Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Vintage Paper | Tagged: blue beetle, Jack Kamen

Blue Beetle & the Chorus Girl in Bell Features' 4Most #22, at Auction

With Jack Kamen art not seen on a U.S. cover, Bell Features' 4Most #22 features Blue Beetle and Goldie the chorus girl.

Published Thu, 27 Feb 2025 14:57:06 -0600

Article Summary

Spotlight on Bell Features 4Most #22 from ca.1947, a rare Canadian gem showcasing Blue Beetle.
Repurposed Jack Kamen cover art illustrates classic good girl style alongside vivid superhero action and narrative flair.
Historical context traces Blue Beetle’s evolution from Fox Feature roots and controversial mentions in early critiques.
A compelling blend of artistry and character-driven storytelling marks a pivotal era in Blue Beetle’s comic history.

According to GCD, Canadian comic book company Bell Features only published a handful of issues featuring Blue Beetle, scattered across titles such as Mystery Adventure Thrillers and Zoot. Publisher Superior also put out three issues of the Blue Beetle series in Canada. But 4Most #22 from Bell Features might be the most interesting Canadian-published Blue Beetle of the bunch — and the most obscure. This one hasn't even been documented by GCD, and features one of the best Blue Beetle covers published in either the U.S. or Canada during this late Golden Age era. The blurb on the Jack Kamen cover repurposed from one of the interior stories (originally published in Fox's Blue Beetle #49) tells the tale, as the action takes place "over the footlights of a girly-girly show to spare the life of Goldie, Queen of the Chorus!" There's a 4Most #22 (Bell Features, ca. 1947) VG condition copy up for auction in the 2025 March 13 Canadian Golden Age Comics Showcase Auction #40290 at Heritage Auctions.

4Most #22 (Bell Features, ca. 1947) Blue Beetle cover by Jack Kamen.

Best remembered for his work at EC Comics across a range of genres including science fiction, horror, and crime, Jack Kamen also made noteworthy late-1940s contributions to publishers like Fiction House and Fox Feature Syndicate, where his good girl artwork on titles like Phantom Lady among others is also highly sought after by collectors. We've mentioned his Fox work on Dagar, Desert Hawk, and Rulah, Jungle Goddess recently, and his Blue Beetle work is also highly sought after by collectors. This era of the U.S. Blue Beetle series is well known to have garnered a couple of mentions in Fredric Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent, but that's only part of the story. In 1948, shortly after the harder-edged true crime story and good girl art era had begun for this series, a number of major metros around the United States put Blue Beetle on their banned comics lists.

In Canada that same year, the Vancouver Sun would say of Blue Beetle, "Superman stuff this with liberal ladling of super sex. In this regard, follows comic book formula of giving readers sex of one and half a dozen of the other. Blue Beetle is a cop named Dan Garret with a deep sense of public duty which causes him to pull on what appears to be a suit of long underwear, dyed blue, whenever the world threatens to be blown up (and it almost is blown up in one edition) and prevent it in the nick of time. Featured on cover is the typical Miss Maximum Minimum. That is, she has a maximum of physical development and a niminum of clothing."

While much of the Fox line survived the 1948 era, Blue Beetle effectively ended that year in the U.S. with issue #57. Interestingly, Fox had him increasingly crowded off of the covers of his own series in favor of the beautiful women during this part of the run in the U.S., making Canada's 4Most #22 an apt symbol for this era of the character. There's a VG condition copy up for auction in the 2025 March 13 Canadian Golden Age Comics Showcase Auction #40290 at Heritage Auctions.