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AMERICAN

CHRONICLES THE

1940-1944 By KURT F. MITCHELL with Table of Contents

Introductory Note about the Chronological Structure of American Chronicles...... 4

Note on Comic Book Sales and Circulation Data ...... 5

Introduction & Acknowledgements...... 6

Chapter One: 1940 Rise of the Supermen...... 8

Chapter Two: 1941 Countdown to Cataclysm...... 62

Chapter Three: 1942 Comic Books Go To War...... 122

Chapter Four: 1943 Relax: Read the ...... 176

Chapter Five: 1944 The Paper Chase...... 230

Works Cited...... 285

Index ...... 286 Rise of the Supermen

America on January 1, 1940, was a nation on edge. Still suffering the aftershocks of the despite Franklin D. Roosevelt’s progressive New Deal nos- trums—unemployment stood at 17% for 1939—Americans eyed the expanding wars in Europe and Asia nervously. Some tried to dismiss Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini as comic opera buffoons, decrying the hostilities as a “phony war” because not much had happened since the blitzkrieg dismemberment of Poland the previous September. These naysayers did not see it for what it was: the calm before the . Before the first year of the new decade was out, Nazi Germany seized Norway, Denmark, Belgium, the Nether- lands, and ultimately France, while attempting to bomb the United Kingdom into subjection. The British held out defiantly, and Hitler reluctantly abandoned his plans to invade England. That small victory brought no cheer to the conquered nations, where Der Führer’s relentless oppres- sion of and other scapegoated minorities was in full force. Il Duce, too, continued his aggression, as Fascist Italy invaded Egypt and Greece. The Soviet Union, the Marxist- Leninist people’s paradise that replaced the brutalities of Tsarist Russia with mass starvation and bloody political purges, was no better. Soviet Josef Stalin— 1940 named Time’s Man of the Year in its first 1940 issue— signed a non-aggression pact with Germany in August ‘39, then helped himself to a piece of Poland and completed his de facto takeover of Finland. The Japanese Empire’s seem- ingly insatiable appetite for territory was also cause for alarm. Its brutal occupation of vast swaths of China was in its third year with no end in sight. Once Paris fell, Japan marched into French Indochina. That the warlords had their collective eye on the ’ Pacific possessions was an open secret. At home, Republican congressmen and a majority of Dem- ocratic legislators remained publicly isolationist, claiming with some justification that they were obeying their con- stituents’ wishes, all while enacting laws expanding the Navy and imposing the nation’s first peacetime draft. FDR, elected to an unprecedented third term later in the year, pledged he would not “send American boys into any for- eign wars.” The public believed him or pretended to: polls suggested the man or woman on the street expected the country to be pulled into the slaughter sooner or later. The American Communist Party, with approximately 75,000 members at the start of the decade, also stood firm for iso- lationism despite internal unrest over Stalin’s pact with CHAPTER ONE Hitler. Fascism and anti-Semitism had their homegrown 8 9 apologists and sympathizers—including prominent and influential citizens like indus- trialist Ford, aviation hero Charles Lindbergh, and radio orator Father Charles Coughlin—but overt Nazism failed to find a foothold. The German-American Bund, despite a rally at Madison Square Garden the previous February that attracted some 20,000 participants, effectively fell apart as a national movement later in ‘39 when its , Fritz Kuhn, was convicted of embez- zling its funds. That kind of venality wasn’t limited to would-be dictators. Corrupt political machines ruled many big cities, though ’s popular mayor Fiorello LaGuardia had finally put an end to the dominance of infamous Tammany Hall. What the bosses didn’t control, the mob did. Prohibition was long over, but the crime organizations it spawned remained. The national syndicate organized by Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano, now headed by the “prime minister of the underworld” Frank Costello, had its fingers in more than the usual no-nos (drugs, gambling, loan-

