The real-life Crime Castle sounds like something out of a comic book, which makes it a good choice for the feature story of Murder Incorporated #5.
Fox Feature Syndicate Archives
Gil Kane's story "The Short Bloody Life of Charlie Birger" in Fox's Murder Incorporated #1 includes a wild moment from Birger's real life, as his hq is bombed by airplane.
Beyond the Blue Beetle cover feature, Mystery Men Comics #21's D-13 story has the hero taking on a bombing attack against Washington
Fantastic Comics #7 is an example of the Fox line at its best, with an array of wild science fiction including a Stardust story that literally stops the world.
The Flame #3 combines modern warfare with contemporary crime concerns and puts its pulp influences inside a superhero wrapper.
Lou Fine and Will Eisner's Flame cover feature for Wonderworld Comics #9 was inspired by real U-Boat attacks in the opening moments of WWII.
While an obscure Fox Feature Syndicate Sunday newspaper insert did debut that month, Samson was notably missing from its lineup The Blue Beetle daily strip also debuted that January, but no other announced Fox property ever made it to that stage According to GCD, the unused Samson newspaper strip material origin script was written by[...]
Long considered an important Fox Feature Syndicate key, there's a CGC VF- 7.5 Off-white to white pages copy of Mystery Men Comics #3 (Fox, 1939) up for auction at the 2026 August 13 Golden Age Century Comics Showcase Auction V #40377.
Mystery Men Comics #3 (Fox, 1939)
What does William Peter Blatty have to do with Mystery[...]
The Green Mask who debuted in 1940s Green Mask #1 was a complete reboot of the character whose previous existance had been a mystery indeed.
1939 might be American comics history's most interesting year. It was a year when the rules of a new medium were being written, broken, and rewritten on a monthly basis. And at some publishers, it was a peak moment when raw talent met naked opportunism, sometimes with astonishing results. That probably describes Victor Fox and[...]
Science Comics #1 (Fox, 1940) is a stand-out example from Fox Feature Syndicate, and there's a Science Comics #1 (Fox, 1940) CGC FR/GD 1.5 Cream to off-white pages copy up for auction in the 2025 September 18 Golden Age Comics Century Showcase Auction II at Heritage Auctions.
Science Comics #1 (Fox, 1940)
Like many other pulps and[...]
Schoedsack, both of King Kong fame, and considered the first science fiction film released in full Technicolor.
While such inspirations are hardly unusual in comics or any other storytelling medium, Fox Features Syndicate founder Victor Fox was one of the most notorious publishers of the Golden Age of comic books — and that's saying something. Through[...]
Fox Feature Syndicate publisher Victor Fox had high hopes for Dick Briefer's Rex Dexter of Mars from early on. A few months after his debut in Mystery Men Comics #1, Rex was part of Fox's push via the Mitchell J Hamilburg Agency to get Fox properties into film, radio, merchandise, and syndicated newspaper strips. A[...]
Thor, God of Thunder from Fox Feature Syndicate's Weird Comics was one of the most interesting comic book takes on the character.
The saga of the Fox Feature Syndicate character the Flame is more complicated than it appears. The character, his powers, and his backstory evolved steadily, sometimes without explanation, from his 1939 introduction in Wonderworld Comics #3 through his final Golden Age appearances in the January 1942 cover-dated issues of Big 3, The Flame, and Wonderworld[...]
Among others, Blue Beetle #1, #3, and #5 are important moments of that change in the comic books, and there are many other Golden Age issues of Blue Beetle, and Mystery Men Comics are up for auction in the 2024 September 26 – 27 Heroes of the Golden Age Comics Showcase Auction #40265 at Heritage Auctions.
Blue Beetle[...]
Although Fox Feature Syndicate published its last comic book in 1951, several characters it published have had life after Fox. The Flame, Phantom Lady and Samson were later used by Ajax-Farrell for example, and more famously, Phantom Lady (who had started life at Quality Comics) and Blue Beetle ended up at DC Comics. The little-known[...]
The Golden Age's first Flame-based superhero, Fox Feature Syndicate's The Flame debuted in Wonderworld Comics #3.
While he didn't have the newsstand publishing experience that many Golden Age comic book publishers had acquired by the late 1930s, Fox Feature Syndicate publisher Victor Fox was highly interested in copying what seemed to be working for others. Emulating the likes of DC Comics publisher Harry Donenfeld among others, Fox had launched a magazine and[...]
Fox Feature Syndicate's V Comics was launched during a period when Fox had decided to go all in on patriotically-themed war titles. The Eagle was rebooted as a patriotic hero during this time, launched in his own series, and also given the cover feature of Weird Comics. The new character U.S Jones was launched in[...]
The history behind Victor Fox's Wonder Comics gives us a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes of the comic book industry of 1939.
Long considered one of the most notorious publishers in comic book history, Victor Fox was seemingly a desperate man by 1947. With the superhero genre well into its post-War decline, in August 1946, remaining Fox flagships Blue Beetle and Green Mask were halted, and Fox's rising tide of funny animal and other humor titles completely took over[...]
The romance Fox Giants haven't caught on to that extent, but perhaps they should. Many of these are ridiculously rare, with several of the issues listed here having CGC Census numbers in the 3 to 5 copy range, and some stand-out covers among them. There are several romance genre Fox Giants up for auction in[...]
Best remembered for his work at EC Comics across a range of genres including science fiction, horror, and crime, Jack Kamen also made noteworthy late-1940s contributions to publishers like Fiction House and Fox Feature Syndicate, where his good girl artwork on titles like Phantom Lady among others is also highly sought after by collectors[...]
We discussed some early Blue Beetle origin revisions recently, and a similar situation developed with another Fox Features Syndicate hero named Green Mask. Both characters had debuted in Mystery Men Comics #1 in 1939 and were rebooted with added superpowers when they both received their own series early the next year. In Green Mask's case,[...]
After his debut in Mystery Men Comics #1, Blue Beetle finally gets his origin moment in his series debut in Blue Beetle #1.
Clipping from The Sacramento Bee via Newspapers.com
In 1942, Fox Feature Syndicate was forced into bankruptcy by creditors. One of those creditors, printer Holyoke Press took over the title With Fox's Blue Beetle and other titles the publisher acquired under similar circumstances from Frank Z Temerson, Holyoke decided to get into the comic book publishing business. [...]
Initially, Eisner and Lou Fine's The Flame for Fox Feature Syndicate title Wonderworld Comics didn't have quite as much to do with fire as one might think either.
The creation of the costumed superhero version of the Flame was prompted by what can now be considered one of the most important sequences of events in American comic[...]
A regular cover-feature of Fox Feature Syndicate's Weird Comics, the Dart has his origin in the pre-Roman Empire era of Sulla.
The infringing publications by the defendants were contained in the "Mystery Men Comics" August and September, 1940, issues."
This corresponds to Detective Comics #38-41 and Batman #1 from DC Comics and Mystery Men Comics #13 and #14 from Fox Feature Syndicate. While there's only a very general resemblance between Batman & Robin and Lynx & Blackie,[...]