged Woozy Winks, Plastic Man settled into a riotously funny groove. His growing legion of fans had come to expect lavish doses of Cole’s trademark weirdness. He delivered, setting Plas and Woozy up against unique menaces like Great Chief Warrior, a Native American shaman out to steal back America from the white man; Abba and Dabba, stage magicians turned bank robbers; Serpina, a circus snake charmer dabbling in extortion; and dozens of robot Plastic Men created by a cash-strapped scientist at the behest of a vengeful mobster. Sales went through the roof in response. A solo title was the obvious next step, but there was a problem.

career as “Destiny” by avenging 711’s murder. Brenner stayed with the revised series only until his promotion to editor. Paul Gustavson tinkered with “The Human Bomb,” adding comedy relief sidekick Hustace Throckmorton, a nerdy wimp who gained similar explosive powers after a transfusion of the Bomb’s blood. Hustace, however, only manifested the powers through the soles of his feet. The comic possibilities were quickly exhausted, so Gustavson tried another new direction. Turned down for military service as too valuable to the war effort, chemist Roy Lincoln shared the secret formula that turned him into The Human Bomb with three other rejectees, Swordo the Sword Swallower, patriotic street thug Montague T. “Curly” McGurk, and feisty aviatrix Red Rogers. As The Bombardiers, they snuck behind enemy lines and terrorized the Japanese Army and Navy for all of two issues. When Gustavson passed the baton to Mort Leav, the new artist returned the character stateside without his partners and put him back to work battling the same old saboteurs and spies. “Spirit” reprints and the unimpressive “Manhunter,” who appeared without his mask in two episodes (one drawn by Reed Crandall), were the other strips to appear in every 1943-dated issue. By contrast, the usually maskless “Phantom Lady” wore one in two episodes drawn by Joe Kubert before creator Frank Borth returned for the “Spider Widow” crossover. Two final stories with art by Rudy Palais saw print before cancellation. “Chic Carter” moved to National Comics, his pages reassigned to “Flatfoot Burns,”

Despite his government connections, Busy Arnold was denied sufficient newsprint to run Quality at full capacity. Every title, whether monthly, bi-monthly, or quarterly, skipped an issue, with Feature, Smash, National, and Military skipping two. This allowed the publisher to postpone conversion to the new 60-page standard until the November and December issues, but it was not enough to accommodate the launch of a new title. So Arnold struck a deal with the printing firm of Wm. C. Popper & Co., to publish Plastic Man through its newly created subsidiary, Vital Publications. In case anyone questioned the legality of the arrangement, a disclaimer in the first issue announced “This book has been manufactured under wartime conditions in full compliance with all orders and regulations of the War Production Board, in particular I.245 by VITAL PUBLICATIONS, Inc.[,] New York[,] from material prepared and supplied by COMIC MAGAZINES [Quality’s legal name]” It was not an original strategy—Columbia, Gilberton, and Harry Chesler had struck similar bargains—but none had been so open about it, or had the gamble pay off so spectacularly. Plastic Man #1 sold out. The lesson was not lost on other, less scrupulous entrepreneurs, as 1944 would prove.

Handoffs and Holdouts The paper shortage had a much different impact on another printer-turned-publisher. The year had barely begun when Massachusetts-based Holyoke Publishing Co. found its modest line of comics slashed by two-thirds. Frank Temerson had finally paid off his delinquent printing bill and regained the rights for Cat-Man Comics and Captain Aero Comics, their January issues the last released by Holyoke. This reversion of rights also cost the company the services of editor Charles M. Quinlan, who had been working out of Temerson’s offices all along, and most of the freelancers he oversaw. That left Holyoke scrambling to man its last remaining comic book. The company enticed Allen Ulmer, co-creator of “Captain Aero,” to stay on as the new editor. But Ulmer had neither the editorial instincts nor the raw talent of Quinlan, and his issues of Blue Beetle were some of the worst comics to see print in the 1940s. Truth to tell, Blue Beetle hadn’t been too good under Quinlan’s care either, treated like the proverbial red-headed

A switch in editors left the Holyoke version of Blue Beetle even less worth reading than it already was. TM and © DC Comics.

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stepchild by an editor more interested in the books he had helped create. The title character’s series, once the chief moneymaker for the defunct Fox Publications, was in a constant state of flux. The Beetle’s super-powers came and went at the whim of the writers. His alter ego, Dan Garrett (now spelled with two Ts), was in the military in some stories, a policeman in others. His girlfriend was sometimes Joan Mason, sometimes Tina Lovely. His kid sidekick, originally named Sparky, became Spunky in issue #18 (January), was nowhere to be seen two issues later, and didn’t return until the December issue (#28) minus his costume. Scripts were by Sylvan H. Stein, Dudley Rutherford, and Zac H. Gabel, all but Gabel, who would write a single “Captain America” story in 1944, with no other comic book credits to their names outside Holyoke and/or Temerson’s comics. The artists were better known but, aside from a half-dozen Charles Quinlan jobs the former editor left behind, none of their efforts came remotely close to the work of Jack Kirby, Sam Cooper, or Al Carreno during the Beetle’s days at Fox. The back pages were also a mess. The other series held over from the Fox incarnation, “Spark Stevens” and “V-Man,” were cancelled following Blue Beetle #19 (February), replaced by two series from Allen Ulmer and Ray Willner. “Crime Reporter” was a true crime strip of dubious authenticity. “Ali Baba” was a screwball version of the classic Arabian Nights tale. Neither was very good, but at least they lasted. Jack Alderman’s “Wing Lee, Boy Patriot of China” was good but had only a three-issue run (#21-23). The title went through 27 other features this year, only a handful lasting more than one issue, plus an additional 13 true war stories. Credits ranged from familiar names like Joe Kubert, Sol Brodsky, Jack Farr, and Montgomery Mulford to obscurities like Bruce Bard, George Tukel, Ruth Peecook, and Edith Wieselthier. The only advantage the book had was that without the other titles eating up their shares of the company’s allotted newsprint, it could stay at 68 pages through the end of the year. Still, it is hard to imagine anyone at Holyoke thought kids were lining up to buy this turkey or suspected that its original publisher was busily planning his strategy to take back the pet character on which he’d once planned to build a comics kingdom.

Despite the racially insensitive caricaturing of its Chinese hero, “Wing Lee, Boy Patriot of China” was the best strip to be found in the pages of Blue Beetle, so naturally it was cancelled after three episodes. TM and © respective copyright holder.

ing the plots, though Suspense Comics emphasized crime and detection over costumed adventurers. Editor Quinlan and his son and collaborator Charles Jr. retained creative control of key strips “The Cat-Man and Kitten” and “Captain Aero,” later adding a one-off western, Suspense’s “The Sunset Kid” to their workload. Jack Grogan, a regular in Timely’s humor comics, took over the writing chores on “The Deacon,” “The Hood,” and “Commandos of the Devil Dogs,” with Jack Alderman drawing all three plus the anonymously scripted “The Red Cross.” Freelancer Herman C. Browner provided story and art for “The Ragman,” “Alias X,” and new series, “Counter Spy,” debuting in Captain Aero #12 (November). “Flagman and Rusty” and “True Personal Adventures” were illoed and possibly written by Christopher “C.R.” Schaare. Zac Gabel and Don Rico contributed “The Grey Mask and The Dove,” an old-school masked detective series notable only for giving the hero’s uncostumed African-American sidekick equal billing. None of these features, including “Captain Aero” and “Cat-Man,” batted in the same league as their competition at DC/AA, Quality, or Fawcett, but at least the Et-Es-Go front office could take comfort that its product was noticeably better than Holyoke’s.

There was a several month lag between Frank Temerson reclaiming his wayward titles and the first issues released under his new Et-Es-Go Magazines, Inc., imprint. During that interim, a one-shot called Veri Best Sure Fire Comics appeared on newsstands. Published anonymously, it was actually an issue of Captain Aero Comics Temerson had persuaded someone to print for him to tide him over financially while he got his business in order. Temerson and Quinlan re-entered the marketplace with confidence, promoting Cat-Man Comics to monthly status with its second Et-Es-Go issue (#9 on the cover, but actually #19). Captain Aero Comics remained bi-monthly and both titles were 60-pagers from the start. This left the company just enough paper to launch a new 52-page title, Suspense Comics, its first issue bearing a December cover date. Even so, the company published just eight comics for the year. But it was a start.

Some of the same freelancers who populated the pages of Et-Es-Go and Holyoke’s titles also worked on the small line of comics from Hillman Periodicals, Inc., but with better results. The difference was probably Hillman editor Ed

Super-heroes remained the line’s primary focus, with Axisspawned villains and the infrequent costumed crook driv225

Cronin, who had resuscitated the moribund Air Fighters Comics the previous year with new characters that readers responded to with enthusiasm. Thanks to its pulp line, the publisher had enough paper on hand to not only maintain Air Fighters’ monthly release schedule and add a new book, Clue Comics, but to keep both titles at 68 pages, making Hillman’s comic books among the best bargains on the newsstands in the final months of 1943.

she turn her back on her Nazi masters and vow to fight for the Allies instead. With her long black tresses worn Veronica Lake-style, a blouse casually unbuttoned to the navel, and the smoldering kiss she planted on the hero, Valkyrie was all the proof needed that, despite his action name, Airboy under Kida and Stein was going to be treated as a full-grown man. He faced several other unique opponents in the air and on the ground, including self-styled “Nazi super-boy” Youth Kultur; Misery, the ghost of a 16th century scientist burned at the stake for building a functioning set of artificial wings who sought vengeance on all pilots; and The Four Horsemen, the sons of a German engineer trained from childhood to pilot the super-fighters he designed. None, naturally, was a match for Airboy and Birdie.

“Airboy” spent the year proving he deserved the lead-off spot in Air Fighter Comics, even after the departure of his original creators, artist Al Camy and writers Charles Biro and Bob Wood, following the March issue (#6). Wood stayed on for another three issues, providing scripts for interim illustrator Tony DiPreta, before Harry Stein and Fred Kida became the new creative team. It was Stein and Kida who introduced Airboy’s greatest nemesis and one of comics’ most iconic anti-heroes in Air Fighters #14 (November). Valkyrie was the code name of a stunning German combat ace who led an all-woman squadron known as The Airmaidens. Capturing Airboy when he gallantly refused to shoot her down, the ruthless vixen tried to torture him into revealing the secrets of his wonder plane Birdie. Only when the other Airmaidens were ordered whipped after helping the handsome young American escape did

Airboy’s Air Fighters co-stars also had to deal with creative turnovers in addition to the accustomed assortment of colorful enemies. Bob Fujitani, artist of “The Flying Dutchman,” took over “The Iron Ace” when Fred Kida was promoted to “Airboy,” while original “Bald Eagle” penciler Harry Sahle, his work at M.L.J. leaving him less time for freelancing, had a long string of successors, some identified, some not. Fujitani, Dan Barry, and John Giunta illoed two or three “Sky Wolf” stories each after co-creator Mort Leav left the series. Only John Cassone stayed with “The Black Angel” all year, teaming her in two episodes with an RAF ace nicknamed The Black Prince with whom the leather-clad Angel shared a few stolen moments of romance. All these series featured long sequences of air combat, usually involving one of the exotic villains that became an Air Fighters staple: The Salamander, Madame Claw, Dr. Roulette, Genghis Khan, Gog and Magog, Captain Bedlam, Rubberman, The Hag from Hades, and returning rotters Baroness Blood and Half-Face. Fan favorite The Heap appeared only once, in issue #9 (June). Joining the roster with the January issue (#4) was “Skinny McGinty,” a hillbilly who discovered he could fly under his own power. Played strictly for laughs, the Tony DiPreta-drawn strip included a hilarious send-up of crooner Frank Sinatra, making headlines at the time for the hysteria he was generating amongst the bobby soxers of America. For Hillman’s follow-up to Air Fighters, Ed Cronin decided to play it safe, populating Clue Comics with various types of super-heroes. “Nightmare and Sleepy” were professional wrestler Bob White and his teenage manager Terry Wake, who first donned their eerie black outfits, treated with phosphorescent paint so that in the dark they looked like reanimated skeletons, to save Perfect Town from a costumed extortionist named The Checker. Two other crusaders relied on outré inventions for their effectiveness. Tom Wood, a.k.a. “Micro-Face,” wore an allconcealing “micro-mask” equipped with photo-electric eyepieces that let him look through solid matter and a microphone that projected his voice wherever he chose, while the gold-and-purple clad “Zippo,” actually private eye Joe Blair, wore rocket-powered steel wheels on his feet. Another P.I., Terry Gardner, adopted the alternate identity of “Twilight” to continue sleuthing while serving as a sergeant in the Marine Corps. His costume, which resembled a brown version of Wildcat’s with a big red T emblazoned on the chest, suggests the charac-

The introduction of the sultry Valkyrie, one of the most alluring femmes fatale of 1940s comic books. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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ter may have started out under another name. All four series leaned heavily at first on swipes from Simon and Kirby. Tony DiPreta’s “Stupid Manny” was a slapstick series about a dimwitted blacksmith who gained the power of flight after exposure to an antigravity ray, thereafter fighting crime Though Clue Comics co-stars like “Micro-Face” dressed in long underseemed more colorful superficially, “The Boy King wear and a cape made and The Giant” earned its cover feature status out of venetian blinds. on pure originality. TM and © respective copyright holder. “Jackie Law and the Boy Rangers” was a generic kid gang distinguished only by the football uniforms they wore into action. The only series in Clue displaying any originality was the book’s cover star. Created by the Biro/Wood team and illustrated by Alan Mandel and Dan Barry, “The Boy King and The Giant” starred David, teenage heir to the throne of Naziconquered Swisslakia, and his amazing ally, a Godzillasized robot invented hundreds of years before by the seer Nostradamus. After squashing the German governor who’d ordered his parents’ execution, The Boy King had his towering servant tow a fleet of rafts carrying the surviving Swisslakians across the Atlantic to safety in America. For the next four issues, the strange duo opposed the machinations of a Nazi spymaster known as The Crane. In issue mus, an immortal wizard, began in issue #27 (June) and #6 (December), David met a street tough named Muggsy was still going strong in the December issue (#33). Devil who turned out to be his long-lost twin brother. Despite Kyoti, a demon in the service of Imperial Japan, took five the novelty of its lead feature, sales on the monthly Clue issues (#23-27) to take down. Art chores were divided Comics weren’t what publisher Alex Hillman had hoped among Binder, Coll, and Al Bare, with three stories drawn for, and it was demoted to a quarterly with its fourth issue. by Vernon Greene that had been kept in inventory followPulp powerhouse Street & Smith not only kept its line at ing his induction into the military. “Blackstone the Magi68 pages throughout 1943 without any title skipping an cian” spent his book-length episodes much as he had the issue, it also promoted the quarterly Supersnipe Comics to two previous years, though the real-life prestidigitator did bi-monthly status with its April issue (#8). Low sales on delve into the realm of fantasy with a visit to the lost conDoc Savage Comics and Pioneer Picture Stories led to their tinent of Lemuria in Super-Magician #17 (September). “The cancellations, while the publisher’s other non-fiction title, Hooded Wasp” stung his last villain in the November issue Trail Blazers, became Red Dragon Comics, a more conven(#32) but “Nick Carter,” “Beebo of Jungle Isle,” and “Danny tional anthology title featuring super-hero and war series. Garrett” continued to appear irregularly in the back pages Editor-in-chief William DeGrouchy served primarily as an of Shadow, while a new occult detective series, “Duneen administrator and traffic manager, while Ed Gruskin acted the Spook-Buster,” gained a tentative foothold in Superas story editor. The downsized Jack Binder shop continMagician. Other series came and went in both books, while ued to supply artwork for the line but was gradually supbiographies of entertainers like Red Skelton, Zero Mostel, planted by a new studio run by Walter Gibson, with former Al Jolson, Truth or Consequences host Ralph Edwards, and Myra North artist Charles Coll as the new enterprise’s art the cast of the Shadow radio program became a frequent director. fixture. There were no significant changes to the cover features of The life stories of radio stars Burns & Allen, Jack Benny, the monthly Shadow Comics and Super-Magician Comand Fannie Brice also filled the back pages of Doc Savage ics, both scripted by Walter Gibson. The Shadow faced an Comics, alongside a series of boxer bios by Thornton Fisher. eerie assortment of villains, some original, some adapted The title character, still wielding the magic jewel given from the pulp novels, including The Silver Skull, Dr. Satani, him by the lamas, opposed the machinations of such evilThe Money Master, The Green Hoods, and arch-foe Shiwan doers as The Black Knight, the team of The Beggar King and Khan. Gibson and his collaborators experimented with The Worm, and a skull-faced Nazi called (what else?) The extended storylines. The Shadow’s duel with Monstroda227

Skull. Ed Gruskin scripted the Man of Bronze’s escapades, but his efforts were in vain. Steadily diminishing sales spelled the end of the title, cancelled as of its October issue (#20), taking “Ajax the Sun Man,” “Astron, Crocodile Queen,” and “Gobs o’ Fun,” a military comedy by Gruskin and Charles Wessell, Continuing plotlines, like the hero’s eight-issue duel down with it. Only with the evil sorcerer Monstrodamus, became a Savage himself and regular feature of “The Shadow” strip in 1944. TM and © Condé Nast. an adaptation of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Clare Dwiggins survived the cut by moving to other titles. Bill Barnes, America’s Air Ace also disappeared from newsstands following its October issue (#12), though it would return after some refurbishing.

through the October issue (#8), an issue longer than three of his co-stars. “Captain Jack, Commando” was the title’s original cover feature. Its lead wore a bright red uniform straight out of a Victor Herbert operetta, but it was otherwise a straight war strip. “The Minute Man,” a superpatriot clad in colonial garb, had a unique gimmick: the more war stamps and bonds Americans bought, the stronger and more invulnerable he became. Generous doses of battlefield action presumably made the propaganda go down easier. Young Jimmy Rover, given a magic ring by a mysterious stranger, used it to become the modern incarnation of “Red Rover,” a legendary super-powered champion of justice said to appear once every century. The strips that replaced this bargain basement Captain Marvel and his co-stars were just as uninspired. “The Black Crusader” and “The Red Knight” were generic mystery-men. Sideshow attraction turned costumed crusader “Midget-Man,” at least, had super-strength. None lasted longer than one issue. Certainly the most unusual (and arguably most important) comic released by Street & Smith was the one-shot Aviation Cadets. Prepared at the request and with the cooperation of the Naval Bureau of Aeronautics, it outlined the rigorous training Navy fliers received. Broken up into chapters with titles such as “American Training vs. Enemy Training,” “Obstacle Course,” “Sports in War,” and “Swimming to Stay Afloat,” the comic emphasized the intense physical conditioning required of prospective pilots, glorifying the American fighting man without whitewashing the dangers he faced. Credits are unknown for this propaganda piece, as is any indication of its effectiveness as a recruiting tool. It did indicate that the publisher, and the rest of the comic book industry, remained ready to do whatever Uncle Sam asked of them.

Supersnipe Comics had no such problems. Indeed, the book proved so popular it became a bi-monthly with its April issue (#8). Ed Gruskin began scripting “Supersnipe” with that issue, maintaining the tongue-in-cheek atmosphere established by creator George Marcoux, who continued to illo the exploits of The Boy with the Most Comics in the World. Gruskin and Marcoux created a new character, Roxy the Girl Guerrilla, who turned Koppy McFad’s world topsyturvy, outwitting and outmatching the boy hero in acts of imaginary derring-do. Aside from the kid strip “Ulysses Q. Wacky,” the title had few other enduring features, filling its pages with stray episodes of “Doc Savage;” Ed Gruskin’s “Wing Woo Woo,” a detective series dripping with ethnic stereotypes; and the same biographies of sports figures and entertainers that populated the other Street & Smith comics.

Ten Years After It had been ten years since Eastern Color issued Famous Funnies, the first modern comic book. The industry’s early

The first issue (#5, January) of the quarterly Red Dragon Comics, formerly Trail Blazers, introduced a new slate of features. Oddly enough, the strip from which the book took its name did not appear in issue #5 except in a onepage text feature. It told how Bob Reid, the orphaned son of an American merchant executed during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, was subsequently trained by a mysterious order of Tibetan monks in their secrets of magic. Clad in a red loincloth and accompanied by a trained Komodo dragon and Chinese war orphan Chin Foo, “The Red Dragon” thereafter roamed Asia using his mystic powers against the invaders. The actual series began the following issue and was the only feature to appear throughout the balance of the book’s run. Created by Jack Binder and his brother Michael, a.k.a. Curly, “Rex King, Man of Adventure” wore a costume, complete with mask, despite his true identity being public knowledge. He and Jet, his pet panther, helped the Allies in the Pacific theater against enemy troops and black marketeers. Rex made it

Creator cameos, like those of William Moulton Marston and H.G. Peter in this “Etta Candy” solo story from Wonder Woman #5, also became more common this year. TM and © DC Comics.

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successes were written off by the cognoscenti as a passing fad. Now that fad had spread beyond syndicated strip reprints and costumed crimefighters to encompass fairy tales, funny animals, teen humor, westerns, crime, history, biography, religion, adaptations of classic novels and ripped-from-the-headlines war memoirs, and government propaganda. Clearly, comic books were here to stay. Several trends crossing publisher and genre lines suggest that the men and women who filled the pages of those comic books were also aware of it, if only subconsciously. Seasonal comics like Santa Claus Funnies were nothing new but it had been rare for series published year round to acknowledge a holiday beyond a Christmas-themed cover on the issues released in December. “Batman and Robin,” “Captain Marvel,” “The Boy Commandos,” “Porky Pig,” “Wonder Woman,” “The Brownies,” “Sergeant Spook,” “Mary Marvel,” “Sniffles and Mary Jane,” “The Cadet,” “Dinky Duck,” “Captain Midnight,” “Willy the Worm,” “Judy Wing,” “The Spider-Widow,” “Edison Bell,” and “El Bombo” all featured a Christmas episode in 1943. “Andy Wolf and Bertie Mouse” observed Christmas and Halloween. “Wilbur” had stories set on Thanksgiving and Independence Day. In an era when the “done-in-one” was the rule rather than the exception, when episode-to-episode continuity was kept to a minimum so that a series could see print in any order, it was a sign of confidence that the publishers were now scheduling comics that coincided thematically and chronologically with the biggest days on the American calendar. Although writers and artists had been signing their work from the earliest days of the industry (at least whenever creative anonymity was not a condition of employment), few had taken the jump and written themselves into their strips. Stories in which the characters were aware they were in a comic book, acknowledged the title’s other features as their costars, or encountered their own creators cropped up in “Captain Marvel,” “Jingle Jangle Tales,” “Frankenstein,” “The Target,” “The Jester,” “Speck, Spot and Sis,” “Wonder Woman” “Little Dynamite,” “Inkie,” and “Yan-

kee Longago.” The Timely bullpen were constantly drawing themselves and their co-workers into their humor titles. Comic book creators, most of whom had originally seen comic books as a comedown or at best a stepping stool to better-paying, more respectable opportunities, were beginning to show pride in their work, almost in spite of themselves. A third trend running through 1943’s comic books reflected the culture at large: the fascination with gremlins. The magical little saboteurs first cropped up in the tall tales of RAF airmen stationed overseas in the 1920s as a humor“Captain Tootsie” was the first of many advertising campaigns disguised ous explanation for as features to appear in comic books. Though no longer as prevalent, the tradition continues to this day. TM and © respective copyright holder. otherwise inexplicable mechanical or structural failures in their aircraft. produced by Captain Marvel co-creAmerican servicemen latched onto ator C.C. Beck and originally written these stories on arriving in Britain by Fawcett editor Rod Reed, it shared and passed them on to the folks back the same accessible art and lighthome. Soon there were gremlin refhearted approach to super-heroics as erences on the radio, in newspapers, its predecessor. It was also an adverin song, and, of course, in the comtisement for Tootsie Rolls, and as ics. Dell had Walt Kelly’s “The Gremsuch, was the forerunner of a wave of lins” a.k.a. “Gremlin Gus” and Dan ads disguised as comics that flooded Gormley’s “Three Little Gremlins,” the industry over the next few years. Fawcett had “Gremmy the Gremlin,” Purveyors of candy, soda pop, breakand Eastern Color had “Gup and His fast cereal, and other kid-friendly Gremlins.” Tom McNamara’s “Demconsumables were finally waking lins” were close cousins. Captain Marup to a hitherto untapped marketvel, Captain Midnight, Doc Savage, place patronized by the very demoThe Target, Greasemonkey Griffin, graphic they sought to entice. Some and Little Sneezer all had encounters publishers would resist the siren call with the little pests. Steel Sterling’s of potential advertisers’ dollars, but invisible Yehudis were gremlins in others would give in, offering up preall but name. The gremlin myth gave cious pages of the product they had war-weary Americans something to just voluntarily downsized. It seemed laugh at and take delight in, and fit like a reasonable enough move, a way perfectly into comics’ wider embrace to make back the money lower print of comedy this year. runs and skipped issues had cost Late in 1943, DC and Fawcett began running the same new one-page strip, which generally appeared on the back covers of their comics. It was called “Captain Tootsie.” Created and 229

them, but they might not have been so quick off the mark had they known of the new sacrifice they would be asked to make in the coming year.

The Paper Chase D-Day. It is now as much the stuff of legend as of history. On June 6, 1944, over 156,000 American, British, Canadian, and ANZAC troops participated in the largest amphibious assault of all time, storming the beaches of Normandy. After months of planning and preparation, the Allies had finally begun their invasion of Hitler’s Fortress Europa. Just two days before, American forces under Gen. Mark Clark captured Rome. This was welcome news in the hardpressed Soviet Union, where the two-year siege of Leningrad had at last been lifted and the Red Army was busy recapturing the Crimean Peninsula from the Germans. In the Pacific, the Empire of Japan continued to lose ground, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps taking the Marshall and Admiralty Islands, laying waste to the enemy’s warships, and establishing an airbase in the Aleutians from which to launch bombing raids on the Japanese homeland. None of these were easy victories, each claiming the lives of thousands of soldiers, sailors, and airmen, but victories they were nevertheless. The war was far from over but its end was no longer a distant dream. As the United Nations continued to hammer at the edges of Axis territory, the availability of certain resources became of critical importance to the war effort. This included pulp paper and two key ingredients in its manufacture, chlorine and sulphur. Comic book publishing houses found their newsprint quotas lowered once again, this time to 75% of their 1942 levels. This triggered a new round of cancellations, reduced frequencies, and cut page counts. A new standard of 52 pages for a dime swept across the industry, with only a fraction still offering 60 pages when their December-dated issues arrived at newsstands. Despite this (and, paradoxically, because of it), the industry was still booming. Every comic book publisher in business at the end of 1943 was still in business a year later. Detective/AllAmerican, Dell, Fawcett, Eastern Color, Novelty Press, and Parents’ Magazine Press, as divisions of larger publishing empires or affiliates of major printers and/or distributors, were assured of a reliable supply of paper. Several companies followed Timely’s lead in diverting paper to their comics from their pulp lines, as pulp sales continued to slump in the face of competition from paperback books. For most players in the industry, it was a year of stability. Fawcett, Fiction House, Parents’, Eastern Color, Family, Crestwood, and Novelty Press neither cancelled nor launched a title in 1944. Minor lines like Hillman, Et-Es-Go, and Ace were able to juggle their quotas judiciously enough to add new books to their schedules. 230

But there were those who weren’t content with this state of equilibrium. Whether through greed, hubris, or sheer cussedness, some publishers were determined to milk the cash cow for all she had to give, and if they had to skirt or break a few pesky rules, so be it. Some, noting Quality’s profitable partnership with Vital Publications, turned to proxy publishers, who used their excess paper to print others’ content for a percentage of the proceeds. The most prolific of these was Wm. H. Wise & Co., better known for its reference books, poetry collections, and coffee table art books. Wise issued comics under its own name for Nedor, Columbia, Comic House, a resurrected Fox, and All-American. Some were identical in appearance to the real publisher’s books, right down to the trade dress, with only the indicia revealing the switch. Others were jumbo-sized one-shots offering 132 pages for a quarter or 196 pages for 50¢. These comics usually bore no issue number, no date beyond the year, no advertising except a public service announcement or two, and omitted the two pages of text required for second class mailing privileges. Many of these comics were, in fact, illegal. As comics historian Will Murray has observed: “During the war, when you practically needed a license to print anything, [publishing black market comics] was an offense taken seriously by the War Production Board under Limitation Order L-244. The order stipulated that any publisher who did not issue a magazine in 1942—which was the base period used to determine paper quotas—had no allotment for paper.… The temptation to pirate comics during the war was great. With print runs virtually selling out for even the least popular titles, no [financial] risk was involved. Publishing comic books was the next nearest thing to printing money!” (Murray 40-42)

Movie star Roy Rogers headlined Dell’s Four Color #38, the start of a long, profitable partnership between the wholesome singing cowboy and the comic book publisher. TM and © respective copyright holder.

It stands to reason, then, that out of more than a dozen publishers entering the comic book marketplace in 1944, some were bound to be of questionable legality. Indeed, rumors of organized crime using these fly-by-night comics outfits to launder mob money persist to this day, though conclusive evidence has yet to turn up. Some stiffed the freelancers or packagers who provided their content: when the talent came looking for their paychecks, they found an emptied office. Although most of these publishers fit the profile of what Murray aptly labeled “unknown quickbuck companies” (44), cranking out comic books to exploit the sales boom without regard to quality, a few seemed determined to offer value for their readers’ dimes.

With up to three issues reaching the newsstands every month, Four Color was a dominant presence (though unless they paid attention to the tiny “Four Color Comic” blurb appearing on the covers during this period, buyers were oblivious to the fact that there was such a comics title). Fourteen out of the 34 1944-dated issues featured reprinted syndicated strips, including “Dick Tracy,” “Smilin’ Jack,” “Popeye,” “Terry and the Pirates,” and “Little Orphan Annie.” Two cancelled titles got new leases on life as issues of Four Color. Issue #50 brought back Fairy Tale Parade, offering a fresh round of childhood classics as illustrated by Walt Kelly, Arthur Jameson, and an artist known to comics scholars only as “The Great Unknown,” whose stylized interpretation of “The Fourth Voyage of Sinbad the Sailor” was in the same spirit as the “Arabian Nights” issue of Classic Comics drawn by Lillian Chestney the previous year. In a similar vein were “Tiny Folks Funnies” in issue #60, a showcase for adaptations by George Kerr of “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Chicken Little,” “The Gingerbread Man” and other favorites, and two issues (#s 41 and 59) of “Mother Goose and Nursery Rhymes Comics.” These were exactly what they sound like: illustrated nursery rhymes aimed at the preschool set, the first issue by Jameson, the second by Kelly. “Gene Autry” rode from the pages of his defunct solo book to issue #s 47 and 57, bringing artist Til Goodan and scripter Gaylord DuBois along for the ride. DuBois was also at the typewriter for issue #38’s “Roy Rogers,” the first comic book appearance of the singing cowboy

Above the Fray To mighty Dell Publishing, a new round of cutbacks to their paper quotas meant no more than a phased conversion to the slimmer 52-page format. The monthlies Popular Comics and Super Comics switched with their March issues, Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories and Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies with their April issues, and New Funnies with May. Our Gang Comics began the year at 52 pages, but its fellow bi-monthlies, Animal Comics and Red Ryder Comics, managed one and two issues, respectively, with the higher page count before converting. None of the eight titles missed an issue. In fact, the only changes to Dell’s schedule in 1944 were the cancellations of Gene Autry Comics at the start of the year and of the quarterly War Heroes at the end. 231

TIMELINE: 1944 A compilation of the year’s notable comic book history events alongside some of the year’s most significant popular culture and historical events. (On sale dates are approximations.) January 29: Convinced that Wonder Woman was too offensive for the eyes of children, educational consultant Josette Frank sends a letter to All-American Comics publisher M.C. Gaines, announcing her resignation from the company’s Editorial Advisory Board.

May 18: The Battle of Monte Cassino ends with Allied forces driving German defenders out of the Italian town. The four month long assault results in the deaths of over 55,000 Allied soldiers and 20,000 German soldiers.

March 18: In Italy, Mount Vesuvius erupts, killing 26 and causing thousands of others to flee their homes.

June 4: The U.S. Army, under the command of General Mark W. Clark, capture the city of Rome, the first Axis capital to fall to the Allies.

February 15: A New York bankruptcy court permits Victor Fox to reclaim the rights to Blue Beetle, allowing the former comic book publisher to go back in business and repay his creditors out of future profits from the character’s use.

JANUARY

FEBRUARY

MARCH

February 5: The first chapter of Captain America is released to movie theaters. Distributed by Republic Studios, the fifteenchapter serial resembles nothing like the Timely comic book as actor Dick Purcell stars as Grant Gardner, a district attorney who turns into a vigilante named Captain America in order to stop a mysterious criminal mastermind.

APRIL

M AY

JUNE

May 8: The first installment of the daily Wonder Woman comic strip appears in newspapers, courtesy of the Kings Features Syndicate. Produced by the character’s co-creators, writer William Moulton Marston and artist H.G. Peter, the strip lasts only 19 months, ending its run on December 1, 1945.

June 6: Operation Overlord commences as over 150,000 Allied troops cross the English Channel to land on the beaches of Normandy in northern France. Most commonly known as “D-Day,” the assault becomes the most famous military operation of World War II, allowing the Allies to liberate France from German occupation.

born Leonard Slye. Set in the Old West, the story depicted Rogers as a drifter drawn into a conflict between an honest young rancher and the greedy money men after his land. Despite the presence of wonder horse Trigger, the comic didn’t capture the warmth of Roy’s onscreen persona and was held back by stiff, unexciting art from an unknown hand. Several stars of animated cartoons received solo issues of Four Color. Writer John Stanley and artist Lloyd White sent Walter Lantz’s “Oswald the Rabbit” to Easterland in issue #39, a realm of living candy people ruled by King Creampuff where Oswald and his voracious pal Toby quickly wore out their welcome. Stanley and Dan Gormley delivered issue #54’s “Andy Panda” book-lengther. While vacationing out west, Andy and Charlie Chicken encountered The Ghost Rider, a notorious costumed outlaw, in a story that introduced Andy’s cartoon co-stars Wally Walrus and Miranda Panda to the comics page. There was no full-length Donald Duck tale this year, but duck man Carl Barks did create a pair of stories for issue #48, “Porky of the Mounties,” in which the stuttering swine was mistaken for the legendary Dauntless of the Mounties, and “Porky the Pirate,” which found Porky, Petunia, and Bugs Bunny shanghaied by the immortal Blackheart the Pirate on a search for the Fountain of Youth. Bugs had his own adventures in issue #51, wherein the wascally wabbit and Porky, after winning a treasure map in an auction, went in search of lost “Zazztec” gold. Carl Buettner wrote and drew

both that and a second story that saw Bugs seemingly bring a statue of Hercules to life. The Disney gang wasn’t completely shut out this year. Four Color #49 featured an all-new adaptation of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” by Merrill DeMaris and the art team of Hank Porter and Bob Grant timed to correspond to the theatrical re-release of the animated film. As she and the editors continued to experiment, it was becoming increasingly clear to Dell business manager Helen Meyer that the key to a successful issue of Four Color was a popular character from movies, comic strips, or radio produced by the best talent the publisher could muster. Not much was new in the two monthlies that specialized in reprints of syndicated strips. Super Comics and Popular Comics maintained their rosters of recycled funnies, as did the bi-monthly Red Ryder Comics. Popular swapped out “Elza Poppin” for “Felix the Cat,” relocating from New Funnies, as of its October issue (#104); Red Ryder traded “Dan Dunn” and “Myra North” for Henry Lee’s boys’ adventure strip “Biff Baker” with issue #19 (May-June); and that was all. The three titles each retained one original series. Super Comics featured Jim Chambers’s “Clyde Beatty;” Popular had “Gang Busters;” and “The Fighting Yanks,” now also illoed by Chambers, ran in Red Ryder. Strip reprints had long since been supplanted by the animated characters spawned by Disney, Lantz, Leon 232

July 18: After a series of military setbacks, including the recent loss of the Battle of Saipan which put Allied bombers within range of the Japanese mainland, Emperor Hirohito forces Hideki Tojo to resign as Prime Minister of Japan. He is replaced on July 22 by General Kuniaki Koiso.

July 20: German Lieutenant Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg attempts to assassinate Adolf Hitler as part of a military coup to depose Nazi leadership and force an armistice with the Allies. Hitler, however, survives the detonation of a bomb-laden briefcase, and Stauffenberg is soon arrested and executed on July 21 along with three other co-conspirators.

J U LY

AUGUST

October 8: The first episode of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, a family sitcom starring Ozzie Nelson and his real family, debuts on CBS radio stations around the country. The show will be adapted to television in 1952 where it enjoys a successful 14-season run.

August 25: A six day battle in Paris culminates in the surrender of a German garrison to Allied forces. After five years of German occupation, the capital of France has been liberated. A provisional French government is formed with General Charles de Gaulle installed as its president.

SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER

NOVEMBER

DECEMBER

November 7: Franklin D. Roosevelt remains President of the United States as he defeats Republican challenger Thomas E. Dewey. Roosevelt becomes the only president elected to a fourth term in the history of the United States.

