Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Vintage Paper | Tagged: golden age, Jack Kamen

Love and Death in Claire Voyant #3, Up for Auction

Created by Jack Sparling for the newspaper PM, the comic book reprint of the strip caused some controversy with this Jack Kamen cover.

Claire Voyant was the creation of Jack Sparling and debuted in the tabloid newspaper daily PM on May 9, 1943. Claire was found drifting on a life raft by a U.S. Navy ship, and it was soon discovered she had amnesia.  The ship's cook suggested the name "Claire Voyant" by paging through a dictionary, cleverly reasoning that a name suggesting knowing the future is the very opposite of not knowing your past.  After the war, more of her backstory was revealed as she discovered that she was a chorus girl touring overseas with the USO when the ship she was traveling on was sunk by the Nazis.  In the meantime, Claire became a well-known singer and entertainer, and the strip chronicled the adventures of the beautiful women and dangerous men in her orbit.  The strip was reprinted in comic book form most famously by publisher Leader Enterprises, with Jack Kamen covers, where one particular issue of the series attracted the attention of comic book critic Gershon Legman in his book Love and Death.  A particularly interesting example of the moral panic of the anti-comics crusade era, there's a solid-looking G- copy of Claire Voyant #3 (Leader Enterprises, 1947) up for auction in the 2024 October 24 – 25 Pre-Code Horror & Crime Comics Showcase Auction #40272 at Heritage Auctions.

"As to this enormous use of sexual symbols in comic books it is almost useless to speak, except to mention that it is a predictable enough result of censorship," wrote cultural commentator Gershon Legman, in Love and Death, which was ostensibly a study of the relationship between censorship and violent and sexual content.  The comic book portion of Love and Death was originally published in issue #3 of the magazine Neurotica from Fall 1948.  Legman's rather breathless discourse takes the artwork of a number of comics to task, such as: "…with the whales rushing up between the legs of women who go out to fish for minnows (Jumbo Comics #94), the rhinoceros with double horns on his nose… (Fight Comics #48), the moon-rockets with the red tips to which interplanetary women-captives must be bound (this is standard), the snakes, the whips, the endless revolvers and automatics aimed from and at the groin, if not at the buttocks; and, at the absolute nadir of indefensible vulgarity, the habitual desecration of women in wedding gowns, now repeated on the cover of Claire Voyant Comics #3… where the bride is socked on the chin with the butt of a gun, thrown in the mud in her white tulle gown…"

After launching in PM, the strip was initially syndicated to a relatively small number of newspapers by PM, and then went wider when the Chicago Sun Syndicate took over syndication of the strip in October 1944. Ironically, the Jack Kamen cover of Claire Voyante #3 is based very specifically on the September 23, 1946 episode of the newspaper strip, which is part of the material reprinted in this issue.  While Legman did note that the character originated in PM, he proceeded to use it as part of his argument targeting comic books specifically.  The strip is arguably more graphically violent than the comic book cover that it inspired.

Publisher Leader Enterprises released a handful of comics during this period and was primarily the publisher of trade-focused newspaper publications such as The Civil Service Leader and Fashion Trades, among others.  Leader Enterprises Publisher Jerry Finkelstein founded The Hill in 1994.  A notorious cover by the legendary Jack Kamen, there's a solid-looking G- copy of Claire Voyant #3 (Leader Enterprises, 1947) up for auction in the 2024 October 24 – 25 Pre-Code Horror & Crime Comics Showcase Auction #40272 at Heritage Auctions.

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