Harry Shorten Archives

Top-Notch Comics #6 (MLJ, 1940) featured image. The Wizard looms over a medieval battle featuring Galahad

The Real Hoover Dam Threat Behind Top-Notch Comics #6, at Auction

Edd Ashe's machinery and action and Harry Shorten's story make this one of the most underappreciated features of the early Golden Age Shorten wrote six of the issue's nine features, moving from Galahad's Arthurian adventure to Streak Chandler's science fiction, Dick Storm's fictional Honduran dictatorship, Bob Phantom's narcotics war, West Pointer's military-school baseball, and Kardak's[...]
Illustration from the cover of Zip Comics #33, featuring four female nurses dressed in white uniforms standing in front of a large red cross symbol.

The Angels of Bataan-Inspired Cover of Zip Comics #33, Up for Auction

Such inspirations start with the book's cover, credited to MLJ mainstay Harry Shorten, which depicts U.S Army nurses bound and facing a Japanese firing squad, a scene likely inspired by the widely reported capture of the "Angels of Bataan" earlier that year While the real nurses were POWs rather than firing squad victims, the cover[...]
An illustration of The Shield, a superhero dressed in patriotic colors with a star-patterned cape, holding scales of justice in one hand. The background features bold text that emphasizes his role as a symbol of truth, justice, and patriotism.

A Congressional Committee Gone Awry, Shield-Wizard Comics 2 at Auction

We've previously discussed the rather unusual take on the elements that played into the run-up to World War II in early issues of Top-Notch Comics from MLJ, particularly in the historic Shield/Wizard crossover saga in Top-Notch Comics #5-7.  That crossover directly set up the Shield-Wizard Comics series, so it's no surprise that this sophisticated brand[...]