sharking, prostitution). It had worked its way By 1940, the major movie studios were coming to see the into many legitimate enterprises like con- value in licensing their films for adaptation to comic books. struction, sanitation, labor unions, and maga- TM and © respective copyright owner. zine distribution, using bribery, intimidation, by the studios. Among the films they saw that extortion, and violence to gain every possible year were The Grapes of Wrath, Rebecca, Fantasia, His Girl advantage. Friday, The Sea Hawk, Kitty Foyle, The Philadelphia Story, Small wonder, then, that Mr. and Mrs. Average American Gaslight, Pinocchio, the anti-Nazi The Mortal Storm, and and all the little Americans sought comfort and escape in a slew of westerns featuring Roy Rogers, Bob Steele, Tex entertainment, turning to three art forms born at the turn Ritter, Johnny Mack Brown, and their fellow Hollywood of the century—the motion picture, the , the cowboys. Feature films were only the tip of the iceberg. —and their younger sibling, radio, to provide it. Theaters had a complete evening’s program in those days, including newsreels, travelogues, short films equivalent to modern music videos, even the occasional live appearance Media Nation by a movie star. Serials, comedy shorts starring Our Gang Movie factories like MGM, Warner Brothers, 20th Century- or The Three Stooges, and animated cartoons made the , Paramount, Universal, RKO, and Columbia were happy Saturday matinee a rite of passage for kids of the 1940s. to supply all the entertainment the public could handle. Walt Disney was the undisputed king of American car- Americans spent $735,000,000 ($12.5 billion in 2018 toons— and Donald Duck were recognized terms) on movie tickets in 1940, often at theaters owned around the globe—but other studios were girding their loins to challenge him. had released its own feature, Gulliver’s Travels, at Christmas ‘39. Less ambi- tious producers like Leon Schlesinger, , and Fred Quimby contented themselves with improving and expanding their own cartoon brands. In addition to new installments of proven favorites Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Barney Bear, Andy Panda, and , 1940 saw the screen debuts of , Elmer Fudd, , The Fox and The Crow, ’s Puppetoons, and a cat-and-mouse duo not yet named Tom and Jerry. Whether your tastes ran to prestigious literary adaptations, high-gloss melodrama, singing cowboys, or wascally wabbits, the movies had something for everyone. A new medium called television would threaten film’s supremacy within pop culture by of the decade but Bugs Bunny made his screen debut in the 1940 short A Wild Hare. Animated cartoons would provide a rich vein of material for comics of the 1940s to mine. for now it remained a novelty accessible to few. Not so with Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd TM and © Warner Bros. 8 9 2: Denny Colt, a.k.a. April 25: The first issue of DC’sBatman “The Spirit,” debuts as the TIMELINE: 1940 quarterly introduces two of the Caped main feature of a 16-page Crusader’s most famous villains: the comic insert for Sunday A compilation of the year’s notable comic book history events alongside and (originally named newspapers. Created, some of the year’s most significant popular culture and historical events. “the Cat”). Both stories are written by written, and drawn by Will (On sale dates are approximations.) and drawn by and Eisner, the masked crime- . fighter will become one of the January 8 – The first most legendary characters in February 7: Walt Disney’s second full-length animated film, comic book history. installment of the daily Blue Pinocchio, makes its debut in a movie theater comic strip—written before being distributed nationwide two weeks later. and drawn by as “”— appears in the Boston March 2: Warner Bros. cartoon June 22: Six weeks Evening Transcript. No other character Elmer Fudd debuts in after being invaded and newspaper is known to the Merrie Melodies animated May 10: As Germany suffering over 92,000 have carried the strip which short Elmer’s Candid Camera. military casualties, is cancelled in November. prepares to invade France, Neville Chamberlain France surrenders to resigns as prime minister Germany. of the United Kingdom. He is replaced by Winston Churchill.

JANUARY FEBRUARY MARCH APRIL MAY JUNE

May 21: All-American #16 introduc- March 5: #38 in- Comics troduces ’s , , es the the Boy Wonder, in a story written by in a story written by Bill Finger and drawn by Bob Kane Bill Finger and drawn and Jerry Robinson. by Mart Nodell. June 4: Great Britain May 17: Marvel Mystery completes “Operation February 22: Comics #23 introduces Comics #9 features the first Dynamo,” an evacuation Luthor, soon to become ’s most battle between the title’s two of over 330,000 Allied famous arch-enemy, in a story produced by star characters, the Human soldiers from Dunkirk, writer and artist . Torch and the Sub-Mariner, France, back across in a 22 page story written the English Channel via and drawn by a hodgepodge fleet of February 12: The Adventures of Superman, starring Bud and . over 800 military and Collyer and Joan Alexander as the voices of Superman/Clark May 15: Two brothers, civilian vessels. Winston Kent and , debuts on New York City’s WOR before Richard and Maurice Churchill describes going national six months later. The syndicated radio serial McDonald, open their first the operation as “a will remain on the air until 1951. McDonald’s restaurant miracle.” in San Bernardino, California. Batman, Robin and Superman TM and © DC Comics. Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd TM and © Warner Bros. radio. By the end of the there don during the Blitz brought the war The War of the Worlds had created were radios in 28,700,000 homes into American living rooms with an pockets of up and down the offering a daily smorgasbord of news, immediacy motion pictures could not Eastern Seaboard, a testament to the information, and entertainment. Like provide. and the Mer- power—and potential abuse—of the film, radio was a national medium. cury Theater of the Air’s October 30, airwaves. The , Amos ‘n’ Andy, 1938, dramatization of H. G. Wells’ Despite the revenue lost The Green , Baby to movies and radio, Snooks, Fibber Magee print was by no means and Molly, Ma Perkins, dead. There were over , 1,800 daily newspapers Henry Aldrich, and in the United States, other characters born most of which included on radio became cul- a page of black-and- tural touchstones, their white comics on week- catchphrases and theme days and an entire color music recognized from section devoted to them coast to coast. Radio on Sundays. The comic made stars out of Bob strip had been an Amer- Hope, Jack Benny, Bud ican obsession since its Abbott and Lou Costello, birth during the “yel- Fred Allen, Edgar Ber- low journalism” circula- gen and Charlie McCar- tion wars of the 1890s. thy, Kate Smith, Gene Papers might occasion- Autry, and newsman ally commission a local Edward R. Murrow, to create a whose live broadcasts Comic books added visuals to radio-born characters readers previously strip for them, but by from the rooftops of Lon- knew only as disembodied voices. TM and © The Green Hornet, Inc.

