Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Vintage Paper | Tagged: fiction house, Jumbo Comics, sheena, will eisner

Sheena Takes Over with Jumbo Comics #17, Up for Auction

Sheena became the regular cover feature of Jumbo Comics beginning in issue #17, and would stay on the title's covers for the next 143 issues.

Prior to Jumbo Comics #17, the covers of the Jumbo Comics series featured a rotating cast of characters, including the weird science fiction hero Stuart Taylor, Spies in Action, and the superhero called The Lightning. While Sheena had appeared on a few earlier covers, her status as the book's main draw was not yet solidified.  That changed when Sheena became the regular cover feature with issue #17, and this move cemented her as Fiction House's flagship character and the anchor of their most successful title. It also established the publisher's formula of action and adventure wrapped in good girl art covers and stories, a model they would successfully replicate across their line in titles like Jungle Comics and Planet Comics.  This is the issue where the Jumbo Comics anthology title officially became Sheena's book, and there's a high grade CBCS FN/VF 7.0 Off-white to white pages copy of the scarce Jumbo Comics #17 (Fiction House, 1940) up for auction in the 2025 October 16 Golden Age Comics Century Showcase Auction III at Heritage Auctions.

The cover of Jumbo Comics #17, attributed to Will Eisner and Bob Powell, features Sheena in fierce combat with a tribal warrior. This scene is loosely representative of the lead Sheena in this issue. In the story, a villainous hunter manipulates a local tribe into attacking Sheena's village to create a diversion while he attempts to steal a gorilla that Sheena and her allies have captured for a safari expedition.  This cover story is a bit of counter-programming as compared to much of the rest of the issue.  The feature ZX-5 Spies in Action reolves around the master spy ZX-5 investigating the sabotage of a revolutionary new aircraft, an electrically driven plane with limitless cruising range powered by "air-waves."  Similarly, the saga of The Lightning in this issue reflects another important aspect of the state of America in 1940. In the story, the superhero battles a ruthless gang hired by a powerful foreign power to sabotage and destroy America's steel mills. Following the overthrow of France, the Roosevelt administration initiated a ramp-up of American industrial production, particularly in steel, to supply Great Britain through what would become the Lend-Lease program and to build up America's own defenses.

Jumbo Comics #17 has been considered rare for decades. The Photo-Journal Guide to Comic Books rates the issue a seven on its Scarcity Index, designating it as scarce with an estimated 21-50 copies left in existence.  While collectors have often found that those estimates were too low, that doesn't seem to be the case here, with just 24 total copies on the CGC census, and a tiny handful of those in high grade. But there's an incredibly rare chance to get a high-grade CBCS FN/VF 7.0 Off-white to white pages copy of the scarce Jumbo Comics #17 (Fiction House, 1940) up for auction in the 2025 October 16 Golden Age Comics Century Showcase Auction III at Heritage Auctions.

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