fiction house Archives

EC Comics titles like Haunt of Fear, Shock SuspenStories, and Tales from the Crypt; Fawcett title This Magazine is Haunted; and even enduring Marvel Comics titles like Strange Tales have all transcended the politically-motivated witch hunt stigma of the 1950s to be considered well-crafted classics in the modern day.  But a few of those 65[...]

For the first eight issues of its run, Fiction House's Jumbo Comics was essentially a tabloid-sized 10.5" x 14.5" and also had black and white interiors.  Even the covers of this early part of the run looked nothing like the iconic adventure series that Jumbo Comics would become Although Sheena is the most famous character[...]

The name Matt Baker has become synonymous with beautiful women in comic book art, so it's fitting that his likely first work was on iconic jungle girl Sheena in Jumbo Comics from Fiction House.  Between the period in 1944 that he worked on that 12-page Sheena, Queen of the Jungle story for Jumbo Comics #69[...]

The stories of the people who created, published, distributed, sold, and purchased comic books throughout the decades helps us understand what the world was like during those times.  This is why CGC denotes a number of comic book pedigree collections on their labels.  The Eldon Pedigree collection is every bit as interesting as some of[...]

Fight Comics #32 is the first appearance of Tiger Girl, a long-running jungle girl character from publisher Fiction House Tiger Girl was created by artist Robert Webb with an unknown writer, with the artwork taken over by a number of Fiction House / Iger Studio notables over the years, including Matt Baker, Jack Kamen, and[...]

The Werewolf Hunter feature in Rangers Comics was one of Golden Age artist Lily Renée's early assignments at Fiction House Professor Armand Broussard, the Werewolf Hunter, was an occult investigator whose adventures brought him up against a wild variety of supernatural creatures, exotic sorceresses, and artifacts of dark magic Lily Renée brought inventive and detailed[...]

Rip Regan, Power Man was one of the early superhero characters to appear from Fiction House, and his debut in Fight Comics #3 also features a classic cover by the legendary Will Eisner Eisner's cover for the issue is unusual for the title, and some have speculated it was originally meant for Planet Comics This[...]

Man O' Mars #1 came during perilous times for Fiction House as a comic book publisher.  By the time it hit in 1953, the entire comic book industry was in turmoil due to the moral panic that would soon result in the Comics Code.  Fiction House had ended its Sheena title a short time prior,[...]

Dan Zolnerowich's spectacular Kaanga action cover on Jungle Comics #30 from Fiction House in 1942 has made it a favorite in the decades since.

But in 1947, he began working for the publisher with which he would make his mark: Fiction House.  Whitman worked on interior stories for the likes of Wings Comics, Planet Comics, Jungle Comics, and other Fiction House titles 1947-1950 before starting to get cover work as well.  Maurice Whitman created dozens of covers for Fiction[...]

The eleven-point Gerber Scarcity Index rated comics from common to nonexistent, with Gerber 11 meaning known to be published but with no copies known to exist, Gerber 10 designated as less than 5 known copies, and a Gerber 9 meant to indicate 6-10 known copies.  As a result, Gerber 9s and Gerber 10s have been[...]

Like artists such as Dan Zolnerowich, Maurice Whitman and Lily Renée, Joe Doolin (1896-1967) is another Fiction House regular whose work is vastly underappreciated today.  Born in Pontiac, Illinois, Doolin attended the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts beginning around 1916, and is said to have worked as a cartoonist for a Pontiac-area newspaper in the early[...]

An underappreciated eight-year-long saga from an important Golden Age artist, you can get several issues of Fight Comics featuring Señorita Rio up for auction in the 2023 October 19 The Fiction House Comics & Comic Art Showcase Auction #40235 at Heritage Auctions. Lily Renée's Señorita Rio in Fight Comics. Some references have noted that the character may[...]

We recently singled out the short-lived but the highly-collected Ghost Comics series from Fiction House, with its covers by an underappreciated artist of the Golden Age, Maurice Whitman.  But Whitman's work graced a large number of comics of the mid-1940s through the early 1950s that are undeservedly overlooked After serving in WWII, Whitman entered the[...]

Magazine.  But he might be best remembered for his work at Fiction House, where his contributions included 101 credited covers for that publisher on titles including Fight Comics, Jumbo Comics, Jungle Comics, Planet Comics, Rangers Comics, Sheena Queen of the Jungle and Wings Comics.  An artist worthy of vastly more attention than he gets, there's[...]