10 11 July 3: The World’s Fair in New York City hosts “Superman Day” to promote DC Comics’ 98-page November 5: Franklin D. Roosevelt wins his third consecutive New York World’s Fair Comics. Presidential election by defeating Republican Wen- dell Willkie by a wide margin. Roosevelt becomes the nation’s first—and only—third-term president.

November 22: All-Star December 29: In a “fireside September 16: President Roosevelt signs Comics #3 introduces chat” radio broadcast the Selective Training and Service Act. the Justice Society of President Roosevelt insists The first peacetime draft in U.S. history America in a story written the United States must requires all men between the ages of 21 by . The first become “the great arsenal and 35 to register for military service. super-hero team joins of democracy,” effectively All-American Comics’ ending the nation’s policy of The , Green Lantern, wartime neutrality. , and the with Detective Comics’ Spectre, Dr. Fate, Sand- December 20: Timely’s man, and Hour-Man. Comics #1 introduces not only and Jack Kirby’s famed July 10: The Battle of Britain begins as the of Liberty but also his Royal Air Force defends the United Kingdom nemesis, the . against assaults from the German Luftwaffe.

JULY AUGUST SEPTEMBER OCTOBER NOVEMBER DECEMBER

December 8: In the champion- ship game, the Bears de- feat the Washington Redskins 73-0.

December 17: At a press conference October 21: Scribner’s publishes Ernest President Roosevelt outlines his Hemingway’s For Whom The Bell Tolls, about “Lend-Lease” plan to send military an American serving in a guerilla unit during equipment and supplies to Great the Spanish . The is considered Britain. Despite opposition from iso- July 27: Warner Bros. cartoon character Bugs one of Hemingway’s greatest works and is lationist Republicans, the bill passes Bunny debuts in the Oscar-nominated Merrie adapted into a 1943 motion picture starring both branches of Congress and is Melodies animated short A Wild Hare. Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman. signed into law in March 1941.