August 4: In German-occupied Netherlands, Nazi Gestapo discover a sealed-off area in an Amsterdam warehouse where they find Jews in hiding, including fifteen year old Anne Frank and her family. They are sent to concentration camps where they die the following year, but Anne Frank’s diary of her time in hiding is published in 1947 and becomes one of the most important documents of the Holocaust.

September 17: Allied forces launch Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands with the purpose of securing an invasion route into Germany. While several Dutch cities are liberated from German occupation, the operation ultimately fails.

Schlesinger, and MGM as the chief source of revenue for Dell and its business partner, Western Printing. And no title contributed more to the bottom line than Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories. For the first time since its launch in late 1940, new material made up a majority of its contents. There were still pages devoted to the King Features Donald Duck strip, as well as the older, adventure-oriented “Mickey Mouse” sequences of the previous decade, including a memorable saga of Mickey and Goofy “In the Land of Long Ago,” time traveling into the past to rub elbows with cavemen and dinosaurs. The title’s biggest draws were the new “Donald Duck” stories by Carl Barks that led off every issue. Barks brought something extra to these stories, a thoughtfulness that elevated them above the slapstick and farce that constituted the average funny animal story. As he explained in a 1992 interview:

October 23: The Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines begins. The largest naval battle in World War II, involving over 350 vessels, ends three days later with a decisive Allied victory.

because I worked so hard to make the story plausible and give it a reason for having been written, people would read it over and over again. They didn’t throw the comic book away. So these stories are still alive today, while many others are gone and forgotten.” (Helnwein) Most of the year’s stories centered on the foul-tempered Donald’s ongoing war with the world around him, particularly his precocious nephews and his next door nemesis Neighbor Jones. He could always be counted on to let his anger and ego carry him to ridiculous extremes, as when he wore a suit of armor to win a snowball fight with Huey, Dewey, and Louie. Barks also dabbled in science fiction, rocketing his sailor-suited star to the moon in WDC&S #44 (May). In addition to monthly doses of “Bucky Bug,” the title used its back pages to spotlight lesser Disney characters like “The Three Caballeros,” “Pluto,” and “The Seven Dwarfs.” Doc, Happy, Bashful, Sleepy, Sneezy, Grumpy, and Dopey appeared in four issues (#s 43, 45, 47, and 49) fighting The Wicked Witch and teaming up with Donald Duck, Thumper, and Dumbo.

“If you have a story to tell, a story that somebody is going to read over and over again, you have to put some substance into it. It takes more than just a bunch of pratfalls and bumps on the head. There had to be motivation for the different things the characters did, and revenge for their mistakes. It took a lot to write a ten-page story. A lot of the guys didn’t take the time to go into it that far and as a result there were a lot of their comic book stories that never lasted for very long. With my stories,

Such crossovers were a staple of Looney Toons and Merrie Melodies. Scarcely an issue went by without Porky Pig turning up in the “Bugs Bunny” strip, or Porky in Bugs’, or both of them in “Elmer Fudd.” Sniffles, Chester Turtle, Beaky Buzzard, and Daffy Duck all guest starred in one or 233

dental ruin of bystanders—with a mad single-mindedness. Sometimes things turn out well for his characters[,] but it was always obvious that disaster was at least as likely, and not infrequently arrives for those bystanders.” (Barrier 132) Likewise, Stanley’s work on “Tom and Jerry” made the eversquabbling cat and mouse one of the must-reads of the bimonthly Our Gang Comics. The competition was fierce. With Carl Barks on “Barney Bear and Benny Burro” (the two strips were combined when the page count was lowered) and Walt Kelly on “Our Gang,” how could it not be? Kelly sent Spanky and company halfway around the world in a four-issue adventure that found them shipwrecked on a desert island, where they bested a Japanese gun crew. Three new characters, all from the MGM stable, made their comic book debuts in 1944 issues of Our Gang. “Johnny Mole” had been the star of an obscure 1941 cartoon The Little Mole, the strip capturing and perpetuating the short’s gentle domesticity. It was sweet but nowhere near as much fun as “Screwy Squirrel,” an obnoxious prankster who made Daffy Duck look like a testimonial for mental health, and “Happy Hound,” the sad-eyed, mournful-voiced little canine better known under his later alias Droopy.

It wasn’t enough for Carl Barks’ “Donald Duck” to outdo his nephews, not if he could throw in some extra humiliation along the way. A fitting comeuppance awaits him later in this duck tale. TM and © Disney Enterprises Inc.

the other of the title’s main features. Only Chase Craig and Roger Armstrong’s “Sniffles and Mary Jane” was free of any cameos, preferring to focus on the title pair’s encounters with Azurita, Goddess of Turquoise, and the Mid-Summer Elves, or their visits to Cookieland, Toyland, Mother Goose Land, and the Land of Clocks. Most issues included “Beaky Buzzard” and “Henery Hawk” stories. Henery added Ollie Owl to his little cast in the March Looney Tunes (#29), a timid bookwormish type who served as a perfect foil for the scrappy little raptor. The first two “Daffy Duck” solo stories ran in #31-32 (May-June), a test run to see if the wacky webfoot could carry his own feature.

Animal Comics also added new strips this year, most of them featuring characters from the Famous Players animation studio, the division of Paramount Pictures that bought out the Fleischer Brothers. “Blackie,” drawn by Tom Golden, was a shrewd little lamb who regularly outsmarted the wolf who wanted to eat him and his siblings. Otto Fueur provided the art for the barnyard antics of “Cilly Goose,” a feathered flibbertigibbet, and her unruly brood. The premise of “Hector the Henpecked Rooster” was given away by the title. Illustrated by Rube Grossman, a Sangor Studio regular like Fueur seduced by Dell’s superior page rates, it featured the first comic book appearance of Herman the Mouse, the wisecracking rodent voiced by Arnold Stang who became one of Famous Studio’s biggest stars. The fourth new strip, “Raggedy Animals,” was a “Raggedy Ann”

Dell’s third funny animal monthly, New Funnies, began the year by replacing “Mr. Twee Deedle” with a series for second-string Walter Lantz star “Homer Pigeon.” As drawn by animation veteran Vivie Risto, the amiable hick and his girlfriend Carrie spent much of their time outsmarting obnoxious types like Red Cardinal, Roscoe Rooster, Black Catbird, Feather Magpie, and bratty Robert Robin, though the September issue (#90) followed Homer’s attempt to join the Army Air Force’s carrier pigeon unit. He finally made it in, but was discharged with honors after a single perilous mission behind the lines. Another Lantz player, “Woody Woodpecker,” got his own series in New Funnies #85 (March) but it took a while to find its footing, as the various writers couldn’t decide if Woody was a savvy trickster like Bugs Bunny or genuinely nuts, or whether he was a naughty schoolboy or a harried adult. “Oswald” began a long serial that left the lucky rabbit and best pal Toby shipwrecked on the African coast, where they spent several issues before being rescued by kindly Doc Beaver, joining his traveling medicine show until it reached their hometown. No multi-part sagas were in the works for “Raggedy Ann,” “Li’l Eightball,” or “Andy Panda,” though cheerful art by Dan Gormley and clever scripts by Gaylord DuBois, Frank Thomas, and John Stanley kept Andy’s antics thoroughly enjoyable. Stanley’s stories in particular stood out for their rib-tickling exploration of the quirks and foibles of his central characters, who invariably turned out to be their own worst enemy:

Modern audiences may not find the slapstick domestic violence of “Hector the Henpecked Rooster” as funny as the kids who bought Animal Comics off the newsstands.

“The quintessential Stanley stories may be those … in which one or more characters pursue their own ruin—or the inci-

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under Dell’s, In addition to new issues of Famous Fairy Tales and Firestone Tires’ annual Donald and Mickey Merry Christmas, the publishing partners launched Omar Book of Comics, a 16-page monthly produced for the Omar Baking Company and available only to members of its Omar Junior Comic Book Club. Each issue combined a reprint from one of Dell’s monthlies with a new adventure of “Omar,” a turban-wearing super-hero created by Gaylord DuBois with the power to summon and control whirlwinds. Distributed solely in the Midwest, few copies of the 30 issues of Omar still exist.

The Return of Victor Fox Dell rarely indulged in outright propaganda. This powerful image from the back cover of War Heroes #7 was a striking exception. TM and © respective copyright holder.

spin-off by the same team of writer Gaylord DuBois and artist George Kerr. DuBois also provided scripts for regular cover feature “Uncle Wiggily.” All these series made Animal Comics a good read, but it was Walt Kelly’s “Albert the Alligator” that made it a great one. Although few of his cast of swamp critters had yet assumed the personae seen in the later Pogo comic strip, the triumvirate of Albert, Pogo, and Bumbazine proved more than sufficient to showcase Kelly’s mastery of slapstick and wordplay. Radical surgery was applied to the quarterly War Heroes in a bid to keep it alive. As of the April-June issue (#8), responsibility for its contents passed from Albert Delacourte to New York Journal-American political and sports cartoonist Burris Jenkins. Though writing the entire book from cover to cover, Jenkins drew only the splash panel of each story before handing the remainder over to others to finish. Therein lay the problem, for his scripts were so dense with verbiage that it left no room for usually apt visual storytellers like Jim Chambers and Tom Hickey to provide anything but the most rudimentary artwork. This ultimately sank the book, which was cancelled after three issues under his editorial regime. As usual, Western Printing issued a number of giveaways this year, some released under its own name, some

On February 15, a New York court approved a plan permitting Victor Fox to reclaim his rights to “The Blue Beetle” and repay his creditors out of any future profits from the character’s use. The publisher hastily reorganized the bankrupt Fox Features Syndicate, made distribution arrangements through Fawcett, retained the services of the studio that had been packaging the Beetle’s comic for Holyoke, and reentered the marketplace. It seemed straightforward enough, but nothing was ever that simple where the self-proclaimed “king of the comics” was concerned. With a third of the revenue from his revived Blue Beetle title earmarked for his debts, Fox’s personal earnings would be slim, so he quickly added a second title, a resuscitated Green Mask, and a third, The Bouncer, featuring a brand new character. All

The first new Fox issue of The Blue Beetle featured the new Beetlemobile and inexplicably depicted the hero becoming a giant to repair a damaged skyscraper barehanded. TM and © DC Comics.

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were launched as monthlies, but by the autumn all had been demoted to quarterlies or suspended publication. Fox wasn’t worried. He arranged for two proxy publishers, Wm. H. Wise and R.W. Voight, to issue a series of 132-page one-shots priced at 25¢. Using inventoried material prepared for Green Mask, The Bouncer, and the back pages of Blue Beetle (he carefully avoided including any Beetle stories), Fox made sure that something that would make him money was on the newsstands at all times. If fans of the original run of The Blue Beetle had hopes of a post-Holyoke return to the title’s glory days, they were quickly dashed. If anything, it got worse. Internal continuity was non-existent. Dan Garret/Garrett (it was spelled both ways in every issue) was an FBI agent in two stories in the first new Fox issue (#31, June), but a plainclothes cop for the NYPD in a third. The Beetle had the power to grow to giant-size in the first story, no powers in the second, and super-strength and “an extra set of lungs” in the third. The Beetlemobile, the Beetlebird (“the greatest war plane of all time”), and a black light ray that rendered the hero invisible appeared only in the first story, though the Beetlemobile did pop up a few more times in later issues, never drawn the same way twice. In issue #33 (August), Garret was a uniformed rookie again and kid sidekick Spunky was back for a final appearance. This

Al Zere provided three of the four introduced in issue #10: “The Joy Family,” a congenial Blondie-style sitcom; “Dick Transom,” the tongue-in-cheek exploits of a fat, dumb, thoroughly incompetent detective; and “One-Round Hogan,” an entertaining series about a former Marine turned prizefighter with a cast full of colorful characters. “Rocket Kelly” was the fourth strip to debut in issue #10. It starred POWs Captain Kelly and Sergeant Wacky, who escaped from a Japanese military prison with the aid of a prototype rocket invented by a dying fellow inmate. The following issue introduced “Rick Evans,” a gawdawful Flash Gordon wannabe; “Snooky,” a kid strip with fantasy elements; and “Pussy Catnip,” an atypical funny animal strip about a sexy feline torch singer. Responsibility for this prehistoric ancestor of Reed Waller’s Omaha the Cat Dancer is obscured by Fox’s preference for fictitious bylines.

confusion reigned throughout the year. The art for many of these stories was by E.C. Stoner, now affiliated with the Lou Ferstadt studio. This was not Stoner’s best work, his pages cramped and confusing, his figures stiff and inexpressive. The other artists had even less going for them. Backing up the Beetle were “Joan Mason, Reporter,” a solo strip for the hero’s love interest; Jack Farr’s “The O’Brine Twins,” the farcical adventures of brothers Wetmore and Waterman, perpetually brawling merchant mariners; and “Minute Mystery,” an intermittently appearing one-page whodunnit. Farr’s strip was the only feature displaying any professional sheen, and it was symptomatic of the book’s troubles that he abandoned it to the lesser lights of the Ferstadt shop after three issues, probably leaving over money. As long as Victor Fox was paying off his creditors, he wasn’t going to waste precious money on coherent plotting, literate scripting, or good art, not even for his pet character.

“One-Round Hogan,” “Rocket Kelly,” and “The Joy Family” next co-starred alongside the eponymous star of a new Fox title. The Bouncer #1 bore a September cover date. Billed as “a new character who is really different,” The Bouncer was a statue of Antaeus that came to life and ran to the rescue whenever its sculptor, Adam Antaeus, Jr., the demigod’s 20th-century descendent, got into trouble. This happened surprisingly often for a mousey little guy in glasses, beret, and artist’s smock. Both statue and sculptor possessed superhuman strength and invulnerability as long as they were in contact with the earth, and both had the same bouncing power. Created by Robert Kanigher and Lou Ferstadt, “The Bouncer” was indeed “really different.” It just wasn’t particularly good. That wasn’t the only thing the living statue had in common with Blue Beetle. Both super-doers teamed up with their fans in a series of stories known collectively as “The Comics Hall of Fame,” in which readers who won an essay contest appeared in the comics they wrote in about. It was a typical Fox stunt, but at least it delivered on its promises. Prizes offered in previous Fox comics were rarely actually awarded.

The Blue Beetle revamp set the bar low, yet Fox’s next project fell short of even that pitiful standard. The Green Mask resumed its old numbering with its August issue (#10). The title hero’s name and costume were the same, but otherwise this was a new character rather than a revival. Here, the Mask was 15-year-old Johnny Green, son of Walter (supposedly the original, away serving in the military), who first spontaneously transformed into the superhuman hero after witnessing gangsters kill his dog Curly and best friend Punchy (both turned up alive at story’s end). Whenever suitably angered or scared, Johnny automatically changed if he said the word “E-e-e-eow!,” retaining no memories of his double life once he reverted. This Green Mask was, in short, a cut-rate Captain Marvel, par for the course for a publisher infamous for copying his competitors’ characters. Violent, abysmally plotted and scripted, and featuring crude, amateurish art, the new “Green Mask” series made its bland, generic predecessor look like high art by comparison. Only two issues were released in 1944, each with a different assortment of back-up features, most better than “Green Mask,” all living on in later titles.

By mid-autumn, Victor Fox had burned through the modest allotment of paper his handful of 1942-dated comics had entitled him to, even with all three titles conforming to the new 52-page standard. That wasn’t going to stop the king of the comics. Earlier in the year, he’d published a one-shot, The Book of Comics, through Wm. H. Wise. Its 132 pages were filled with new stories of all the back-up features from Green Mask and Bouncer, plus nine new strips created for an officially scrapped fourth monthly. The title’s cover star was “Captain V,” who may have begun life as a revamp of “V-Man” but emerged from his creators’ tinkering as his own person. Puppetmaker Alan Dale became the superhuman Captain V whenever he sat down at the pipe organ he kept in his cellar and played “those mighty notes of freedom” (presumably the four opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, synonymous at the time with the Morse code signal for the letter V-for-Victory). Premiering alongside this latest superpatriot were “Red Robbins,” a daring pilot out to free the subterranean city of Yndorcia from the tyranny of its dictator Reltih (do we have to tell you to read it backward?); “Karrots,” a funny animal sitcom centered around the diner owned by the title bunny; “Merciless

“Puzzy Catnip” was not just another funny animal strip. The cartoonist behind the “Len Short” byline remains a mystery. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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With his paper allotment used up, Victor Fox turned to proxy publishers like Wm. H. Wise and R.W. Voight to burn off the inventory he’d paid for but couldn’t legally publish. TM and © respective copyright holder.

the Sorceress,” an evil magician serving the Axis cause; “Johnny Earthquake,” a young Southerner traveling cross-country in search of work and finding trouble along the way; the detective strips “Titan” and “Jim Jolt;” and a pair of military-themed gag strips, “Mike the M.P.” and “Gussie the Gob.” Aside from Alvin “A.C.” Hollingsworth, the artist for “Captain V,” none of the talents producing these strips has been identified. Most, possibly all, were likely working for the Ferstadt Studio. All Book of Comics’ features except “Jim Jolt” would reappear sporadically in the later titles jointly issued by Fox and Wise. The two companies produced an additional pair of one-offs, All Top Comics and All Great Comics, after Fox used up the last of his legal allotment. They were virtually identical to Book of Comics in format and content, down to the logo on the back cover identifying them as part of the “Great Comics Library” of the “World’s Best Comics.” A handful of new strips saw the light of day in these books, notably All-Top’s “Crime at Number 9,” a funny animal crime strip starring a gang of rats, and All Great’s “Jack Terry,” in which an Army Air Forces intelligence officer countered subversives and hobnobbed with real-life military leaders like Gen. George C. Marshall. Most of their contents were veterans of the earlier titles. Once Wise had given him all the paper and press time it could spare, Fox turned to another proxy, R.W. Voight, to pony up for two more comic books in the same vein, All Good Comics and

All Your Comics. These new entries in the “Great Comics Library” series offered basically the same assortment of strips as the others, though as always there were a few new arrivals. All Good featured a rechristened Captain V, now calling himself “The Puppeteer” but still decked out in the stars-and-stripes. In All Your, Puppeteer acquired a sidekick, a talking raven who seemed to have more common sense than the guy in the tights. One of the most interesting features, which appeared only once, was “Mr. Memory,” a bizarre murder mystery narrated by elfin personifications of the lead suspect’s inner monologue (e.g. Mr. Memory, Mr. Logic, Mr. Panic). It was a welcome touch of imagination in a succession of one-shots otherwise short on that commodity. Fox also produced the 36-page Rocket Kelly in partnership with Larkin, Roosevelt & Larkin, a small Chicagobased publishing house. Other than a pair of true aviation one-pagers, the comic was entirely devoted to the title feature. Drawn by Arnold Hicks for an unknown scripter, the series found Capt. Kelly and Sgt. Wacky transitioning from a relatively straight war strip to a fantasy, with the heroes transported to an extradimensional planet by their malfunctioning rocketship. Like the five “Great Comics Library” titles, Rocket Kelly was in violation of Limitation Order L-244, dumped onto newsstands, mostly in the Greater New York area, in hopes of selling out before the authorities noticed. It didn’t always work out that way. Many copies were seized by the

federal government and warehoused for the duration. Victor Fox, he of the checkered past, had once again tried to put one over on the law. Fox’s reclamation of The Blue Beetle from Holyoke Publishing left that company scrambling to keep its comics line going. Four months after its final issue of Blue Beetle (#30, February) came off the presses, it started a new title. Edited by Philip Steinberg and produced by the Lou Ferstadt shop, Sparkling Stars was populated largely by refugees from the Beetle book, including “Ali Baba,” private eye “Durrand Draw,” and two series by Morris “Mo” Weiss making their debuts in the final Holyoke issue. “Petey and Pop” was a corny but cute

It took Holyoke a few months to recover from the loss of the Blue Beetle title, finally reentering the marketplace with Sparkling Stars. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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Lurid cover art by Gus Ricca helped disguise that Harry Chesler’s revived Dynamic Publications line was made up almost entirely of reprints. TM and © respective copyright holder.

kid strip, “Boxie Weaver” a pretty good genre strip about a prizefighter with likeable characters, decent dialogue, and pleasantly cartoony art. These qualities made it Sparkling Stars’ best read, along with the war strip “Hell’s Angels” premiering in issue #1 (June). Drawn for its first four episodes by Carmine Infantino, it featured the over-the-top exploits of former Flying Tigers Gil Little, Lank Strong, and Clem West.

sodes of “Dynamic Man” running in Dynamic #9-11 and a few comedy fillers from Joe Beck, he filled his pages with reprints, not only from the four Dynamic books but from his 1937 titles Star Comics and Star Ranger as well. Why spend money on artists and writers when you had years’ worth of inventory sitting around the office? To entice buyers, these assemblages of recycled material bore dramatic, attention-grabbing new covers by Chesler Studio art director Gaspano “Gus” Ricca, including the morbid self-portrait he drew for Punch #9 showing the cartoonist at his drawing board being simultaneously stabbed, shot, and hanged by the very characters he’s drawing. The interiors never came close to living up to the promise of Ricca’s lurid imagery.

Minimal outlay meant maximum profits. Chesler was anxious to repeat this formula with other titles, undeterred that he had no paper left to print them on. The enterprising studio owner made deals with a succession of small firms to act as his proxies. Major Victory Comics #1 was released through the H. Clay Glover Co., its second issue through Service Publishing Co. of Chicago. A third Dynamic title, Scoop Comics, was revived with an undated issue #8 listThe rest of the new monthly’s pages were filled with a sucing Irwin H. Rubin as the publisher of record. The followcession of lackluster true crime and true war stories, gag ing issue was renamed Snap Comics and credited Chicago strips that sometimes forgot to include a gag, and George Nite Life News, Inc., in its indicia. Magazine Press, through Tukel’s “Speed Spaulding,” a blah series about a college which Chesler had released the all-reprint Captain Battle baseballer unconnected to the sci-fi series of the same #3 two years earlier, handled the next two issues of the name previously seen in Famous Funnies. Sparkling Stars series, retitled Jest Comics for issue #10, then Bulls Eye Comwas the only comic book in 1944 still published in the ics with #11. All six comics were dominated by reprints, 68-page format but, with half its many of them jarringly antiquated features displaying little thought or by 1944 standards. A few pages of polish, it was something less than a new content crept in from time to bargain. time. There was Major Victory #1’s “Spider Woman,” a ridiculous strip Whatever shady road Victor Fox set in the Ozarks about Helen Godchose to walk down, the odds were dard, daughter of a deceased entogood that Harry “A” Chesler was mologist, who dressed like a giant going to follow sooner or later. Like spider to frighten off some gangFox, Chesler was entitled to a small sters. Scoop Comics #8 included amount of newsprint thanks to a a three-part story pitting policesmattering of 1942-dated issues woman “Dolly O’Dare” against Nazi of his defunct Dynamic Publicaspy Baron Blue. The only new series tions line. He used it to revive two to appear in multiple titles was Joe of his old titles, Dynamic Comics Beck’s “Punch and Cutey,” starring and Punch Comics, as bi-monthlies, a lovable boxer and his curvaceous the first with an undated issue sister, who doubled as his manager. #8, the latter with issue #9 (July). The comedic siblings, debuting When it came to minimizing his in Punch Comics #10 (September), Only a handful of new strips appeared in 1944 issues of Chesler’s up-front costs, Chesler outcheaped comics. “Punch and Cutey” was one of the few that lasted beyond made further appearances in Jest its first episode. TM and © respective copyright holder. even Fox. Aside from three new epi238

Comics and Skyrocket Comics, an unnumbered one shot nominally published by Home Guide Publications. Skyrocket was the only Chesleraffiliated title in 1944 to feature all-new content. Its highlights included the Maurice Whitman super-hero strip “Alias the Dragon,” wherein police forensics specialist Sgt. Bill Norton led a double life as the mysterious costumed lead; “Doctor Vampire” a.k.a. Dr. John Rogers, who abandoned a profitable medical practice to spend his nights hunting down bloodsuckers; the conceptually similar “Ghost Hunter” starring paranormal investigator Fred Randall, and two stories drawn, and possibly scripted, by Ken Battefield. “Skyrocket” took its name from the jetThe resemblance of Family Comics’ titles to Timely’s became stronger when Alex Schomburg began producing the cover art. powered bomber designed and Green Hornet TM and © The Green Hornet, Inc. piloted by USAAF Lt. Ted HowChesler studio, the Harvey Brothers were content to see ard on a daring one-plane raid on Tokyo. “The Desperado” their steadily selling bi-monthlies, Speed Comics and Green was fugitive Ray Collins, who terrorized the underworld in Hornet Comics, on the newsstands, joined by the revamped his costumed identity while seeking to clear himself of a All-New Comics, sole survivor of the Chesler experiment. All bogus bank robbery charge. All these new strips were betthree titles were dominated by costumed heroes patterned ter than the average Chesler Studio product, but they never on those published by Timely Comics, a resemblance that had a chance to catch on. Skyrocket, like all its siblings grew stronger when Timely mainstay Alex Schomburg but Dynamic and Punch, was a black market comic, and began providing cover art for the line beginning with the thus subject to seizure and a hefty financial penalty if the March issues. When the books were downsized to 52 pages feds found them on the newsstands. Even the legitimate in the late spring, Leon Harvey chose to drop filler mateDynamic titles wound up in trouble, losing their original rial like gag strips and puzzle pages rather than cancel a distributor. Riding to their rescue was a familiar figure. feature.

The Manheimer Connection

No Family feature had a stronger whiff of Timely about it than “Captain Freedom and The Young Defenders,” especially with Simon and Kirby ghost Arthur Cazeneuve handling the art. The star-spangled alter ego of crusading publisher Dan Wright and his loyal band of newsboy sidekicks held the lead-off spot in Speed Comics, starting each issue off with an action-heavy account of Freedom’s latest clash with enemy spies, Axis-sponsored nasties like Mr. Skrooge, and an occasional change-of-pace menace like the swarm of giant bees that buzzed through the July issue (#33). Similar slates of foes pestered their Speed costars “The Girl Commandos” and “The Black Cat.” Linda Turner’s feline alter ego wore a cape with her costume in the sole episode drawn by Al Gabriele (issue #30, January) before he handed the reigns over to Joe Kubert. Learning his craft on the job, the 17-year-old artist’s grasp of basics like anatomy and perspective was still shaky but his flair for creating excitement and drama on the comics page was already in place. Original Speed star “Shock Gibson” fought his share of Axis agents this year but offered more variety than the others. Now stationed in Alaska, most of Shock’s adventures revolved around scientist Dr. Bright, his daughter Beatrice, and their Inuit pal Ike. The quartet found

Publishers Distribution Corporation president Irving Manheimer had underwritten the launches of several small comic book lines prior to 1944, including Worth, Brookwood, and Helnit. Since his business required product to distribute, he saw no problem with helping a new publisher out financially. Et-Es-Go, Aviation Press, Leffingwell, Consolidated Magazines, and Four Star all owed their existences to a Manheimer boost, and before the year was out Elliot and Dynamic had also turned to PDC when their comics were going down for the third time. This was more than generosity: with entire print runs of even the shoddiest shlock selling out, the money man had little to lose and much to gain if any of his protégés managed to turn out a Superman, a Donald Duck, or an Archie. But few of these shoestring operations lasted longer than a year, and none produced a hit character. Eldest of Manheimer’s many offspring was Family Comics, Inc., the small line owned by Alfred Harvey, away serving in the U.S. Army, and run in his absence by his twin brother Leon Harvey. Nonplussed by the failure the previous year of a handful of titles packaged for Family by the Harry “A” 239

themselves shrunk to the size of insects in one story, and dealt with such off-beat nemeses as The Bat People, a race of green-skinned subterraneans riding giant bats, and Baron Kido, whose special zeppelin armed with lightning generators proved no match for Gibson’s electricity powers, in others. Similar enemies populated Though the covers of All-New Comics the pages of Green Hornet belonged to a redesigned “Red Blazer,” Comics, its radio-born title the title’s lead-off spot went to “The Boy character facing off against Heroes.” TM and © respective copyright holder. Rex, a Japanese-built robot dinosaur; Dr. Zorano, a Nazi-funded zookeeper using animals as assassins; Mamaloi, a voodoo priestess on Germany’s payroll; and The Society of the Swastika, a collection of bums bribed into acting as saboteurs. Opposing “The Zebra” were Professor Future, The Silver Silhouette, and The Jackal, a hideously costumed saboteur unmasked as a war worker avenging his being bullied by other factory hands. Bob Powell handled the art on “The Spirit of ‘76.” That hero learned in issue #17 (March) that his best pal Tubby was aware of the military cadet’s double life. Returning stateside after visiting various battle zones, the duo encountered radio crooner Hank Wonatra, a Nazi spy who worked classified information into his songs’ lyrics. “The Twinkle Twins,” now drawn by “Girl Commandos” artist Jill Elgin, found themselves reduced to bug size just like Shock Gibson, here at the hands of the evil Dr. Vulture, Later stories focused on the wholesome siblings’ struggle to save Mike the Muscle’s streetwise nephew Mikey Murgatroyd from a life of crime. Family’s third title, All-New Comics, began the year with a new roster of features. Its cover star was “The Red Blazer,” the fire-based hero last seen in Pocket Comics, wearing a colorful new costume and accompanied by the identicallypowered Sparkie, a.k.a. orphan Mickey Vane. On the inside, Red Blazer appeared only in each issue’s text story, usually teaming with the book’s other characters. The opening pages belonged to “The Boy Heroes,” an obvious but entertaining mash-up of the Boy Commandos and Newsboy Legion illoed by Louis Cazeneuve. Farmboy Corny, Dutch war refugee Prince, and slum kids Punchy and Trigger acquired a mascot, the parrot Trouble, in their second episode. Alternating installments of “The Black Cat,” “The Zebra,” and “Shock Gibson” rounded out All-New, along with a plethora of war and crime stories drawn by Kubert and others. All-New Comics skipped its November issue when the company’s paper quota proved inadequate to allow all three bi-monthlies to meet their schedules, even after dropping their page counts to 52.

strike deals with other companies to keep the title’s back issues in print.) This year’s literary adaptations included two of James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales, “The Deerslayer” and “The Pathfinder;” Alexandre Dumas’s swashbuckling “The Corsican Brothers;” “Huckleberry Finn;” “3 Favorite Mysteries,” adapting short fiction by Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Allan Poe, and Guy de Maupassant; and “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” Scripter Evelyn Goodman and artist Allen Simon followed Hollywood’s lead in changing the downbeat ending of the epic Victor Hugo novel (the gypsy girl Esmeralda is hanged for witchcraft in the original). Past issues of Classic Comics had downplayed the more mature aspects of the source material—the Huck Finn issue glossed over Mark Twain’s pointed commentary on race relations in 19th century America—but this was the first time Kanter allowed his creative staff to change a major plot point. Taking advantage of a loophole in the War Production Board’s quota system, former Classic Comics publisher Elliot Publishing laid claim to enough newsprint to launch a new quarterly title. Packaged by Roche & Iger, Bomber Comics filled its pages with strips previously appearing in various Quality comics. “Wonder Boy,” “The Kid Patrol,” “Bobby,” “Kid Dixon,” and “Eagle Evans,” all copyrighted in Jerry Iger’s name, carried on as if they’d never been off the newsstands. Bomber also introduced a new supercharacter. The fez-wearing “Kismet, Man of Fate” was an Islamic hero in the same vein as Columbia’s “Raja, the Arabian Knight,” whose escapades in Axis territory aroused

Another veteran PDC client, The Gilberton Company, was not only able to procure enough newsprint to keep the bimonthly Classic Comics on schedule but to keep it at 60 pages all year. (Publisher Albert Kanter also continued to 240

Packaged by Roche & Iger, most of Bomber Comics consisted of series dropped by other publishers. “Kismet, Man of Fate” was an exception. TM and © respective copyright holder.

the wrath of both Hitler and Satan. Created by studio partner Ruth Roche (using the house name Omar Tahan), it was initially drawn by Chuck Winter, then by Alex Blum, and finally the team of Henry Kiefer and Blum. A second Elliot title, Spitfire Comics, hit the stands in August. Nominally published by The Malverne Herald, a small Garden City, New York newspaper, and inexplicably numbered issue #132, Spitfire featured more cancelled strips from other publishers’ titles, including Champ Comics’ “Jungleman” and E. C. Stoner’s “Drop Towers,” last seen in Holyoke’s Blue Beetle #30. The legal status of Bomber Comics was questionable, but Spitfire was indisputably illegal. The government descended on Elliot, and the Winter issue of Bomber (#4) was its last official release (though a second issue of Spitfire, #133, would pop up on a few scattered newsstands in early 1945). Irving Manheimer played a decisive role in several small publishers’ plans to convert their excess newsprint into cash by starting their own comics lines. The Aviation Press, which ran a magazine for airplane devotees called Contact out of the Airlines Terminal Building on East 42nd Street, hired L.B. Cole to package a bi-monthly comic book version of their sole property. Contact Comics #1 (July) debuted four aviation-themed strips that ran in all three 1944-dated issues. “The Golden Eagle” was Dennis Quinn, a retired Army officer and World War I combat ace deemed too old to re-

enlist. Aiding the Allied cause as an independent agent against weird menaces like human bats and zombies, Quinn gained a sidekick, a bald eagle named Freedom, in the third episode. The series’ debut was one of the first professional credits of 18-year-old Lithuanian immigrant Eli Katz, later to become one of the medium’s most influential artists as Gil Kane. Two of Golden Eagle’s co-stars were costumed aviators. John Giunta’s “The Flamingo” was really USAAF Col. Moore Williams, who hopped into his snazzy custom fighter whenever overt military action was not a viable option. USO hostess Mary Roche led a double life as “Black Venus.” Drawn by a different artist in every episode, the “terror of the Burma skies” consequently wore a different costume in each issue. The final regular series, “Tommy Tomahawk,” was a silly strip about the Tomahawk Squadron, Cherokee fighter pilots who wore war bonnets into battle instead of flight helmets. Contact Comics’ biggest asset was the cover art by studio head Cole, whose bold, colorful imagery of warplanes in combat made the comic irresistible to flight enthusiasts. Contact would run for twelve issues over three years. Another PDC client didn’t fare as well, despite its comics featuring art by Funnies, Inc., stars Harold DeLay, Jack Warren, and Henry Kiefer. Consolidated Magazines, Inc., headed by publisher and editor Joseph A. Ruby, nee Rubinstein, released two issues of Key Comics and one of Lucky Comics before abandoning the effort, though whether low sales or the War Production Board torpedoed its titles is uncertain. The intended star of Key Comics was “The Key,” alias Dr. Jeffrey Quick, keeper of a mystic key gifted 241

to him by the Native American tribe he formerly lived among. Aside from glowing in the presence of crime (a trait with questionable utility as a weapon), the key wasn’t much help to Quick, who was nonetheless considered the bane of the underworld. “Gale Leary, The Will o’ the Wisp” was a vengeful teenager on the trail of the gangsters who murdered her mother and crippled her DA father. The gimmick of announcing her presence with a willow branch left at the scene of her exploits was the only element setting Gale apart from similar girl sleuths. DeLay’s “Dick Dash,” featuring an American schoolboy trapped behind enemy lines after the Nazis took France, and Warren’s “Mascot Monkeyshines,” in which monkey Hooch and dog Pooch, the constantly squabbling mascots of a Marine unit

Behind its striking L.B. Cole covers, Aviation Press’ Contact Comics featured early work by future super-stars Gil Kane and Carmine Infantino. TM and © respective copyright holder.

That the contents of Hollywood Comics were packaged by Comic House was no coincidence. Publisher Lev Gleason had a history of espousing and supporting left-wing causes. His nephew and biographer Brett Dakin described the uncle he never met as “liberal, secular, progressive, and resolutely antifascist. While he was making a name for himself in comics, he became increasingly involved in an array of left-leaning activist groups in New York City. He also participated in a short-lived but important liberal publishing experiment with [David Gilmor, publisher for a time of Gleason’s comics.] They teamed up to publish Friday magazine, a liberal alternative to Life. Every cover featured an attractive female model, but within its pages was some of the best leftist muckraking of the time. A November 1940 article entitled “Conspiracy of Silence: The Case Against Henry Ford” detailed Ford’s anti-Semitic statements and publications, his admiration of Hitler and association with domestic fascists and nativists, and his suppression of organized labor. Friday folded after about a year, but not before being sued for libel by William Randolph Hearst in 1941—the same year that Orson Welles’ anti-Hearst masterpiece Citizen Kane was released, a coincidence Lev must have relished.” (Worcester) Gleason himself was still serving in the Army, but must have found time to okay the deal with New Age. He also signed off on an agreement with Wm. H. Wise to produce two more humor comics, Candy Comics and Cryin’ Lion Comics. The first issues of both quarterlies bore a Fall cover date and featured an olio of comedy series, most good, a few not, the only outstanding contribution being episodes of Basil Wolverton’s screwy “Scoop Scuttle.” Among the better reads were “Cock Robinhood,” an avian swashbuckler created by Al Eugster; “Dumb Like a Fox,” which found confidence artist Fernando, later Lucifer, Fox drifting from town to town forever hoist on his own petard; “Chile the Bullthrower,” about a super-strong Mexican peasant who became a star of the bullring by taking on los toros bare-

The otherwise innocuous Hollywood Comics was published to generate revenue for the left-wing organization American Youth of Democracy. TM and © respective copyright holder.

in the Pacific, traded insults their masters were unable to hear, rounded out the title. Highlights of Lucky Comics included “Bobbie,” wherein the title teen bucked the local mob in tiny Milltown by organizing a social club for her fellow high schoolers as an alternative to the crime-ridden juke joint it ran, and “The Ring of Darius,” the well-drawn account of a champion charioteer in ancient Rome killed on the orders of his sponsor’s scheming wife and the curse his spirit placed on the priceless ring at the heart of the incident. Consolidated’s comics showed promise, but died before getting a chance to live up to it. The most obscure of the Manheimer-sponsored newcomers, Hollywood Comics was a one-shot from New Age Publishers, Inc., the publishing arm of American Youth of Democracy, a leftist organization formed from the remnants of the disbanded Young Communist League. If it was intended as a propaganda vehicle, it was a spectacular failure. “Nikkey Gnome” was a children’s fantasy in which the title character contracted an illness that enlarged him to “hooman” size. It was accompanied by a quartet of fairto-middling funny animal strips: “Pirate Parrot,” “The Cub Reporter,” “Billy the Kid Goat,” and Richard W. “Dick” Hall’s “Buggsey,” about an accidentally enlarged microbe, a detective in his microscopic world, who took to helping solve crimes in ours. None of these features showed any sign of a political agenda. The comic likely existed simply as a way to raise funds for the AYD.

