Posted in: Comics, Vintage Paper | Tagged: Promise Collection, solomon grundy

The Promise Collection 1944: Monsters of Gotham

One day after Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected to his unprecedented fourth term as President of the United States in November 1944, comic book and pulp publisher Alex Hillman announced that he had scaled back his comic and pulp lines in order to launch a general interest periodical called Pageant Magazine.  Hillman told the New York Post that he'd shut down comic books with a total circulation of 1,250,000 copies and that if Pageant Magazine was merely modestly successful, he might be able to continue publishing them sporadically.  Hillman was publishing three titles at the time, two of which — Air Fighters Comics and Clue Comics — were being read by the young fan who put together the Promise Collection.  After this announcement, Air Fighters Comics would not be seen on the newsstands again until June 1945. It would reappear and continue as Airboy Comics a few months later.  Clue Comics would not continue until August 1946.

Remembered today as the publisher of comic books titles such as Air Fighters Comics and Airboy Comics among others, Alex Hillman is arguably the most politically and economically savvy individual to ever publish a comic book line in America.  Hillman was a law student at the University of Chicago during the dawn of what became known as the Chicago School of Economics at that university, which encompassed teachings in related academic areas such as business and law.  The Chicago School became known for applying economic theory to other fields such as politics. In later times, Hillman was among those who helped fund the Economics Department there via endowments after the Ford Foundation halted their funding.  The Chicago School has produced some 30 Nobel Prize winners in economics, including most famously, Milton Friedman. Friedman attended Chicago a short time after Hillman, and the school's economic theories have been influential on conservative politics (and in later years, so was Hillman himself, playing a role in the development of modern American conservatism).  Hillman's entry into publishing came via serving as a lawyer for William Randolph Heart's Chicago-area interests. After World War II, Hillman would be sent by Hillman Periodicals board member Senator Styles Bridges to France to lead an investigative team for the Senate Appropriations Committee regarding a proposed $5 billion economic aid package for that country under the Marshall Plan.  All of which is to say, Hillman's method of shifting his paper quota around to suit his requirements was an indicator of comic book industry trends that were just getting started.

Welcome to Part 8 of the Promise Collection series, which is meant to serve as liner notes of sorts for the comic books in the collection. The Promise Collection is a set of nearly 5,000 comic books, 95% of which are blisteringly high grade, that were published from 1939 to 1952 and purchased by one young comic book fan.  The name of the Promise Collection was inspired by the reason that it was saved and kept in such amazing condition since that time. An avid comic book fan named Junie and his older brother Robert went to war in Korea.  Robert Promised Junie that he would take care of his brother's beloved comic book collection should anything happen to him. Junie was killed during the Korean War, and Robert kept his promise.  There are more details about that background in a previous post regarding this incredible collection of comic books.  And over the course of a few dozen articles in this new series of posts, we will also be revealing the complete listing of the collection.  You can always catch up with posts about this collection at this link, which will become a hub of sorts regarding these comic books over time.

July through December 1944 in the Promise Collection

While Hillman's shift of paper from his comics and pulps and into the launch of Pageant Magazine likely had political rather than economic motivations, the usage of various techniques by publishers to try to work around (or in some cases, circumvent) their paper quotas was becoming evident by late 1944.  In one obvious case for two series in the Promise Collection from this period, Spitfire Comics and Bomber Comics, Elliot Publications was likely an imprint or shell company for the Malverne Herald newspaper.  No doubt the newspaper or its owners wanted to try to take advantage of their paper allotment for use in the lucrative comic field or made a deal with someone to do so.  In the case of Blazing Comics from Rural Home Publications, the publisher was sent to prison for violating his paper quota.  We'll explore this case and others in a future post in this series.

The number of comic books that Junie purchased for his collection began to explode over this period.  July through December 1944 includes roughly 225 comics in the collection — nearly double the amount of the first six months of the year.  New series launches in the collection from this period include Marvel's Amazing Comics #1 and Mystic Comics volume 2 #1, along with M.C. Gaines' Picture Stories from the Bible #1.  Junie added a significant number of ongoing series to his regular purchases during this time as well, such as Action Comics, Adventure Comics, All-Star Comics, Black Hood Comics, Green Hornet Comics, Jumbo Comics, More Fun Comics, Suspense Comics and Terrific Comics among others.  As I write this, the Terrific Comics #5 CGC 9.0 from this time frame, which includes a legendary cover by Alex Schomburg, has just sold for $75,000.  But perhaps the most important key in the Promise Collection from this six-month period is the All-American Comics #61 CGC 9.6 which sold for $138,000 earlier this year.

Monster of Gotham

All-American Comics #61 is the first appearance Solomon Grundy, of one of the most important super-villains of the Golden Age of comics and a character who has remained a fixture of Gotham up to modern times.  Written by Science Fiction great Alfred Bester and drawn by Paul Reinman, this Green Lantern story takes a nursery rhyme and brings it to literal and evil life.  Solomon Grundy's nursery rhyme tale is the most basic form of biography when you think about it.  He's born, lives his life, and dies, all in the space of one week. One can see how that suggested horror to Alfred Bester. It's certainly supernatural when taken at face value.  The character's longevity as an icon that transcends comics is a part of the allure of All-American Comics #61 for collectors, and so is that wonderfully eerie cover by Reinman.