1940 most subscribed to their com- (, Our Board- Tracy and his rogues gallery of gang- ics through syndication services. Wil- ing House with Major Hoople, Freck- land grotesqueries, readers waited on liam Randolph Hearst’s King Features les and His Friends), the McNaught tenterhooks for each episode, their Syndicate offered some of the most Syndicate (Dixie Dugan, Toonerville addiction reinforcing their loyalty popular series, including , Folks), and a host of smaller services. to the newspapers featuring them. Thimble Theatre (starring ), However serious their storylines , Henry, Bar- Since the simultaneous 1929 pre- might get, many of these strips were ney (featuring Snuffy Smith), mieres of Philip Nowlan and Richard still drawn in a variety of “cartoony” The Little King, Calkins’ in the 25th Cen- styles. Others took a more illustra- (with Maggie and Jiggs), , tury, based on Nowlan’s pulp novel tive approach. , creator of Kat, and comic strip incarnations of Armageddon 2419 A.D. published and his two-fisted “pod- Disney’s mouse and duck. Joseph Pat- the previous year, and of the nah” , combined sim- terson and his and Apes, an adaptation of the Edgar Rice ple but expressive figure work with Register Syndicate, Hearst’s bitterest Burroughs classic illustrated by Har- atmospheric backgrounds rendered rival, featured , Smokey old “Hal” Foster, adventure strips in duotone, a pattern pre-printed on Stover, , , featuring continuing storylines had art boards brought up by the appli- , , and Winnie proliferated. Whether following the cation of a developing fluid, to give Winkle. The United Feature Syn- exploits of ’s peripatetic his panels depth and mood. , dicate’s roster included Li’l Abner, , V. T. Hamlin’s born Leon Gross, created and scripted , Joe Jinks, Abbie an’ Slats, Ella time-traveling caveman , a pair of prototype super-heroes for Cinders, and the other Katzenjam- Frank Martinek and Leon Beroth’s King Features. Mandrake the Magi- mers strip, The Captain and the Kids. maritime detective Don Winslow of cian, a professional prestidigitator There were also the Associated Press the Navy, Hammond “Ham” Fisher’s with real magical powers (later toned (Dickie Dare, The Gay Thirties, The dimwitted but goodhearted prize- down to hypnotic trickery), and ), the Bell Syn- fighter Joe Palooka, Fred Harman’s , an allegedly immortal pro- dicate (Mutt & Jeff, The Nebbs), the rugged cowpoke , or Ches- tector of the African jungles clad in Newspaper Enterprise Association ter Gould’s square-jawed cop Dick purple tights, were both drawn in a 10 11 Until comic books began reprinting them in the mid-1930s, fans of syndicated comic strips like Prince , , and Li’l Abner had to clip episodes out of their local newspapers if they wanted to enjoy them again. TM and © , Inc. Dick Tracy TM and © , LLC. Li’l Abner TM and © Capp Enterprises Inc. ing their blood-and-thunder sensibility and lack of literary pretense. As Lee Server notes in Danger is My Business: An Illustrated History of the Fabulous Pulp Magazines: “Thriving on unrestrained creativity, held account- “straight” style by Philip “Phil” Davis and Raymond S. “Ray” able to few standards of logic, believability, or ‘good Moore, respectively. gave up Tarzan to focus on taste,’ the pulps were literary dream machines, Prince Valiant, a Sunday-only Arthurian fantasy rich in offering regular entry to intense worlds of excite- period detail. One of his successors on the ape-man’s adven- ment, danger, , romance… [T]he imagina- tures, nee Spinoza Ginsburg, demonstrated tion was loosed and roamed nearly out of control. a flair for dense, rococo settings and a mastery of human When the pulps exhausted the possibilities in anatomy. The superb draftsmanship and lush linework of extant character types and popular fiction cat- Alexander “Alex” Raymond made his strips—Flash Gor- egories, they invented new ones—, don and , both scripted by Don Moore—aes- sword and sorcery, hard-boiled detectives, occult thetic delights, as they had for Secret -9 (briefly detectives, erotic cowboy stories, tales of ‘Weird written by Dashiel Hammett, later by Leslie Charteris, ,’ gangsters, flying spies, superheroes, Moore, and others), now drawn in 1940 by . masked . In the creative boom years of the , former artist of the aviation series Scorchy 1920s and 1930s, new pulps flared in all directions, Smith who left comics for advertising in 1936, had gone in offering a manic diversity of titles[, s]omething another direction, adopting an impressionistic style that for every reader’s taste, no matter how narrow or combined quick, sure brushstrokes with extensive use of obscure, and quite a few things left over with no chiaroscuro, the delineation of form through the dramatic known appeal at all.” (9-10) juxtaposition of shadow and light. This technique reached its apogee in the work of Sickles’ former studio mate, Mil- Denigrated in their day as disposable, sensationalistic fod- ton Caniff. His Terry and the Pirates, an adventure strip der for the lowest common denominator, the pulps none- set in China, was and remains a masterpiece of visual sto- theless showcased such now-familiar authors as Edgar rytelling. These creators, at the top of their form in 1940, Rice Burroughs, Dashiell Hammett, H. P. Lovecraft, Zane inspired and influenced an entire generation of disciples. Grey, Brand, Harold Robbins, Erle Stanley Gardner, Robert E. Howard, , Rafael Sabatini, Americans were, of course, reading far more than the James M. Cain, Sax Rohmer, Louis L’Amour, and Ray Brad- funny pages. For Whom the Bell Tolls, The -Bow Incident, bury, and contributed Tarzan, , Conan the Barbarian, Native Son, Darkness at Noon, Why England Slept, You