Lev Gleason’s Magazine House skirted the government’s restrictions on paper usage by partnering with Wm. H. Wise to launch a small line of children’s titles. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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handed; and “The Cryin’ Lion,” a lovable fraidycat based loosely on Bert Lahr’s performance as The Cowardly Lion in the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz. The legality of these comics is in question, though the Wise titles possessed all the requisite elements (issue numbers, dates, text pages) to pass muster. Hollywood Comics, which did not, was likely a pirate title and subject to confiscation. All three books were history by year’s end. Of all the comic books distributed through PDC, Gleason’s three Comic House titles were the best-selling. Rebranded Magazine House, Inc. with its March-dated issues, the line converted to the new 52-page standard with minimal muss and fuss (save for another editorial praising itself for its patriotic sacrifice). Under co-editors Bob Wood and Charles Biro, the publishing house continued to carve out its own identity within the industry by offering comics that were a cut above the competition in appealing to a more mature audience. This was certainly the case with Crime Does Not Pay. The true crime title eschewed any experimentation in content, sticking with its sensationalized re-creations of violence and murder that first put it atop the company’s sales charts. Scripted primarily by Wood and his brother Dick, with art by A.C. Hollingsworth, Robert Q. Sale, Dick Hall, Art Gates, and others, stories like “Four Crooks and a Coffin,” “Señorita of Sin,” “Two-Legged Rats,” “Four Steps to Doom,” and “The Case of the White-Eyed Butcher” related the transgressions of their degenerate protagonists with a voyeuristic glee that belied the moralistic condemnation in each conclusion. CDNP had only two recurring features, the “Crime Kings” segment narrated by Mr. Crime that opened every issue and Dick Briefer’s “Who Dunnit,” which challenged readers to solve a fictional murder. The episode in the September issue (#35) starred entertainer Jimmy Durante as its guest detective.

Dick Briefer’s time-traveling “Yankee Longago” teaches Jean Nicot the joys of smoking. It’s all his fault! TM and © respective copyright holder.

The Undertaker and The Moth. One of the most appealing aspects of “Crimebuster” was the respect its teenaged hero was shown by the police, the FBI, military intelligence, and other authority figures, providing some vicarious wish fulfillment for those among the series’ young audience who longed to be taken seriously by the adult world. The back pages of Daredevil Comics and Boy Comics tried hard, not always successfully, to live up to the quality of their lead features. After reprinting the inaugural episode from Silver Streak Comics #1, “The Claw” jettisoned The Ghost and other recent additions to return the strip to its roots, restoring the awe and mystery surrounding the hideous villain and making him once again a global threat. This change likely represented a transition from recent writer Bob Wood to another unidentified author, with new illustrator Rudy Palais doing his best to bring back the look and feel of the series’ early days under creator Jack Cole. “Sniffer” also went back to basics, discharging its uncouth hero from the military and returning him to the mean streets of New York. Dick Hall filled in while regular artist Carl Hubbell took a three-issue break from the strip. Dick Briefer’s light touch made his “Dickie Dean, Boy Inventor” and “The Pirate Prince” refreshing changes of pace from the grim doings elsewhere in Daredevil, while his tonguein-cheek time travel series “Yankee Longago” performed the same service for Boy Comics. Yankee’s most interesting adventure found him teaching Jean Nicot the recreational uses of tobacco to his subsequent regret, its anti-smoking message thirty years ahead of its time. “Swoop Storm,” previously a humdrum xerox of Hillman’s “Airboy,” upped his game this year, introducing a series of ingenious new aircraft, each cleverer and more improbable than the last, one of them utilizing a component invented by Dickie Dean. As of Boy #18 (October), “Little Dynamite” was saddled with his country cousin, a would-be detective named Augie the Awful. Cousin Augie provided a much-needed contrast in personalities to a series whose supporting cast had

The best material coming out of the Comic/Magazine House offices remained the two series scripted and sometimes drawn by Charles Biro, “Daredevil” and “Crimebuster.” The eponymous star of Daredevil Comics and his constant companions The Little Wise Guys faced a loathsome line-up of evildoers like The Tramp, a homicidal hobo whose victims included the kindly war widow with whom Curley, Pee Wee, and Scarecrow were going to live; he-and-she spree killers Punch and Judy; and the title subject of issue #21’s “Confessions of a Nazi,” an astute look at the kind of damaged soul attracted to Hitler’s perverse ideology. The clash of cultures that resulted when the Wise Guys enrolled in a prestigious prep school in the June issue (#25) provided some welcome relief from all this murder and mayhem. Norman Maurer illoed most of the year’s episodes, backed by Carl Hubbell. Biro himself drew the lion’s share of Crimebuster’s escapades in Boy Comics, where 1944 started off with a bang. Iron Jaw, condemned by his Nazi superiors for his repeated defeats at the hands of the teenaged spy-crusher, was lured into a trap. His executioner, a weirdo known as The Rodent commanding an army of rats, didn’t survive his encounter with the metal-mouthed marauder but he did his job. Iron Jaw’s corpse, covered head to toe with rat bites, washed up on the banks of the Potomac in issue #15 (February). The death of his arch-enemy didn’t mean a respite for Chuck Chandler and Squeeks, as the duo tackled such menaces as 243

hitherto functioned primarily as an echo chamber for its tough-talking, derby-hatted boy hero. All of these changes reflected the flexibility and willingness to experiment that made the Biro-Wood combo one of the top editorial teams in the business.

Four-Color Free-for-All The chutzpah with which some publishers flouted the restrictions on paper usage could be breathtaking. Take the unknown publisher who snuck seven 36-page issues of reprints from Frank Temerson’s Crash Comics Adventures and Captain Fearless Comics onto newsstands in 1944, though whether Grit Grady Comics #1, Corporal Rusty Dugan Comics #2, Miss Victory #3, Mr. Miracle Comics #4, U.S. Border Patrol Comics #5, Captain Fearless Comics #6, and Secret Agent Z-2 #7 constituted a monthly or were released all at once is not clear. Was it Temerson himself making a fast buck? Or was it a cash grab by Holyoke using original art pages (or the printing plates made from them) that ended up in its possession during its temporary takeover of Temerson’s comics line two years earlier? Certainly the absence of any publisher information or copyright notices suggests whoever it was knew full well they were in violation of Limitation Order L-244.

Other start-up publishers preferred to be less obvious about the cupidity with which they entered the marketplace. Some even went so far as to hire good people to produce good content. In the case of the Chicago-based R.B. Leffingwell & Co., its executives turned to a new studio hungry to make its reputation. Bernard Baily, co-creator of DC’s “The Spectre” and “Hour-Man,” and Mac Raboy, star artist of Fawcett’s “Captain Marvel Jr.,” had gone into business together the previous autumn, with Raboy overseeing their new shop’s commercial assignments while Baily focused on offering packaging services for neophyte comics publishers. As a sampler to prospective customers of what the studio had to offer, Leffingwell’s Jeep Comics #1 (Winter) wasn’t half bad. Its cover feature, “Jeep and Peep,” was a fun, breezy adventure strip about Army veteran and mechanical whiz Jeep, his little pal Peep, and the flying jeep they used to foil the plans of evil Dr. Duyvil. The cape Jeep wore gave the strip just a touch of the super-heroic, one of many benefits it derived from the art of Charles A. Voight, whose syndicated strip Betty had recently concluded a 23-year run. Paul Gattuso’s “Solid Jackson,” in which scientific sleuth Prof. Xerxes Herakles Jackson helped the police solve an attempted murder, had a

smart plot and good dialogue. “Superstitious Al-o-ysius” [sic] was a fantasy by Al Fago about the seventh son of the goddess Fortuna sent to Earth to help the luckless with his magic. It was entertaining, even if Aloysius always spoke in rhyme. Eli Katz, the future Gil Kane, was at the drawing board for an espionage story starring Capt. Ernie Eaton, an Army officer fluent in German sent undercover to infiltrate and destroy a secret Nazi sub base. Why it was called “Captain Power” was a mystery unanswered in this first episode. Jeep Comics could have been a solid foundation on which to build for Leffingwell, but the line died late in the year after two issues of Jeep and three one-shots with 1945 cover dates. It was Bernard Baily, under the corporate identity of the Baily Publishing Company, who produced one of the most unusual comic books in the history of the industry. Illustrated Stories from the Operas was a four-issue series adapting the books of a quartet of classic grand operas: Verdi’s Aida and Rigoletto, Bizet’s Carmen, and Gounod’s Faust. The story behind the comic has been obscured by time. Produced in partnership with the Passantino Printing Company, it seems to have been commissioned by the Sons of Italy, a fraternal organization dedi-

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The Baily shop encompassed both veteran illustrators like Charles Voight and rookies like John Giunta’s assistant, a high school student named Frank Frazetta. TM and © respective copyright holder.

istically rendered world, the super-strong Snowman was drawn by John Giunta with the assistance of a 16-yearold newcomer named Frank Frazetta. Voight’s “He-Man” was Samson Hercules Muckles of Snood, North Dakota, last living male in a line of circus strongmen, who carried an enchanted talisman that not only erased his inherited aversion to metal but gave him immunity to all metallic weapons. With a boneheaded lead bossed around by his feisty, iron-willed grandmother, the series was played strictly for laughs. Rounding out Tally-Ho were “Captain Cookie,” a kid strip about the dream life of its bespectacled hero, and “The Man in Black,” another (possibly unauthorized) adaptation of a radio series, the CBS drama Suspense, narrated by the titular character. These were quality books. It was a shame they weren’t legal. Neither was to have a second issue.

cated to (among other things) celebrating Italian-American culture, as a promotional tie-in to the 1944 season of the New York Civic Opera. Originally priced at 25¢ for 16 blackand-white pages wrapped in a monotone cover, Illustrated Stories from the Operas was never intended to be sold on newsstands. Some surviving copies have the price blacked out, suggesting that the series was not a success and may have ended up as giveaways. The Baily studio was also responsible for a pair of 36-page one-shots released through Swappers Quarterly, another Chicago publishing firm dabbling in comics printed on black market paper. Cisco Kid Comics #1 (Winter) featured the first comic book appearance of the cruel outlaw created by O. Henry in his 1907 short story “The Caballero’s Way,” later reinterpreted by Hollywood as a benevolent Robin Hood of the Old West in a series of films starring Warner Baxter, later replaced by Cesar Romero. The movie series ended in 1941 but Cisco and his compadre Pancho were currently headlining a Mutual Network radio series. If the comic had any official connection to the program, it kept it well-hidden, though the story, beautifully illustrated by Charles Voight, definitely reflected its influence. Also appearing in that first-and-only issue were Frank Little’s “Super Baby,” a rip-off of the similar Timely strip told entirely in rhyme; “Funnyman,” the nefarious exploits of a former Gestapo interrogator whose vengeful victims carved a permanent smile into his face (like Batman foe The Joker, this strip was probably inspired by the plot of Victor Hugo’s novel The Man Who Laughs); and a condensed reprint of Baily’s adaptation of “Faust” from Illustrated Stories from the Operas. Swappers’ other title, the unnumbered and undated Tally-Ho Comics, introduced a pair of unusual super-heroes. “Snowman” was exactly what his name suggested, a being of snow magically brought to life to serve as the champion of an Eskimo tribe threatened by an evil sorcerer called The Fang. A cartoon character in appearance and personality inhabiting a real-

Funnies, Inc. provided the content for two new titles from Rewl Publishing, the first of many suspect outfits associated with Lindsay “L.L.” Baird, a slick operator characterized by Will Murray as “the most notorious black marketeer in comics” (50). Blazing Comics #1 and Blue Circle Comics #1 bore June cover dates, their third and final issues dated September. Between them, the books offered an entertaining blend of super-heroes, detectives, swashbucklers, aviators, and jungle goddesses that deserved better than their underhanded publisher gave them. When the government began closing in, Baird closed the doors on Rewl. The cover feature of Blazing Comics was “The Green Turtle,” a super-hero created by Chinese-American cartoonist Chu F. Hing. The Turtle, a.k.a. Ching Qwai, was a costumed mystery-man aiding the Chinese against the Japanese with the help of his manservant Wun Too, young war refugee Burma Boy, and Ra-Tin, daughter of an executed mandarin. Operating from a cave in the mountains and flying a distinctive rocket plane, Green Turtle’s only superpower was the ability to cast the shadow of a huge cartoony turtle, 245

Shifty entrepreneur L.L. Baird published black market comics under successive corporate aliases, often leaving the studios supplying his content unpaid in his haste to stay one step ahead of the law. TM and © respective copyright holder.

tune, granted the power to live underwater, and set on the throne of Atlantis. Beautiful Harold DeLay art enhanced stories of Maureen’s clashes with such undersea foes as the fishlike Miro Men and the Ice Men. Henry Kiefer illustrated the exploits of “The Steel Fist.” After Nazi saboteurs plunged patriotic steelworker Tim Slade’s right hand into molten steel, the Spirit of Liberty restored its mobility and set him on a crusade against the enemy as the costumed Fist. “Slaphappy Grandpappy” was a funny, observant Jack Warren strip starring the crotchety patriarch of a typical American family driven around the bend by the travails of life in wartime. The remainder of the back pages were occupied by a trio of amateur detectives: “Gail Porter, Girl Photographer,” tender-hearted hobo “Driftwood Davy,” and “The Toreador,” alias American-born bullfighter Ron Russell, his sleuthing limned by Leonard Starr.

a shadow that didn’t always match his own position. A tad wordy and brutally violent at times, the series’ only serious flaw was its continually promising to reveal the hero’s origin then putting it off. Backing up the masked aviator was the Harold DeLay-illustrated “Jun-Gal,” a well-drawn “Sheena” knock-off marred by offensive stereotyping of its black characters. Joan Teal, daughter of an American scientist and his wife, was raised by Gooma, witch doctor of the African tribe that slew her parents when she was an infant, to be the guardian of their sacred Pit of Death. The radium in the pit granted Jun-Gal superhuman strength and prowess, much to the chagrin of the German troops who came after the radioactive element. “The Black Buccaneer” was a pirate strip nicely illustrated by Leonard Starr, a Funnies, Inc. background man taking full advantage of the opportunity to strut his stuff. His crisp lines and compositional eye helped the adventures of Jeffrey Scott, English privateer and captain of the black-sailed Raven, stand up to comparison with Quality’s “The Hawk” and DC/AA’s “The Black Pirate.” Filling out the back pages of Blazing were “Red Hawk,” a Native American fighter pilot known as “the one-man Air Force” who took a turn for the ridiculous in the second episode, abandoning his Army uniform for Hollywood-style Indian garb; “Mr. Ree,” a former pupil of Houdini dabbling in detection; gutsy war correspondent “Tommy Paige;” and Art Moore’s “Super Drooper and Dip,” the slapstick shenanigans of three Stooge-like knuckleheads trying their luck as private eyes, auto mechanics, and farmers.

Less than two months after shutting down Rewl, Baird was back, this time with a bi-monthly title packaged by the Bernard Baily studio and released through Publicaciones Recreativas, a Mexican publisher with a small line of Spanish-language magazines. The cover of Red Band Comics #1 (November) jointly spotlighted two of the features within. Bruce Elliot and August Froehlich’s “The Bogey Man” was a case of pure, barefaced plagiarism. Its central character, mystery novelist Kendall Richards, allowed the police and public to believe him dead after surviving a mob hit, thereafter striking from the shadows as the mysterious Bogey Man. The strip didn’t just borrow its hero’s origin story from “The Spirit.” It actively worked at duplicating the look and style of Will Eisner’s magnum opus, even making its crusty cop character a Commissioner Dolan lookalike. It was a well-done imitation, but an imitation all the same. Bogey Man’s cover co-star was the one-eyed, green-skinned “Satanas,” a.k.a. “the most evil man in the universe,” a super-villain exiled from Pluto who threatened Earth with his scientific super-genius. Sam Cooper supplied the art for an unidentified scripter. The book’s other features included “The Sorcerer and His Apprentice,” the tale of a wizard in

Companion title Blue Circle Comics took its name from its lead feature. “The Blue Circle” was society playboy Len Stafford, a mystery-man who fought crime with the aid of the Council of the Blue Circle, seven reformed master criminals. This unique gimmick, along with competent art by Bill Allison, were the only assets of an otherwise so-so strip. Better was “Maureen Marine,” a fantasy aimed at girls in which the title character, the only survivor of a fishing trawler sunk by a U-boat, was adopted by King Nep246

Balloon Buster,” and “Breadbasket of the Seas,” a shoutout to the unsung heroes who manned the Navy’s supply lines. Tailspin also included “The Firebird,” a mysterious costumed pilot clad in red and yellow working with the German underground, who took on a female Luftwaffe ace codenamed The Valkyrie, just like Airboy’s sultry frenemy. Perhaps the folks at Spotlight thought the feds might look the other way if its illegal comics glorified the war effort. They were wrong.

Renaissance Venice and his new apprentice, a not-terriblybright peasant lad named Joe Djerk, beautifully illustrated by Henry Kiefer; the Eli Katz-drawn war strip “Sgt. Strong;” and Bernard Baily’s “Captain Milksop,” a silly but entertaining super-hero parody with lots of fourth wall breaking: meek clerk Mortimer K. Mortimer is granted superpowers by Red Band Heroes, Inc. (Bogey Man, Sorcerer, and Satanas) whenever he rubs the top of his head with a copy of the comic and says the magic phrase “Red Band Comics.” The Baily shop put its best effort into the title, as Funnies, Inc. had into the Rewl books, and would soon find itself left just as high-and-dry by its shifty client.

Like The Aviation Press, the U.S. Camera Publishing Company of Springfield, Massachusetts was a specialty house that decided to use its excess paper to launch a comic book. And like Aviation Press’ Contact Comics, all of the features How Baird persuaded Funnies, Inc., to give him a second in Camera Comics evolved around a chance is, for now, unknown, but persingle theme. Photography may, at first suade them he did. The studio pronod, not seem to offer the same opporduced Variety Comics #1, the first of tunities for exciting visuals or dramatic three annual issues that, along with action as the flight theme generally seven one-shots released intermitdid, but the mostly anonymous arttently through 1946, constituted the ists and writers filling Camera’s pages total output of Croydon Publishing were out to prove otherwise. Three of Co. Sub-titled “The Spice of Comics,” its features focused on combat phoVariety lived up to its name, offering tographers. The fearless pilot known a smorgasbord of genre strips ranging as “The Grey Comet” was the son of a in quality from adequate to embar“bigwig” who signed up with the Army rassing. The lead-off feature, one of Air Force under an alias to avoid accuthe adequate ones, was mysterysations of nepotism or favoritism. His man “Captain Valiant.” Bruce Barton, custom reconnaissance plane “The understudying the role of Valiant in Flying Camera” baffled the Luftwaffe a Broadway show called Comics Folwith its speed and maneuverability, or lies, found himself living the part in so readers were told. Despite pleasant order to recover the production’s stofigure work by layout man Bill Allison, len payroll. “Terry Temple, Woman the series was hindered by skimpy Investigator” and “Gabby Grayson, backgrounds and badly drawn aircraft Radio Reporter” were badly-written in badly staged combat. Crude art also crime dramas with art bordering on marred “Art Fenton,” starring a Signal the incompetent. Teen sleuth “Marty Corpsman documenting the D-Day Moore” fared better, his slapstick invasion, while “Bob Scott, U.S.N. Crash exploits drawn in an amusing bigfoot Photographer” featured the creaky style. “Mystery Master” was a creepy cliché of bickering buddies cracking old man spinning tales of horror. wise to ease the stress of their dangerFrom cover to cover, Variety read and ous duties aboard an aircraft carrier looked like a junior high school art in the Pacific Theater. Filling out the project. Funnies, Inc., may have been back pages were “Kid Click,” starring willing to take his money, but they an award-winning schoolboy photogwere clearly no longer inclined to put rapher recruited by the chief of police their top talent at the disposal of L.L. to help sniff out an Axis spy ring; “Ole Baird. Prof,” a mildly amusing romp about Spotlight Publishers was yet another a cranky old coot’s encounter with fly-by-night comics company based jitter-bugs - not swing dancers, but a out of Chicago. After acting as proxy race of hep insects; and “George Ferfor United Feature Syndicate’s 128guson, Combat Photographer,” a series page Jim Hardy Comics Book, Spotlight set in prewar California chockful of hired the L.B. Cole studio to produce vicious “yellow peril” stereotypes and two military-themed one-shots, Ship caricatures that seems to have been Ahoy! and Tailspin. Cole’s unmistakdeliberately created to fan the flames able cover art excepted, no credits of of anti-Japanese fervor in the waning any kind are known for these books. days of the war. With the second issue, Both titles were primarily devoted to a special 16-page center section was true war material, features like “HighSpotlight Publishers hired the L.B. Cole shop to added featuring photography tips and produce a pair of gung ho one-shots featuring true lights of U.S. Naval History,” “Coast other nonfiction features, none of it in stories of heroic American airmen and sailors. Guard to the Rescue,” “Frank Luke, TM and © respective copyright holder. 247

a familiar presence on newsstands for the next 41 years. A second continued its efforts in fits and starts, doggedly pumping out titles under a dozen business names well into the late ‘50s. But for a third, success proved elusive, folding up its tent after only eighteen months despite turning out some of the highest quality comics of its time.

the form of comics. It was a sign that U.S. Camera wasn’t convinced that comics alone would keep the young shutterbugs it was targeting coming back.

One of the year’s oddities was Tops Comics, a 5” x 7¼” comic printed in alternating pages of full color and two-tone, that was probably a giveaway since no price appears on any of the covers. Seven issues in all were John Santangelo first met released, all edited by one Jim Edward “Ed” Levy in 1935 while McMenomy, copyrighted in the both men were incarcerated at name Book Production IndusNew Haven County Jail, Santantries, Inc., and published by gelo for multiple counts of copyConsolidated Book Publishers, right infringement, Levy for his a Chicago firm with no apparpart in a financial scandal while ent connection to the New Yorkserving as corporation counsel based Consolidated Magazines. for the city of Waterbury. On their The first two issues were acturelease, the two went into busially two individual 32-pagers ness together publishing a legal stapled together, one combinversion of the song lyric magaing “Don on the Farm,” a slapzine that had gotten Santangelo stick kid strip by Mort Greene, locked up in the first place, with with “The Black Orchid,” a Levy lining up the permissions masked mystery-woman crethat made it legit. They set up ated by the husband-and-wife published using a different corporate identity, Yellowjacket Comics shop in Derby, Connecticut, as team of Albert and Florence Though was the first in a long string of comic books from Connecticut-based Charlton Publishing. By 1944, Magarian, the other combinCharlton Publishing. TM and © respective copyright holder. their little magazine line had ing “Ace Kelly,” a space opera by a curiosity than a serious attempt to grown sufficiently that the duo Buck Rogers ghost Rick Yager, create a going concern. decided to expand into comic books, with “Dinky Dinkerton,” a slapstick getting their feet wet with a single Sherlock Holmes parody last seen in In It to Win It monthly title. a 1941 issue of Eastern Color’s Reg’lar Fellers Heroic Comics. All four strips Not every new publisher who entered Yellowjacket Comics, its first issue were also collected into a single 168the comics industry in 1944 was bearing a September cover date, page edition. Four additional issues intent on getting in, making a quick was released under Charlton’s Frank (#s 2001-2004) followed, each spotbuck, and getting out again. A few Comunale Publishing imprint. To fill lighting a different character. “The were playing the long game, hoping its pages, Santangelo and Levy hired Jack of Spades” was another supertheir line of books would have the Funnies, Inc., which provided an hero from the Magarians, this one a longevity of a Dell or Detective. For interesting mix of features. Cover star playing card figure animated by the one, the gamble paid off, its comics “Yellowjacket” was really crime writer spirit of a murdered gambler. Franand amateur beekeeper Vince Harcis Kim’s “Rip Raider” about a Navy ley, “one of those rare people whom fighter pilot was no great shakes, nor bees won’t sting,” who adopted his was “Red Birch,” an exercise in hillcostumed identity to give himself billy humor by Will Johnson. The final greater insight into the workings of issue, #2004, consisted entirely of the criminal mind. Drawn by Ken Batmilitary-themed gag cartoons under tefield, the yellow-and-black clad cruthe collective title “Don’t Bother to sader was an ordinary mystery-man Dry Off, Admiral.” Why Tops Comics at first, but by the December issue was published, how it was distrib(#4) was said to have superhuman uted, and whether it too was a black strength and stamina absorbed from market comic are questions currently his pets through some sort of negligiunanswerable. What can be said is bly-defined osmosis. The title’s other that, Yager excepted, few of the cresuper-hero was “Diana the Huntress,” ators of Tops had or would have much sent to modern-day Greece by Zeus of a presence in the industry, and the “Diana the Huntress,” Charlton’s answer to “Wonder to rally the people’s spirits and help Woman,” had a more bloodthirsty approach to fighttitle itself with its weird numbering ing the Axis than her All-American counterpart. them expel their Axis conquerers. and oddball format seemed more of TM and © respective copyright holder. Unlike “Wonder Woman,” on which 248

the series was clearly modeled, this Diana had no qualms about using her godly archery skills to kill the bad guys. Gus Schrotter illoed the first two episodes before Leo Morey, a better draftsman, took over. Other features included Harold DeLay’s “King of the Beasts,” a circus drama starring Danny King, an animal caretaker who became the show’s star lion-tamer after his predecessor was fired for performing drunk; “Harbor Lights,” an anthology series spotlighting sea stories; and “The Filipino Kid,” a war strip unusual for the lack of condescension in its portrayal of its lead, college-educated guerrilla Juan Manito. Yellowjacket’s most ambitious offering was “Famous Tales of Terror,” adaptations of classic short stories by Edgar Allan Poe. Bill Allison provided the art for the first episode, “The Black Cat,” with Gus Schrotter coming aboard for “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Writing credits are unknown for this series, as they are for its companions, but whoever it was didn’t hesitate to rewrite “Usher” with Poe himself as the central character. Though none of its features was beacon of originality, Yellowjacket Comics was a solid first step for Charlton. Four Star Publications, Inc. was the first of many names under which onetime Fox ad manager Bob Farrell published comics over the next fourteen years. A bit of confusion surrounds Farrell’s activities during this period. Military records show the 36-yearold former attorney stationed at an Army base in Alabama throughout 1944, directing his newborn publishing venture by mail. Some sources list him as a co-owner of Elliot Publishing and credit him with editing its titles, while others make no mention of a connection to Elliot at all. Adding to this chaotic atmosphere were the three different addresses listed in the indicia of Four Star’s sole title, the first of which placed it in the offices of PDC, its distributor. Captain Flight Comics #1 debuted early in the year bearing a March cover date. The bi-monthly, which downsized to 52 pages with its second issue, featured artwork by a phalanx of freelancers with ties to Roche & Iger, Funnies, Inc., Majestic Studios,

from “Professor X, Crime Doctor,” in which said professor narrated tales of unusual or bizarre crimes, the back pages of Captain Flight were in a constant state of flux. Sixteen different strips made one-issue appearances, including “Zann of the Jungle,” “Dash the Avenger,” “The Goofy Knights,” “Secret Agent 2B-3,” and “Top Bowers,” an episode of E. C. Stoner’s “Drop Towers” from the bootleg Spitfire Comics with the lead’s name relettered (which, in turn, may have started out as a repurposed inventory story of Quality’s “Prop Powers”). Other artists contributing to the title were Al Bryant, Chuck Winter, Claire Moe, Dick Ryan, Carl Pfuefer, John Jordan, George Marcoux, and Dan Zolnerowich. The first title from Robert Farrell’s Four Star Publications. Captain Flight Comics #1 was a mixed bag of polished and crude features. TM and © respective copyright holder.

and other packaging services, none of whom seemed able to stay with a strip for longer than two episodes. Then again, most of those strips were lucky to make it to two episodes. No scripting credits are available, though the likelihood of Farrell himself doing much of the writing is high. He was probably at the typewriter for the title feature, originally illustrated by Bill Boynanski, later by Bob Webb and Gus Schrotter. “Captain Flight” was an engineer cum adventurer targeted by Axis spies zeroed in on his many inventions. Later episodes used operatives from fictitious countries like Morvia and Berbera as antagonists. The series was strictly by-the-numbers and it couldn’t make up its mind if Flight was military or civilian, but it was laudable for its non-stereotypical treatment of Tim, the hero’s black valet. The only other series to appear in all four issues released this year was “Ace Reynolds, War Correspondent,” about a would-be reporter who stumbled his way into a big story. Initially drawn by Murray “Ray” Tobin, it was a sloppy genre piece, full of misspellings, grammatical errors, and word balloons pointing to the wrong characters, redeemed only by its exciting battle scenes. Later installments were better executed technically but the strip lost some of its dubious charm in stripping Ace of his naive personality, making him just another smart-ass newshound. Aside 249

Bob Farrell’s haphazard approach to comics stood in contrast to that taken by another tyro publisher. Spark Publications was a joint venture of Ken Crossen, whose modest pulp line netted him a small surplus of newsprint, and Mac Raboy, in the process of severing his ties to Bernard Baily to avoid being mired in Baily’s legal hassles. Spark’s first title was Green Lama, a monthly starring the robed-andhooded magician last seen in Crestwood’s Prize Comics #34 (September ‘43), a character Crossen created and still held the rights to. He and Raboy, who had worked together on the ear-

The new Green Lama title from Spark Publications gave its pulp-spawned title character a sleek new super-heroic look. TM and © respective copyright holder.

Quota? What Quota?

liest Prize episodes, reunited to produce the new run, with Raboy delivering some of the best art of his career. Also featured in the first issue, the only one published in 1944, were Joseph Greene and Al Bare’s “Boy Champions,” a Newsboy Legion wannabe in which street kids Tuffy, Mickey, and Wellington forded their way across a never-ending stream of trouble after starting their own errand-running business; “Lieutenant Hercules,” a burlesque of Captain Marvel by Horace L. Gold and Irving Tirman starring Wilbur Klutz, who instead of transforming into a strapping muscleman remained the same scrawny, bespectacled nerd he was before Merlin the Magician blessed him with superpowers; and two strips written by Bruce Elliot. “Rick Masters” concerned a globetrotting flier-for-hire and his Native American co-pilot, while “Angus MacErc” was a fantasy about a faerie of Oberon’s court sent to Earth to do good deeds in atonement for past mischief with beautiful art by “Batman” veteran Jerry Robinson. With Crossen at the helm as publisher/editor, Raboy onboard as art director, and a roster of well-written, nicely illustrated strips, Spark seemed positioned to join the ranks of the industry’s most respected publishers. But the timing was against them, for their gem of a comic book was lost on newsstands, thanks to two competitors determined to saturate the marketplace with endless iterations of their own established lines.

Between them, publishing partners Ned Pines and Ben Sangor controlled four lines of comics totaling two monthlies, five bi-monthlies, and six quarterlies split about evenly between titles featuring super-heroes and those featuring funny animals, with the non-fiction Patricia Highsmith contributed Real Life Comics adding a scripts for Nedor and other dash of respectability. That publishers en route to achieving fame as a bestselling novelist. wasn’t good enough for the veteran pulp men. The duo secured proxy publishers for an additional two quarterlies, Wonder Comics and Barnyard Comics. That still wasn’t good enough. They next went to Wm. H. Wise, who lent them the paper and press time to launch what was in essence a fifth line. Some of these were legal, others not so much. Despite an expansion that nearly doubled their total output, the co-publishers and editor/head writer Richard Hughes played it safe, their new titles replicating the look and feel of their existing ones. Those comics featuring costumed crusaders presented the same stories of Axissponsored super-villains, mad scientists, saboteurs, spies, and fifth columnists that had been a staple of the line since Pearl Harbor, all served up beneath enticing, actionfilled Alex Schomburg covers. The funny animal books threw dozens of one-off strips at readers, all churned out by the moonlighting animators and inexperienced school kids that manned Sangor’s bi-coastal packaging service, although recurring characters became a wee bit more common this year. The roster of talent on hand contained many familiar names—Bob Oksner, Jim Davis, Al Camy, Max Plaisted, Carl Wessler, Ken Hultgren, Maurice Gutwirth, August Froelich, Tony Loeb, Rube Grossman, Henry Kiefer, Victor Pazmiño—as well as two newcomers with illustrious futures. Ken Battefield handled the layouts for most of the major super-hero series in 1944, his roughs completed by 18-year-old Art Students League graduate Everett Raymond Kinstler. A devotee of the great magazine illustrators with a strong compositional sense and an elegant pen technique, Kinstler would later become one of the nation’s most sought-after portraitists, his subjects including two sitting presidents. Helping out the harried Hughes with scripts was Patricia Highsmith, born Mary Patricia Plangman, a freelancer who also wrote for Fawcett and Timely. Using comics to pay bills while working on her serious fiction, Highsmith later achieved renown as the author of such classic suspense novels as The Talented Mr. Ripley and Strangers on a Train. Thrilling Comics, the only Pines title released under the Standard Magazines imprint this year, saw no major changes to its line-up of features. Cover star “Doc Strange,” now scripted by Joseph Greene, wielded his alosun-derived powers against America’s wartime foes, most armed with some sort of super-weapon like the “zootron,” a ray that turned volunteer German soldiers into bestial AnimalMen, or Der Stahlgeist [The Steel Ghost] and The Terra-

The action-filled cover art of Alex Schomburg accurately captured the patriotic fervor of the super-hero comics published by Ned Pines and Ben Sangor. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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Bullet, enormous manned vehicles of terrible destructive capabilities. Such plots were rife throughout the company’s super-hero series this year, regardless of who was at the typewriter. “The Ghost,” having finally ended his years-long duel with rogue physicist Dr. Fenton, turned his attention to more mundane foes like spies and Bedouin bandits, his only significant challenge taking the form of Mendezzi, a failed stage magician who traded his soul to Satan for real magical powers. His series was missing from two issues, its pages going to “The American Crusader” in issue #41 (April) and the returning “Jimmy Cole, Boy Sleuth” in issue #45 (December), the latter story featuring the first solo art job by E.R. Kinstler. Episodes of war strips “Commando Cubs,” “The Lone Eagle,” and “Lucky Lawrence, Leatherneck” rounded out the title. The Battefield-Kinstler team was at the drawing table for three of Startling Comics’s headliners, illoing every episode of “The Fighting Yank,” “Pyroman,” and “Captain Future,” as well as three out of four installments of “Don Davis, Espionage Ace.” All three costumed crusaders focused on Axis agents armed with outré weaponry, with only the Yank’s bout with Nitro-Man, a factory worker who gained explosive powers after falling into a vat of nitroglycerin, breaking the mold. “Ghost” artist August Froelich took over “The Oracle” from Henry Kiefer, but the switch didn’t make the clairvoyant do-gooder’s future any less dull than his recent past. The stars of Startling’s companion title Exciting Comics suffered from a similar monotony, “The Black Terror,” “The American Eagle,” and “The Liberator” confining themselves to Nazi or Japanese operatives and the occasional colorful gangster. Alex Schomburg contributed one of his rare interior art jobs to the February issue (#31)’s “Black Terror” story before Edvard Moritz took over. The back pages of Exciting went to Richard Hughes and Al Camy’s “Crime Crushers” and a trio of military series, “Sergeant Bill King,” “Crash Carter, Air Cadet,” and “Larry North, U.S. Navy.” Startling and Exciting were still issued under the Better Publications identity but that was the only difference between them and Pines’ other

fell. Living up to his name, the Reaper had no compunctions about killing Nazis, especially the Gestapo, with his bare hands.