But this legacy almost certainly influenced the genesis of far more comic books than those featuring Wonder Woman, particularly comics published by Fiction House There are a number of these comic books, 38 issues of the 86-issue Fight Comics series, up for auction in the 2023 October 19 The Fiction House Comics & Comic Art[...]

You can get a high grade Sheena, Queen of the Jungle #1 (Fiction House, 1942) CGC VF- 7.5 Off-white to white pages with a beautiful cover by Dan Zolnerowich, and several other issues of the Sheena, Queen of the Jungle series up for auction in the 2023 October 19 The Fiction House Comics & Comic[...]

Jungle Comics, published by Fiction House from 1940 to 1954, is a genre-defining and iconic series in the realm of vintage comic books, especially for its incredible covers featuring artwork by Dan Zolnerowich and Nick Cardy, among others Zolnerowich is one of the most underappreciated artists of this period, and he and Cardy, along with others[...]

Tiger Man's launch in Rangers Comics #28 was a weird addition to a title that was already wonderfully strange by this time.  We've recently talked about features such as Lily Renée's Wolf-less Werewolf Hunter and Kazanda, Wild Girl of the Lost Continent from this period of the Rangers Comics title, but the addition of Tiger[...]

Jumbo Comics #69 is widely considered as containing the first published comic book artwork from legendary artist Matt Baker.  An artist whose name has become synonymous with beautiful women in comic book art, this issue would contain two stories that Baker contributed to, Sheena and Sky Girl.  While Baker's contributions to the iconic jungle girl[...]

The story is a good fit for a Fiction House line best known for jungle girls, because Kazanda is in a sense just that Kazanda's Lost Continent is protected from detection by outsiders through the machinations of its evil ruler Sylf But when explorers from the outside world do find it, Kazanda helps them and[...]

Kaänga was a Tarzan-alike character who starred in the Golden Age anthology comic series Jungle Comics, published by Fiction House from 1941 and created by Alex Blum A runaway orphan raised in the jungle by apes, he returned to "civilisation" where he fell in love with one Ann Mason, who retaught him English However, finding[...]

Fiction House is known for having some of the most dynamic and fun-to-collect covers of the golden age, and one of their favorite types that they ran over the years were covers featuring a jungle setting, such as this cover for Fight Comics #49, published in 1947, by frequent Fiction House artist Joe Doolin It[...]

The February 1940 issue of Jungle Comics is perhaps every bit as sought-after and desirable as the debut issue of the series.  While the first issue of this iconic Fiction House title is best remembered for the debut of Kaanga, Jungle Comics #2 features the first appearance of Fantomah, Mystery Woman of the Jungle, who[...]

Sheena's iconic leopard skin costume with its plunging neckline front and mostly backless design has become so familiar and ubiquitous, that it's hard to imagine that the character ever wore anything else.  But she did, and there's even an early moment in the Jumbo Comics series that explains the change to the now-familiar design.  For[...]

Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, created by Will Eisner and Jerry Iger, was a comic book jungle girl heroine, originally published primarily by Fiction House  Eisner cited H Rider Haggard's 1886 novel She as a primary inspiration, though Iger stated that Eisner had nothing to do with her creation and that her name came from an[...]

Rangers Comics #39 is a perfect example of what Fiction House at its best The company specialized in fantastical storytelling with dynamic, eye-catching covers and solid characters that ranged from the iconic to the hilarious Not everything was a home run, not every book has stood the test of time But look at that cover[...]

When it comes to determining the toughest-to-get Fiction House comic books, the elephant in the room is Jumbo Comics #1-8.  Those oversized issues are much larger than standard Golden Age comic books and are thus not able to be CGC graded at present.  That means they don't appear on the CGC census, and while the[...]

Fiction House founder John W Glenister was a man who embodied the notion of living life to the fullest.  During a 1922 trip to the UK, he was filmed for a newsreel short titled Man Who Vows to Kill the 'Kill-Joys' in which he forcefully went off against the side effects of what he termed[...]

The feature Spy Fighter in 1940's Fight Comics #1 from Fiction House divided the world into three warring superpowers, as explained in the opening caption blurb: "The year is 1997 Only three nations have emerged from the great war of 1939 — Russmany, ruler of all Europe and all Africa; Mongo, the kingdom holding Asia[...]