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Operation Chastise & a Famous Photographer, Blue Bolt v4 10 at Auction

Blue Bolt returns to the cover while a character inspired by Margaret Bourke-White joins his story, and RAF pilot Guy Gibson is featured elsewhere in the issue.

Comic book publisher Novelty Press was launched in late 1939 as a fully-owned subsidiary of highly successful magazine giant Curtis Publishing.  According to most sources, comic book packager Funnies Inc. had convinced the publisher of Ladies Home Journal and the Saturday Evening Post to get in on the comic book boom of the era, though Curtis is said to have had a sophisticated internal research department by that time.  Novelty Press launched with the title Target Comics, followed shortly by Blue Bolt, the latter named for the character created by Joe Simon, who debuted in the first issue of the title.  Jack Kirby joined Simon on the feature beginning with issue #2, and their run on the title lasted through #10, with the character being continued by others afterwards as more of a superhero rather than the science fiction saga that Simon and Kirby had started.  Curiously, Blue Bolt disappeared from the cover of his own series after issue #7.  It was an anthology title to be sure, but Simon suggests in his biography My Life in Comics that Funnies Inc.'s Lloyd Jacquet had pitched Blue Bolt to Curtis to get them onboard, and they liked the name so much they wanted to use it for the title. The character carried on as a superhero until v3 #4, where he joined the Army Air Corps in his civilian identity (kind of… as he was still called Blue Bolt by everyone), and continued his adventures in what were essentially war comic stories.

According to Joe Simon, publisher Victor Fox threatened to sue Curtis, presumably because of the similarity of the title "Blue Bolt" with the name "Blue Beetle" and also because Simon had a contract to work for Fox.  Just a month prior to the release of Blue Bolt #1, Simon had done the cover for Blue Beetle #2 and the Blue Beetle cover of Mystery Men Comics #10, among other work for Fox.  As it happens, Kirby had worked on the Blue Beetle newspaper strip by that time as well.  While Fox dropped the suit before it went to court, one wonders if a settlement was reached that had Curtis agreeing to not use the character on the title's covers, and perhaps even change the character into a war-era pilot rather than a superhero.  Fox had a number of such entanglements with other publishers, most on point here is forcing Marvel to drop the character Blue Blaze out of the title Mystic Comics.  Blue Bolt in his original costume would not return to the cover of the Blue Bolt title until the Star Publications era in 1950.

In the meantime, Blue Bolt finally returned to the cover of his own title as a war-era aviator in v4 #10, and on the story inside, a famous real-life figure from the war has joined the storyline. War photographer character Marg Hesslin is clearly inspired by photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White.  As we've discussed previously, Bourke-White appeared in a few different comic books across that era.  Most notably,  according to photography scholar Gary Saretzky, the character Linda Lens, who debuted in Camera Comics #3, was loosely inspired by Bourke-White. Famous Funnies #89 (cover-dated December 1941) contained a one-page comic of her career highlights at that time, and DC Comics' Real Fact Comics #8 (May-June 1947) included a story chronicling her career, and on its cover included an illustrated version of the iconic photo of Bourke-White from the May 1, 1943, Life article.  The Margaret Bourk-White Collection at Syracuse University includes original art pages from an additional comic book story featuring Bourke-White which may have gone unpublished. Bourke-White was a staff photographer for both Fortune and Life magazines, and her photograph of a dam at Fort Peck, Montana was used as the cover for the 1936 relaunch of Life as a photo-centric magazine (Life, which had launched in 1883, was previously best known for its illustrations by Charles Dana Gibson among others). In 1930-1932, she became the first Western professional photographer allowed into the Soviet Union, taking now-famous photographs of Joseph Stalin and other figures, among many other subjects.

During World War II, Bourk-White became a war correspondent, working in combat zones.  The March 1, 1943 issue of Life article "Life's Bourke-White Goes Bombing" further vaulted her into the public eye as she became the first woman to accompany the U.S. Army Air Force on a bombing mission.  The 1944 Alfred Hitchcock movie Lifeboat starring Tallulah Bankhead is said to have been inspired by a December 1942 incident in which a ship Bourke-White was traveling on during a combat mission was torpedoed.  That incident seems to have inspired the story in Blue Bolt v4 #10, as Blue Bolt and Marg Hesslin spend three days on a life raft before being rescued.  The Marg Hesslin character would go on to become an occasional part of the Blue Bolt storyline thereafter.

Margaret Bourke-White would not be the only noteworthy real-life figure to appear in Blue Bolt v4 #10.  Elsewhere in this issue, the story of Royal Air Force Wing Commander Guy P. Gibson and the Dambuster Raid (also known as Operation Chastise) of May 16-17, 1943, is chronicled in the regular Cap Hawkins' Tales feature of the title.  Gibson led the mission to attack Germany's Möhne and Edersee dams, destroying critical infrastructure.  The highest graded CGC 9.2 copy of Blue Bolt v4 #10 (Novelty Press, 1944) is up for auction at the 2025 June 26 – 29 Comic & Comic Art Signature Auction at Heritage Auctions.

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