Fantastical Axis vehicles and weaponry featured prominently in 1944 issues of Pines’ super-hero features. TM and © respective copyright holder.

existing super-hero titles, all credited to Nedor Publishing. The quarterly America’s Best Comics offered regular installments of “Black Terror” and “Doc Strange,” with “Fighting Yank.” “Pyroman,” “American Eagle,” “The Liberator,” and “The Ghost” taking turns as the book’s back-up features. The solo titles The Black Terror and The Fighting Yank were more of the same, though the Yank did take on slightly more interesting threats in later issues, such as The Brain, a Nazi strategist turned into your basic living-brain-in-a-jar, and Mojo, a fanged Japanese scientist commanding a squadron of miniaturized soldiers. Fighting Yank #7 (February) introduced a new super-hero from the Hughes-Camy team. “The Grim Reaper” was American student Bill Norris, trapped in France when Paris

Nedor’s funny animal titles, the bimonthly Coo-Coo Comics and the quarterly Goofy Comics and Happy Comics, continued to feature an everchanging assortment of anthropomorphic amusement. Coo Coo cover star “Supermouse” was the only character to hold down a regular berth in any of these books, though several others managed to make multiple appearances, most notably Ken Hultgren’s “Crock O’Dile,” about a bombastic reptilian grifter, and “Stanley Stallion” by veteran Disney animator John “Jack” Bradbury. The Sangor studio staff cranked out one-off strips by the carload. Among the artists contributing these features were Thurston Harper (Dapper Dan), Lynn Karp (Wilbur Wolf), the husbandand-wife team of Bill and Teddie Hudson (The Boathouse Boys, Drippo the Hippo, Mr. Lovesong), Don Arr a.k.a. Donald Christensen (Oompah), Carl Wessler (Archie Pelican, Pancho, Waldo the Weasel), Al Pross (Chee Wah Wah), and Tony Loeb (The Daffy Bros., Uncle Bunny). Occasionally, the title of a strip alone was worth the price of admission, as in the case of Gil Turner’s “Pistol-Packin’ Llama” in the November Coo Coo (#14). Giggle Comics and Ha-Ha Comics, the two monthlies jointly owned by Sangor and DC publisher Harry Donenfeld as the Creston Publication Corporation, featured a similar scattershot mix of funny animal strips by

Recurring features like Giggle Comics’ “Superkatt” became more common in Creston’s funny animal books this year. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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a similar scattershot mix of creators. Under editor Gerald Albert, the little line began to distinguish itself from its Nedor cousins, with a higher percentage of recurring features. “Superkatt” was a funny strip by Dan Gordon, who signed his work “Dang,” that debuted in Giggle #9 (June) and continued through the year. The title character was a housecat with delusions of grandeur, whose imaginary superpowers led to very real victories, even winning him a medal after Superkatt singlehandedly (singlepawedly?) captured a U-boat. Ken Hultgren’s “The Duke and The Dope,” about a foxy moocher and his dim-witted rabbit pal, appeared in nine issues of Giggle, Jim Tyer’s “Pete Parrot, Rookie Policeman” in six of Ha-Ha. Other Hultgren strips making multiple appearances were “Robespierre,” “Izzy and Dizzy,” and “Hokum and Blokum.” Artists contributing to Ha-Ha and Giggle included Dave Tendlar (Pinky the Pink Elephant), Rube Grossman (Happy Goes Hayseed, Storekeeper Stan), Woody Gelman (Doggy Dave, Horatio Hare), Gordon Sheehan (Bow-Wow Beagle, Roscoe Raccoon, Scarecrow Sam), Otto Feuer (Sandy and His Gang), Lynn Karp (Doc Kat Supp, Hap Hi-De-Ho, Kyoodle Coyote, Wooley Walrus), Carl Wessler (Billy the Kidder), the Hudsons (The Grouch Club, Young Hippo), and Milt Stein (Bitsy Bat). Giggle Comics #6’s “Hosmer Hounddawg,” one of the earliest professional credits of 18-year-old Eugene “Gene” Colan, gave little hint of his later career as a premier horror and super-hero artist.

name. Its cover star was “The Grim Reaper,” fresh from his debut in Fighting Yank. Joining him in the first issue (May) were Al Camy’s “Spectro the Mind-Reader,” which found vaudevillian Bob Morgan, “direct descendent of a 17th-century settler burned to death for witchcraft,” using his psychic powers to help the police solve allegedly impossible crimes, and “Tim Dawson, Soldier of Fortune,” a confusing Ken Battefield-drawn serial that ran its chapters out of sequence. Wonder #1’s “Mekano” starred a mechanical man, created for the World’s Fair, reprogrammed by electrical engineer Bill Foster and his young pal Tommy Clark into an unstoppable nemesis of the German military. It was immediately replaced by “The Supersleuths,” a production of Charles Quinlan Sr. and Jr. wherein Stan and Sam, operatives for the Neversleep Detective Agency, tackled cases of the seemingly supernatural. Pines and Sangor immediately followed up with Barnyard Comics, a funny animal quarterly published through Polo Magazine, Inc., of Lumbermille, New Jersey. It was more of the Sangor Studio same-old same-old, averaging seven one-shot stories per issue dashed off by the usual suspects—Lynn Karp, Bill and Teddie Hudson, Al Pross, Thurston Harper, Jack Bradbury—along with a few new faces, including M.L.J. regular Virginia “Ginger” Drury. Having exhausted all the legal alternatives, the enterprising in-laws took a page from Victor Fox’s playbook, arranging with Wm. H. Wise to release the 132-page Complete Book of Comics and Funnies, a one-shot title that seems to have begun life as the first two issues of a Nedor anthology scuttled by the mandatory reduction in paper usage, running two episodes of every feature it premiered. “Brad Spencer, Wonderman” was a scientist who used electrical current to give himself and girlfriend Carol super-strength and impenetrable skin. Created by Richard Hughes and Bob Oksner, the red-and-green clad power couple clashed repeatedly with the mad Dr. Voodoo. Ken Battefield’s “Zudo” featured the usual jungle boy shenanigans, this time with an American-born feral child fighting for justice with an enormous lion named Lao at his side, a bleh strip except for a handful of well-executed scenes of animal combat. Edmund Good was the artist for “The Magnet,” a science fiction thriller centered on the Geo-Locator, a miracle of science that could find anyone on Earth and teleport itself and its passengers to that location, which its inventor employed to oppose the machinations of The Crimson Conqueror, a costumed mastermind bent on world domination. Bringing up the rear was “The Silver Knight,” written by Leo Isaacs and moodily illustrated by the Battefield-Kinstler pairing. Sir Briane, a Knight of the Round Table, was chosen by the enigmatic Deathless Druid to serve as the mystical champion of England in this better-than-average Arthurian fantasy.

Details are hazy as to how Ben Sangor and/or Ned Pines acquired the rights to the Great Comics Publishing name, as neither had any prior involvement in the defunct company, but acquire them they did. This gave them a claim to Great’s paper quota, which they used to launch a new quarterly. From its colorful Alex Schomburg covers to its assortment of Richard Hughes- created super-heroes, Wonder Comics was a Nedor title in all but

Though nominally published by Great Comics and Polo Magazine, respectively, Wonder Comics and Barnyard Comics made little effort to hide their connection to the Pines outfit. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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All four series continued in Mystery Comics, a standard-format monthly nominally published by Wise, along with “The King of Futuria,” your basic Buck Rogers knock-off. Capt.

Martin Goodman’s Timely line expanded in 1944, but most of the titles it revived or launched featured the same handful of super-heroes. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Dick Devans, volunteering to be sent a thousand years into the future on a 24-hour fact-finding mission, ended up stranded on a future Earth ruled by the evil Tentacle-Men of Venus and their robotic enforcers. A surfeit of space opera clichés was mitigated somewhat by good, albeit cramped, art. Mystery Comics ran four issues, as did the non-fiction It Really Happened, a companion title to Real Life Heroes offering true war stores like “Faro of the Partisans,” “Behind Enemy Lines,” “Rescue at Turuk,” “For Total Victory,” and biographies of such disparate personages as Benjamin Franklin, Kit Carson, paleontologist Roy Chapman Andrews, explorer Cabeza de Vaca, and Gautama Buddha. A third title, the 80-page 15¢ quarterly America’s Funniest Comics, was devoted to funny animal one-offs by Don Arr (Horsey Hooligan, Little Willie WartHog, Sappy Happy Hyena), Lynn Karp (Palzy Pig, Reggie Rabbit), Bill and Teddie Hudson (Lemuel Lamb, Pepper Poodle), Carl Wessler (Adventure at Rosie’s Roost, The Saving of Good King Rollo), and others. It managed a pair of issues before the War Production Board stepped in and shut down the Pines-Wise books. The two companies defied the government a final time with America’ Biggest Comic Book, a 196-page anthology combining stray episodes of “The Grim Reaper,” “The Silver Knight,” “Commando Cubs,” and “Thunderhoof” with a slew of funny animal and military humor strips from such Sangor staff regulars as Don Arr, Manny Perez, Ken Hultgren,

and Dave Tendlar. It was a hearty Bronx cheer from a publishing team that had gotten away with their scofflaw antics for half a year before finally getting caught.

The Secret of His Success Martin Goodman was far too shrewd a businessman to let a little obstacle like a reduced paper allotment stand between him and a larger piece of the action for Timely Publications, or more accurately the 24 corporate entities, only one of which actually still bore the Timely name, through which he released his comic books in 1944. He began the year with three monthlies, three bi-monthlies, and seven quarterlies; he ended it with four monthlies and 21 quarterlies, increasing the line by nearly two-thirds. This was not accomplished by resorting to a proxy or flirting with the black market, but by diverting paper from Goodman’s pulp line, by shifting the frequencies of some titles, suspending publication of others, and reducing page counts. By the August-dated issues, the entire line had been converted to the new 52-page standard, and by their Winter issues, seven quarterly titles offered just 36 pages for the same dime that two years earlier had bought twice that. Somehow, it worked. With 99 comics issued with a 1944 date, Timely was now the third most productive comics publisher behind Dell and the DC/AA combine. On paper, and in the legally required Statement of Ownership that appeared annually in each title, editorial responsibility lay with the publisher’s wife, Jean Goodman. In 253

reality, those duties fell on Vince Fago, who got the salary commensurate with the job and therefore didn’t fuss over titles. Pages continued to be filled by the dual bullpens ensconced in Timely’s offices on the 14th floor of the Empire State Building, one handling the super-hero titles, the other funny animals and comedy. But there was a noticeable difference in tone in the humor titles, which still delivered the laughs but without the raucous spirit that gave them so much personality the year before, a change directly attributable to Goodman’s decision to flood the newsstands with new product: “With so many books, new artists were being used as freelancers, and several of the staff instigators of the fun had left the company. Things had settled down into a routine that meant just cranking out those stories. Individual styles started to fade, and a sameness became pervasive. Strips that had been done for years by the same artist became homogenized or altered styles with each episode.” (Vadeboncoeur 38) This aggressive expansion was not accompanied by a burst of creativity. Virtually all the new titles were either anthologies featuring the same strips that populated the established Timely comics or solo books starring the most popular characters. The only hint of innovation in the line was a handful of titles tailored for its girl customers.

supernatural, its porcine heroes interacting with a genie, a witch, ghosts, and monsters, as well as a costumed fink called Tar-Face.

The triumvirate of “The Human Torch,” “Sub-Mariner,” and “Captain America” completely dominated the company’s adventure line, with the Torch and Namor regularly appearing in seven titles each, Cap in four titles, and the affiliated “Young Allies” in three. Episodes of “The Angel,” “The Destroyer,” “The Whizzer,” and “Miss America” were also scattered across multiple books. In fact, not a single new strip debuted this year and only one, “Terry Vance, Schoolboy Sleuth,” was discontinued. Combined with the non-stop action, grotesque villains, and unabashed jingoism that defined the Timely super-hero formula, this stability made the line a dependable monthly investment for its young clientele. The humor line followed a similar path, with “Ziggy Pig and Silly Seal” featured in six titles, “Super Rabbit” in five titles, “Tessie the Typist” in three, including solo books for all three features. Goodman’s credo was quantity over quality. His staff did their best to deliver both. The work they produced was energetic and entertaining but rarely inspired or original.

The importance of Terry-Toons Comics to Goodman’s bottom line was underscored by his two best-selling superhero books, Marvel Mystery Comics and Captain America Comics, missing months, Marvel Mystery skipping its August and November issues, Captain America its July, September, and November issues. This was no reflection on the contents of either. Aside from the sacrifice of “Terry Vance” to the 52-page format and the return of “The Human Torch” to the back pages of Cap’s book, there were no significant changes to their line-ups. Syd Shores continued to lay out and usually pencil the adventures of the Star-Spangled Sentinel and junior partner Bucky, illustrating scripts by Ray Cummings, Otto Binder, Bill Finger, and others, until he was transferred to Europe late in the year. Vince Alascia drew a good share of the balance, with Al Gabriele, Don Rico, Al Avison, Ken Bald, Allen Bellman, Jimmy Thompson, and Al Fagaly chipping in on the solo book as well as those Cap stories appearing in USA Comics, All-Winners Comics, and All Select Comics. All hewed faithfully to the formula established by Simon and Kirby: lightning-paced encounters with monstrous or otherwise horrific villains and the occasional hazardous mission behind enemy lines, leavened by Steve Rogers’s wry befuddlement of the ever-more-exasperated Sgt. Duffy. Many of the hero’s opponents were variations on or allusions to classic horror films: The Mad Monster of the Opera, The Baron of Horror Castle, The Leopard Woman, The Murder Brain, The Killer Beasts of Notre Dame. Cap and Bucky even met Frankenstein’s Monster in USA #13 (Summer). There was no paucity of Nazi or Imperial Japanese nasties to challenge the flag-draped freedom fighters, such as The Seven Sons of Satan, identical Japanese siblings posing as a single immortal killer, each growing exponentially stronger whenever a brother died; Doctor Necrosis, a hideously disfigured vampire posing as the head of a Red Cross blood drive; The Bamboo Knife Murderer; The Death Riders, a gang of hooded Japanese motorcyclists; Dr. Agony, a Nazi master of torture with hypnotic powers; The Scarecrow, The Cane, The Shadow Monster, and, inevitably, The Red Skull, as well as countless spies and enemy troops. Sometimes the bullpen’s eagerness to emulate the glory days of Simon and Kirby got the better of it—the tale of The Sea Dragon in Captain America #43 (December) was a lackluster rehash of the duo’s superior Dragon of Death story in issue #5 (July ‘41)—but the strip was consistently the line’s best super-hero series month after month.

Contractually bound to produce Terry-Toons Comics monthly, Timely kept the funny animal title on schedule, the only monthly to not skip at least one issue this year. Terry-Toons stars “Gandy and Sourpuss” spent most of the year as Marines serving in the Pacific, then were suddenly private detectives in the December issue (#27). Vince Fago handled the adventures of their studiomates “Dinky and Rudy Rooster,” introducing Dinky’s twin brother Slinky, an escaped convict, in issue #26 (November). Fago also drew and often wrote “Frenchy Rabbit and Flippit,” with Cpl. Stan Lee providing scripts when he could, as he did for Jim Mooney’s “The Ginch and E. Claude Pennygrabber.” Ernie Hart continued at the drawing board for his creations “Andy Wolf and Bertie Mouse” and “Wacky Willy,” adding Bertie’s lookalike cousin Brutie, “the strongest mouse in the world,” to the hapless Andy’s woes in issue #18 (February), and enlisting Willy in the Navy. Ed Winiarski’s “Oscar Pig and Grunty” specialized in the

The character’s popularity led to what should have been a major coup for Timely: the release of Captain America, a fifteen-chapter Republic Studios serial. But Martin Goodman, eager to cash in on Hollywood’s interest, waived any input into the production. Thus, Private Steve Name and costume aside, Republic Studios’ Captain America serial bore little resemblance to its source material. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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The Sub-Mariner’s head, vaguely triangular in the original Bill Everett version, had become bizarrely exaggerated under other artists by 1944. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Rogers became Grant Gardner, a district attorney turning to vigilante tactics to stop a mysterious criminal mastermind. Operating sans Bucky or shield and played by Dick Purcell, an actor too old and flabby for the role (in fact, he suffered a heart attack and died shortly after the serial’s completion), the movie Cap was a pale shadow of his comic book counterpart, lacking everything that made him a sales phenomenon in the first place. Captain America fans were bound to be disappointed. More importantly, the serial’s box office was not impressive, and the film industry turned its collective back on Goodman’s properties. It would be two decades before they came around again. Those masters of their elements “The Human Torch” and “Sub-Mariner” continued to helm Goodman’s flagship title Marvel Mystery Comics, plus their solo titles and berths in other Timely books. The amphibious Prince Namor held court in Human Torch, All-Winners Comics, All Select Comics, the resurrected Daring Mystery Comics minus the Mystery, and a single issue of Kid Komics, while the Torch

and boy pal Toro blazed their way through Captain America, All-Winners, All Select, Daring Comics, and a new version of Mystic Comics. This was too much work, too many pages per month for one or two artists to handle. There was no such thing as a regular artist for either strip this year, though a case could be made for Allen Simon on “Sub-Mariner” and Jimmy Thompson on “Human Torch.” Charles Nicholas, Mike Sekowsky, Allen Bellman, Carl Pfuefer, Al Avison, Bob Powell, Al Gabriele, Harry Sahle, and Alex Schomburg all had a turn at illoing one or the other. Nazis of one kind or another comprised much of the villainy faced by the Flaming Furies this year: The Jackal, Madame X, The Day, The Mole, The Brain, Herr Bat, The Wisp, and The Wolf all owed their allegiance to the Third Reich. The Cadaver, The First, Mr. Grim, and the robot hordes of Professor Svengalie [sic] were homegrown menaces who broke the pattern, as did the Torches’ trip to a fabulous floating city. Sub-Mariner ran into his share of Nazi ne’er-do-wells like The Master of Death, The Black Snake, and The Zombie Master and his army of undead saboteurs, but more commonly took on the armed forces of the enemy, U-boats earning an extra portion of his regal wrath. By this point, Namor’s head was drawn as a nearly perfect triangle, a caricature of Bill Everett’s original design begun by Carl Pfuefer that got broader over time and under less disciplined hands. It disturbs the modern eye but it didn’t seem to stop his comics from flying off the shelves (though the decision to skip the Summer issues of SubMariner Comics and Human

Torch might’ve slowed them down a hair). Their Marvel Mystery co-stars needn’t have felt slighted by the proliferation of pages devoted to the Torch and Namor. It was a good year for most of them. “The Angel,” already the back-up feature in Sub-Mariner, earned the cover slot on Mystic Comics, beginning with its new first issue (October). The series lost some of its pizazz after the horror aspects of the series were dialed down in favor of gangsters and Axis spies. Gus Schrotter was the main artist for the first three-quarters of the year before handing the art chores off to Bellman, Sekowsky, Thompson, and Don Rico. “Miss America” went Angel one better. Miss America Comics #1 (no date) made Madeleine Joyce’s other self the third comic book-born heroine after Wonder Woman and Sheena to be awarded her own solo title, an accomplishment somewhat muted by its conversion as of its second issue into the larger, thicker Miss America Magazine, patterned after Parent’s Magazine Press’ Calling All Girls and offering a similar mix of comics, articles, and photo features. Joining Miss America in the comics section was teenager “Patsy Walker,” a vivacious redheaded high school student in the suburban town of Farmdale, along with her parents Stanley and

Debuting in Miss America Magazine #2, “Patsy Walker” was Goodman’s longest-running teen humor character. A super-hero version of Patsy still appears in modern Marvel comics. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Mary, her little brother Mickey, her boyfriend Buzz Baxter, and her catty, wisecracking rival for his affections, Hedy Wolfe. The dynamic between the leads was evident from the start and carried the strip through the next twenty years and beyond, with Patsy eventually morphing into a superheroine called Hellcat in 1975. “The Patriot” made no appearances outside the pages of Marvel Mystery Comics and the strip’s highlight for the year was his relocation from New York to Washington D.C., but at least he fared better than poor “Terry Vance.” Terry solved one last mystery in Mystic Comics #2 (Fall) before slipping off into comic book history. “The Young Allies,” the patriotic kid gang led by Bucky and Toro, already appearing in Kid Komics and their eponymous solo title, added a third book to their workload, the new quarterly Amazing Comics, rechristened Complete Comics with its Winter issue (#2). Backing up the kids were USA Comics stars “The Destroyer” and “The Whizzer.” Both heroes’ strips ran elsewhere as well, Whizzer in All Select, Destroyer in Kid Komics, both in All-Winners. In Martin Goodman’s comics, even the third-string superheroes could command space in five different books. With the same eight features spread across twelve titles, there was an undeniable sameness to Timely’s line of super-heroes. The casual reader can be forgiven if they all run together in the mind’s eye. They are nonetheless far simpler to sort out than the explosion of funny animal and humor titles pouring from the world’s tall-

Timely’s humor line expanded even more aggressively than its super-hero books but again recycled the same series for each new title. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

est building. Joining the bi-monthly Comedy Comics, Joker Comics, Krazy Komics, and the quarterly All Surprise on the schedule were Funny Tunes, Comic Capers, Ideal Comics, two different incarnations of Gay Comics, and solo titles for “Super Rabbit,” “Tessie the Typist,” and “Silly Seal and Ziggy Pig,” all quarterlies, all reduced to 36 pages with their Winter issues. Goodman’s senior humor books, Comedy Comics and Joker Comics, were demoted from 60-page bi-monthlies to 52-page quarterlies following Comedy #24 (May) and Joker #16 (June). “Super Rabbit” was first among equals in Comedy, which saw no changes in its features this year beyond losing “Floop and Skilly Boo” to the cut in page count. The heroic lagomorph could also be found doing his deeds of derring-do in All Surprise, the new quarterlies Comic Capers and Ideal Comics, and his solo book, taking on such baleful malevolents as The Mad

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Monster, Dracula, and Super Nazi. An undated trial issue of Super Rabbit Comics went on sale in the spring. When it returned with its Winter issue, it was as a 36-pager. The balance of Comedy went to “Waldo Wolf and Ferdy Fox,” “Puffy Pig,” “Percy Penguin and Fizz,” “Widjit Witch,” and “Morty Monk and Buck Baboon,” who joined the Army in issue #24 (Summer), the same issue where Widjit and Krazy Komics’ The Creeper dropped in on Super Rabbit. Basil Wolverton’s “Powerhouse Pepper” was the best reason for buying Joker Comics, and the introduction of the hero’s mother, retired circus strongwoman Penelope Pepper, made it more so. Elsewhere in the title, “Eustace Hayseed” was redesigned to look like a blonde Li’l Abner while “Tessie the Typist,” her stint in the Marines either completed or forgotten, spent three issues in Hollywood after being offered a screen test but quit to become a factory worker. Neither Tessie the Typist Comics #1 nor Ziggy Pig-Silly Seal Comics #1 bore cover dates but likely debuted at the same time as Super Rabbit #1 and experienced the same months-long pause between issues. Ziggy and Silly also popped up in Ideal Comics, Comic Capers, All-Surprise, Funny Tunes, and their original home in Krazy Komics. “The Creeper and Homer” became “The Creeper and Crawler” as of Krazy #16 (Winter), its first quarterly issue, replacing all of its funny animal cast members with humans and promoting the self-styled master villain’s lookalike son to equal billing. It was business as usual for “Toughy Tomcat and Chester Chipmunk,” “Sharpy Fox,” and “Posty and Lolly,” but

endsville for “Super-Baby,” “Skinny Bones,” and “Billy and Buggy Bear.” Taking their places were “Krazy Krow,” an okay series about a corvine con artist and his ever-gullible pal Boobsey, and “Super-Soldier,” a Stan Lee-scribed Captain America parody about puny draftee Pvt. Percy Private being accidentally transformed into a super-hero by a blundering Nazi spy. The casts of Comedy and Krazy were also the casts of Ideal Comics, Funny Tunes, Comic Capers, and All-Surprise Comics, just in different combinations (plus Terry-Toons’ “Gandy and Sourpuss” in All-Surprise). Aside from a few forgettable one-page fillers, not a single new strip debuted in any of these books, nor in Gay Comics, which ran extra episodes of the Joker roster. A March-dated first issue was followed in the fall by a second issue numbered #18, one of the inexplicable glitches in numbering that can make following Timely’s history so very challenging. Joining Miss America Magazine and the quarterly Miss Fury Comics on the newsstands at year’s end was Junior Miss, a one-shot catering to female buyers through such features as “Betty Lane, Reporter;” “Peggy Brooks,” a never-seen-again teen humor strip; biographies of Frank Sinatra and June Allyson; and a series of “Junior Miss Fashion” pages drawn by Pauline Loth purportedly displaying the latest styles for teenage girls. If intended as an ongoing series, it missed the mark. Junior Miss was the only new title from the company not continued into 1945, the sole failure in a year of successful exploitation of the Timely brand.

Doin’ the Newsprint Shuffle Though displaying little of Martin Goodman’s voracity, two other comics publishers did take a page from his playbook, shoring up their lines with paper originally earmarked for their pulps. This mimicry did not extend to content. M.L.J. Magazines owners John Goldwater, Louis Silberkleit, and Maurice Coyne opted not to ape Timely’s balance between humor and heroics. The cancellations of Shield-Wizard Comics and Zip Comics cemented the move away from costumed heroes begun the previous year. “The Hangman,” “Steel Ster-

Alert “Archie” readers may have noticed the switch from Harry Sahle to Bill Vigoda as the series’ primary artist, but for most the transition was nearly invisible. TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

ling,” “The Wizard,” “Red Rube,” “The Boy Buddies,” and even “Stuporman” all got the proverbial hook. By the end of the year, only “The Shield” and “The Black Hood” were still standing, the former playing second fiddle to “Archie” in Pep Comics, the latter confined to his quarterly solo book and the back pages of Pep. After ousting the Hood from Top Notch Laugh Comics, editor Harry Shorten completed its metamorphosis into the allcomedy Laugh Comix (an early use of that alternate spelling, later adopted by the underground comics scene of the 1960s). The children’s title Jolly Jingles folded at year’s end, leaving M.L.J. with only the bi-monthly Archie Comics and five quarterlies— Pep, Laugh, Black Hood, plus new solo titles Wilbur Comics and Super Duck Comics—maintaining its presence on the nation’s newsstands. Buoyed by the popularity of his radio series, “Archie” reigned supreme as M.L.J.’s chief moneymaker. New characters continued to be introduced into the strip. Pop Tate, owner of the gang’s favorite hangout (not yet called the Choklit Shoppe), became a permanent fixture, still welcoming Riverdale’s teens in the 21st century. Others, like Grandpa Andrews or the gossipy Gabby a.k.a. “the town radio station,” were used as needed but never caught on like Veronica, Reggie, or the perpetually apoplectic Principal Weatherbee. Oscar, the 257

bucktoothed hero’s faithful pooch, turned out to be misnamed: “he” had puppies in Archie Comics #6 (January-February), and was awarded her own back-up feature the following issue. Seasonal stories became routine, with Archie and his pals ‘n’ gals celebrating Christmas, Halloween, and April Fools Day. The latest fads and buzzwords began to crop up, like the zoot suit Fred Andrews ended up wearing to a business dinner after a long series of hilarious mishaps, which helped make the series a time capsule of its era, a role it has continued to play in pop culture over the succeeding seven decades. Aided by Ginger Drury and Janice Valleau, Harry Sahle handled the art for the misadventures of America’s Typical Teen, sometimes writing episodes as well, until he left M.L.J. in the fall to launch his own teen humor feature at Quality. Taking his place as the primary “Archie” artist was William “Bill” Vigoda, a sculptor and painter who took up comics for the sake of a steady paycheck. Vigoda, the younger brother of actor Abe of The Godfather and Barney Miller fame, held that status through the end of the decade, turning out hundreds of pages. In addition to the “Oscar” strip, the back pages of the bi-monthly Archie Comics were filled with a blend of spin-offs from the cover feature and Joe Edwards’ funny animal strips “Cubby” and “Bumbie the Bee-

“Señor Banana” down with it. “Wilbur,” “Ginger,” and “The Slap-Happy Applejacks” moved to Top Notch. Shield-Wizard Comics preceded Zip into oblivion, the plug pulled following the Spring issue (#13). It was the last appearance of The Man with the Super Brain and his little chum Roy the Super Boy until the super-hero craze of the mid-’60s resurrected Wizard and most of his costumed cronies. Top Notch Laugh Comics went through numerous changes over the year, with series coming and going at a rapid clip. “The Black Hood” and “Señor Siesta” were moved to other titles to make room for “Wilbur” and “The Twiddles,” a fun domestic comedy by Bill Woggon featuring lazy husband Talbert, practical wife Tootsie, grandfather Doc, and town gossip Fanny Twitch. Woggon’s other strip, “Dotty and Ditto,” began a new storyline filled with tongue-in-cheek melodrama as gold digger Fifi Glamour set her sights on dude ranch guest Tommy Scanville, heir to an asbestos fortune. The title was renamed Laugh Comix and demoted to a quarterly with issue #46 (Summer). Supporting players “Betty and Veronica” (the billing was often reversed in the early episodes) received their own back-up feature in 1944, with Ginger Drury handling much of the art duties. TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

The outlook for Jolly Jingles was much grimmer. “Super Duck,” redesigned a tad by Ed Goggin to lessen his resemblance to Donald, graduated to his own comic, but lost first his costume, then his superpowers. Most of his co-stars were left behind. “Woody the Woodpecker,” “Judge Owl’s Fables,” “Snuggy, the Bug in the Rug,” “Li’l Chief Bugaboo,” and “Goony Gremlin” joined their super-heroic brethren in oblivion. That the title’s creative staff was down to just Dave Higgins and Ellis Chambers by the end suggests that the editors had already written it off before the order came down to cancel it.

Tective,” with Red Holmdale occasionally illustrating Edwards’ scripts to give his drawing hand some downtime. The only secondary feature to appear in every 1944dated issue was “Betty and Veronica” (sometimes billed as “Veronica and Betty”). Ginger Drury drew most of the episodes, with Bill Vigoda taking over after she followed Harry Sahle out the door. The “Jughead” series, in which the sleepy-eyed second banana played straight man to cousin Souphead (real name Remington Salsbury, Jr.), got the axe when the title was downsized to 52 pages.

Co-publisher John Goldwater had explicitly ordered the launch of Wilbur Comics as a hedge against the crop of imitation Archies poking their heads up around the industry. If kids were going to buy such imitations anyway, why shouldn’t Archie’s own company make money from it too? Such thinking made one point clear: the entire weight of M.L.J.’s future now rested on the slim shoulders of the young Mr. Andrews, the licensing fees generated by his

The presence of Archie on the cover and inside Pep Comics couldn’t prevent the publishing house’s longest-running title from skipping its April issue or from being demoted to a quarterly with issue #50 (September). The Shield and kid sidekick Dusty, still drawn by co-creator Irv Novick with occasional fill-ins by Clem Weisbecker and Pen Shumaker, were able to hold on to their spot in the comic. Other series weren’t as lucky. “Catfish Joe” and “Li’l Chief Bugaboo” were relocated to other titles, but “Marco Loco” took his last journey in Pep #50. Filling the void was “The Black Hood,” exiled from his original home in Top Notch. The adventures of Kip Burland’s black-andyellow clad alter ego were no less violent for the transition, here or in the quarterly Black Hood Comics, as he took on such nefarious baddies as the living puppets of Panlino, a homicidal bibliophile named The Bookworm, The Crime Baron, and Blackbeard. He even found himself wielding the enchanted sword Excalibur. The Weisbecker-Shumaker team provided much of the art for “Black Hood,” spelled by Novick, Vigoda, Al Fagaly, and Don Rico. Pep’s longtime companion Zip Comics fell victim to the shift in editorial emphasis. It too skipped an issue, then became a quarterly. The Summer issue (#47) was its last, taking “Steel Sterling,” “Red Rube,” and

Super-heroes became an endangered species at MLJ following the cancellations of Zip Comics and Shield-Wizard Comics. TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

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multiple media giving him a cultural prominence of central importance to the bottom line. Creator and scripter Walter Gibson could be depended on to find suitable opposition for Lamont Cranston’s night-shrouded alter ego, with costumed fiends like The Red Mask, The Python, and The Green Ghoul. Shadow’s months-long duel with Monstrodamus came to a satisfactory conclusion in the January Shadow Comics (#10, but actually the 34th issue), but he soon found other foes worthy of multiple-episode confrontations. Professor Solarus took three installments to beat. The Death Master required four. The Shadow also spent two episodes aiding the Kura, the pro-democracy Japanese underground, a rare acknowledgement that the Empire’s citizens were not some sort of hive mind controlled by the generals. Issue #2/38 (May) introduced The White Lama, the Asian holy man who taught Cranston how to cloud men’s minds. Art chores for “The Shadow” were shared by the Gibson Studio’s art director Charles Coll, Al Bare, and Thornton Fischer, whose open, cartoony style ill-suited the strip.

The new emphasis on humor at MLJ led to solo books for “Super Duck” and “Wilbur.” TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

radio program supplying a lifeline to keep the company afloat until paper restrictions were lifted. Things went more smoothly for the comics line of another pulp publisher. Street & Smith, though hurting from the same sales slump affecting its competitors, was able to release its two monthlies, Shadow Comics and Super-Magician Comics, and three bimonthlies on schedule. The only concession to the reality of rationing was the line’s reduction to 60 pages with the year’s first issues and 52 with the last. “The Shadow” remained the big dog in the Street & Smith kennel, his use in

With his own book cancelled, “Doc Savage” settled for the #2 spot in Shadow Comics, displacing the jungle boy series “Beebo” as of the January issue. Writer Ed Gruskin and semiregular artist Al Bare took Doc back to his roots, abandoning the hooded cloak with its mystic gem and the superpowers that came with it to return Clark Savage, Jr., to his original role as a genius polymath and largerthan-life champion of justice. “Chick Carter,” the teenage son of private eye “Nick Carter” and a fine sleuth in his own right, joined the roster. Born in the pulps like his father and the star of his own radio series, the boy detective appeared in all but the December issue, yielding his place for that month to his famous father. Aside from a special team-up of The Shadow and Nick Carter in issue #36 (March), the rest of the back pages were occupied by various one-off biographies, including a two-issue puff piece on FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. The heroes of Shadow Comics had made it through the transition from the Jack Binder shop to Walter Gibson’s without much effect. It hadn’t 259

worked out as well for Blackstone, the titular star of Super-Magician Comics. New artist James Hammon was a perfectly acceptable draftsman, but with three tales of the famed showman and his traveling companion Rhoda per issue instead of the single long narrative seen in earlier issues, there wasn’t a lot of room left for him to strut his stuff. As a result, Hammon’s layouts were cramped and his backgrounds lacked the atmosphere and air of authenticity Binder and Charles Sultan had provided. Most episodes depicted Blackstone bringing down dangerous cults or exposing the fraudulently supernatural, but issue #26 (June) saw him combatting the Magorians, extradimensional invaders intent on sharing their advanced technology with Imperial Japan. With Red Dragon Comics cancelled following its January issue (#9), the loincloth-clad mystic with the Komodo dragon sidekick became the primary back-up feature in Super-Magician, the only secondary series besides the “Blackstone’s Tricks” how-to text articles to appear in every 1944 issue. Numerous other strips, many of them one-offs, rotated in and out of the title, including a three-parter starring comedians “Olsen and Johnson,” the Charles Wessell military humor strips “Gobs o’ Fun” and “Corkey and Bobo,” and stray episodes of “Tao Anwar” and “Tigerman.” Street & Smith’s most consistent title, in terms of both content and entertainment value, was Supersnipe Comics. Virtually the entire comic was the work of artist George Marcoux and writer Ed Gruskin, the duo producing not only the title feature but the spin-offs “Ulysses Q. Wacky, Boy Inventor” and “Wing Woo Woo,” both members of Supersnipe’s supporting cast. Between the would-be super-hero’s rivalry with Roxy Adams a.k.a. The Girl Guerrilla, Wacky’s elaborate inventions (often depicted in loving detail in a full-page panel), and the introduction of Herlock Dolmes, a boy detective sporting a deerstalker cap and a coat three times longer than he was tall, the creative team were able to keep Koppy McFad’s exploits fresh. Through a combination of courage and dumb luck, the four kids proved surprisingly effective against the real crooks and spies who crossed their paths, including The

tracted by war. Beginning in that same issue, the back pages were filled by long features explaining some facet of science such as gravity, inertia, or the electron alternating with articles and photo features usually but not always devoted to aviation. Bill Barnes had been an underperformer saleswise. It remained to be seen if its replacement would do better.

Hood, a genuinely menacing costumed villain. Marcoux’s personality-laden characters and energetic action scenes made Supersnipe hands down the best-drawn comic in the line. Gruskin also scribed the obligatory text story, making “Supersnipe’s Diary” one of the book’s most delightful assets by writing as The Boy with the Most Comic Books in the World, reproducing the eccentric spelling and slipshod grammar of a preadolescent boy:

Business As Usual

“JAN 13, 194—… Wacky who has bin stayin with us cuz his mom and pop has bin outa town, has gone home as of today. Im back to normal ruteen which means no more invenshuns o’ Wacky’s hangin all over my room doin such things like a alarm clock that pulled us outa bed every mornin, burglar traps wich trapt my pop in mushy cement 1 nite wich made him send us to bed erly, book traps for theevs wich every time you take a book from a shelf snaps hard on your figers sompun feerce, an a lotta other things like that wich made my room like a chamber o’ horrors in a Boris Karlof piture. I gotta admit Wacky is a smart guy to invent all that stuff. But I’m glad he aint bein smart in my room no longer.”

