Serious Golden Age collectors know Exciting Comics #22 for the debut of the American Eagle, one of several patriotic hero debuts that followed the success of Captain America Comics. But a year and a half after the debut of that series, Exciting Comics #22 hits a very specific wartime nerve. Cover-dated October 1942 and on […]
Matt Baker's cover for Cinderella Love #25 (St. John, cover-dated December 1954) is considered among his best pieces of cover artwork, and it's easy to see why. A festive, celebratory theme, a budding romance in the background, and a beautiful woman in the foreground who clearly has something on her mind. Like much of Baker's […]
Liberty Scouts Comics #3 from Centaur is one of those Golden Age books where the timing is everything. With a June 1941 on-sale window and an August 1941 cover date, it lands in the narrow range of months when the United States was still officially at peace while also bracing for the possibility of all-out […]
Three months before Pearl Harbor, Silver Streak Comics #15 was already playing out the details of what the unfolding conflict might soon mean for America on the newsstand. Cover dated October 1941 but on sale September 5 of that year, it drops Captain Battle, Daredevil, and a supporting cast of heroes into a pre-war American […]
Keen Detective Funnies had become one of the most interesting anthologies in comics by the time #20 arrived. Hitting newsstands around the same time as Adventure Comics #48 (which was introducing Hour Man in that issue) and Marvel Mystery Comics #6, there was certainly plenty of competition by that time, and like some others, the […]
Zip Comics #33 hit newsstands around December 1942, delivering art and stories ripped directly from the headlines of the world at war during that year. While many Golden Age comics used the war as a generic backdrop for superheroics, this issue hits harder than most, using a wide range of then-recent real events for its […]
Released around September 1942, Cat-Man Comics #14 hit newsstands at a moment when American wartime paranoia was arguably at its peak, and not for no reason. That July, the FBI announced that the U.S. government had thwarted the plans of Nazi agents captured during Operation Pastorius, a failed plot to destroy American industrial targets. Six […]
Best remembered today for its cover by Lou Fine, the publication of Wonderworld Comics #6 in late August 1939 captures a powder-keg moment for both the comic book industry and the world. In hindsight, it's no surprise that these things are related. From that point forward, over the next few months, the comic book industry […]
Startling Comics #16 hit newsstands in May 1942, some six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and a time of profound unease mixed with rising determination. The contents of this issue were put into production after President Franklin D. Roosevelt's State of the Union address delivered on January 6, 1942, with the lead Fighting […]
By the fall of 1939, American culture was heading towards two incompatible futures at once, a reality reflected in many comic books of that year. At Flushing Meadows in Queens, the New York World's Fair promised "The World of Tomorrow" through shiny architectural curves and futuristic exhibits. Visitors saw a carefully crafted vision of highways, […]
With a cover date of June 1946 and an on-sale date of April 11, the contents of America's Best Comics #18 were likely in various stages of production over the prior few months. The Black Terror, Pyroman, and Doc Strange stories were clearly conceived while World War II was still ongoing, and had been hastily […]
The Wizard is a pulp-style superhero character who first appeared in Top-Notch Comics #1, cover-dated December 1939. He was the earliest cover star of the Top-Notch Comics series, the second title launched by MLJ Magazines, the publisher who would eventually become known for Archie. The Wizard was created by Will Harr and Edd Ashe, Jr. and […]
Ace Periodicals' Banner Comics title starts off with a little bit of a mystery: the series begins with issue #3. Typically, this would mean that the series changed titles after the first two issues, sometimes even from a non-comics title, but there's no apparent match for that scenario on the Ace Periodicals timeline. The debut […]
Suspense Comics #3 is one of the most infamous Alex Schomburg covers ever published, and it's a theme that Schomburg would use from time to time during the Golden Age. Terrific Comics #5 and All-New Comics #8 are Schomburg covers with similar themes. These Nazi/Bondage/Horror/War covers wrap up the terrors of that era in a […]
The pre-Code era's true crime comic book genre stayed surprisingly true to its name. From long-running and legendary titles like Crime Does Not Pay to shorter but still-infamous series like Gangsters Can't Win, most titles that positioned themselves as true crime made an effort to chronicle the exploits of real-life criminals with at least some […]
According to a lawsuit over the creation of Ace Periodicals comic books during this era, Magno the Magnetic Man and the rest of the material in Super-Mystery Comics #1 was the creation of a comic production studio run by Patrick Lamar. At least two stories in this issue were based on plots from past Ace […]
We've talked about the weird and wonderful world of the comic books from publisher Harry "A" Chesler a few times here over the years, but the role of Charles Sultan as art director of the publisher beginning in 1940 is deserving of more attention. In 1941, Chesler's Punch Comics #1 introduced Sultan's Mr. E and […]
Of the genesis of Pocket Comics which debuted long-running character the Black Cat among others, Joe Simon noted in his biography Joe Simon: My Life in Comics, that "Alfred's first offices were on 44th Street in the same building as Fawcett Comics. He had this idea for "pocket comics," little books that were half the […]
The Heritage blurb for Harvey's All-New Comics #4 from 1943 says "WWII/Nazi/bondage cover by Al Avison," but that's understating the case. That cover is more like "space creature Nazis with a human woman captive while an astronaut adventurer comes to the rescue." The vast majority of the time, a weird cover like this would have […]
In the spring of 1940, as the New York World's Fair prepared to open for its second and final season in Flushing Meadows, Queens, by all appearances, it had become a towering success. Exhibits centered around its theme "The World of Tomorrow" inspired numerous pulps and comic books, as we have discussed here extensively. While Amazing Adventure […]
