Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Vintage Paper | Tagged: jack kirby, joe simon, Romance Comics

Jack Kirby & Joe Simon's My Date Comics #1 From 1947, at Auction

My Date Comics by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby saw them take Swifty Chase from Airboy Comics and make him a romantic comic lead character.

Published Wed, 28 Feb 2024 08:17:09 -0600

by Rich Johnston

Last updated Wed, 28 Feb 2024 08:31:50 -0600

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Article Summary

Jack Kirby & Joe Simon's My Date Comics was a short lived series from 1947.
First in "romance humour" genre, featuring character Swifty Chase.
Includes rare artwork by Jerry Robinson, George Roussos, and others.
Hillman founder Alex Hillman had extensive publishing interests 1930s-1960.

Joe Simon and Jack Kirby may be best known for creating the patriotic political superhero with Captain America, espousing military intervention in a foreign country at a time when US politics favoured isolationism, and Nazis held rallies in New York. But after the war, they also invented the American romance comic, the success of which spawned an industry that dominated for a decade.

My Date Comics ran from July 1947 to January 1948, was the first in the "romance humour" sub-genre of romance comics that mainly concerned Swifty Chase, a lovestruck athlete who competed with rival Snubby Skeemer for the hand of Sunny Daye and whose continuity actually continues from a non-romance strip in Airboy Comics. As well as was House-Date Harry, a lanky teen who preferred to entertain his dates in their homes and not go out. You could read into that whatever you wished.

And a copy of My Date Comics #1 is currently up for auction at Heritage Art Auctions. It has a lead Swifty Chase story by Simon and Kirby, as well as other work, with a Violet Ray/Ultraviolet story believed to be by Jerry Robinson and George Roussos, and others by Dan Barry and Mort Meskin.

My Date Comics was published by Hillman Periodicals, a publisher founded in 1938 by Alex L. Hillman, known for its true confession and true crime magazines, such as Pageant, Air Fighters Comics and Airboy Comics, which launched Airboy and The Heap. Hillman ceased publishing comics in 1953, while launching magazines such as Homeland, and People Today, while also distributing The Freeman, a journal of right-wing opinion, and one if the inspirations of the New Frontiersman magazine in Watchmen.

My Date Comics #1 (Hillman Publications, 1947) Condition: GD. Joe Simon and Jack Kirby cover and art. Mort Meskin art. The cover is detached, and the spine and first wrap have 2.75" splits. Overstreet 2023 GD 2.0 value = $71.