While Martin Goodman and Ned Pines were scrambling to see who could dump more product on the newsstands, other publishing houses kept their heads down, content with what titles they had and the steady income accrued thereby. Such was the case with Fiction House, its twin trios of monthlies and bi-monthlies delivering the expected genre thrills without missing a single issue. While the most popular strips ran unimpeded, a few lesser series went away, some due to the drop to 52 pages, others replaced by new features. “Sky Girl” and “Tiger Girl” were the kind of strong, take-charge heroines that Fiction House did so well, worthy companions to “Sheena,” “Gale Allen,” “Señorita Rio,” “Glory Forbes,” and “Jane Martin.” Every title now boasted at least one female-headed series, while attractive women, good and bad, appeared in nearly every other strip, all served up with a generous dollop of the company’s trademark cheesecake. The Roche & Iger studio produced most of the content in 1944, backed by freelancers answering to the editorial staff headed by co-publisher and managing editor Jack Byrne.

The only strip in the title not from the Gruskin-Marcoux team was “Huckleberry Finn,” a sequel to the Mark Twain classic by 70-year-old Clare “Dwig” Dwiggins, whose career as a cartoonist dated back to 1897 and included the long-running syndicated strips School Days and Nipper. Dwiggins’ version included many fantasy elements that would never have occurred to Twain, as when the ghost of an inventor guided Huck and pal Tom Sawyer to his greatest invention, the Robot Duck, in which the boys spent the rest of the series visiting exotic locales and experiencing adventures that would’ve made Injun Joe turn tail and run for his life.

“Sky Girl” was an aviation strip starring “ferry pilot extraordinary” Ginger McGuire, a spirited redhead who first took flight in Jumbo Comics #68 (October). No creator credits are known for the early episodes, which claimed the pages formerly occupied by “Inspector Dayton.” Jumbo cover star “Sheena, Queen of the Jungle” spent much of the year on the trail of a man-eating lion named Bobtail, who ironically saved the fur-clad heroine’s life in one story before escaping. Along the way, Sheena mixed it up with a tribe of Ostrich-Men, a con woman posing as the jungle queen, and Doranda, monarch of Forbidden Valley. The war was never mentioned. The time travel series “Stuart Taylor” spent the year as a group effort by the Iger shop, with multiple hands working on each installment, as was true of isolated episodes of “ZX-5” and “The Hawk,” who added a sexy she-pirate named Velvet to his crew in Jumbo #65 (June). Following that same issue’s finale, the horse strip “Midnight” was permanently stabled. Later “Sheena” and “Sky Girl” stories included touch-ups by a new artist soon to become one of the industry’s most sought-after talents. Clarence Matthew “Matt” Baker was a 23-year-old North Carolinian with only a few courses at Cooper Union under his belt when he walked into the Roche & Iger offices late in the summer of 1944. Jerry Iger, who considered Baker one of his greatest discoveries, recalled decades later:

Joining Supersnipe and the non-fiction True Sport Picture Stories on the bi-monthly schedule was Air Ace, a continuation of Bill Barnes, America’s Air Ace with its numbering reset. Barnes himself continued to hold the lead slot in the title until replaced in issue #3 (May) by Charles Wessell’s “The Four Musketeers,” in which four elite soldiers—Bull from the U.S., Tommy from Britain, Ivan from the U.S.S.R., and Lee from China—were recruited as special operatives for the Allied Bureau of Investigation, their main task to oppose The Cobra, leader of an organization of masked fascists conspiring to seize power while the world was dis-

Fiction House added two newcomers to its roster of kick-ass heroines this year, “Tiger Girl” and “Sky Girl.” TM and © respective copyright holder.

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“[Baker] came to my studio … handsome and nattily dressed, ‘looking for a job,’ as he put it. His only sam-

ple was a color sketch of—naturally—a beautiful gal! On the strength of that and a nod from my associate editor Ruth Roche, he was hired as a background artist.… When given his first script, he showed originality and faithfully executed its story line. His drawing was superb. His women were gorgeous!” (Beccatini 37) Baker was just beginning to get noticed, but Lily Reneé had impressed the editorial staff sufficiently the previous year to warrant all the assignments she could handle, adding Ranger Comics’ “The Werewolf Hunter” and Fight Comics’ “Señorita Rio” to her existing gig on “Jane Martin,” all benefiting from the Austriaborn artist’s gift for drawing luscious women. Nurse-turned-spy Jane was a highlight of Wings Comics, which dropped the non-fiction “Yank Aces of World War II” and the anthology series adapting the pulp stories of the fictional Capt. Derek West when the format changed, leaving “Wing Tips” the only surviving true aviation feature. Neophyte artist Gene Colan drew the December installment, five issues after the professional debut of another future superstar of the medium, 18-year-old University of North Carolina drop-out Murphy Anderson.

The photogenic Matt Baker, one of the most influential African-American artists in comic book history, got his start in the industry this year at Fiction House.

The ruler of a lost civilization in early issues of Jungle Comics (left), “Camilla, Queen of the Jungle” had morphed into an imitation “Sheena” by 1944. TM and © respective copyright holder.

The formerly fearsome “Fantomah” reached the end of her run in Jungle Comics #51 (March), the title’s only casualty for the year. Its other features rarely deviated from the formulas that made them work, though “Captain Terry Thunder” was still purging itself of the comedy elements that defined it for a time, placing comic relief Andy the Arab on trial for a murder he didn’t commit. Thunder successfully exonerated him, but Andy was thereafter reduced to a minor background character, sometimes going an entire episode without a single line of dialogue. “Kaänga,” “Wambi,” and “Simba” continued to entertain in the same vein they had from the beginning, but a Jungle reader of 1940 would be hardpressed to recognize the “Camilla, Queen of the Jungle Empire” of 1944. Once ruler of an exotic hidden kingdom, Camilla was now a straight-up Sheena clone, with only her blonde hair, her zebra-skin bikini, and her lack of a supporting cast distinguishing her from the Jumbo star. A similar character made a splashy debut in the June Fight Comics (#32), replacing the worn-out “Dusty Rhodes.” Raised by Abdola, faithful Sikh servant of her late father, in a hidden temple deep in the African jungle, the half-Indian, half-Irish “Tiger Girl” was the rightful heir to the throne of Vishnu but preferred the life primeval. Wielding a whip and accompanied by twin Bengal tigers, Bezali and Togara, the heroine’s credo was simple: “Help those in need and the gods will smile.” “Sheena” artist Bob Webb drew the early episodes, heightening the resemblance between the two. She and “Señorita Rio” were the big draws of Fight, which otherwise played host 261

to the same kind of competent but unexciting war and espionage series that filled the pages of Wings. Planet Comics gave up “Auro, Lord of Jupiter” on downsizing to 52 pages with its May issue (#30), followed by “Norge Benson” three issues later. That strip was replaced by “Life on Other Worlds,” a fanciful extrapolation of what life might look like on the solar system’s other planets. Despite its supposed scientific credibility, the aliens presented therein were only marginally less fantastical than the BEMs regularly rampaging through Planet’s other series. The sci-fi title sported arguably the line’s best cover art, always featuring a leggy, scantily clad beauty in danger regardless of whether “Gale Allen and the Girl Squadron,” “Space Rangers,” “Star Pirate,” or “The Lost World” was the featured strip. The same proved true for the covers of Rangers Comics, though the women were more likely to be fully dressed. This was not as deceptive as it might seem, for gorgeous gals somehow managed to insert themselves into the action of even the book’s most gung-ho war series. Oddly enough, the one strip besides “Glory Forbes” where inclusion of a female character every episode didn’t feel forced, “Private Elmer Pippin and the Colonel’s Daughter,” wound up a casualty of the cut in pages. Nonetheless, it was clear that Fiction House had committed itself to using pin-up style art outside and inside of every one of its six titles to keep the older readership it was trying to attract coming back for more. Diverting newsprint from its pulp line, Crestwood Publications came just one issue short of keeping the monthly Prize Comics and the quarterly Headline Comics on schedule.

With original editor Reese Rosenfield off serving in the Navy, Samuel Bierman oversaw production. Bierman replaced a few back-up features in both books but otherwise seems to have performed his editorial duties with a light hand. There may be one exception, if it was his influence that briefly sidetracked Dick Briefer’s reconceptualization of “Frankenstein” from horror to humor. In Prize #39 (February), the monster was captured by the Nazis, brainwashed, and set loose on a murderous rampage through occupied territory. When the treatment wore off, he pretended to still be under the influence long enough to smash the machine responsible and exact revenge on its operators. After a mission alongside the German underground, Frankenstein fell under the hypnotic control of Zora, a vampire, and Rollo, the 200-year-old zombie of the soldier she loved. The trio behaved horrifically for an episode or two before moving to New York, opening a hotel for visiting monsters, and settling back into comedy. Elsewhere in Prize, “Yank and Doodle” continued to partner with The Black Owl unaware their own father was beneath the Owl’s hood, until the neophyte mystery-man got framed for murder in the September issue (#45) and it was up to the boys to clear his name. Maurice Del Bourgo was the artist for all but one episode, one indicator among several that the Bernard Baily shop was now packaging much of the Crestwood line’s content, with the balance provided by the Ferstadt shop. The lamoid “Airmale,” now teamed with a kid sidekick burdened with the awful action name of Stampy, was put out of its misery following issue #43 (June), replaced by “Boom Boom Brannigan,” in which college professor Dennis Brannigan became a champion prizefighter to prove a math theorem, devoting his new-found skills to crimefighting after Zeus commanded him to help the present-day incarnation of Pandora counter the evils she released from her fabled box. It was an interesting premise, helped by the art of Charles Voight, taking over from Dan Zolnerowich and Ramona Patenaude with the second episode. Newcomer “Worldbeater and Unggh” was a scifi romp from Fred Morgan about a

time traveler from the 30th century and his caveman pal who wound up stranded in 1944, where his plans to use his knowledge of future science to become rich and powerful in the present were continually thwarted by his ignorance of contemporary culture. Morgan also provided the art for the first four episodes before Gus Schrotter began illustrating his scripts. Morgan’s other series, the pointless “Flying Fist and Bingo,” was replaced as of Prize #48 by “Prince Ra.” Cursed with immortality and condemned by the sun god Ra to use his magic only for good, Yussuf of Nahas, an Egyptian sorcerer, and his Nubian manservant Hykos, fought Nazis and other evildoers in the present. The strip borrowed heavily from other, better series but the hero’s owl-shaped Golden Airship was pretty cool. Headline Comics exhibited more stability, dropping only one strip during 1944. “Perry Allen” yielded his pages to “Kinker Kinkaid,” a boys’ adventure series that couldn’t make up its mind what it was. It began as the Algeresque tale of runaway orphan Llewellyn “Kinker” Kinkaid, whose courage, determination, and discipline earned him a job assisting pretty lion tamer Mary Wilson for Proctor’s Circus. However, in the second episode, he was a schoolboy who prevented the murder of his teacher. The following issue, he was back with the circus. Confused readers could take refuge in the straightforward adventures of Headline’s other features “The Junior Rangers,” “Buck Saunders and His Pals,” the timetraveling “Tom Morgan,” and “Cliff Gordon.” Axis villainy predominated, but The Junior Rangers leaned more

towards the fantastical, meeting the son of Merlin, fighting monsters summoned by Nazi sorcerers, and being shrunk to doll-size by fiendish Dr. Ogo. The Crestwood line played it safe for the most part, sticking with the characters and genres that had kept it in business to this point. The only real risk the company assumed this year was in its business relationship with Bernard Baily. Since that relationship resulted in a general improvement in the quality of the art throughout the line, it would seem to have paid off handsomely. Improved artwork was also a hallmark of the 1944 comics published by Parents’ Magazine Press. Head honcho George Hecht, perhaps prodded by the disdain shown for his line in the previous year’s Child Study Association industry survey, may have decided to pay packager Funnies, Inc., a higher page rate. On the other hand, new managing editor Beatrice Lewi may have insisted on the change, or maybe studio manager Grace Jacquet made the call unilaterally. Regardless, the result was the same: the overall quality of art in the monthly True Comics and Calling All Girls, as well as the quarterly True Aviation Picture Stories, was noticeably better than at any time since the publisher’s earliest days. Most of the contents were consistent with past issues, but True began running regular series, beginning with “Our Good Neighbor,” spotlighting a different Latin American nation in each installment. It was later succeeded by “Cavalcade of England,” a multi-part history of Great Britain scripted by Dr. Joseph H. Park

Every episode of True Comics’ “Special Agent” strip closed with a message from J. Edgar Hoover. The media-savvy FBI director used comic books to boost his agency’s reputation as readily as he did print, film, radio, and later, television. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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of New York University. Of more interest to the average reader was “Special Agent of the FBI,” a lightly fictionalized true crime strip that began every episode with the statement:

of his strips but Greenwood had succumbed to heart disease the previous year. Paul Berandier had taken over “Spark Man” and “Triple Terror” while various artists including Ginger Drury (the only one to sign her work) tended to “Mirror Man.” Reprints from the three series’ super-heroic days occupied the back half of the 128-page Jim Hardy Comics Book released through proxy publisher Spotlight. Why the otherwise respectable United Feature chose to collaborate on a comic that was almost certainly printed on black market paper is a puzzlement.

“This series is presented with the cooperation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The situations presented in this series are true, and the characters are authentic with the exception of [series lead] ‘Steve Saunders,’ who has been created as a typical example of the caliber of men who make up the intelligent and courageous personnel of the F.B.I.” J. Edgar Hoover appeared regularly, giving the strip’s violent retellings of the agency’s cases a veneer of respectability Crime Does Not Pay could only dream of. Not that it mattered. Parents’ comics remained a minor presence on the newsstands, the line owing its financial stability to the educational and civic organizations that bought the books in bulk. No such special consideration was required to keep the money rolling in for the David McKay Company. Its line-up of proven favorites from the funny pages kept kids coming back. King Comics, Ace Comics, and Magic Comics, McKay’s three monthlies starring the King Features Syndicate characters, survived the new reduction in page count unscathed, dropping only a few “top strips” and fillers. Only three 36-page issues of the irregularly published Feature Book were released in 1944, two devoted to “Blondie,” one to “The Katzenjammer Kids.” The company’s experimental 15¢ quarterly American Library, which featured condensed adaptations of current bestsellers, branched out from war memoirs this year, adapting Niven Busch’s controversial western Duel in the Sun, which dealt in interracial romance, and the Perry Mason mystery “The Case of the Crooked Candle,” but the title’s format, combining a half-page of copy with a single illustration, was not embraced by young readers, and the book disappeared from newsstands following its sixth issue. While United Feature Syndicate also relied on the star power of its own

Even United Feature skirted the paper restrictions by using a proxy to publish this 128-page all-reprint title. TM and © respective copyright holder.

newspaper strips, only the quarterly Comics on Parade dealt exclusively in strip reprints, “Nancy and Fritzi Ritz” claiming two issues, “Li’l Abner” and “The Captain and the Kids” the others. The line’s two monthlies, flagship book Tip Top Comics and Sparkler Comics, included original content as well. Tip Top, which skipped its May issue to preserve newsprint, offered Bernard Dibble’s “Bill Bumlin,” a strange but funny fantasy about a race of winged hobos, and the former super-heroes “The Mirror Man” and “The Triple Terror,” both now straight war strips. Sparkler carried “The Spark Man,” the other series co-created by Fred Methot and Reg Greenwood which also saw its lead exchange his costume for khakis, and Dibble’s “El Bombo.” Methot still scripted all three

The pioneering Famous Funnies, now billing itself as “the favorite comic book on the fighting front and home front,” remained the flagship title of the small line from Eastern Color. After experimenting with original content for a time, the book had reverted to an all-reprint formula, trusting “Buck Rogers,” “Scorchy Smith,” “Dickie Dare,” “Big Chief Wahoo,” “Invisible Scarlet O’Neil,” and their cohorts to keep the dimes pouring in. Significantly, the company released no solo titles for its syndicated stars this year, not even for the perennially popular Buck, the first time since 1939 the publisher had failed to do so. Eastern’s other titles, the bi-monthlies Jingle Jangle Comics and Heroic Comics, took turns keeping Famous Funnies company on the shelves. Anchored by the inspired nonsense of George Carlson, Jingle Jangle added several new strips to keep “Jingle Jangle Tales,” “Bingo’s Frolics in Fairy Tale Land” (renamed “Bingo and Glum in Fairy Tale Land” mid-year), “Hortense the Lovable Brat,” and “The Pie-Eyed Prince of Pretzelberg” company. Two,

Eastern Color editor Stephen Douglas wrote and drew the first episode of “Aunty Spry” before handing the art duties off to others. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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strips on their own time. Others, like Jack Warren and Gus Schrotter, gave up their Novelty Press assignments.

“Chauncey Chirp and Johnny Jay” and “Susie Spring and Her Offspring” were funny animal series by Dave Tendlar. The third, “Aunty Spry,” starred an old woman beloved by the kids of her lower-class neighborhood for her carefree, youthful antics. Created and designed by Eastern editor Stephen Douglas, later episodes were drawn by Ray Willner, Allen Ulmer, and Ben Levin. Heroic remained split between true war stories and a shrinking roster of superpowered crusaders. Changes in the art of the latter hint at an end to the working relationship between Funnies, Inc. and Eastern Color. Although Henry Kiefer, who took over “Hydroman” with issue #23 (March), booked an occasional job through the packaging service, none of the other artists working on the book in the latter half of the year had any known association with it. His “Wonder Woman” duties led H.G, Peter to give up “Man o’ Metal.” Most of his successors strove to mimic Peter’s distinctive look—save for the unidentified maverick who used an illustrative style in the September issue (#26)—including a rookie named Seymour Pearlstein, later an award-winning illustrator and chairman of the City University of New York Art and Advertising Design Department.

After a last hurrah for “Sub-Zero” in Blue Bolt #44 (March), “The Target and The Targeteers” were Novelty Press’ sole remaining costumed crimefighters, though as military men on active duty they sometimes spent entire stories in uniform instead of in tights. Regardless of how their leads were dressed, scripter George Kapitan and illustrator Bill Allison sent them against a long line of nasty Nazi agents but did so in fast-paced, tidily structured stories that seldom insulted the older reader’s intelligence or trivialized the realities of war. Two new series joined “Pete Stockbridge, Alias The Chameleon,” “Speck, Spot and Sis,” “The Cadet,” and “Dan’l Flannel” in the back of Target Comics, replacing Harold DeLay’s “Stories of the United Nations” and the inane “Al T. Tude.” “Candid Charlie” was an overenthusiastic teenage shutterbug forever stumbling into trouble, including kidnappers, Axis agents, and Mexican banditos, in pursuit of his passion. A light-hearted series with a likeable lead, it was the work of B. Gordon Guth, whose style bore a loose resemblance to that of Boody Rogers. Its opposite in tone was “18 Men and a Boat,” the true story of a Navy crew caught within enemy-held territory following the Japanese attack on the Philippines and their courageous journey back to safe waters, adapted by Thomas P. “Tom” Gill from the bestseller of the same name. “Bull’s Eye Bill” graciously sat out a couple of issues after the cut in page count so the five-part adaptation could run its course. Bill was transferred to his own ranch as a special investigator for the Army, where he confronted black marketeers, cattle rustlers, spies, and others up to no damn good. He yielded his spot again in the December Target (#54) to “Al T. Tude, Aviation Cadet.” Despite the name, this was not a revival of the silly “Gooperman” character but a straight strip about a pilot trainee.

Its connection to Curtis Publishing had long meant that Novelty Press could offer some of the industry’s best page rates for its comic books. From the beginning of its arrangement with Funnies, Inc., its three titles had rated the studio’s best available talent. But the paper shortage forced Curtis to reevaluate its priorities and comics weren’t high on the list. Some belt-tightening was needed, beyond skipping the July and September issues of Target Comics and Blue Bolt or converting them into 52-pagers like the quarterly 4Most. Robert D. Wheeler replaced Stanley Beaman at the editorial desk and, with the assistance of associate editor Jane Spaulding Nye, assistant editor Peggy Ann Crowley, and new art director Mel Cummin, decided to deal directly with freelancers rather than using a packager. The switch didn’t seem to have much effect on the comics themselves, as several writers and artists continued their

It seemed there was always an arrogant new cadet that needed “Dick Cole, Wonder Boy,” the lead-off feature of Blue Bolt, to put him in his place. This happened so often this year it seemed like the new creative team of Jim Wilcox and George Kapitan couldn’t think of any other plot worth pursuing, save for the occasional brush with foreign agents. The title’s namesake, meanwhile, had drifted far from his days as a costumed champion, his electrical powers faded away or forgotten. His was a now a war strip, better executed than many but nothing extraordinary. For that, the book had “Sergeant Spook.” Under the direction of artist John Jordan (literally, in issue #43) and new writer George Kapitan, the phantom patrolman was once more rubbing elbows with his fellow spirits, encountering historical celebs Balboa, Cortez, Davy Crockett, Sam Houston, Ponce de Leon, and Peter Stuyvesant, and dealing with Shubach, the ghost of a classical composer obsessed with swing music. In the December Blue Bolt (#51), Spook acquired his “zephyr-cycle,” an ethereal motorbike complete with sidecar so his little friend Jerry could join him in action. After wrapping up an ongoing storyline about his heroes’ time with the See-Bees, Jack Warren handed “Krisko and Jasper” over to Milt Hammer, who did a fine job of replicating Warren’s style and sense of humor, here and on Target’s “Speck, Spot and Sis.” The title’s best art was invariably found in “Edison Bell,” where Harold DeLay brought his illustrative

The five-issue adaptation of Lt. Cmdr. John Morrill’s memoir 18 Men and a Boat was one of the best non-fiction war strips, thanks in no small part to the art of Tom Gill. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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skills to bear on the boy inventor’s exploits, but that’s not to say there wasn’t good art to be found elsewhere in its pages. In fact, the art generally improved throughout the line following the editorial reorganization, suggesting the executives at Curtis may have had more in mind than merely saving money. The Columbia Comic Corporation had a problem. Its owners’ insistence on using their line to boost the visibility of their syndicated strips at the expense of original content finally pushed original editor Vin Sullivan over the brink. With his own Magazine Enterprises brand beginning to take off, Sullivan decided he no longer needed to live with the frustration. The June issue of Big Shot (#46) was the last released with his name on the masthead, though he had left several months before that comic went on sale. It took an additional three issues before a new name, Thomas DeAngelo, replaced it. Paper rationing resulted in only ten issues of the monthly title, and that was the entirety of Columbia’s output for 1944 under its own name. Publisher Charles V. McAdams and business manager Frank J. Markey struck deals with a pair of proxy publishers to release new issues of the annual Joe Palooka, Mickey Finn, and Sparky Watts solo books, low-overhead, all-reprint titles that meant a quick transfusion of cash. Sparky’s syndicated strip was cancelled after creator Boody Rogers was drafted, but its superhuman star lived on in new stories created for the comic books, some by Rogers, some by unidentified other hands, starting with Big Shot #45 (April). “Skyman” illustrator Ogden Whitney and “The Face” artist Mart Bailey remained with their characters throughout the year, but co-creator and writer Gardner Fox was no longer with Columbia. This may explain the new direction both strips took. In Big Shot #45, Tony Trent was captured by the Japanese, spending months as a POW enduring horrific tortures. In his absence, his Marine buddy Bill Soggans took over the Face identity, risking court martial and prison if caught, until Trent was finally rescued in issue #51 (November). The previous issue saw Skyman, back in America after months of helping out on the frontlines, first don his “Icarus-Cape,” which gave the costumed aviator the power to glide like Fawcett’s Captain Midnight. Was this a sign of desperation or a beneficial injection of fresh thinking? Given the departures of Fox and Sullivan, it was probably a bit of both.

Columbia’s “Skyman” lost the services of original writer Gardner Fox but gained the astonishing Icarus-Cape, allowing him to fly sans plane. TM and © respective holder.

in addition to regular outlets, both titles were profitable, enough so that Sullivan could begin putting funds aside for that approaching day when the war would end and the publisher could turn Magazine Enterprises into the kind of comics line he had hoped to develop at Columbia.

Opportunity Knocks Magazine Enterprises was not alone among third-tier publishers in finding a way to expand its line of comic books, though it was the only one that got help from the government to do so. Those less well connected had to fall back on their own ingenuity at juggling production schedules and paper quotas to add new titles to their line-ups. Frank Temerson was looking to make a change. His comics group, currently released under the corporate name EtEs-Go Magazines, Inc., was stagnating. A weary Charles Quinlan, who had been acting as editor and art director for the line since the Helnit days, including during the Holyoke interregnum, longed to get out from under his editorial duties and focus on his artwork. Temerson was also unhappy about the work coming out of his current packaging service, the Lou Ferstadt studio. As it turned out, the solution to both problems was already working in the Ferstadt shop, a freelancer with bigger ambitions than knocking out pages for a middleman who claimed a big chunk of the page rate:

Sullivan’s Magazine Enterprises, meanwhile, was beginning to gain some momentum, adding a new title. With two issues of The American Air Forces alternating with two of The United States Marines on the newsstands, ME essentially had a single quarterly title. Although lacking the official sanction of the latter title, American Air Forces followed a similar format, mixing photo features among the comics. Both titles were blatantly propagandistic, at times downright savage in their anti-Japanese sloganeering, as evidenced by titles like “The Nips Are Nuts” and “Smell of the Monkeymen.” Editor Ray Krank provided the scripts for the main features drawn by Mart Bailey, Odgen Whitney, Henry Kiefer, and Charles Quinlan, with Ray McGill and Wood Cowan supplying gag cartoon pages as fillers. With the War Department defraying some of the costs and facilitating distribution through the PX system

“Wanting ‘a piece of the action’ as an art director, partner, or editor, L. B. Cole knew there was no point in approaching the major comics houses such as [DC, Timely,] Dell, Quality, or Fawcett. Instead, he set his sights on the lower-rung players, the ones who might be amenable to the kind of arrangement he wanted. He found what he was looking for when he found [Frank Temerson, who] was impressed enough with Cole to take him on as art director and editor.” (Schelly 12-13) 265

techniques of newspaper strip artists… Instead, he looked to fine art and focused on fundamentals. ‘I went to Rembrandt because he was a master of shadow.… I went to the Art Students League to study under George Bridgman who, to me, was a master of anatomy.’ Leonard Cole wasn’t in comics because he yearned to work in the medium, but because it was a way to make a good dollar from his drawing ability. More an illustrator than a storyteller, he made his mark in comics not for his skill at sequential storytelling, like just about every other top artist, but for his striking, posterlike covers.” (19)

The staff of Continental Magazines shortly after L.B. Cole succeeded Charles Quinlan as editor. Standing (L to R): C.R. Schaare, Mark Bogardo, Frank Temerson, George Harrison, Jack Alderman, Cole, Jack Grogan, Quinlan. Seated: Lucy Feller, Rae Herrmann.

Cole’s cover art was distinctive, a blend of Mac Raboy’s powerful compositional eye and Gus Ricca’s bravura exhibitionism with an allure all its own. The new editor rarely contributed art to the interiors, confining himself largely to one-off true war or propaganda features. Circulation figures are not available for the Continental line so there is nothing to suggest sales improved, fell, or held steady under Cole’s direction. It is perhaps enough that he successfully shepherded its three bi-monthlies through the year without missing an issue (though some interesting anomalies did occur, including Cat-Man Comics having two issue #26s and Captain Aero Comics inexplicably leapfrogging from issue #17 to #21), and was able to add a fourth to the schedule.

Cole, in fact, bought into the company, as did PDC president Irving Manheimer. Reusing a name left over from Manheimer’s days as a publisher and listing managing editor Ruth Rae Hermann (here using the masculinized professional name Ray Herman) and Temerson’s sister Esther (the “Es” in Et-Es-Go) as co-owners, the line was rebranded as Continental Magazines, Inc., with its June issues. It was at this point that Cole took over for Quinlan, replacing Ferstadt’s crew with the freelancers he would soon organize into his own studio and, with his Continental partners’ blessing, start a profitable sideline packaging comics for other publishers like Aviation Press and Spotlight. Cole hired Ferstadt’s head writer Jack Grogan out from under his former employer and put him to work hammering out scripts for Rudy Palais, Jack Alderman, C.R. Schaare, John Giunta, George Appel, Don Rico, Nina Albright, Manny Stallman, and Quinlan to illustrate. Many of the artists were veterans of the shop system and not prepared for the iconoclastic attitude of their new boss. Cole biographer Bill Schelly has noted that

Oldest of the Temerson titles, Cat-Man Comics shed itself of some of its less inspired mystery-men, cancelling “The Ragman” with issue #23 (March) and “Blackout” the following issue. Neither strip received a permanent replacement, editor Cole opting instead for a smorgasbord of hillbilly humor, true western and true war fillers, and try-outs of new super-heroes. Don Rico handled the art on two such newcomers. “The Reckoner” offered the standard masked sleuth stuff, differing only in its hero, Michael Shawn, being a cab driver instead of the standard rich playboy. “The Golden Archer” was a mishmash of genres

“Cole was coming from a different mindset than many of his fellow artists. Unlike other artisans in comics, he didn’t try to absorb the style and

Bright, bold cover art by Cole made Continental’s comic books stand out on crowded newsstands. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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in which scullery boy Ned became Robin Hood’s masked kid sidekick. A third pilot, “Leatherface,” set in 16th century France, saw foppish courtier Andre de LeBoef lead a double life as the masked swordsman of the title, a champion of the oppressed. Up front, the father-and-son team of Charles Quinlan Sr. and Jr. continued to chronicle the exploits of “Cat-Man and The Kitten,” while Jack Alderman took over the art duties on “The Hood” and Rudy Palais those on “Little Leaders.” Credits have not been completely pinned down for “The Deacon and Mickey,” but Alderman and John Giunta both contributed episodes. All four strips featured the usual Nazi nogoodniks, with a special emphasis on bizarre or horrific menaces like The Four Horsemen of Doom, Nazi soldiers scientifically transformed into the apocalyptical figures; Belshar, a reanimated corpse turned Viking-helmeted Nazi übermensch; and Lady Satan, a skull-faced Nazi spy with electrical powers. “Deacon” villain Rasputin, Jr., provided an extra edge of villainy as he knew the secret of Deacon’s criminal past, a secret he took to his well-deserved grave. The Quinlans also retained creative control over the title character of Captain Aero Comics, giving the intrepid aviator an arch-nemesis in Major Zero a.k.a. Lt. Yahuchi, a Japanese ace forced by his superiors to become the costumed counterpart to Aero. Nina Albright drew most of the year’s “Miss Victory” installments, redesigning her costume in the October issue (#17) to increase her sex appeal by substituting the full blouse the patriotic mystery-woman previously wore for a barely-there halter top. “Captain Aero’s Sky Scouts” and “The Red Cross” held on to their spots in the back pages, but “Flagman,” “Alias X,” “Commandos of the Devil Dogs,” and an artistically maturing Russ Heath’s “Hammerhead Hawley” were all axed. Only one ongoing took their place, “The Mighty Mite,” whose kid hero showed up for a masquerade party in super-hero gear, little suspecting he was about to accidentally become a real-life costumed crimefighter. It was cute, but no “Supersnipe.” Recurring characters were comparatively rare in the third Temerson title, though several took root in

Girl detective “Sherry Flippe” spent nearly as much time in her undies as she did on her cases. TM and © respective copyright holder.

later issues of Suspense Comics once Cole took the helm. These included “Sherry Flippe” a.k.a. “Sherry the Girl Detective,” a mystery series about a beautiful private investigator and the bizarre cases she worked featuring loads of cartoony cheesecake, and Mo Weiss’ “Worthless Wiggins,” the amusing saga of an amiable tramp roped into running for mayor against a ruthless, corrupt banker that mixed the tongue-in-cheek melodramatics of cartoonist Ed Wheelan’s “Minute Movies” with the political satire of filmmaker Preston Sturges. The best of the lot was “Satan” by Jack Grogan and George Appel, a horror strip with a sense of humor in which the Lord of Hell persuaded gangster Woody Malone, taken before his time, to fill in for him while the Lord of Hell took a six-year vacay, never suspecting that Malone was scheming to take over permanently. Joining the Suspense cast in issue #5 (August) was “Mr. Nobody,” the first of comic books’ mysterious men in black, this one limited to the role of narrating Hitchcockian thrillers. Somebody in the front office liked Nobody, as they ran two episodes of the series in the October issue (#6) and three in the one after that. “Mr. Nobody” debuted in the first issue of a new comic. Unlike Suspense, Terrific Comics had a full slate of regular series. Premiering alongside Nobody were “Kid Terrific and Jimmie,” a washed-up prizefighter and his orphan pal working for a traveling circus; “Buck and Broncho,” in which dashing newsreel photogs Buck Jordan and 267

Broncho Boyd were sent to the front to provide news footage for the Army; and “Juggernaut, Giant of Justice,” about a mysterious stranger fighting for the greater good in the wilds of the Yukon. Replacing Nobody in issue #2 (March) was Ed Wheelan’s “Comics’ McCormick,” starring a young comic book fanatic with a rich fantasy life having imaginary encounters with various super-villains (Dr. Hunchback, The Octopus) and super-heroes (Captain Catapult, Bingo the Wonder Boy). Terrific’s only real costumed crusader was “Boomerang,” alias U.S. Army Intelligence agent Capt. Lloyd Raleigh, whose task it was to perform top secret missions behind enemy lines as a costumed assassin. Created by L.B. Cole, Boomerang was joined in action by costumed archer Diana in the second episode. All of these series, plus transferee “The Reckoner”

After debuting in the first issue of Terrific Comics, the enigmatic “Mr. Nobody” became the title feature of sister title Suspense Comics. TM and © respective copyright holder.

Hillman’s new children’s title Punch and Judy Comics was a winner, thanks to strips like the title feature (left) and the sweet-natured “Starry Eyes.” TM and © respective copyright holder.

ran through issue #6 (November), the title’s last. Cole’s touch, apparently was not 100% golden. When Hillman Periodicals decided to add a humor title to its existing roster, it made room for it on the schedule by demoting the monthly Air Fighters Comics to a quarterly for the duration, starting with issue #20 (Fall). Combined with a two-stage reduction in page count, from 68 to 60 then to 52, the demotion meant the end of “The Bald Eagle” and “The Black Angel.” The surviving strips stayed on course, rarely deviating from the colorful Axis villains and riveting air battles that editor and head writer Ed Cronin favored. “The Flying Dutchman,” in particular, featured a fascinating battery of opponents like Yugao the Wizard, a thousand-yearold Japanese sage who invented the first flying machine; The Ghost Pilot, a treasonous English nobleman in skull mask and hooded robe; and “the real Hitler,” the true Führer for whom the clownish Adolf Schickelgruber served as a front. Facing off against “Sky Wolf” were recurring nemesis Baron Von Tundra; Mr. Brim, who claimed to be (and possibly was) Satan; and Frederick Barbarossa, brought forward in time from the 12th century by a mysterious warp in the fabric of space/ time. Villains tackling “The Iron Ace” included The Black Mail, a Nazi-built robot, and The Firebug, “Hitler’s personal arsonist,” a costumed madman with burnt features. “Airboy” villain The Black Ace bore similar scars. A Luftwaffe pilot disfigured by fire after being shot down by Airboy, the Ace had a better reason than most to hate the teenage aviator. Valkyrie and her Airmaidens made a return appearance in issue #19 (April), this time flying for the Allies. The year’s most

significant story in hindsight was also its most frightening, as Iron Ace discovered Nazi Germany was working feverishly to develop atomic weaponry, a push the armor-clad RAF flier disrupted but could not permanently derail. Little did readers suspect that their government feared that very thing was happening in secret German facilities out of sight of our best intelligence agencies. The quarterly Clue Comics was also called upon to forego its Summer issue for the sake of the new comedy book. It, too, lost characters to the reduction in pages, dropping “Micro-Face,” “Zippo,” and “Twilight.” Cover star “The Boy King,” now reunited with his long-lost twin brother Muggsey, dealt with menaces Dr. Plasma and the diamond-powered mechanical chessmaster Paris largely without the aid of his towering robot servant, a character the creative staff was finding difficult to weave into its plots. Artist Art Seymour gave “Nightmare and Sleepy” more practical costumes in Clue #7 (Spring), outfits that didn’t require darkness to be effective. The book’s other remaining features, the kid gang strip “Jackie Law and the Boy Rangers” and Tony DiPreta’s satirical “Stupid Manny,” were enjoyable but delivered few surprises. The same assessment could easily be applied to the entire book, which went on hiatus following the Winter issue (#9). The good news for Hillman was that Punch and Judy Comics proved worth the sacrifices asked of Air Fighters and Clue. Cronin and publisher Alex Hillman were able to entice several freelancers away from the Sangor Studio to fill its pages, most notably Joe Oriolo. The Fleischer Studios veteran created the title feature, a charming fantasy strip that owed more than a 268

little to the Disney version of Pinocchio. Grandfatherly toymaker Uncle Tony brought a Punch doll to life with the secret “perfume of life,” the living toy thereafter sharing adventures with Judy Jones, the little girl who lived next door to Tony’s shop, most of them centered on Punch’s misuse of the perfume. “Punch and Judy” was the best thing appearing in its namesake comic. The most unusual was “Starry Eyes.” A gentle strip about a little circus bareback rider and her talking pony Pinkie, it was drawn by creator Orestes Calpini in an abstract style that may remind the modern reader of manga (Pinkie could’ve stepped out of an episode of My Little Pony). The funny animal series that filled Punch and Judy’s back pages— “Captain Codfish,” “Buttons the Rabbit and Officer Hippo,” “Fatsy McPig,” and “Peanuts the Monkey”—were more typical fare, much in the vein of the material cranked out by Sangor but with a higher degree of polish. Where Continental and Hillman had to go through contortions to add a single new comic to their schedules, Ace Publications managed to add three, two featuring animation-style children’s characters, the other a solo book for the long-running “Hap Hazard,” without any impact on its existing titles, Super-Mystery Comics and Four Favorites. The new titles, Monkeyshine Comics and Scream Comics, were put together by a unit of the Sangor Studio under Sam Singer. The others were packaged by the Lou Ferstadt studio. Judging from the quality of these comics compared to the work Ferstadt was turning out for other publishers, Ace head honcho A.A. Wynn must’ve been offering superior page rates, with Ferstadt himself providing the art (or at least the layouts) for much of the super-hero material. Super-Mystery Comics, Ace’s senior book, lost Robert Turner and Earl DaVoren’s “Dr. Nemesis” to the drop to 52 pages. “Magno and Davey” and “The Sword and Lancer” stuck relentlessly to their formulas, fighting the same villains in every episode, The Clown in the former, the triad of Faye Morgana, The Goth, and The Hun in the latter. There was an occasional break in this routine, as when Magno and his teen partner donned drag to go undercover on a cross-country

train as mother and daughter. Private eye “Mr. Risk” made a few interesting new fiends, such as The Cougar, a costumed blackmailer and killer, and Nadya Burnett, a fashion model turned female Two-Face. “Hap Hazard,” which had been slowly downplaying its hero’s newspaper job in favor of more typical teen humor tropes, gave up his place in Super-Mystery after receiving his own quarterly solo title. Taking his place was “Chuck,” another teen strip without a distinct personality. Writing credits are few and far between for the 1944 issues, though it is likely Jack Grogan contributed scripts to the earlier issues before joining fellow Ferstadt defector L.B. Cole at Continental. Ferstadt’s signature adorned every “Magno” story, and random episodes of the other series, but the entire book post-Dr. Nemesis was drawn in his style, and probably from his layouts, by his studio staff, all but Bill Savage unidentified as of this writing. Ace Magazines sub-contracted with the Sangor shop to add two more humor titles, Monkeyshines Comics and Scream Comics, to its schedule.

