Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Vintage Paper | Tagged: golden age, Hillman Periodicals

Miracle Comics and the Rare Super-Science of Sky Wizard, at Auction

Miracle Comics featured Sky Wizard, the "world's greatest scientist" with a headquarters on a floating island in the sky.

The debut comic book effort from magazine and paperback publisher Hillman Periodicals, the Miracle Comics series ran for four issues from early 1940 to early 1941.  Hillman's comic book line and this title itself were developed under the auspices of Hillman editors Anatole Field and Lionel White, with White soon becoming the publisher's editor-in-chief for a brief time.  The title's protagonist was the Sky Wizard, the world's greatest scientist with a headquarters on a floating island in the sky. With a series of superweapons of his own invention, Sky Wizard defended mankind from a variety of threats.  This is a tough-to-get and often-overlooked series, but there are copies of the complete four-issue series of Miracle Comics, featuring the world's greatest scientist turned superhero Sky Wizard now up for auction in the 2024 August 1 – 2 Rarities of the Golden Age Comics Showcase Auction #40259 at Heritage Auctions.

Sky Wizard was the creation of writer Emile C. Schurmacher and artist Ed Kressy.  Under Schurmacher's guidance, the short-lived feature became an example of how WWII-era cutting-edge scientific concepts were being embedded into comic book stories to update the more traditional superhero concepts.  In a 1940 article in Writer's Digest, Miracle Comics writer Schurmacher wrote of the pseudo-scientific elements that he introduced to Sky Wizard's adventures. Schurmacher was inspired by news accounts of footprints in the Himalayas ascribed to a race of giant snowmen, a reported German effort to mine the skies against invading airplanes, and methods of growing vegetables in water known as hydroponics that was being introduced in newspapers in the late 1930s. With these elements in play, Sky Wizard's adventures took on a life of their own.

Schurmacher was a longtime magazine fiction writer for a wide range of publications, and later became the managing editor of Hillman's Pageant Magazine at the launch of that title.  Pageant would later become embroiled in a massive political controversy under Schurmacher's successor as managing editor, Abner Sundell (who himself had been a longtime MLJ/Archie editor and writer).

Best remembered today as the publisher of Airboy and other comics, Alex Hillman entered into the publishing business in the late 1920s, working for publishers including Heron Press, Inc. and a publisher of academic texts.  By the early 1930s he was working for publisher William Godwin, Inc., soon becoming president of that firm. He eventually formed a partnership called Hillman-Curl, which got into magazine-style pulps around the mid-1930s, and started his own Hillman Periodicals in 1938.  Hillman then essentially made three distinct attempts to enter the comic book publishing business from 1939 to 1941.

Hillman-Curl's late-1939 launch of Miracle Comics and Rocket Comics, under the editorship of  Field and White, was the first short-lived attempt.  Apparently free of the partnership with Sam Curl a short time later, Hillman Periodicals then launched Victory Comics and Air Fighters Comics under the editorship of former Funnies, Inc. editor John H. Compton.  This attempt seems to have quickly stalled out as well, but Hillman apparently didn't want to let Air Fighters Comics die after just one issue.  Air Fighters Comics returned with sort of a soft relaunch a year later under the editorship of Ed Cronin and with a completely different line-up, including the introduction of Airboy.

There are only 12 unrestored copies of Miracle Comics #1, 6 of issue #2, 11 of issue #3, and 11 of issue #4 on the CGC census. In addition, #4 is considered by Heritage Auctions as one of the ten rarest Hillman Periodicals comic books.  Featuring a quirky and unique hero of the Golden Age in Sky Wizard, there are copies of the complete four-issue series of Miracle Comics, featuring the world's greatest scientist turned superhero Sky Wizard now up for auction in the 2024 August 1 – 2 Rarities of the Golden Age Comics Showcase Auction #40259 at Heritage Auctions. For those new to Heritage Auctions and their bidding process, be sure to check out their FAQ on the bidding process and related matters.

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