But contrary to popular belief, the nursery rhyme — first put down in written and published form in 1842 in The Nursery Rhymes of England compiled by James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps — is not the first literary mention of Solomon Grundy.  The name was used as a key character in a very popular play and a novel before that. Both of those characters appear to have inspired the DC Comics character as much as the nursery rhyme. The 1805 play Who Wants a Guinea? A Comedy, in Five Acts by George Coleman was characterized as a Transatlantic sensation in its time, appearing in various modified forms in both the United States and the UK for decades. This version of the character was variously referred to as Solomon Grundy, Solomon Gundy, and Solomon Swap.  As later recalled by The Gentlemen's Magazine: "Who Wants a Guinea? in which, on the actor's behalf, the role of Solomon Grundy was transmogrified for the nonce into Solomon Swap the Yankee. Apart from this, the original situations in the piece were retained. This, the first delineation in England of the genus Yankee by a Transatlantic artist, was remarkably well received."

The Materials of Exchange between Britain and North East America, 1750-1900 by Daniel Maudlin and Robin Peel further elaborates on the character: "The most important alteration to Who Wants a Guinea?, however, is undoubtedly Hackett's transformation of the garrulous rat-catcher Solomon Gundy into a Yankee merchant called Solomon Swap. Purged of Francophilic malapropisms and 'cursed jabber' is squarely in the tradition of the Yankee's self-consciously mischievous double-talk. Hence while the benevolent landowner Torrent in John Bull at Home still hires the Solomon character as his footman, their relationship in Hackett's piece is marked by the verbal advantage Swap gains over his employer. "He does nothing but run about and talk", Torren complains of his errant servant at one point. He knocks the furniture about as he does English, and makes as much havoc in the house as in a language."

Those familiar with the DC Comics character Solomon Grundy may note some basic similarities in the character to this earlier version here.  But it goes farther.  In the 1833 novel The Buccaneer. A Tale by Mrs. S.C. Hall, Solomon Grundy is again portrayed as a simple yet determined dolt who babbles and blunders along on misadventures:  "Ah! Solomon Grundy, would that the Lord had given thee sense to understand, as he hath bestowed upon thee talent to speak according to thy understanding!  As it is, Solomon, I lament that thou art a fool, Solomon, a very fool, except in what regardeth the creature comforts. Solomon grinned, and applied himself with renewed diligence to his viands when the preacher had passed. He was now surrounded by a motley party."

It seems possible and perhaps likely that the DC Comics character drew at least indirect inspiration from these previous forms of the character, which had passed into the popular culture of the early 19th Century era, as it did from the simple nursery rhyme. As for the original version of the rhyme, it reads as:

Solomon Grundy,
Born on a Monday,
Christened on Tuesday,
Married on Wednesday,
Took ill on Thursday,
Grew worse on Friday,
Died on Saturday,
Buried on Sunday,
That was the end,
Of Solomon Grundy.

Just a few pages before the Solomon Grundy rhyme in The Nursery Rhymes of England there's another rhyme called Three Wise Men of Gotham.  In this original story in All-American Comics #61, the creature who was named Solomon Grundy terrorized Gotham as well.  This begs some interesting questions about the origins of the character. I've found that Bill Finger, who wrote many Green Lantern tales in the Golden Age, put even more research into his stories than people generally realized, which makes one wonder if he was aware of the Gotham-adjacent rhyme and suggested that to Bester.  These wise, mad men are tied into the original legends of Gotham.  Bester modified the original Solomon Grundy rhyme for his tale:

This is a tale of Solomon Grundy
Born on Monday
Got a mob on Tuesday
Robbed on Wednesday
Looted on Thursday
Murdered on Friday
Trapped on Saturday
And Sunday??

As Bester's twist on the rhyme suggests, not unlike Batman of the earliest era, the Solomon Grundy story in All-American 61 is horror-tinged noir. Set in Batman's Gotham, and it tells us something about Gotham too:  it's a dark, grimy, dangerous place where anything can happen.  That eerie cover (complete with bats) fits in very well alongside some of the classic Detective Comics covers from this era.

While All-American Comics #61 is the most historically famous comic book from the July-December 1944 period of the Promise Collection, the obscure Blazing Comics #2 might be the most historically fascinating.  In a story starring the jungle girl character "Jun-Gal" in this comic, Adolf Hitler orders Nazi subordinates to seize the source of Uranium near an African village in order to use it to develop an atomic weapon (they actually refer to Radium in the story, which is found in Uranium ore and was an element already familiar to the public at this time).  Of course, the African nation now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo was at that time the largest and best source of Uranium on the planet, and the United States had by that time already secretly taken control of the Shinkolobwe Mine and its Uranium for use in the Manhattan Project.  While the notion of atomic-powered weapons was rather quietly seeping into the comic books of the time (Comic Cavalcade #7 and All-Select Comics #4 from this time frame contain somewhat trivial examples), the Blazing Comics #2 example is curiously on the nose given the secrecy surrounding such activities.  Of course, within the next year, such matters would begin to have an unmistakable impact on comic books.

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