Showcase title Four Favorites was more of the same. “Magno and Davey” were there battling The Clown (surprise, surprise), alongside two other victims of Ace’s endless recycling of bad guys. “Capt. Courageous” faced his evil opposite number Captain Nippo in three out of four episodes, while “Lash Lightning” and Lightning Girl spent three issues trying to bring in Madam Death, a phony spiritual healer, and Dark Eyes, a super-strong gangster. The criminal duo teamed with last year’s recurring villain, The Maestro, in the second chapter. “The Unknown Soldier” marched to a different drummer, taking on a flock of phony vampires, a resurrected Attila the Hun, and The New Nation, a gang of preteen Nazi sympathizers that were scarily believable.

named Zippermouth; a dog named Flophead; and a love interest, his boss’s wholesome daughter Judy. Also joining the cast in that first issue was Ethelbert Moran, Zip’s wacky inventor uncle. Flophead and Zippermouth went on to star in their own back-up strips, the latter introducing yet another memorable character, Minerva Millicent Morganhouse, a.k.a. Slug, whose sweet schoolgirl facade was hilariously offset by her pugnacious, take-no-prisoners personality. By the time Ferstadt handed the feature over to Sam Singer with issue #3 (Winter), the chemistry between the characters was set and one of the better “Archie” imitators was primed for a five-year, 24-issue run. Debuting the same month was Monkeyshine Comics, a title tailored for younger readers. It seemed more time and thought was being put into the title compared to the material the Sangor shop was producing for other publishers, as the use of a regular roster of features rather than a constantly rotating menu of one-offs reinforces. There was some fine-tuning along the way. Lead-off feature “Mortimer Monk” started off as a little boy monkey but had become an adult by the Winter issue (#3). “Aesop’s Fables” retold familiar tales like “The Fox and the Crow” with a flippant wiseacre attitude not unlike that of the 1960s Jay Ward animated cartoon Aesop and Son. Loosely based on the classic children’s poem “The Duel” by Eugene Field, “The Gingham Dog and The Calico Cat” followed the slapstick war between two stuffed animals. As advertised, “Carrottop Cabot the Rhyming Rabbit” always spoke in rhyme but thankfully others, including his best friend Ferdie Fieldmouse, didn’t. Ellis Chambers’ “Slick Chick,” a funny animal/teen humor hybrid with potential, was hurt by a different artist taking over with the second episode who radically redesigned all its characters. It and another underperforming strip, “Hillbilly Goat,” were dropped, replaced by “Pete the Peke” and “Superham, the Pig of Tomorrow,” a spectacularly unfunny Superman parody with bad art and a wafer-thin story. Despite the occasional clunker, Monkeyshines was, if not up to the standards of a Dell funny animal book, worthy of its audience’s dimes.

With the release of the undated Hap Hazard Comics #1, editor Fred Gardener and de facto art director Lou Ferstadt committed to the strip’s conversion to teen humor. The over-eager copy boy acquired a best friend, the charmingly

A third title, Scream Comics, was added in the fall. Also packaged by Sangor but heavily influenced by Sam Singer, who wrote and drew three of its seven features, Scream

Long-running Super-Mystery Comics feature “Hap Hazard” graduated to his own book in 1944. Distinctive characters like Zippermouth and Slug helped the series stand out from the ever-growing crowd of “Archie” imitations. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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was devoted to kid strips, each built around a specific theme: “All-Star Al” was about baseball, “Li’l Dan’l Boone” the outdoor life, “Andy and His Airplane” aviation, and so on down the line. Most of these series were harmless fluff, upbeat and about as controversial as a loaf of bread, but one, “Doc Watson and Alex,” dared to depict a friendship between a white boy and a black boy based on trust and mutual respect, an unusual choice in emphasis for the time. The addition of three new quarterlies, each published under a different corporate identity and using newsprint diverted from that division’s pulp titles, represented a change in thinking towards the comic book business on the part of A. A. Wynn. The publisher had up to this point not shown much faith in or enthusiasm for the medium, but now, with his competitors making money hand over fist during the war boom, Wynn finally saw value in his line. The value was there from the beginning but unappreciated until it showed up on the plus side of the balance sheet.

Playing Poker with a Pair of Deuces Everett “Busy” Arnold had believed in his comic books from the beginning, and remained determined to keep his Quality Comics a value for his readers by maintaining the entire line at 60 pages throughout the year. He made up the difference by skipping the June and December issues of the monthly Feature Comics and Military Comics and by demoting Smash Comics and National Comics to bi-monthlies following their May issues. Arnold also published a second issue of Plastic Man through proxy Vital Publications, as well as an inaugural issue of The Spirit, an all-reprint quarterly. While most features ran uninterrupted, three strips, all of them starring mystery-men, bit the dust, including editor George Brenner’s “The Clock,” a series predating Quality itself. The replacements for these strips reflected an ongoing editorial shift away from costumed heroes toward new genres like teen humor and funny animals, though super-heroes continued to hog the pages of most titles.

Quality released a second title through proxy Vital Publications in 1944 collecting Will Eisner’s The Spirit. TM and © Will Eisner Studios Inc.

The only title issuing a full twelve issues in 1944 was Police Comics, a sales powerhouse thanks to a certain stretchable sleuth. The popularity of “Plastic Man” could be laid directly at the feet of creator Jack Cole, whose trademark inventiveness and off-kilter sense of humor made every episode, here and in the Plastic Man solo book, a treat. Plas began the year in uncertainty when his boss at the FBI learned the truth about his relationship to fugitive gangster Eel O’Brian. In the end the chief buried the evidence, satisfied that his top operative’s reformation was sincere. Trouble of another kind emerged in Police #33 (August), as gangland (and readers) first learned of Plas’ vulnerability to freezing: it made him brittle. Cole concocted a delectable assortment of villains for Plastic Man and sidekick Woozy Winks to best, including dogooder Serena Sloop, president of the Women’s Society to Prevent Cruelty to Criminals; meek Elmer Body, who used 270

Created by former “Archie” artist Harry Sahle, “Candy” was Quality’s first venture into teen humor. The strip lasted for 12 years. TM and © respective copyright holder.

his power to exchange minds with other people to seek adventure, first as Woozy, then as Plas; The Mangler, who turned desperate 1As into 4Fs for a price; and The Lava Man, a.k.a. bank robber Fargo Freddie, a shapeshifting criminal counterpart to the ductile hero. The duo also took a trip to Hollywood, saved Woozy’s uncle, farmer Blinky Winks, from black marketeers, and visited No Place, a city stuck in the Gay Nineties after the Census Bureau lost all record of it. “The Human Bomb” was once more stuck with sidekick Hustace Throckmorton, he of the explosive feet, as of Police #26 (January). The strip took a brief dramatic turn in the October issue (#35) as the Bomb, convinced that people saw him as a monster, had a crisis of faith. It all worked out happily, but it was rare to see comics of the era delve that deeply into a costumed hero’s inner life. Amidst his takedowns of The Ghostmaster, The Match, and the disembodied brain of gangster Tony Conroy, “Manhunter” also had a personal crisis: a juvenile delinquent learned his true identity but vowed to keep the secret after going straight. The ever-mysterious “Destiny” took on The Werewolf of Warsaw and made a trip to Hell before ceding his pages to “Candy,” the teen humor strip Harry Sahle and Ed Groggin left “Archie” to create. Candy O’Connor (only her mother called her Candace) was a small town teenage jitterbug who spoke in jive and lived to go dancing. She was no goody two-

shoes: she lied to her parents, bullied her boyfriend, and traded bitchy bons mots with arch-rival Cornelia Clyde. The jitterbug gimmick didn’t last long but “Candy” did. The series would run in one title or another until Quality closed its doors in 1956. The comic book version appeared on newsstands about a month after The Chicago Times Syndicate added the syndicated newspaper strip to its catalog. The balance of the Police line-up were humor fillers and reprints of “The Spirit” from the weekly newspaper insert jointly owned by Busy Arnold and the Register and Tribune Syndicate. The Spirit Sunday section went through some changes in 1944, most notably the cancellation of “Mr. Mystic” after the Army laid claim to writer/artist Fred Guardineer. Taking its place was “Intellectual Amos,” a funny kid strip by Andre LeBlanc about a child prodigy and his pet goblin, Wilbur. Klaus Nordling continued to take loving care of “Lady Luck,” the one constant this year. As for the title feature, Denny Colt’s masked alter ego gave up one of his pages beginning with the July 8 issue (#219), first to “Jonesy,” teen humor à la Bernard Dibble, then to advertising, a sign that the section had not been turning a profit. With creator Will Eisner off serving his country, “The Spirit” was in the hands of talented caretakers he trusted to leave his characters as they found them so he could step back in when he returned to civilian life. Spirit stories were invariably entertaining, but there was a conservatism about them, a hesitation to take any chances in plot or storytelling. (Perhaps that’s why so many stories were built around sidekick Ebony during this period, comedy pieces reducing Spirit himself to a walk-on.) This hesitation is most obvious in the issues ghosted by Jack Cole. All the elements were there—strong plot, breezy dialogue, lively art—to make a great comic instead of the good one that resulted. Cole was handcuffed by his obligation to Eisner, unable to loose his full imagination on another man’s creation. He did nineteen of the first 27 issues. Lou Fine and his assistants drew the balance, with Robin King filling in on two occasions, following scripts by William Woolfolk and Manly Wade Wellman.

With the feature’s creator in the Army, Jack Cole and other Spirit ghosts focused on the antics of Ebony White in lieu of Eisner’s innovative storytelling. TM and © Will Eisner Studios Inc.

were not as good as his because of this. I finally realized I was playing poker with a pair of deuces, so I had to fold and we made a deal.’ … What warmth, if any, between Busy Arnold and Will Eisner cooled significantly during that time.” (Kooiman 23) If sales were lagging on Hit Comics, it wasn’t because its stars weren’t in there pitching. Cover feature “Kid Eternity” underwent some adjustments, his power changing from becoming figures from legend or history when he shouted “Eternity!” to merely summoning them. The change was permanent as of Hit #33 (Fall), one issue after a guest appearance by Plastic Man. His fellow supermen, “Stormy Foster, the Great Defender” and “Bill the Magnificent,” went about their heroic business as usual. Ditto the (usually accidental) heroics of the felonious “Her Highness and Silk.” Klaus Nordling gave up his long-running military comedy “Bob and Swab,” passing it on to Janice Valleau and an unidentified scripter. The title’s most interesting stories this year were two episodes of “Betty Bates, Attorney at Law” which saw its lead, now an assistant district attorney, fake her own death to foil an assassination plot in one story and framed for murder in the next. With co-creator Toni Blum now out of comics, writing credits for “Betty Bates” and virtually all the straight strips not scripted by their artists remain a mystery.

It was Police Comics and not the Spirit section that figured in a rupture in the business and personal relationship between Eisner and Busy Arnold. As recounted in The Quality Companion, it was no less than the United States Army that precipitated the break: “[E]arly in the war, only eighteen periodicals were approved by the Army for distribution to troops.… In July 1944, the Army [relaxed] the limits on reading material and released an expanded list of 189 periodicals—which included comics. The list of 189 was the result of a survey of those enlisted, and it is a singular glimpse at the preferences of the time. Quality tied with DC, [Timely,] and Fawcett, each scoring five titles on the list. If a title made the list, the publisher might be awarded preferential paper quotas to enable their production. Notably, Police Comics and Hit Comics did not make the list. Curious, isn’t it, that these were the two titles co-owned by Will Eisner?… Eisner bitterly complained about this, accusing Busy Arnold of using the quota preferentially for books in which Eisner didn’t own a share[:] ‘Arnold started diverting paper to his own books, and it was giving me a hard time. My sales

Getting framed for murder was a popular pastime for Quality characters this year, with two of the stars of Crack Comics undergoing that ordeal. Cabbie “Hack O’Hara” and Klaus Nordling’s cartoonist sleuth “Pen Miller” were cleared of the charges, of course, but the accusations were the highlights of both strips. With “The Clock” stopped as of issue #34 (Fall), “Captain Triumph,” now drawn by Mort Leav, was Crack’s only remaining super-hero. Most of Lance and Michael Gallant’s time was spent chasing spies and mobsters, save for Triumph’s clash with Colonel Fishama, a treasonous American steel magnate posing as a Japanese assassin with a cyborg arm. The rest of the title was 271

Martha Roberts, girlfriend of “Doll Man,” temporarily joined him at doll-size in Feature Comics #77. Seven years later, she became his fulltime partner as Doll Girl. TM and © DC Comics.

devoted to comedy, including Bernard Dibble’s teen humor feature “Beezy Bumble” and “Floogy the Fiji,” a funny animal strip from an unknown hand whose central character was a grossly caricatured Pacific Islander. Humor was a central component of flagship title Feature Comics as well, though the diminutive “Doll Man” still commanded the covers and leadoff spot. He, too, was wanted for murder briefly, but his most interesting exploits revolved around others who ended up at his size. Girlfriend Martha Roberts was the first, becoming the doll-sized Midge in the April issue (#77) simply by wishing it, a transformation she would undergo in a less arbitrary fashion during her post-war career as Doll Girl. Also getting small were Professor Rhoades, discoverer of Element 99 which gave him the same powers as Darrell Dane’s pocket-sized alter ego, and Jacko, the miniaturized ape who committed the killings Doll Man was blamed for. The Feature episodes were it for the tiny hero in 1944, as his solo book was on hiatus due to the newsprint shortage. Art chores for the strip passed from the team of Alex Kotzky and John Cassone to Rudy Palais to Mort Leav. Aviation strip “Spin

Shaw” featured early solo work by Spirit background artist Jack Keller. Bandleader and amateur detective “Swing Sisson,” now written and drawn by Quality regular Vernon Henkel, was also framed for murder in one installment, while “Rusty Ryan and the Boyville Brigadiers” played second fiddle in their own strip to the zoot-suited Pierpont Jones and the fez-adorned Alababa, whose chief asset was possessing more personality between the two of them than all the Brigadiers combined. Replacing Sid Lazarus’ scifi comedy “Professor Noodle” in issue #75 (February) was “Perky,” Lazarus’ imaginative fantasy about a boy who, after volunteering for a magic act, found himself teleported to magical realms like Rockland, Goblin Town, and the Home of the Winds. Feature was the only Quality title still running newspaper strip reprints, including “Mickey Finn” and “Rube Goldberg’s Side Show.” National Comics and Smash Comics, downgraded to bi-monthlies with their August issues (#43 and 54 respectively), had more costumed heroes in residence than any Quality title save Police Comics. Smash’s cover star “Midnight” managed to get framed for murder like so many others, but Paul Gustavson showed more originality in other stories, introducing Wild Bill Hiccup, a farmer whose land sat atop an aquifer containing helium, and sending Midnight and his crazy cohorts on a mission through time to Nero’s Rome. Gustavson’s humor was more whimsical and less anarchic than creator Cole’s but no less enjoyable. “The Marksman” lost Fred Guardineer but gained Irving Tirman, who drew a brontosaurus for a script that called for a mammoth. Mort Leav avoided such awkward snafus while illoing “The Jester” and the police strip “Rookie Rankin.” The costumed guerrilla called “The Unknown” was cancelled following National #41 (April) The strip brought in to take its place also bumped the venerable “Uncle Sam” off the covers, not a good sign for the Living Symbol of America, especially as his solo title was in the same limbo as Doll Man’s. Co-created by Jack Cole and writer Joe Millard, “The Barker” was a funny, 272

action-packed series about two-fisted sideshow spieler Carnie Calahan and his pals, the towering Tiny, the diminutive Major Midge, and Lena the Fat Lady. The quartet stood ready to defend the Mammoth Circus, its honest owner/manager Colonel Lane, their fellow performers, or the show’s patrons against any and all threats. Klaus Nordling assumed the art duties with the third episode. Artist turnovers affected other National features, including “Uncle Sam, “G-2,” and “Quicksilver,” but “Chic Carter,” “Sally O’Neil,” and “Destroyer 171” held on to Vernon Henkel, Al Bryant, and Al Camy throughout 1944. The departure of Fred Guardineer left several strips in Military Comics in the lurch. Filling his shoes on “Atlantic/Pacific Patrol” and the nonfiction “Secret War News” (as well as on National’s “Quicksilver”) was William “Bill” Quackenbush (no relation to the Hall of Fame hockey player). Jack Cole returned to “The Death Patrol” for a few issues to give regular artist Al Stahl a breather but made little effort to recapture the unpredictability of his original run. Ted Udall and Vern Henkel gave “The Sniper” a recurring nemesis, an assassin for the Black Dragon Society named Suratai who reared his head in five episodes, but it couldn’t save the series, which made its last stand in the December issue (#34). Sniper undoubtedly had

A new series, “The Barker,” knocked “Uncle Sam” off the covers of National Comics, a sign that Quality was no longer banking exclusively on costumed heroes to sell its comics. TM and © DC Comics.

his fans, as did the humor series “Private Dogtag” and “Johnny Doughboy,” but everyone at the Quality offices knew it was none of these features that made Military the line’s top seller. With Reed Crandall in the Army, “Blackhawk” tried several different artists, hoping one would serve as an acceptable substitute for the mas“Blackhawk” got his own solo title this year, also acquiring the services of artist Bill Ward, a worthy substitute for the ter draftsman. John absent Reed Crandall. TM and © DC Comics. Cassone, Mort Leav, and Al Bryant all did (Winter) hit newsstands late multi-issue stands, each performing in November. It offered three at his best, but it was a newcomer Bryant-drawn tales of the to Quality whose work stood out. title character taking on the A Pratt Institute grad with several Japanese military, backed years’ experience as a layout man for by Ernie Hart’s “Rasputin,” the Jack Binder studio, William Hess a funny animal strip, and “Bill” Ward, in his own words, “took Harry Sahle’s “Ezra,” a teen naturally to Blackhawk” (Ward). No humor strip that looked susone else replicated the look and feel piciously like a repurposed “Archie” of Crandall’s version quite as accustory. rately, or was better at matching his Blackhawk earned his own title just way with a lusciously lethal lady, as Busy Arnold was buying out co-crea talent for which Ward would be ator Will Eisner’s claim to other Qualjustly celebrated within a few years. ity properties. Like “Sheena, Queen of Bill Woolfolk wrote a majority of the Jungle,” another Eisner creation the scripts, backed by Manly Wade to which the master cartoonist gave Wellman, and delivered some of his up the rights, “Blackhawk” went on hardest-hitting scenarios. The Blackto conquer other media, attaining a hawks brought down scurrilous foes level of popularity few comic booklike Skell the Ruthless and Dr. Koro, born features achieved and making a Japanese surgeon who created an money for Arnold and Quality for implantable mind control device; had another dozen years. Eisner wouldn’t a rematch with the sultry Xanukhara; see a penny. fought alongside Wang the Tiger, a masked Chinese freedom fighter; A Declaration of Independence butted heads with Eve Rice, a reckless and amoral combat photographer; On January 29, Josette Frank sent a and met the unforgettable Capt. Powletter to All-American Comics pubhatan Bushrod, a Civil War veteran lisher M.C. Gaines resigning her and leader of a Confederate colony in position on the company’s Editorial China. The strip was not afraid to go Advisory Board. The cause, inevitadark, as when Stanislaus was briefly bly, was “Wonder Woman.” Despite believed killed in action during the her best efforts, she had failed to Magnificent Seven’s dogfight with the convince Gaines that the strip’s fixasinister Suicide Squadron, or when tion on bondage and dominance Blackhawk himself was captured and was unwholesome, no matter what tortured by the Japanese. As sales of its author, psychologist William Military continued to rise, Arnold Moulton Marston, claimed. Perhaps decided the time was ripe to give the stung by George Hecht’s accusations Polish pilot his own title. Continuing of hypocrisy, Frank felt she could no the numbering from Uncle Sam Quarlonger serve on the board with a clear terly, Blackhawk #9 conscience: 273

“Recent issues have omitted whippings, tortured women in chains, and other objectionable features[, but] I have come to the reluctant conclusion that it is the basic theme of the strip that is offensive, rather than its detail, or in addition to its details.… [T] he theme of men against women and women against men is hardly a suitable one for children’s story material.… There was nothing for it but to quit.” (Lepore 242-243) Marston had won, and not just the war with Frank. On the very day she submitted her resignation, Marston and Gaines signed a deal with King Features Syndicate for a Wonder Woman newspaper strip. The series debuted on May 8. Scripted by Marston and drawn by co-creator H.G. Peter, the daily series—there was no color Sunday page—was faithful to the comic book version… up to a point. King Features insisted they tone down the very elements Frank had been objecting to. The strip ran through December 1, 1945, but never caught much traction. No matter. “Wonder Woman” was generating enough money from her comic book appearances alone to make Dr. Marston a wealthy man.

Toned down for mainstream audiences, a “Wonder Woman” syndicated strip debuted in May 1944. Newspaper readers did not respond with the enthusiasm of her comic book fans and the strip died after a year and a half. TM and © DC Comics.

Between her solo title, her berths in Sensation Comics and the oversized Comic Cavalcade, and her role as secretary to the Justice Society in All-Star Comics, there was little doubt the Amazing Amazon was the biggest star in the All-American firmament. Marston and Peter added several new villains to her rogues’ gallery this year, including Giganta, a female gorilla transformed by an evolution ray into human form and looking for all the world like Sheena on steroids; Queen Clea, deposed monarch of the sunken continent of Atlantis; Hypnota, another female criminal posing as a male; The Vulture King, a hunchbacked scientist who used his “electronomizer” to create a squadron of mental slaves clad in atomic-powered winged exoskeletons; Countess Mazuma, vengeance-crazed owner of a Spanish diamond mine; and The Green Imps of Jealousy. In addition to visiting Atlantis, Diana traveled to the Fourth Dimension and to Grown-Down Land, a topsy-turvy world where children held the reins of power. In the December Sensation (#36), Wonder Woman was challenged by the combined might of old foes The Duke of Deception, The Cheetah, Dr. Psycho, and King Blackfu of The Mole Men, joined by Queen Clea and Giganta, only to discover they were actually actors hired by Bedwin Footh, a washed-up thespian envious of the heroine’s fame.

story editor Ted Udall, and a newcomer to comics named Julius Schwartz. One of the founding fathers of science fiction fandom alongside Mort Weisinger, Otto Binder, Manly Wade Wellman, and others, Schwartz went on to become a literary agent for sci-fi, fantasy, and horror writers, at first in partnership with Weisinger, later on his own. He sold H.P. Lovecraft’s last story and Ray Bradbury’s first. But times were hard in the shrinking world of pulp fiction and a young man had to eat. A former client had a suggestion: “[Alfred Bester] told me that there was trouble down at All-American Comics, because the assistant editor was leaving, and the chief editor, Sheldon Mayer—already too busy with other duties—needed an assistant to plot stories, edit scripts, and proofread pages. Alfie suggested—no, insisted—that I apply for the job. He knew that the very same narrowing of the market that made things financially tight for him as a science-fiction writer was no doubt making things tight for me as a science-fiction agent.… I really didn’t know anything about comics, let alone about editing them. Alfie said not to worry,… All I really needed to do was to pick up two or three comics that I could read on the way [to] the interview. So on my way to the subway station I went to the newsstand and picked up three All-American comics. They cost a dime apiece back then, and to this day that thirty

“Wonder Woman” was not the only pony All-American had in the race. Her Comic Cavalcade co-stars, “The Flash” and “Green Lantern,” also headlined anthology titles and their own solo quarterlies. Gardner Fox kept the adventures of The Fastest Man Alive imaginative and fun, though the art did not always do right by his scripts. E.E. Hibbard drew only two issues of All-Flash this year. Chet Kozlak, who did a decent Hibbard impression, contributed several art jobs to Flash Comics, All-Flash, and Comic Cavalcade. Over half of this year’s “Flash” stories were the work of Martin Naydel, who did a very poor Hibbard. Nonetheless, the series concocted plenty of new super-speed tricks, new Three Dimwits tomfooleries, and new forms of villainy to thwart. The newcomers included The Clue Sleuth, a renowned detective turned blackmailer; Sven Scarface, a Viking warrior from the 10th century armed with the mystic hammer of Thor; John Rogers alias Merman, an amphibious mutant; and criminal scientists The Alchemist and The Wind Master. The Scarlet Speedster also had a return match with The Thinker in a hilariously metatextual story that guest starred not only Green Lantern and Doiby Dickles, but Fox, Hibbard, All-American editor-in-chief Sheldon Mayer,

New All-American story editor Julius Schwartz had once been a mover and shaker in the early days of science fiction fandom, posing with several other future sci-fi and comic book titans in this 1935 photo. Front row (L to R): Otto Binder, Manly Wade Wellman, Schwartz. Back row: Jack Williamson, L. Sprague de Camp, John D. Clark, Frank Belknap Long, Mort Weisinger, Edmund Hamilton, Otis Adelbert Kline.

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cents was the only money that I had spent on comics in my entire career. But it turned out to be the best investment [of] my life.” (Schwartz 68-69) Julius Schwartz was a fast study, and he caught on to the building blocks of comics storytelling right away. He took over for the departing Dorothy Roubicek in the summer, not long before the conversion to 52 pages wrote finis to “The Whip,” “The Black Pirate,” and, alas, Sheldon Mayer’s “Scribbly and The Red Tornado,” which went out on a high note in All-American Comics #59 (July) by reimagining its cast as funny animals. It was Schwartz who brought in a new writer for “Green Lantern” to supplement the work of lead scripter Alfred Bester. Henry Kuttner was a seasoned fantasy author who had contributed to the Cthulhu Mythos cycle in the classic horror pulp Weird Tales. He hit the ground running with two stories for Green Lantern #12 (Summer), one a slapstick farce complete with villains in drag, the other the deadly serious introduction of The Gambler. Kuttner’s GL and Doiby had a mellower relationship than Bester’s, and he was far more interested in Alan Scott’s radio career than Bester, who rarely even mentioned the Lantern’s day job. It was Bester who finally settled on Gotham City as the Emerald Crusader’s home turf, and who created his deadliest enemy, the hideous albino giant Solomon Grundy, a nightmarish undead creature with superhuman strength born in the bowels of Slaughter Swamp, who killed because he enjoyed it and hated GL with an insatiable fury. Green Lantern co-creator Martin Nodell handled the art for the solo title, while Paul Reinman illoed the All-American episodes, the two artists taking turns on those running in Comic Cavalcade.

“Green Lantern” faced his greatest challenge this year in the person of Solomon Grundy, a hideous undead swamp-spawned monster. TM and © DC Comics.

bered a similar publicity blitz for Picture Stories from the Bible had to wonder if a similar series was in the offing. No answer was forthcoming this year. “The Gay Ghost” no longer haunted the back pages of Sensation Comics following the September issue (#33). Claiming his pages was a returning “Sargon the Sorcerer,” now drawn by Joe Kubert. The title’s other mystery-men, “Mr. Terrific” and “Wildcat” got a big boost in visibility when they shared a mission with the JSA in All-Star Comics #24 (Winter). The art assignment on the Feline Fury’s series passed from Paul Reinman to Joe Gallagher, whose simple lines and fluid movement suited the action-heavy strip. Joseph Greene scripted “Mr. Terrific,” still drawn by Stan Aschmeier, sending the Man of a Thousand Talents to the future to topple a dictator named Black Barax. Evelyn

Appearing on the cover of every other issue of Flash Comics, “Hawkman” and his pinioned partner Hawkgirl winged their way through encounters with some of their most memorable opponents. The Humming Bird was really ornithologist Hester Morgan, who turned the artificial wings she invented to more lucrative ends than birdwatching. She flitted by twice, the second time without her wings. Simple Simon was a criminal genius who was anything but the ignorant country bumpkin he appeared to be. The dauntless duo also took on The Human Dynamo, the legendary Pied Piper of Hamelin, and the dictator of a Saturnian city/spaceship from which he planned to conquer Earth. Gardner Fox and Sheldon Moldoff handled all but one “Hawkman” story this year, the exception a Joe Kubert try-out for the strip as a safeguard against Moldoff getting a draft notice. After spending five issues stranded behind enemy lines, “Johnny Thunder” was rescued and given an honorable discharge from the Navy. He returned home to take care of foster daughter Peachy Pet and didn’t summon his Thunderbolt for a couple of episodes. Johnny’s scripter, John Wentworth, took over the writing chores on “The Ghost Patrol.” His first work there overlapped his last work on the cancelled “Whip.” The November and December issues of Flash Comics ran two installments of a new series written by M. C. Gaines himself in place of Ed Wheelan’s “Minute Movies,” Episodes of “Picture Stories from American History” also displaced “Little Boy Blue” for two issues of Sensation Comics and replaced “The Atom” as of the December All-American (#62). Those who remem-

Definitive “Hawkman” artist Joe Kubert’s first work on the Flying Fury appeared in 1944’s oversize showcase title The Big All-American Comic Book. His final “Hawkman” story was published in 2012. TM and © DC Comics.

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Gaines, the publisher’s niece, wrote “Little Boy Blue” with “Ghost Patrol” artist Frank Harry wielding the brushes. After a final episode that found Jon Valor and his crew visiting the Land of the Little People (implicitly Lilliput from Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels), “The Black Pirate” sailed into the sunset for the nonce, though he would return some eighteen months later with a new creative team at the helm. All-American Comics was the line’s most consistent in 1944, with the same writer-artist teams turning out the year’s runs of “Dr. Mid-Nite,” “Hop Harrigan,” and “Red, White and Blue,” backed by reprints of “Mutt & Jeff” and “Cicero’s Cat.” Mid-Nite, whose sidekick Hooty hadn’t been seen in some time, continued to stalk thematically appropriate foes like The Shade and The Black Rain amidst his takedowns of more mundane gangsters. “The Atom” lost his pages to “Picture Stories from American History” following issue #61 (November) For the time being, fans of the Mighty Mite would have to be content with his appearances alongside the Justice Society in All-Star Comics. Harrigan and the G-2 boys from “Red, White and Blue” also appeared in issues of Comic Cavalcade, as did “Scribbly,” “The Black Pirate,” “Sargon,” and a solo story starring Wonder Woman’s helpmates “Etta Candy and The Holliday Girls.” The “Hop Harrigan” story from Comic Cavalcade #9 (Winter), a straight-to-the-point condemnation of racism in general and the Nazi master race myth in particular, was reprinted as an eight-page giveway, as were three other features from the title. “Heroes in Dungarees” examined the critical wartime role of the U.S. Merchant Marine. “The Twain Shall Meet” tracked the efforts of the East and West Association, co-founded by Nobel Prize-winning author and new Editorial Advisory Board member Pearl S. Buck, to bridge the cultural gap between America and her Asian allies. “100 Years of Co-Operation” celebrated the consumer co-operative movement, enjoying a second wind thanks to increasingly rigorous rationing. All three were written by Gaines and distributed to the same schools, libraries, and civic institutions that carried his “The Minute Man Answers the Call” giveaway two years earlier.

Funny Stuff was a project near and dear to AA editor-in-chief Sheldon Mayer. Among its stars was “McSnurtle the Turtle,” a.k.a. The Great Whatzit, a funny animal Flash. TM and © DC Comics.

Great Whatzit, a funny animal version of The Flash complete with winged helmet. McSnurtle, a storekeeper known as “the laziest guy in Zooville,” was the secret weapon of Prince Highness, “governor and director of all good on Earth,” in his war with Prince Lowness, self-described “boss and big shot of all de evil on Oith.” Martin Naydel drew the strip, his unique style as fitting here as it was unsuitable for the human Crimson Comet. “Bulldog Drumhead” was a tough police detective saddled with a ward, Oliver Wendell McDuffy, the holy terror of an offspring of a mob boss Drumhead sent up for life. Not every feature was a winner but that could be fixed with a little fine tuning. Funny Stuff opened up a whole new demographic for All-American. It was fortuitous timing and no accident.

Joining the quarterly All-Star Comics, All-Flash, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and Mutt & Jeff on the newsstands was a new title, a pet project of Sheldon Mayer’s and one of the reasons he’d closed down “Scribbly.” From its first issue, Funny Stuff was one of the best funny animal comics on the market thanks to clever premises and stellar art. Ronald Santi’s “The Three Mousketeers” was a parody of the Dumas classic starring Amouse, Porterhouse, and Aramouse, swashbuckling swordmasters in the service of Louis the Fourteenth. Mayer himself contributed “J. Rufus Lion,” the travails and occasional triumphs of a Fieldsian layabout with a penchant for prevarication, as well as the first script for “McSnurtle the Turtle,” better known as The

The cover of Funny Stuff #3, like those of All-Star #24 and Green Lantern #14, were the first All-American comics since 1940 to not display the DC “slug.” In its place was a new, albeit similar symbol, this one reading simply “AA – An All-American Publication.” It was the latest in a series of signs that all was not well between Gaines’ line and its sister company, Detective Comics. Take, for example, the “Justice Society of America” strip. Over the course of the year, all four JSA members owned by DC—The Sandman, Doctor Fate, Starman, and The Spectre—were dropped from the ranks without explanation, their places 276

Nominally published by Wm. H. Wise, The Big All-American Comic Book was a key factor in M.C. Gaines’ plan to sever his business ties to Detective Comics. TM and © DC Comics.

The Two Faces of DC

ultimately taken by returning honorary members Flash and Green Lantern. The truth was that Gaines and co-publisher Jack Liebowitz couldn’t stand each other, and their infrequent business meetings inevitably devolved into shouting matches. Gaines wanted out. He’d already shown signs of independence with Picture Stories from the Bible, which returned this year to begin its adaptation of the New Testament. Now he took a more radical step, arranging with Wm. H. Wise & Co. to issue a pair of one-shots, the profits from which would not have to be shared with Detective. Ed Wheelan’s Joke Book was a 52-page showcase for the 66-year-old cartoonist’s corny comedy top-heavy with installments of the vaudevillian “Fat an’ Slat.” The Big All-American Comic Book, by contrast, was a thick 132 pages inside a sturdy cardboard cover featuring original stories of virtually every major AA character except “Dr. Mid-Nite” and “Sargon” (who, unlike Mid-Nite, was at least included on the front cover’s mindblowing group shot, an image that must have attracted buyers like moths to a flame). With the money from these books, Gaines was finally able to rid himself of Liebowitz’s aggravation, buying out any and all rights DC might have to AA’s characters and setting him free.

