fiction house Archives

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[...]

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[...]

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[...]

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,[...]

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[...]

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[...]

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 and her stories ran continuously from 1944 to the end of Fiction House in 1954, first in Fight Comics and then in Jungle Comics[...]

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[...]

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[...]

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[...]

He drew a lot of work for Fiction House, such as the South Sea adventure feature Shark Brodie under the pen name of George Aksut, and the investigative feature Hooks Devlin, both for Fight Comics And a copy of such is up for auction from Heritage Auctions from 1940, Fight Comics #4. #gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item[...]

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[...]

As we've mentioned recently, after Fiction House launched its first comic book series with Jumbo Comics in 1938, its next four comic book titles were counterparts of four of its pulp titles.  Jungle Comics hit the newsstand in October 1939.  Planet Comics and Fight Comics followed in November.  Wings Comics was launched a few months[...]

Jones and quite a few others, including Fiction House's Super-American.  An underappreciated Fiction House superhero, there's a copy of the debut of Super-American in Fight Comics #15 (Fiction House, 1941) CBCS VG- 3.5 Slightly brittle pages up for auction in the 2022 October 13 The Fiction House Showcase Auction #40199 at Heritage Auctions. Fight Comics #15 (Fiction House,[...]

Kaanga Comics #8 appears to be one of the toughest Fiction House comics in high grade, and features a spectacular cover by Maurice Whitman This issue is a recent breakout among serious vintage comic book collectors, as high grade copies are unheard of on the public marketplace Five years ago, a slightly higher-graded copy sold[...]

Fiction House's Rangers Comics was originally titled Rangers of Freedom Comics.  The series featured a fairly typical if well-executed war-era team of superheroes fighting a Nazi supervillain called the Super-Brain.  But America's entry into WW2 changed all that.  The title changed into a more typical kind of war comic with some spectacular good girl covers. [...]