With three monthlies, four bi-monthlies, and four quarterlies to their names, each selling an average of 500,000 copies per issue, Detective Comics executives Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz could be forgiven if the break with AllAmerican didn’t upset them overly much. They may have felt relieved that their ongoing quest for respectability would no longer be compromised by association with the “Wonder Woman” controversy. That quest paid off big for DC in 1944 when the U.S. Navy’s Bureau of Naval Personnel approached the company with a request. Many raw recruits were functionally or totally illiterate. Detective was asked to create new editions of its comics with the dialogue rewritten at the primer level, comics the Navy could use to keep its seamen interested while teaching them to read. A total of six issues were prepared, two of them released in 1944. To no one’s surprise, the first comics chosen for this special treatment were issues of Action Comics. Thanks to his exposure on radio, in animated cartoons, and in his syndicated strip, no DC character was likely to be more familiar to the sailors targeted by the project than “Superman.” The Man of Tomorrow was undergoing a new burst of creativity now that co-creator Jerry Siegel was no longer the strip’s sole writer. Siegel found time between his Army duties to supply half a dozen scripts this year, but most stories came from the pen of Don Cameron, with Bill Finger, Alvin

All-American was now on its own, even if it was still handled by DC distributor Independent News. Whether it could survive without its big brother backing its plays had yet to be determined. 277

Schwartz, and Horace L. Gold also pitching in. Joe Shuster studio staffers Sam Citron, Ira Yarbrough, Don Komisarow, and Pete Riss supplied most of the art, with George Roussos providing inks and the occasional complete art job when deadlines got tight. Return bouts with Luthor, The Prankster, The Puzzler, and The Toyman were balanced by the introductions of several new villains, including Johnny Aesop, a used car salesman who based his crimes on the fables of his famous namesake; The Hobby Looter, who extorted cash from wealthy hobbyists for the safe return of their collections; and The Tycoon of Crime, whose secret weapon was lots and lots of money. The Man of Steel also crossed paths with the Greek gods Mercury and Hercules, as well as the legendary Paul Bunyan (though that encounter turned out to be a dream). Two baddies would figure prominently in the alien strongman’s evolving mythos. Con man Wilbur Wolfingham debuted in Superman # 26 (January-February), popping up again in issues of Action and World’s Finest Comics. The other was originally created by managing editor Whitney Ellsworth and artist Wayne Boring for the newspaper strip, proving so popular that the syndicated continuity was hastily condensed to 13 comic book pages, shedding a distracting subplot about the Big Red S’s infatuation with “the most beautiful woman in the world” to focus on the magical mischief of Mr. Mxyztplk. The court jester to the king of another dimension, the annoying imp seemed unstoppable until Superman tricked him into saying his own name backwards, which

sent him back to his own world and undid the effects of his catastrophic practical jokes. The emphasis on humor, initiated the previous year, continued, with characters like Adelbert Diddle, a timid milquetoast claiming to be Superman to impress the woman he loved; Uncle Dudley Kent, an eccentric millionaire intent on leaving his fortune to Clark to punish his real family for their greed; and Lois’s niece Susie making life as difficult for the Last Son of Krypton as the out-and-out-villains. Humor was also a major element in the “Lois Lane, Reporter” solo series introduced in Superman #28 (May-June). The Daily Planet’s star newshen was not the only supporting player cast into the spotlight in 1944. “The Adventures of Alfred,” in which Bruce Wayne’s faithful butler bumbled his way through various mysteries, debuted in the AprilMay Batman (#22). Aside from three issues of World’s Finest and a handful of inking jobs, the “Alfred” stories were the only contributions of artist Jerry Robinson to the world of “Batman and Robin” this year, which may go far in explaining why Robinson signed up with Ken Crossen’s Spark Publications late in the year. Co-creator Bob Kane, tied up with the syndicated Batman and Robin strip, penciled a few episodes, as did Sunday page artist Jack Burnley. A slim majority of the Dynamic Duo’s escapades were drawn by Dick Sprang. An advertising artist and pulp illustrator with only a single previous credit (Crestwood’s “Powerman”) in comic books, Sprang went to the DC offices in 1943 on the recommendation of studiomate Ed Kressy. The artist described what happened in a 1993 interview: “[DC story editor Jack Schiff] looked [my samples] over, he said, ‘I’d like to try you out. I’m going to give you three pages of a “Batman” script, and this story has been published, but I don’t want you to look at the magazine.’ I said, ‘Okay.’ I [took] the script, took it home and penciled it and inked it— and brought it back in four days.… I brought them back. And he went through them. He said… ‘I’m going to give you a full story, 15 pages. And I want it penciled, inked, and lettered. And I’d like to have it back here in fifteen, no more than sixteen, days.’ I did them and I brought them back, and he said, ‘I’d like to put you to work. One thing: would you mind if I stockpiled you? I’ll pay you for them, but I’d like to stockpile them. The reason why is that [with] this damn war we’re getting into, I’m going to lose some artists. I may lose you. I want a backup.’ I said, ‘That’s fine with me.’” (Dorf 9)

The introduction of Prof. Carter Nichols and his amazing time hypnosis procedure gave new “Batman and Robin” artist Dick Sprang a perfect opportunity to display his gift for depicting historical settings. TM and © DC Comics.

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The first of these inventory stories saw print in Batman #21 (February-March). It was a perfectly acceptable imitation of the Kane-Robinson-Roussos look but it was not yet true Sprang. By the time the stockpile was depleted, there was no doubt that a major new talent stood behind the obligatory Bob Kane signature. Sprang had an uncanny eye for composition and staging that brought a clarity and focus to his pages that only Burnley could match, and his mastery of linework and texture gave his interpretation of the Kane style a clean vibrancy that wowed editors and readers alike. For the next two decades, Dick Sprang was considered the “Batman and Robin” artist, the one to whom all others were compared. Don Cameron continued to serve as lead scripter, backstopped by Alvin Schwartz, Joseph Greene, Joe Samachson, Edmond Hamilton, and editor Schiff. Co-creator Bill Finger, whose meticulous writing process led to others stepping in on the syndicated strip when he couldn’t keep up with the pace of production, also handed in a few comic book scenarios. No new costumed villains were introduced this year, but the Caped Crusaders kept plenty busy fighting the ones they already had. The Joker, The Penguin, The Catwoman, The Cavalier, and the lookalike rogues Tweedledum and Tweedledee all returned, sometimes more than once, including a team-up of Joker and Penguin that degenerated into a frantic flurry of oneupmanship and double crosses. Science fiction began to play an important role in the series, as in a story in the December-January issue (#26) starring the Batman of the year 3000. More significant was the debut of Professor Carter Nichols in Batman #24 (August-September). The respected scientist, an old friend of Bruce’s late father, had developed a method of time travel through hypnosis, using it to send Batman and Robin back to ancient Despite the absence of series creators Simon & Kirby, “Boy Commandos” continued Rome. It was a fun change of pace that gave Sprang a to deliver exciting battlefield action, as well as such outré adventures as the kids visiting chance to draw on his extensive collection of historical the home of the Norse Gods. TM and © DC Comics. reference material, and the first of a series of time travel No such respite was to be had for Tex Thomson, a.k.a. “The tales running intermittently until 1963, eventually Americommando.” After a final two-issue confrontation involving Superman as well. with The Little One (brought back from the dead without Co-starring with the Dark Knight and Boy Wonder in explanation), the Bernard Baily-drawn series, which dated Detective Comics, “The Boy Commandos” remained third back to Action Comics #1, drew to a close in the 74th issue in popularity among DC properties, the only characters (July) of that title. Americommando was Action’s only besides Batman and Superman to star in three titles. Louis casualty this year. “Zatara,” which changed artists midCazeneuve provided a reasonable facsimile of Simon and year from Joe Sulman to William F. White, and “Congo Bill” Kirby art, while Don Cameron, Joe Samachson, and Joseph delivered their usual thrills, but “The Vigilante” remained Greene did a creditable job of finding exciting new chalthe book’s best hero not born on another planet. Artist Mort lenges for Rip Carter and his underage soldiers. Between Meskin and scripter Joe Samachson kept the Prairie Trouperilous missions in every theater of the war, the Combadour and boy pal Stuff hopping, as old foes The Dummy, mandos visited Sherwood Forest, met the Norse Gods, The Fiddler, The Rainbow Man, Shakes, and Dictionary posed as circus performers, clashed anew with Agent found their plans foiled by the duo again and again. Axis, and saw the irrepressible Brooklyn crowned king of Star Spangled Comics lost Jack Farr’s humorous “Super a South Seas island. Elsewhere in Detective, the team of Joe Sleuth McFooey” to downsizing, but its super-heroes Samachson and George Roussos kept “Air Wave” dependfought on undisturbed. Arthur Cazenueve kept the art on ably atmospheric, but another Samachson-scripted series “The Newsboy Legion” as Kirbyesque as possible, either couldn’t hold on to its artists, “Slam Bradley” passing from flying solo or paired with Eli Katz, doing his first work for Jack Farr to Martin Naydel to Howard Sherman and finally the company that in time elevated him to comics stardom. to Chuck Winter. Two series came to an end. “Spy” disap“The Star-Spangled Kid” lost original artist Hal Sharp folpeared following the January issue (#83), while “The Crimlowing the May issue (#32), replaced first by “Green Arrow” son Avenger” held on another six issues before the drop to artists Cliff Young and Steve Brodie, then by “Bulletman” 52 pages did him in. The Avenger did live on, however, as co-creator Jon Small. Star Spangled #37 (October) introone of “The Seven Soldiers of Victory” in Leading Comics. duced the Kid’s cousin Ambrose, an obnoxious brat who 279

pages. “Doctor Fate” took down his shingle following More Fun #98 (July-August), though he had been a mere shadow of himself since being declawed by the Editorial Advisory Board. His JSA teammate “The Spectre” hung on, though he too had become a parody of Jerry Siegel’s original concept. Co-stars “Johnny Quick,” “Aquaman,” and “Green Arrow” all enjoyed well-crafted albeit uninspired scripting, by Don Cameron on JQ, Joe Samachson on the others. The YoungBrodie team handled the Emerald Archer, while Louis Cazeneuve kept Aquaman swimming along and Mort Meskin brought his gift for dynamic action to the King of Speed’s exploits. Adventure bid farewell to “Manhunter,” a character that never recovered from the loss of Simon and Kirby. Jack and Joe’s other stepchild, “The Sandman” had better luck, thanks to Samachson scripts and art by the future Gil Kane even if his membership in the Justice Society expired in mid-year. “Starman,” too, lost the cachet of being a JSAer but carried on regardless. “The Shining Knight,” “Genius Jones,” and a resurrected “Mike Gibbs, Guerrilla” completed the Adventure line-up. Both titles turned a profit, but neither could point to one character that made it a must-have for readers.

The introduction of Robbie the Robot Dog completed the “Robotman” feature’s turn away from the serious tone it had under original writer Jerry Siegel. TM and © DC Comics.

repeatedly came close to exposing his and Stripesy’s secret identities. A constant diet of Axis spies and German troops made “Liberty Belle” bland and monotonous, though Don Cameron and Chuck Winter did liven things in up in one story by pitting her against a squad of robot soldiers. Speaking of robots, Jimmy Thompson made an addition to the cast of “Robotman” that gave the mechanical man with the human brain a delightful new foil. Robbie the Robot Dog was more than your average canine sidekick. As created by Robotman himself, Robbie could both think and talk, which presented a problem for the hero whenever the excitable mutt forgot himself and spoke while wearing the disguise used to pass him off as the flesh-and-blood pet of Paul Dennis, Robotman’s alter ego. The strip, which had been so serious under creator Jerry Siegel, now had a lighter tone that made it one of Star Spangled’s most entertaining features.

The switch to 52 pages made little difference to most of DC’s quarterlies. The solo books Superman, Batman, and Boy Commandos met the challenge by cutting the number of stories starring the title characters from four per issue to three. Leading Comics, home of the ‘Seven Soldiers of Victory’ series, adjusted by shortening the solo chapters devoted to the individual Law’s Legionnaires (as the team was also known), with scripter Joe Samachson and artist Arthur Cazeneuve experimenting in issue #10 with small two-man team-ups, like Crimson Avenger and Speedy or The Shining Knight and The Star-Spangled Kid, giving the mismatched heroes a chance to show sides of themselves untapped by their regular strips. In addition to regular installments of “Superman,” “Batman and Robin,” “Boy Commandos,” “Green Arrow,” “Zatara,” and “The Star-Spangled Kid,” the 84-page World’s Finest Comics added a new series by Jack Schiff and John Daly inspired by Pearl Buck’s East and West Association. “Johnny Everyman” (yes, that was his real name) was an engineer and troubleshooter for the American military whose Asian-set exploits were, despite tight scripting and good art, hopelessly dull. There was nothing dull about Detective’s sixth quarterly. All Funny Comics began the year offering the same menu of comedy series seen in its debut issue, but by the Fall issue (#4), a few strips had been swapped out. The dreary doggerel of “Hayfoot Henry” was replaced by Emil Gershwin’s “Sadface Charlie,” the amusingly mournful saga of a “diligent disciple of dejection” who managed to see the downside of even the cheeriest turn of fate. The title also lost its most popular strip, as George Storm and Alvin Schwartz’s teenaged hepcat “Buzzy” graduated to his own solo title. His abandoned pages went to “Tinkerman Tad,” a slapstick series from Thurston Harper about a would-be inventor.

The bi-monthly anthologies, More Fun Comics and Adventure Comics, also lost features in the conversion to 52

The addition of Buzzy to the schedule may have been made possible by the deal with the Navy, with DC receiving a higher paper allotment than it was entitled to under Limitation Order L-244 in recognition of its service to the country. The comics it produced for the Bureau of Naval

“Doctor Fate” was one of several long-running super-hero series to face cancellation this year. “The Crimson Avenger,” “Americommando,” and “Manhunter” joined the Wonder Wizard in comics limbo. TM and © DC Comics.

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Personnel represented Jack Liebowitz and Harry Donenfeld at their best. But behind the scenes, Harry and Jack continued their vendetta against a hated competitor. Their legal action against Fawcett Publications for copyright infringement was now in its fourth year. Although dozens of super-heroes patterned after Superman, Batman, and other Detective properties had popped up in the years since the debut of Whiz Comics #2, only Fawcett’s “Captain Marvel” continued to merit Donenfeld and Liebowitz’s wrath. Why? Because the Big Red Cheese had done the unthinkable and unforgivable: he outsold Superman, not once or twice but consistently, month after month, selling 700,000 copies an issue of Captain Marvel Adventures. The success of Republic Pictures’ Adventures of Captain Marvel compounded that sin, bringing the chosen champion of Shazam into wider public consciousness. Co-creator C.C. Beck and others were deposed in 1944, DC’s lawyers relentlessly pressing them to admit Captain Marvel was a deliberate copy of Superman. Nobody did. The lawsuit ground on, costing both publishers tens of thousands of dollars.

Captain Marvel for President!

An accomplished fighter pilot despite her blindness, “Captain Midnight” foe Frau Von Sade was one of the most despicable Nazi villains to appear in wartime comic books.

Annoying though the lawsuit was, the folks at Fawcett had bigger fish to fry. The slash in the publisher’s paper quota meant it could not maintain its line-up of eight monthlies at 60 pages, or even at 52. All eight were profitable, but not equally so. Master Comics, Wow Comics, Captain Marvel Jr., and Fawcett’s Funny Animals dropped to 44 pages with their June issues. Wow remained that length, but Master and FFA were further downsized to 36 pages after four issues, Marvel Jr. after just two. Don Winslow of the Navy dropped from 52 to 36 pages without an intervening 44-page stage. Even the venerable Whiz Comics ended up a 36-pager. All this sacrifice so the red-hot Captain Marvel Adventures could stay at 52 pages, and still the entire line was forced to skip a month, its November 1944-dated issues followed by issues dated January 1945. Despite all the downsizing, few series were given the old heave-ho and new strips replaced most of those that were.

fanatical Nazi who deliberately blinded herself to sharpen her senses. Able to fly her custom fighter, the Dragon Fly, despite her handicap, Von Sade twice seemed to die at the end of a story but no body was found so… To lighten things up, Ikky Mudd periodically assumed his Sergeant Twilight persona in episodes that served essentially as a serieswithin-a-series with minimal participation by Midnight. Fawcett’s Funny Animals lost only one strip in 1944, “Gremmy the Gremlin” vanishing following issue #14 (January), the last 60-page edition. Later page cuts for a time required the editors to cut up and reassemble existing inventory to fit into fewer pages, as well as cutting short an experiment with giving secondary characters like “Billy the Kid”’s Oscar their own one-page solo strips. Most of the title’s features were well done but nothing exceptional. It was cover star “Hoppy the Marvel Bunny” who made FFA special. Creator Chad Grothkopf struck a balance in his stories between the usual funny animal tropes, fairy tale-style fantasy, and full-tilt super-heroics, the strip’s only sticking point the tiresome gimmick of Hoppy never being able to remember his magic word. Whether battling piscine pirate Captain Kid Perch, The Witch, King Artist of Picture Land, or Simon Spider and his living dolls, “Marvel Bunny” always delivered big laughs and plenty of action. One story showed that Grothkopf was paying attention to what was happening in other Fawcett series, as Hoppy traveled to the year 2544 and met the Marvel Bunny of that era, a clever variation on a similar “Captain Marvel Jr.” plotline used six months earlier.

Since the titular stars of the licensed titles, Don Winslow of the Navy and Captain Midnight, commanded the entirety of their books save for a few one- or two-page fillers, they were scarcely affected by their reductions in page count. Packaged for Fawcett by Funnies, Inc., Don Winslow stayed close in spirit to the syndicated strip, with Winslow and his partner Red Pennington solving crimes and thwarting sabotage in and out of the war zone. A rare book-length story in issue #16 (June) introduced The American, a.k.a. Tom Togochi, an old college rival of Don’s turned Japanese ace, the duo clashing repeatedly until Togochi ultimately lost his life. Although focused on the war, Captain Midnight offered greater variety in plotlines, with stories saluting the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots or WASPS, a civilian organization that flew newly completed aircraft to their destinations, and excoriating the Four Horsemen of the Paper Eclipse (Shortage, Sabotage, Fire, and Waste). Midnight and his Secret Squadron twice butted heads with arch-foe Baron Von Togo this year and added two new black hats to their enemies list. Zeit (German for “time”) was a costumed ace meant to be the Luftwaffe’s answer to Captain Midnight. He was a touch generic, and nowhere near as interesting as Frau Von Sade, a German noblewoman and

Hoppy was the only member of the Marvel Family whose destiny was not in the hands of the prolific Otto Binder, who once again this year scripted the preponderance of stories starring the various stepchildren of Shazam. He teamed with brother Jack Binder for the “Mary Marvel” series running in Wow Comics, where The World’s Mightiest Girl squared off against scurrilous scoundrels like the kleptomanical Professor Van Ish; Rudi Eldritch, a dabbler in the occult intent on bringing machines to life and 281

Unlike their costumed confreres at other publishing houses, Fawcett’s super-heroes frequently guest-starred in each other’s strips. Here, “Mary Marvel” teams up with Pinky the Whiz Kid, boy pal of “Mr. Scarlet.” TM and © DC Comics.

educating them; The Smoke Demon; Dr. Dwarf; and master hypnotist Svengolly, inventor of a Thought Reader machine. The Brothers Binder also sent Mary to Davy Jones’ locker; to Middleton, where the men and women switched traditional gender roles every four years to commemorate Leap Year, and to Sky City, home of a race of Bird-People. Uncle Marvel returned in Wow #24 (April), four issues before Mary teamed up with Pinky, boy partner of “Mr. Scarlet,” to defeat Mr. Question, a quiz show host turned masked criminal. Scarlet’s alter ego Brian Butler was reinstated as special prosecutor in the February Wow (#22) but he was back in the unemployment line the following issue. The duo took on The Sun Man, The Black Hour, The Crime Engineer, Dr. Promise, and the bow-wielding Mr. Green, pausing between battles to don new costumes that added splashes of blue, black, and yellow to their formerly all-crimson duds. Billy Batson’s boss Sterling Morris popped up in an episode of “Commando Yank,” giving orders to the Yank’s other self, radio commentator Chase Yale, also an Amalgamated Broadcasting employee. The costumed freedom fighter’s most interesting exploit in 1944 involved Hitler double Heinrich Heil and his Fourth Reich, a breakaway army with which he attacked Allies and Axis alike. Spurred on by Sir Michael Malone, the ghost of his ancestor, “The Phantom Eagle” began a quest for the Golden Mace, on which was inscribed “the secret formula for international peace and unity,” in Wow #25 (May), a quest still underway as of the December issue.

The only Fawcett title to experience any significant turnover in features was Master Comics, which dropped “Minute-Man,” “Balbo the Boy Magician,” and “Hopalong Cassidy.” Taking their place were two new strips, one featuring a familiar face, the other a character first introduced in Captain Marvel Adventures #35. Republic Studio’s “Nyoka the Jungle Girl” returned in an all new adventure by writer Rod Reed and artist Jack Sparling. Fittingly, each episode was presented as a chapter in a serial called “Curse of the Death Rug.” The other newcomer was Otto Binder and Al Carreno’s “Radar, the International Policeman,” a character considered important enough that he began sharing the covers with Captain Marvel, Jr. Radar was actually Pep Pepper, a former soldier blessed with the powers of telepathy and clairvoyance, who worked as a special agent for the United Nations. Created by executive editor Will Lieberson, allegedly at the behest of the Office of War Information, “Radar” served as Fawcett’s most deliberately propagandistic series. With his solo title on hiatus for the duration, “Bulletman” and partner Bulletgirl had to confine their adventures to the pages of Master. Their opponents included The Clinging Vine, a beautiful botanist who used her mutant plants for crime; deranged plastic surgeon Dr. Carver; The Candid Camera Killer; and Bulletcrook, a gangster armed with a stolen gravity helmet. Also trying to steal the Flying Detectives’ thunder was Young Bulletman, a.k.a. Tod Drake, an overenthusiastic would-be crusader in a store-bought Bulletman costume, who proved accidentally useful in the Bullets’ confrontation with a Nazi spymaster. But it was another boy hero who kept Master Comics atop the sales charts. The atmospheric art of definitive “Captain Marvel Jr.” artist Mac Raboy continued to grace both covers and interiors through the September issues of Master and Junior’s solo book, after which he departed Fawcett for Spark Publications. He left behind a big stack of photostats of his best Junior poses, which the strip’s other artists were happy to use for their own pages. Poor lame Freddy Freeman, still liv282

ing in his lonely attic room, finally got some supporting players, starting with boy scientist Sylvester Jones, who sent CMJ a hundred years into the future where he met himself as a tired old man who hadn’t used his magic word in decades. Another new cast member was “Livewire” Larry Davis, a chronically lazy reporter who began scoring huge scoops after taking Freddy on as his unofficial assistant. On the villainy front, old foes Captain Nazi, Captain Nippon, and Sivana were joined by Professor Vultur, a Nazi ornithologist, and his flock of giant raptors; Captain Monster alias criminal scientist Martin Mayhem charged with Junior’s stolen powers; The Cloud Giant; Nazi spies Vein and Venem; The India Rubber Man; the monstrous Men-Beasts; and Marshall Storm, commander of the Flying Factory, an enormous zeppelin jointly manned by the Germans and Japanese. The teenage thunderbolt also encountered the genie from Aladdin’s Lamp; persuaded The Weatherman, the mythic being who oversaw the world’s climate, not to walk away from his duties; wrestled dinosaurs in the mysterious Lost Chasm; and visited Hollywood, Ghost Land, and Crime City, an island “paradise for thieves” and other fugitives. One of the year’s most off-beat stories

Created at the request of the Office of War Information, the propaganda-laden “Radar” was given a big push by Fawcett. TM and © DC Comics.

him to the planet Pincus, where his race to destroy the super-cannon Great Big Bertha before it could devastate Earth ended in the death of the sinister Dr. Smashi; to England, site of his battle with Jeepers, a monster resembling a demonic humanoid bat; to the underground city of The Sub-Americans, pint-size descendants of colonial-era settlers; and to Hollywood, where he cheerfully disrupted production of a propaganda film extolling Mr. Mind’s purported awesomeness. As if that weren’t enough traveling for one super-hero, Marvel also continued his monthly tours of America’s great cities, visiting Buffalo, Dallas, Omaha, Oklahoma City, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Chattanooga, Pittsburgh, Boston, and Dayton, to the delight of the local celebrities who made cameos in these stories. There were also several new go-rounds with arch-enemy Sivana (including one involving a Sivana lookalike named Reginald Q. Dishlather) and a plethora of fresh nemeses. Not every new villain was a winner but most were worth the price of admission, including Willy Watson, an unscrupulous “boy newscaster” for rival station BLAH, a Nazi front; warlock turned crimelord Mr. Richwitch; the twoheaded Mr. Double; Baron Balderdash; and the murderous Belfry Ghost. Movie stars Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour guest starred in the story that introduced “Radar,” while Mary Marvel came to her big brother’s aid in Captain Marvel Adventures #37 (July).

pitted The World’s Mightiest Boy against Corporal Hitler, Jr., none other than Der Führer himself transformed by the magic word “Ersatz!” It was a broadly comedic change-ofpace for the darkest of the Marvel Family strips. There was nothing dark about “Captain Marvel,” at least not where the artwork was concerned. Whether in Whiz Comics or Captain Marvel Adventures, Billy Batson and his crimson-clad counterpart were drawn in the clean, diagrammatic style of co-creator C.C. Beck, who reorganized his shop this year to make longtime inker Pete Costanza a full partner. Cap’s Whiz co-stars experienced less artistic consistency, though “Ibis the Invincible,” “Spy Smasher,” and “Golden Arrow” all enjoyed good art despite these turnovers. None of the three saw issues of their solo titles released this year, but at least they held on to their spots in Whiz, unlike the long-running “Lance O’Casey,” which relocated to Master Comics for one issue before being put in drydock. Art duties on “Golden Arrow” alternated between Al Carreno and Harry Parkhurst, at loose ends following the cancellation of “Hopalong Cassidy.” Alex Blum, Charles Tomsey, and Marc Swayze all drew episodes of “Ibis” in 1944. The wielder of the enchanted Ibisstick faced an assortment of magical do-badders courtesy of scripter Otto Binder, notably The Little Man Who Wasn’t There, a goblin indulging in crime for kicks; Killer Kull, an executed murderer whose head was resuscitated by mad Dr. Graves; Professor Noggin, whose electronic ray turned Ibis criminal for a time; and the evocatively named Dr. Hookah. It took guest star Captain Marvel to help Prince Amentep take down The Terrible Dark One, a sea demon allied with Hitler. Art credits are scarce for “Spy Smasher,” which was at times clearly drawn by someone other than Alex Blum, the only illustrator known to have lent his pencil to the costumed aviator’s exploits this year. With no costumed villains, old or new, to make his life miserable, the master of the Gyrosub had to content himself wth Axis operatives and enemy troops, though his trip to Sky Harbor, a “Sargasso Sea of the sky,” gave the strip a welcome dose of fantasy. Still, there was no denying that “Spy Smasher” had gotten dull.

Entertaining as all these stories were, there were four that went the extra mile. In Whiz #53 (April), The World’s Mightiest Mortal fell in love with Delia Curtis, Billy’s slavedriving boss at the factory where the teenage newscaster was working part-time, leading to the first serious rift between the hero’s two identities. More emotional fireworks followed eight issues later, after a false news story convinced Billy he was committing crimes while sleepwalking, causing him to reluctantly vow to stop becoming Captain Marvel. The series’ supporting cast got some overdue exposure in the November CMA (#41) when Sterling Morris, Cissie Sommerly, Steamboat, Whitey Murphy, Sivana, his daughter Beautia, and Cap himself were possessed by The Seven Deadly Enemies of Man, the demonic personifications of Pride, Envy, Greed, Hatred, Selfishness, Laziness, and Injustice, statues of whom lined the tunnel leading to Shazam’s

“Dull” was not a word applicable to the 50+ “Captain Marvel” tales concocted by the Binder-Beck team. The duo continued the two series-within-a-series begun the previous year, extending them into 1945. The Big Red Cheese’s epic struggle with Mr. Mind and his Monster Society of Evil took

His ongoing war with Mr. Mind’s Monster Society of Evil led “Captain Marvel” to England and a confrontation with a different sort of “batman.” TM and © DC Comics.

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Washington made Marvel even more endearing to his fans, many of whom would no doubt have been delighted to see their hero in the White House.

Clouds on the Horizon Captain Marvel, of course, was not elected president. Franklin D. Roosevelt was. Although he hadn’t formally announced his intention to seek a fourth term until the Democratic National Convention in July, most Americans had assumed he would. For many, the idea of changing commanders-in-chief in the middle of a world war was unthinkable. To others, the chance of finally seeing “that man in the White House” out of power after twelve years of New Deal-style liberalism seemed at hand. For the first time, the charismatic FDR seemed vulnerable: “In late September, … Democratic leaders were filled with anxiety. The Republican challenger, Thomas E. Dewey, was running an efficient campaign. The steady barrage of Republican criticism—suggesting that the government was in the hands of tired old men who were destroying free enterprise, coddling labor, regimenting agriculture, and saddling the country with high taxes and dangerous debt—was achieving its desired effect. Dewey was rising in popularity, while Roosevelt was rapidly losing ground. The president had to prove to the electorate that he possessed the strength and resilience to rise to the Republican challenge. He began by announcing that he would go out on the stump for a series of speeches.… The announcement was greeted with relief by Democrats, but apprehension soon set in. Was the president up to the task? There was reason to worry. Roosevelt did not look good. His loss of weight made him seem much older than his sixty-two years. His color was bad.” (Goodwin 546-547) He didn’t really run for president, but more than a few of his fans would’ve voted for The World’s Mightiest Mortal if they could’ve.

Despite the leg braces and wheelchair polio had forced upon him, Roosevelt’s public persona had always radiated strength, confidence, and determination. In fact, the president was in far worse health than anyone knew, including FDR himself. A physical ordered in the wake of an attack of angina during a speech in Bremerton, Washington, revealed the disquieting truth. Heart, lungs, immune system: all were dangerously compromised. Roosevelt refused to slow down. There was too much left to be done. He had a war to win and, equally important, a post-war world to shape. In the end, the American people agreed he was still needed. Roosevelt and his running mate, an obscure senator from Missouri named Harry Truman with a reputation for plain speaking and unimpeachable integrity, won by a smaller margin than in previous elections, but they won all the same, carrying 36 out of the 48 states.

secret chamber. And in that same issue’s cover story, Cap mistakenly believed he had been nominated for President of the United States, news that sent the underworld into a tizzy, especially after it looked like he won in a landslide. It was all a big mistake—The Big Red Cheese had actually been elected President of the Ancient Society of Moose— but his unbridled panic at the thought of being sent to

Meanwhile, out in the New Mexican desert near a sleepy town called Los Alamos, some of the world’s greatest physicists and their military minders were working tirelessly to turn science fiction into science fact. Known as the Manhattan Project to the few who knew of it at all (the secrecy surrounding it was so tight even Truman was unaware of its existence), it was only months away from completing its mission. The weapon it produced, a weapon straight out of the pages of a comic book, would end the war, trigger a longer, colder war in turn, and alter the global balance of power irrevocably.

When Hillman’s “Iron Ace” singlehandedly destroyed the Nazis’ top-secret energy program in Air Fighters Comics #16, neither he nor his readers were aware that America’s own Manhattan Project was only months away from ushering in the Atomic Age. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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American Comic Book Chronicles: 1940-1944 Works Cited Chapter 1: 1940 Rise of the Superman Amash, Jim. “A Fine Influence.” Alter Ego (No. 17). Sept. 2002: 9-14. — “Building ‘Batman’ - and Other True Legends of the Golden Age.” Alter Ego (No. 39). Aug. 2004: 3-37. Andelman, Bob. Will Eisner: A Spirited Life (2nd edition). Raleigh, NC: TwoMorrows Publishing, 2015. Barrier, Michael. Funnybooks: The Improbable Glories of the Best American Comic Books. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2015. Boyko, Chris. “We Want This to Look Like Batman.” Alter Ego (No. 107). Feb. 2012: 16-27. Disbrow, Jay. “The Iger Comics Kingdom.” Alter Ego (No. 21). Feb. 2003: 3-48. Eisner, Will. Will Eisner’s Shop Talk. Portland, OR: Dark Horse Comics, 2001. Hamerlinck, P. C. “The Fawcetts Could Do It As Well Or Better Than Anybody.” The Fawcett Companion: The Best of FCA. Raleigh, NC: TwoMorrows Publishing, 2001. Irving, Christopher. The Blue Beetle Companion: His Many Lives from 1939 to Today. Raleigh, NC: TwoMorrows Publishing, 2007. Jacobs, Frank. The Mad World of William M. Gaines. Secaucus, NJ: Lyle Stewart, 1972. Kooiman, Mike, and Jim Amash. The Quality Companion. Raleigh, NC: TwoMorrows Publishing, 2011. Koppany, Bob. “Irritate the Eye!” Alter Ego (No. 2). Sept. 2001: 4-15. North, Sterling. “A National Disgrace (and a Challenge to American Parents).” The Chicago Daily News. 8 May 1940. Schechter, Harold. Savage Pastimes: A Cultural History of Violent Entertainment. St. Martin’s Press, 2005. Server, Lee. Danger is My Business: An Illustrated History of the Fabulous Pulp Magazines. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 1993. Simon, Joe. Joe Simon: My Life in Comics. London: Titan Books, 2011. Steranko, James. The Steranko History of Comics[,] Vol. 2. Supergraphics, 1972. Thomas, Roy. “So I Took the Subway and There Was Shelly Mayer!” Alter Ego (No. 1). Summer 1999: 2-13. Van Hise, James. “Jack Kirby in the Golden Age.” The Jack Kirby Collector (No. 25). Aug. 1999: 4-11. Yronwode, Cat. “Will Eisner Interview.” The Comics Journal (No. 46). May 1979: 34-49.

Chapter 2: 1941 Countdown to Cataclysm Amash, Jim. “I Let People Do Their Jobs.” Alter Ego (No. 11). Nov. 2001: 9-14. Andelman, Bob. Will Eisner: A Spirited Life (2nd edition). Raleigh, NC: TwoMorrows Publishing, 2015. Cox, J. Randolph. “Charles Biro—‘Some Kind

Of Genius.’” Alter Ego (No. 73). Oct. 2007: 15-28. Gilbert, Michael T. “Internal Affairs: DC in the 1940s.” Alter Ego (No. 2). Autumn 1999: 10-13. — “Dr. Lauretta Bender: Comics’ Anti-Wertham [Part 2].” Alter Ego (No. 88). Aug. 2009: 65-69. Jacobs, Dale. Graphic Encounters: Comics and the Sponsorship of Multimodal Literacy. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013. <www.books.google.com/books/about/ Graphic_Encounters>. Jones, William B. Jr. Classics Illustrated: A Cultural History, 2nd ed. McFarland & Company, Inc. (Kindle edition), 2011. Kooiman, Mike and Jim Amash. The Quality Companion. Raleigh, NC: TwoMorrows Publishing, 2011. Leav, Mort. “Fortune.” The Comics (Vol. 12, No. 2). Feb. 2001: 9-18. Morrissey, Richard, and Robin Snyder. “The Golden Age Gladiator: Robert Kanigher.” The Comics Journal (No. 85). Oct. 1983: 51-85. Offenberger, Rik, Paul Castiglia, and Jon B. Cooke. The MLJ Companion: The Complete History of the Archie Comics Super-Heroes. Raleigh, NC: TwoMorrows Publishing, 2016. Olson, Lynne. Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America’s Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941. New York, NY: Random House, 2013. Quattro, Ken. “Sincerely Yours, Busy.” Alter Ego (No. 127). Aug. 2014: 4-25. Simon, Joe. Joe Simon: My Life in Comics. London: Titan Books, 2011. Simon, Joe, and Jim Simon. The Comic Book Makers. Vanguard Productions, 2003. Spiegelman, Art, and Chip Kidd. Jack Cole and Plastic Man. Chronicle Books, 2001. Steranko, James. The Steranko History of Comics. Mediascene, 1970.

Chapter 3: 1942 Comic Books Go To War Andelman, Bob. Will Eisner: A Spirited Life (2nd edition). Raleigh, NC: TwoMorrows Publishing, 2015. Barrier, Michael. Funnybooks: The Improbable Glories of the Best American Comic Books. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2015. Benson, John. “Strange Things Went On In Those Days.” Alter Ego (No. 89). Oct. 2009: 41-55. Benton, Mike. The Illustrated History of Crime Comics. Dallas, TX: Taylor Publishing Company, 1993. Kooiman, Mike and Jim Amash. The Quality Companion. Raleigh, NC: TwoMorrows Publishing, 2011. Jacobs, Frank. The Mad World of William M. Gaines. Secaucus, NJ: Lyle Stewart, 1972. Lage, Matt. “I Was Proud.” The Fawcett Companion. Raleigh, NC: TwoMorrows Publishing, 2001: 55-57.

Lepore, Jill. The Secret History of Wonder Woman. New York: Vintage Books (Kindle edition), 2014. Markstein, Don. “Terrytoons.” Don Markstein’s Toonopedia. 13 Feb. 2001. <http:// toonopedia.com/terrytoo.htm>. Quattro, Ken. “Josette Frank: Alone Against the Storm Part 2.” The Comic Detective. 7 Feb. 2014. <http://thecomicsdetective.blogspot.com/2014/02/ josette-frank-alone-against-storm-part-2>. Steranko, James. The Steranko History of Comics, Mediascene, 1970. Strömberg, Fredrik. Comic Art Propaganda: A Graphic History. St. Martin’s Press, 2010. Vance, Michael. “Forbidden Adventures: The History of The American Comics Group.” Alter Ego (No. 61). Aug. 2006: 3-74 Wells, John. Superman: The Golden Age Dailies 1942-1944. San Diego, CA: IDW Publishing, 2016.

Chapter 4: 1943 “Relax: Read the Comics!” Amash, Jim. “I Let People Do Their Jobs.” Alter Ego (No. 11). Nov. 2001: 9-15. — “When Anything Happened, I Was Working on a Comic!” Alter Ego (No. 34). March 2004: 3-15. Desris, Joe. “A History of the 1940s Batman Newspaper Strips.” Batman Dailies, Vol. 1, 1943-1944. New York, NY and Providence, WI: DC Comics, Inc. and Kitchen Sink Press, 1990. Ellison, Harlan. “Comic of the Absurd.” All in Color for a Dime. Iola, WI: Krause Publications, 1997. Harmon, Jim, and Donald F. Glut. The Great Movie Serials: Their Sound and Fury. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1972. Hill, Roger. Reed Crandall: Illustrator of the Comics. Raleigh, NC: TwoMorrows Publishing, 2017. Jones, Gerard. Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book. New York: Basic Books, 2004. Jones, William B. Jr. Classics Illustrated: A Cultural History. Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland and Company, Inc. (Kindle edition), 2011. Kitchen, Denis, and Paul Buhle. The Art of Harvey Kurtzman: The Mad Genius of Comics. New York, NY: Harry N. Abrams, 2009. Kooiman, Mike, and Jim Amash. The Quality Companion. Raleigh, NC: TwoMorrows Publishing, 2011. Lage, Matt. “Will Lieberson Fawcett Comics Executive Editor.” The Fawcett Companion. Raleigh, NC: TwoMorrows Publishing, 2001. Latino, Joe, and Rich Morrissey, Ken Gale, and Tom Fagan. “Vin Sullivan: The ME Years.” Alter Ego (No. 10). Sept. 2001: 8-14. Lepore, Jill. The Secret History of Wonder Woman. New York: Vintage Books (Kindle edition), 2014. Manchester, William. The Glory and the

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Dream: A Narrative History of America 19321972. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1973. Quattro, Ken. “Josette Frank: Alone Against the Storm Part 2.” The Comic Detective. February 7, 2014. <http://thecomicsdetective.blogspot.com/2014/02/ josette-frank-alone-against-storm-part-2>. Robbins, Trina. The Great Women Cartoonists. New York, NY: Watson-Guptil Publications, 2001. Schelly, Bill. Otto Binder: The Life and Work of a Comic Book and Science Fiction Visionary. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books (Kindle edition), 2003. Steranko, James. The Steranko History of Comics[,] Vol. 2. Supergraphics, 1972. Vance, Michael. “Forbidden Adventures: The History of The American Comics Group.” Alter Ego (No. 61). Aug. 2006: 3-74.

Chapter 5: 1944 “The Paper Chase” Barrier, Michael. Funnybooks: The Improbable Glories of the Best American Comic Books. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2015. Beccatini, Alberto. “Baker of Cheesecake.” Matt Baker: The Art of Glamor. Raleigh, NC: TwoMorrows Publishing, 2012. Dorf, Shel. “A Legend in the Business.” Alter Ego (No. 107). Feb. 2012: 5-15. Goodwin, Doris Kearns. No Ordinary Time[:] Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II. New York: Simon & Shuster, 2004. Helnwein, Gottfried. Untitled. Carl Barks[:] Story teller[,] Disney Artist[,] Duckman. 24 Feb. 2003. <http://www.cbarks.dk/themeetingshelnwein.htm>. Kooiman, Mike, and Jim Amash. The Quality Companion. Raleigh, NC: TwoMorrows Publishing, 2011. Lepore, Jill. The Secret History of Wonder Woman. New York: Vintage Books (Kindle edition), 2014. Murray, Will. “Black Market Comics of the Golden Age!” Comic Book Marketplace (No. 108). Dec. 2003: 28-45, 50-53. Schelly, Bill. “Comics By Design: The Weird World of L. B. Cole.” Black Light: The Art of L. B. Cole. Seattle, WA: Fantagraphics Books, 2015. Schwartz, Julius, with Brian M. Thomsen. Man of Two Worlds: My Life in Science Fiction and Comics. New York: HarperEntertainment, 2000. Vadeboncoeur, Jim Jr. “A Close-Up Look at Timely Komics.” Alter Ego (No. 13). March 2002: 31-38. Ward, Bill. “The Man Behind Torchy.” Women of Ward. 16 Oct. 2014. <https://web.archive. org/web/20141016021949/http://www. womenofward.net:80/bio>. Worchester, Kent. “Lev Gleason: The Family Speaks.” The Comics Journal Archives. 2 July 2010. <http://classic.tcj.com/history/ lev-gleason-the-family-speaks/>.

American Comic Book Chronicles: 1940-1944 Index Ace Comics 18, 111, 164, 206, 263 Ace Magazines 58-59, 108-09, 119, 160, 201, 206, 211, 230, 268-70 Action Comics 21-22, 25, 30, 70-73, 75, 141, 146-48, 150, 178, 181, 183, 277, 279 Adventure Comics 25-26, 70-71, 73, 75-76, 144-45, 149, 178, 182-83, 280 Airboy 132-33, 204, 226, 243, 247, 268 Air Fighters Comics 98, 132-33, 226, 268 All-American Comics (comic book) 26, 28-29, 70, 75-76, 141-43, 186-87, 275-76 All-American Comics (publisher) 2629, 32, 49, 70, 74-78, 84, 91, 97, 108, 135, 138-44, 150, 175, 184-87, 225, 230-31, 246, 253, 273-77 All-Funny Comics 183-84, 186, 280 All-Star Comics 29, 70, 75-77, 141-42, 145, 186-87, 274-77 Amazing Man Comics 40-41, 95-97, 162 Andy Panda 9, 112, 173, 212-13, 232, 234 Animal Comics 174, 213-14, 231, 234-35 Aquaman 73, 98, 149, 182, 280 Archie 86-87, 154, 175, 189-91, 239, 257-59, 269, 273 Arnold, Everett “Busy” 20, 33-36, 58, 90, 118-21, 133-35, 137-38, 161, 178, 220-22, 224, 270-71, 273 Arrow 36, 40-41, 97 Baily, Bernard 25-26, 72, 84, 149, 18283, 187, 193, 244-47, 249, 262, 279 Baird, L.L. 245-47 Baker, Matt 260-61 Barks, Carl 172, 175, 212-13, 232-34 Batman 23-24, 26-27, 37, 41-42, 60, 64, 70, 72-74, 76-77, 93, 105, 113, 121, 148, 150-51, 153, 178-81, 183, 186, 229, 245, 250, 278-81

Blue Ribbon Comics 45-47, 82-86, 154-55 Blum, Toni 30, 32, 35-36, 88, 93, 11821, 134, 136, 138, 166, 221-22, 271 Boltinoff, Murray 71, 73-74, 148, 175 Boy Commandos 145-46, 148, 150, 157, 178, 181-82, 229, 240, 279-80 Bradbury, Jack 251-52 Brenner, George 33-34, 36, 119, 121, 136-38, 220-21, 224, 270 Briefer, Dick 31-32, 39, 45, 58, 81, 89, 92-93, 98, 104, 106, 116, 161, 169-70, 203-04, 211, 243, 262 Buck Jones 54-55, 80, 153, 218 Buck Rogers 11-12, 14, 20, 39, 57, 102, 110-11, 164, 209, 248, 252, 263 Buettner, Carl, 172, 212, 214, 232 Bugs Bunny 9, 114, 171-73, 197, 21213, 232-34 Bulletman 54-55, 80-81, 98-99, 15253, 215, 218, 279, 282 Burgos, Carl 41, 43, 55, 66-67, 69, 76, 110, 128-29, 175 Burnley, Jack 22, 70, 73, 148-49, 180, 187, 278 Buzzy 184, 280

Camy, Al 46, 85, 132, 152, 155-56, 166, 196, 226, 250-52, 272 Candy 270-71 Caniff, Milton 12-13, 102, 200 Captain America 6, 62-69, 79-80, 84, 90, 93, 95-96, 98, 105, 109, 113, 115, 127-29, 138, 157-58, 161, 193-95, 225, 254-55, 257 Captain Easy 11, 16-17, 20, 81, 113, 122, 171 Captain Marvel 52-54, 79-81, 96, 150-53, 191, 214-18, 228-29, 236, 250, 281-84

Bester, Alfred 73, 149, 151, 183, 186, 274-75 Better Publications / Standard Magazines / Nedor Publishing 47-49, 63, 107-08, 116, 143, 158-59, 191, 195-97, 220, 231, 250-52

Carlson, George 207-08, 213, 263

Biro, Charles 45-47, 59, 84-85, 104-06, 132, 168-70, 203-04, 211, 226-27, 243-44 Black Cat 101, 131, 202, 204, 239-40 Blackhawk 39, 120-21, 131, 136-37, 221-24, 273 Black Hood 46, 84-86, 132, 156, 18890, 257-58 Black Terror 107, 158, 195-96, 251 Blondie 11, 13, 18, 111, 124, 164, 206, 236, 263 Blue Beetle 30-32, 37, 91-94, 161, 163, 224-25, 235-37, 241 Blue Bolt 56, 109-10, 165-66, 209-10, 264

Comic House / Magazine House 16870, 177, 203-04, 211, 231, 242-44 Comics on Parade 13, 18, 111, 165, 209, 263 Coo Coo Comics 159-60, 195-97, 251 Cooper, Sam 30-32, 83-84, 93, 155, 225, 246 Coyne, Maurice 45-47, 69, 83, 154, 257 Crackajack Funnies 15-16, 76, 112-14, 171 Crack Comics 36, 118-20, 135, 137-38, 220-21, 271-72 Craig, Chase 114, 172, 212, 234 Crandall, Reed 66, 118-21, 135-38, 178, 199, 221-24, 273 Crestwood Publications 57-58, 98, 160-61, 210-11, 230, 249, 261-62, 278 Crimebuster 169-70, 204, 243 Crime Does Not Pay 170, 175, 203, 211, 243, 263 Cronin, Ed 33, 36, 118-20, 132, 136, 226, 268

Cameron, Don 76, 142-43, 146, 149, 180-81, 183, 187, 277, 279-80

Captain Midnight 10, 112, 150-51, 171, 173, 215, 219-20, 229, 265, 281

Binder, Otto 57, 66, 79-80, 98, 100, 105-06, 109, 124, 127, 136, 138, 15154, 194-95, 215-16, 218-19, 221-22, 254, 274, 281-83

Comet 46-47, 60, 82

Cuidera, Chuck 35, 120, 136, 138, 175

Captain Marvel Jr. 80, 151-53, 215-19, 244, 281-83

Binder, Jack 19, 44, 50, 54, 80, 98, 105-07, 116, 124, 150, 153, 157-58, 195, 210, 215-16, 218, 227-28, 259, 273, 281-82

Comedy Comics 129-30, 192-93, 256-57

Calling All Girls 116, 126, 188, 255, 262

Beck, C.C. 52-54, 80-81, 151, 215-16, 229, 281, 283

Big Shot Comics 58, 102-03, 163-64, 204-05, 265

211, 224, 231, 240, 265

Carnahan, Worth 50-51, 171, 174, 214 Cat Man 42, 94-95, 162, 224-25, 266-67 Cazeneuve, Arthur 33, 93-94, 100, 131-32, 148, 161, 182, 202, 239, 279-80 Cazeneuve, Louis 31, 33, 44, 93-94, 100, 131-32, 148-49, 161, 182, 202, 240, 280 Centaur Publications 19-20, 36, 3941, 95-98, 100, 116, 162 Champion/Champ Comics 50-52, 90, 100, 131, 201-02, 241 Charlton Publishing 248-49 Chesler, Harry “A” 19-20, 39-40, 43, 45-46, 48, 54-55, 57, 80-81, 98-99, 161, 201-03, 224, 238-39 Classic Comics 116-17, 130-31, 171, 206-07, 231, 240 Claw 50, 100, 103-04, 106, 121, 169, 204, 243 Cole, Jack 40, 46-47, 49-50, 82, 100, 103-05, 119-21, 136-37, 170, 221, 224, 243, 270-72 Cole, L.B. 201, 241, 247, 265-69 Columbia Comic Corporation 22, 25, 58, 102-03, 108, 163-64, 166, 204-06,

Everett, Bill 15, 41, 43, 55-56, 66-69, 76, 97, 111, 115, 128-29, 164, 175, 255 Exciting Comics 48-49, 107-08, 158, 195-96, 251 Fago, Vince 70, 175, 192, 194-95, 253-54 Fairy Tale Parade 174, 183, 213-14, 231 Family Comics 131-33, 201-03, 211, 230, 239-40 Famous Funnies 13-14, 21, 110-11, 164, 207, 209, 211, 228, 238, 263 Fantomah 38, 83, 89, 167, 261 Farrell, Bob 30, 58, 91, 93, 249 Fawcett Publications 52-55, 59, 63, 79-82, 99, 101, 135, 150-55, 175, 191, 214-20, 225, 229-30, 235, 244, 250, 265, 271, 281-84 Feature Comics 34, 118, 135, 164, 221, 224, 270, 272

Gibson, Walter 57, 106-07, 157, 227, 259 Gilberton Company 130-31, 171, 206-07, 211, 224, 240 Gleason, Lev 18, 49-50, 84, 103-04, 106, 161, 168, 170, 175, 203-04, 242-43 Goldwater, John 45-47, 83, 86, 154, 257-58 Goodman, Evelyn 131, 206-07, 240 Goodman, Martin 42, 44-45, 64, 66, 68-70, 127-31, 175, 192, 194-95, 253-57, 260 Gormley, Dan 112, 171, 214, 229, 232, 234 Great Comics Publishing 90-91, 100, 161-62, 252 Green Arrow 73-75, 98, 149-50, 182, 279-80 Green Hornet 10, 13, 42, 71, 94-95, 124, 131-32, 153, 201-02, 239-40 Green Lama 57-58, 98, 160-61, 211

Ferstadt, Lou 186, 201, 236-37, 262, 265-66, 268-69

Green Lantern 28-29, 75-76, 141-42, 186, 274-77

Feuer, Otto 197, 235, 252

Green Mask 31-32, 91, 94, 161, 235-36

Fiction House 20, 37-39, 63, 83, 87-90, 101, 106, 110, 116, 135, 150, 166-68, 175, 198-201, 230, 260-61

Grossman, Rube 159, 197, 234, 250, 252

Fight Comics 37-39, 87, 89-90, 166, 168, 198, 200, 261

Grothkopf, Chad 25, 72-73, 128, 152, 175, 188, 193, 215, 219, 281

Daredevil 50, 103-06, 168-70, 203-04, 243

Fighting Yank 63, 108, 158-59, 195-96, 251

Gruskin, Ed 227-28, 259-60

David McKay Company 18, 111, 164, 206, 263

Fine, Lou 31-38, 80, 92, 96, 99, 116, 119, 121, 134-38, 175, 220, 222, 271

Davis, Jim 159, 198, 250 DeLay, Harold 50, 110, 115, 117, 165, 209, 241, 246, 249, 264

Finger, Bill 23-24, 28, 72, 76, 140-41, 148, 180-81, 186-87, 194, 254, 277, 279

Dell Publishing 15-17, 33, 50, 76, 86, 91, 112-16, 135, 155, 164, 171-75, 183, 197, 211-14, 229-35, 248, 253, 265

Flame 31-33, 91-93, 161 Flash 27, 29, 70, 73, 75-76, 97, 108, 142, 148, 186, 274, 277

Detective Comics (comic book) 23-24, 70-72, 75, 145, 148, 150, 179-83, 279

Flash Comics 27-28, 75-76, 142, 187, 275

Detective Comics (publisher) 21-26, 29-30, 33, 42, 50, 53-54, 58, 63, 70-79, 84, 91, 102, 108, 119, 121, 135, 140, 142, 144-51, 175, 178-84, 187, 202, 204, 225, 229-30, 244, 246, 248, 251, 253, 265, 271, 276-81

Flash Gordon 12-13, 18, 57, 111, 122, 164, 168, 172, 214

Dick Tracy 11-13, 16-17, 113-15, 124, 171-73, 231 Doc Savage 12, 40, 57, 65, 85, 105, 107, 117, 157, 227-29, 259 Doll Man 34, 118-21, 135, 137, 221, 272 Don Winslow of the Navy 11-12, 16, 113, 171, 173, 215, 219-20, 281 Donald Duck 9, 17-18, 114, 172, 197, 212, 214, 232-33, 235, 239, 258 Donenfeld, Harry 21, 23, 26, 30, 33, 39, 48, 50, 52, 58, 70, 77-78, 142, 144, 150, 178, 181, 188, 197, 251, 277, 281 Douglas, Stephen 110, 164, 207-09, 264 DuBois, Gaylord 16, 112, 171-72, 174, 213, 231, 234-35 Dynamic Publications 63, 98-99, 161, 201-02, 238-39 Eastern Color Printing Company 1415, 20, 33, 110-11, 116, 135, 164, 166, 178, 205, 207-09, 211, 228-30, 263-64 Eisner, Will 19-20, 23, 30, 32, 34-37, 60, 87-88, 117-21, 133-36, 138, 142, 153, 163, 166, 175, 222, 246, 271, 273 Eisner & Iger, Ltd. 19-20, 23, 30, 3234, 36-37, 48, 57, 93, 221 Ellsworth, Whit 22, 26, 72, 147, 182, 278

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Flash / Lash Lightning 58, 108-09, 160, 201, 269 Foster, Harold 11-13, 25, 43, 109, 144 Four Color 16, 112-14, 164, 172, 212, 231-32 Fox, Gardner 24-28, 58, 70, 72-78, 102, 140, 142, 163-64, 182, 186-87, 205, 265, 274-75 Fox, Gill 133-34, 175, 178, 220-21, 223 Fox, Victor 20, 29-31, 33, 44, 52, 91, 93-94, 99, 161, 163, 235-38, 252 Fox Publications 20, 29-33, 37, 44, 83, 91-94, 106, 108, 161, 225, 231, 235-37, 249 Frank, Josette 78, 139, 184-85, 187-88, 273 Frankenstein 58, 98, 161, 211, 229, 262

Guardineer, Fred 25, 58, 98, 102, 11921, 135, 137-38, 163, 221-23, 271-72 Gustavson, Paul 36-37, 43, 66, 96-97, 110, 119-20, 129, 135-38, 175, 221, 224, 272 Hall, Barbara 101, 131-32, 204 Hangman 82, 156-57, 188, 190, 257 Hanks, Fletcher 32, 38-39, 44, 89, 92 Hap Hazard 268-69 Hart, Ernie 175, 192-93, 254, 273 Harvey, Alfred 30, 52, 93, 100-01, 124, 131-32, 175, 201-03, 239 Hasen, Irwin 19, 27, 42, 47, 76, 84, 95, 140, 142, 184, 186-87 Hawkman 27, 29, 31, 41, 45, 75-76, 142, 184, 187, 192, 275 Hecht, George C. 115-17, 126-27, 142, 175, 187-88, 262 Helnit Publishing / Et-Es-Go Magazines / Continental Magazines 42, 63, 71, 94-95, 132, 162-63, 225, 230, 239, 265-69 Herron, France “Ed” 55, 66, 80, 97, 127, 151, 153, 175 Hillman Periodicals 57, 97-98, 13233, 177, 225-27, 230, 243, 268 Hit Comics 36, 118-20, 135, 137-38, 221-22, 271 Holyoke Publishing 162-63, 177, 22425, 235, 237-38, 241, 265

Funnies / New Funnies 15-16, 112, 171-73, 213, 231-32, 234

Hopalong Cassidy 12, 215, 218, 282-83

Funnies, Inc. 19-20, 30, 36, 39, 42, 44, 55, 57, 60, 67-69, 95, 97, 101, 104, 109, 111, 115-16, 126, 130-31, 162, 164-65, 188, 207, 209, 241, 245-49, 262, 264, 281

Hultgren, Ken 212, 250-53

Funny Stuff 276 Gaines, Maxwell C. 14-15, 22, 26, 49, 75, 78, 139, 142-43, 184-87, 273, 275-77 Gene Autry Comics 81, 150, 214-15, 231

Hughes, Richard 48-49, 107-08, 15860, 195-98, 202, 250-52 Human Torch 43-45, 57, 59, 66-69, 83, 98, 104, 119, 127-29, 194-95, 254-55 Ibis the Invincible 54, 79, 150, 153, 215, 219, 283 Iger, S.M. “Jerry” 19-20, 30, 34, 36-37, 87-88, 90-91, 100, 131, 136, 157, 16162, 166, 198, 222, 240, 260-61

Inferno the Fire Breather 84-85, 91 Jacquet, Lloyd 20, 30, 39, 60, 67, 98, 126, 128, 130-31, 175 Jingle Jangle Comics 207-09, 263-64 Joe Palooka 11, 20, 33, 122, 125, 16364, 204, 265 Joker Comics 130, 192-93, 256-57 Jumbo Comics 37, 87-88, 101, 116-17, 166-67, 198-99, 260 Jungle Comics 37-38, 87-89, 166-67, 198-99, 261 Justice Society of America 6, 29, 74, 76-77, 131, 140-42, 145, 150, 187, 275-77, 280

128-29, 194-95, 254-56 Mary Marvel 152, 215, 217-18, 229, 281-83 Master Comics 54-55, 80-81, 101, 151-53, 215-17, 281-82 Maurer, Norman 169-70, 203-04, 243 Mayer, Sheldon 26-29, 75-76, 78, 140-41, 143, 154, 184, 186-87, 274-76 Meskin, Mort 37, 73, 84-86, 148-49, 180, 183, 279-80 Meyer, Helen 211-12, 214, 232 Mickey Mouse 9, 17-18, 113-14, 172, 212-14, 233, 235 Midnight 119, 121, 136-37, 221, 272 Military Comics 118, 120, 135-37, 222-24, 270, 272

Kaänga 20, 38, 80, 167, 199, 201, 261

Mills, Tarpé 15, 110-11, 129, 164

Kane, Bob 23-24, 37, 72, 74, 88, 110, 148, 178, 278-79

Miss America (Timely) 194-95, 254-55, 257

Kanter, Albert 116-17, 130, 206-07, 240

Miss Fury 110, 129, 132, 257

Kelly, Walt 171, 173-75, 213-14, 229, 231, 234-35 Kerr, George 172-73, 213-14, 231, 235 Kiefer, Henry 32, 36, 38-39, 51, 56-57, 60, 89, 100, 106, 115, 119-20, 131, 137, 165, 167, 175, 196, 199, 209, 211, 241, 246-47, 250-51, 264-65 King Comics 13, 18, 21, 110-11, 164, 206, 263 King Features Syndicate 11, 18, 30, 111, 114, 126, 164, 172, 206, 232, 263, 273 King of the Royal Mounted 13, 17-18, 20, 111, 164, 172 Kirby, Jack 6, 14, 30-32, 42, 44-45, 55-57, 60, 62-70, 73, 80-81, 88, 93, 98, 100, 106, 109-10, 116, 127, 129, 131, 144-46, 155, 178, 180-82, 187, 194-96, 211, 225, 227, 239, 254, 279-80 Kubert, Joe 134, 138, 163, 175, 183, 202, 221, 224-25, 239, 275 Lady Luck 35, 117-18, 120, 134, 221-22, 271 Lebeck, Oskar 15-17, 113-14, 171-72, 174, 212, 214 Lee, Stan 66-69, 77, 127-30, 175, 19294, 254, 257 Lieberson, Will 215, 219-20, 282 Liebowitz, Jack 21, 23, 26, 30, 52, 70, 75, 77, 144, 150, 178, 188, 277, 281 Lightning Comics 58-59, 108-09, 160, 201 Li’l Abner 11, 13, 18, 49, 111, 125-26, 156, 165, 191, 256, 263 Little Orphan Annie 11-12, 16-17, 113, 115, 122, 171, 173, 231 Lone Ranger 10, 13, 17-18, 43, 94, 111 Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies 114, 173, 213-14, 231, 233-34 Lucey, Harry 58, 82, 157, 170 Magazine Enterprises 205-06, 211, 265 Magic Comics 18, 111, 164, 206, 263 Magno the Magnetic Man 59, 108-09, 160, 201, 268-69 Majestic Studios 50, 94, 100, 249 Mandrake the Magician 11, 18, 20, 26, 47, 54, 74, 107 Manheimer, Irving 42, 50-52, 100-01, 131, 201, 239-42, 266 Marcoux, George 157, 228, 249, 259-60 Marston, William Moulton 77, 13840, 184-85, 211, 273-74 Marvel Bunny 152, 191-92, 215, 219, 281 Marvel Mystery Comics 42-43, 66-69,

M.L.J. Magazines 19, 45-47, 56, 63, 69, 82-87, 91, 93, 104, 154-57, 175, 188-91, 226, 252, 257-59 Moldoff, Sheldon 25, 27, 73, 75, 138, 141-43, 184, 195, 217, 275 Montana, Bob 86-87, 154, 156, 16970, 175, 184, 189-90 Mooney, Jim 31, 108, 119, 136, 159, 193, 199, 254 More Fun Comics 25-26, 70-75, 14950, 178, 182-83, 280 Mr. Mystic 35, 117-18, 135, 222, 271 Mystery Men Comics 30-31, 91-92, 94, 161 National Comics 36, 118, 120, 13537, 222, 224, 270, 272 Newsboy Legion 145, 149, 182, 240, 250, 279 Nielson, Alice 114, 173, 212 Nodell, Mart 28, 76, 147, 184, 275 Nordling, Klaus 38, 93, 134, 136-38, 220-23, 271-72

Police Comics 118, 120-21, 135, 137, 221-24, 270-72

73, 88, 150, 166, 198-99, 255, 260-61, 273-74

Terry and the Pirates 12, 16-17, 24, 113, 115, 122, 171-73, 200, 210, 231

Popeye 11, 13, 18, 114, 130, 164, 172, 231

Shield 46-47, 63, 82-83, 86, 156, 18891, 257-58

Terry-Toons Comics 175, 192-93, 254, 257

Popular Comics 15-16, 86, 112-13, 115, 171, 214, 231-32

Shock Gibson 42, 100, 131, 202, 239-40

Thrilling Comics 48, 107, 158, 195-96, 250-51

Porky Pig 9, 114, 172-73, 212-13, 229, 232-33

Shorten, Harry 46-47, 82-87, 154, 156-57, 188, 190, 257

Powell, Bob 32, 34, 37, 118, 120, 134, 137-38, 178, 194, 202, 221-22, 240, 255

Shuster, Joe 21-22, 26-27, 51, 70-71, 106, 147, 175, 178, 181-82, 206, 278

Timely Publications 19-20, 32, 42-45, 62-70, 78-80, 83, 90, 106, 108, 127-30, 132-33, 145, 175, 192-95, 197, 202, 225, 229, 239, 245, 250, 253-57, 271

Siegel, Jerry 21-22, 25-27, 51, 70-71, 74, 84, 106, 147, 149-50, 178, 180-83, 277, 280

Tip Top Comics 18, 21, 111, 164, 209, 263 Tom and Jerry 9, 174, 197, 213, 234

Silberkleit, Louis 45-47, 83, 154, 257

Top Notch Comics 46-47, 84-86, 154, 156, 188, 190-91, 257-58

Powerhouse Pepper 130, 192-93, 256 Prince Valiant 12, 18, 111, 144 Prize Comics 57-58, 98, 160-61, 21011, 249, 261-62 Punch and Judy Comics 268 Quality Comics Group 33-37, 63, 90-91, 98, 105, 118-21, 129, 132-38, 142, 145, 164, 166, 171, 175, 178, 198-99, 220-25, 231, 240, 246, 257, 265, 270-73 Quinlan, Charles 50-51, 94-95, 16263, 224-25, 252, 265-67 Raboy, Mac 54, 58, 80, 98, 151, 215, 217, 244, 249-50, 266, 282 Raggedy Ann and Andy 171-73, 213, 234 Rangers [of Freedom] Comics 90, 166, 168, 198, 200-01, 261 Raymond, Alex 12-13, 25, 84, 108, 168, 184 Red Ryder 11, 13, 16, 24, 51, 113, 115, 171, 173, 214, 231-32 Red Tornado 29, 75, 141, 184, 275 Reed, Rod 150-51, 154, 215, 219, 229, 282 Register and Tribune Syndicate 20, 33-34, 117, 134-35, 221-22 Renée, Lily 199-200, 261 Rice, Pierce 93-94, 100, 131-32, 161, 178, 182, 202

North, Sterling 61-62, 77-78, 83, 115

Robinson, Jerry 23-24, 72, 105, 148, 178, 250, 278-79

Novelty Press 20, 55-56, 109-10, 135, 144, 165-66, 209-11, 230, 264-65

Roche, Ruth 88, 120, 166, 198, 240, 261

Novick, Irv 46-47, 82, 85, 155-57, 190, 258 Nyoka the Jungle Girl 150, 282

Roche & Iger 88, 90, 100, 118, 120-21, 130, 132, 138, 166-67, 178, 198, 20001, 206, 220, 240, 249, 260

Oksner, Bob 66, 98, 158, 195-96, 250, 252

Roy Rogers 9, 231-32

Oriolo, Joe 197, 268 Our Gang 9, 36, 174, 213-14, 231, 234 Owl 16, 76, 113, 171, 214 Packer, Eleanor 114, 172, 212 Parents’ Magazine Press 115-16, 126-27, 175, 187-88, 196, 230, 255, 262-63 Parker, Bill 52-55, 79-80 Patsy Walker 255-56 Pep Comics 46-47, 82-83, 86, 154-57, 189-91, 257-58 Peter, H.G. 59, 110, 139-40, 164, 175, 184-86, 209, 264, 273-74 Phantom 11, 18, 111, 206 Picture Stories from the Bible 143, 187, 275 Pines, Ned 47-49, 71, 107-08, 143, 148, 158-59, 181-82, 195-98, 250-53, 260 Planet Comics 37, 39, 87, 89, 166-68, 198, 200, 261 Plastic Man 50, 121, 137, 223-24, 270-71 Pocket Comics 90, 100-01, 131-32 Pogo 174, 213, 235

Rosenfeld, Reese 42, 57, 98, 210-11, 262

Sahle, Harry 41, 45, 60, 67, 69, 129, 132, 154, 189-91, 194, 202, 226, 255, 257-58, 270, 273 Samson 31, 60, 91-94, 152 Sandman 25-26, 29, 73-74, 144-45, 149, 182, 276, 280 Sangor, Benjamin 48, 108, 158-60, 178, 192, 195, 197, 234, 250-52, 268-69 Schiff, Jack 148, 180-82, 278-80 Schomburg, Alex 43-44, 108, 127, 129, 194, 239, 250-52, 255 Schwartz, Julius 274-75 Scorchy Smith 12, 14, 30, 39, 110, 122, 209, 263 Scott, Thurman T. 37, 39, 87, 90, 166 Scott, W.W. “Bill” 30, 42, 91-93 Secret Agent X-9 12, 18, 20 Señorita Rio 168, 200, 260-61 Sensation Comics 138, 140, 142-43, 184-87, 274-76 Seven Soldiers of Victory 74-75, 81, 150, 279-80 Shadow 12, 57, 71, 106-07, 110, 157, 227, 259 Sheena, Queen of the Jungle 37, 51,

287

Silver Streak Comics 49-50, 103-05, 161, 168-70, 243 Simon, Joe 6, 30, 44-45, 51-52, 56-57, 60, 62-66, 68-70, 73, 80, 93, 98, 10001, 106, 109, 127, 129, 131, 144-46, 181-82, 187, 194-96, 211, 227, 239, 254, 279-80 Skyman 58, 102-03, 163-64, 204-05, 265 Smash Comics 34, 36, 118-19, 135-37, 220-21, 224, 270, 272 S.M. Iger Studio 20, 44, 80, 87, 89, 118 Spark Publications 249-50, 278, 282 Sparky Watts 103, 108, 163-64, 205, 265 Spectre 25-26, 29, 70, 74, 78, 84, 141, 149, 182, 244, 276, 280 Speed Comics 42, 90, 100-01, 131, 201-02, 239-40 Spirit 34-35, 117-19, 121, 134-37, 166, 222, 224, 246, 270-72 Sprang, Dick 57, 278-79 Spy Smasher 54, 79, 81, 99, 150, 15253, 215, 218, 283 Stanley, John 213, 232, 234 Star Spangled Comics 70, 74-75, 145, 149-50, 178, 183, 279-80 Startling Comics 48-49, 158-59, 195-96 Steel Sterling 47, 84-86, 155, 157, 190, 229, 257 Stoner, E.C. 16, 57, 112, 171, 214, 236, 240 Storm, George 28, 82, 84, 152, 18384, 280 Street & Smith Publications 19, 47, 57, 71, 106-07, 110, 116, 125, 157, 169, 177, 227-28, 259-60 Sub-Mariner 43-44, 51, 56, 59, 66-69, 104, 127-29, 194-95, 254-55 Sullivan, Vince 22, 25, 58, 102, 16364, 204-06, 265 Sultan, Charles 19, 80-81, 98-99, 107, 220, 259 Sundell, Abner 45-47, 83, 93-94, 161, 175 Super Comics 15-16, 112-13, 171, 214, 231-32 Super-Magician Comics 107, 157, 227, 259 Superman 21-23, 25-27, 29-30, 32, 37, 41-42, 49, 53, 60, 70-71, 74, 76-77, 93, 107, 125, 139, 147-48, 151, 178, 18081, 183, 185, 239, 269, 277-81 Supermouse 159-60, 191, 197, 251 Super-Mystery Comics 58, 108-09, 160, 201, 268-69 Supersnipe 157, 169, 227-28, 259-60, 267 Target Comics 55-56, 110, 165, 20910, 264 Tarzan 11-12, 18, 20, 38, 42-43, 111, 149 Temerson, Frank 39, 41-42, 94-95, 162, 224-25, 244, 265-68

True Comics 115-16, 126-27, 188, 196, 262-63 Turner, Robert 51, 58, 100, 108, 119, 136, 201, 268 Uncle Sam 36, 63, 98-99, 120-21, 13537, 222, 272-73 Uncle Wiggily 173, 213 United Feature Syndicate 11, 18, 49, 91, 111, 164-66, 209, 211, 247, 263 Vigoda, Bill 257-58 Viscardi, Nick 35, 118, 120, 134, 136, 166-68, 178, 199-200 Walt Disney’s Comics & Stories 17, 60, 114, 172-73, 175, 212-14, 231, 233 Wambi the Jungle Boy 38, 89, 166-67, 198-99, 261 Weisinger, Mort 71, 73-74, 148-50, 154, 175, 181-82, 274 Wellman, Manly Wade 54, 127, 134, 149, 220, 222, 271, 273-74 Western Printing & Lithographing 15, 17, 81, 112-15, 170, 173-75, 211, 214, 233, 235 Whitney, Ogden 25, 58, 102, 163, 165, 178, 205, 265 Whiz Comics 52-56, 79-81, 151-52, 214-15, 218-19, 281, 283 Wilbur 85-87, 189, 229, 257-58 Wings Comics 39, 87, 89, 110, 116, 166-67, 198-99, 261 Wm. H. Wise & Co. 231, 235-37, 242, 250, 252-53, 277 Wolverton, Basil 40, 56, 68, 110, 12930, 165, 169, 193, 204, 242, 256 Wonder Woman 77, 138-43, 184-86, 229, 248, 255, 264, 273-74, 276-77 Wonderworld Comics 31-32, 92-93, 161 Wood, Bob 46-47, 56, 104-06, 110, 132, 168-70, 203-04, 226-27, 243-44 Woody Woodpecker 9, 173, 212, 234 Woolfolk, William 79-80, 134, 137, 151, 153, 157, 219-22, 271, 273 World’s Finest Comics 74-75, 81, 142, 144-45, 150, 178, 181, 278, 280 Worth Publishing 50-52, 100, 131, 162, 202, 239 Wow Comics 55, 81, 153, 215, 217-18, 281-82 Yellowjacket Comics 248-49 Young Allies 69, 129, 135, 193-94, 254, 256 Zip Comics 47, 85, 154-55, 189-91, 257

BOOKS FROM TWOMORROWS PUBLISHING

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MIKE GRELL

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AMERICAN COMIC BOOK CHRONICLES: 1950s-1990s NEW! 1940-1944 and 1945-1949 Volumes coming soon!

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In 1978, DC Comics implemented its “DC Explosion” with many creative new titles, but just weeks after its launch, they pulled the plug, leaving stacks of completed comic book stories unpublished. This book marks the 40th Anniversary of “The DC Implosion”, one of the most notorious events in comics, with an exhaustive oral history from the creators involved (JENETTE KAHN, PAUL LEVITZ, LEN WEIN, MIKE GOLD, and others), plus detailed analysis of how it changed the landscape of comics forever!

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Phone: 919-449-0344 E-mail: store@twomorrows.com Web: www.twomorrows.com

TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA

It was the first half of the

1940s

It was the Golden Age of the comic book industry, a period that presented the earliest adventures of such iconic super-heroes as Batman, Captain Marvel, Superman, and Wonder Woman. It was a time when America’s entry into World War II was presaged by the arrival of such patriotic do-gooders as Will Eisner’s Uncle Sam, Harry Shorten and Irv Novick’s The Shield, and Joe Simon and Jack Kirby’s Captain America. It was when teenage culture found expression in a fumbling red-haired high school student named Archie Andrews. But most of all, the first five years of the 1940s was the age of the “packagers” when studios headed by men like Harry A Chesler, Will Eisner, and Jerry Iger churned out material for a plethora of new comic book companies that published the entire gamut of genres, from funny animal stories to crime tales to jungle sagas to science-fiction adventures. It was 1940-1944. American Comic Book Chronicles documents every decade of comic book history, from the 1930s to today. Each volume presents a year-by-year account of the comic book industry’s most significant publications, most notable creators, and most impactful trends.

ISBN-13: 978-1-60549-089-2 ISBN-10: 1-60549-089-X 54495

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