Can’t Perry Mason, Captain Blood, , Dr. Kildare, Nick Go Home Again, Horton Hatches the Egg, and Farewell, My and Nora Charles, Buck Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy, Fu Man- Lovely competed for attention on bookstore shelves in 1940 chu, Cthulhu, , and private eyes Sam Spade and with new offerings from perennial favorites Agatha Chris- Philip Marlowe to the American zeitgeist. tie, P. G. Wodehouse, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Rex Stout, and James Thurber. Slick magazines like The Saturday Evening These four potent means of storytelling—movies, radio, Post, Life, Look, Colliers, Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, The Atlan- comic strips, pulps—did not function in isolation. Popu- tic Monthly, Vogue, Liberty, and The New Yorker were the lar properties in one medium quickly spread to the rest. aristocracy of the newsstands. For the less sophisticated Zorro, Dr. Kildare, Tarzan, and the detectives were repeat- reader, there were the pulps. edly translated to film. The Shadow starred in his own pulp and on radio, each version influencing the other. Pulp magazines derived their name from the cheap brown Dick Tracy, Buck Rogers, Don Winslow, and Orphan Annie paper, often flecked with wood chips, on which they were had radio shows. Serials devoted to Buck, Tracy, and Flash printed. They were the successors to the dime , shar- Gordon, every one a crowd-pleaser, were joined in 1940 12 13 Comics was Fox’s newest monthly title, the first issue bearing a December 1939 cover date. Its star was “Samson,” a modern day incarnation of the long- haired biblical strongman, a character the publisher knew the authors of the Old Testament wouldn’t be litigating over. Alexander “Alex” Blum, a serious paying bills with comics and the father of Eisner-Iger staffer Toni, was the initial artist behind the Alex Boon signature, with Sam Cooper and Albert “Al” Carreno con- tributing later art jobs. Pitting his superhuman strength against whole armies, Samson’s feats outdid the contem- porary Superman but he was far more ruthless, killing his foes barehanded without batting an eye. He mel- lowed once he acquired a sling-wielding boy sidekick named David in issue #10 (September). Samson, too, was awarded a title, the first issue cover-dated Autumn 1940. Like the , , and titles, each issue combined a new lead story with reprints of various series from the three monthlies. A standout among Fantastic’s other features was “Sub Saunders,” a series about a 30th-century oceanographer’s encoun- ters with an ancient aquatic race, illustrated by Henry C. Kiefer, a veteran and classically trained illustrator with a distinctive style. Kiefer was gone after Fantastic #8 (July), and none of the anonymous artists that followed him possessed his drawing chops. Also of note were two series by the era’s most eccentric cre- ator, . “Stardust,” in which an alien law- man came to Earth to wipe out its criminals, and “Space Smith,” a surreal space opera, both highlighted Hanks’ straightfaced absurdity and distinctively ugly dramatis personae. In style and attitude, Hanks anticipated the underground comics of the 1960s and early ‘70s. Fox added two more monthly titles in 1940. Science Com- ics ran for just eight issues (February – September), its “Samson” was Fox’s answer to Superman, frequently topping him this year in the scope and lethality of his super-feats. Samson TM and © respective copyright owner. four most popular strips continuing in the eighth issue (November) of its sister title, Weird Comics. Both series Berold, was the star of the Eisner-Iger staff. Sidelined spotlighted costumed heroes. Weird’s “, God of Thun- by polio in early childhood, a student of the great maga- der” starred Grant Ferrell, a despondent playboy chosen zine illustrators, Fine brought a sophisticated approach by the Norse god to serve as his superhuman avatar on to the comic book page that influenced not only his stu- Earth. The character underwent a series of metamorpho- diomates—including Jack Kirby—but virtually every ses, winding up as “Dynamite Thor,” a mystery-man with super-hero artist of the 1940s: a different secret identity, different powers, and a different origin… but the same girlfriend. He and a handful of minor “Fine was one of the first comic book artists to features were cancelled to make room for the Science refu- understand that breaking up page design by panel gees. “The ,” who flew with the aid of an “antigravita- composition added to the dramatic pace of the sto- tion fluid,” and “” (renamed “Dynamo” as ofScience ries. His figures in motion created sweeping visual #2, probably to avoid legal hassles over Timely’s earlier arcs for the eye to follow. His decorative use of line character of the same name), who possessed electrical pow- added the necessary contextual cues for this effect. ers, were among the survivors, a pair of super-heroes hardy Fine varied the sizes and shapes of his panels, enough to withstand a redesign in Science #7 (August), rejecting the previous notion of uniform rows and cancellation, and continuation in a different title. Another columns, creating a harmonic symphony between emigre was “Marga the Panther Woman,” about a nurse figures and page layout.” (Amash 10) adventuring in -style lost worlds Fine’s work for Fox was a bit quieter than that but still stood after being genetically modified with panther blood by a head and shoulders above most of the art then appearing dime-store Dr. Moreau. “The Bird Man” was a flying hero in that publisher’s titles. Wonderworld’s other superhuman based on Native American mythology who winged his star was “Yarko the Great,” a turban-wearing Mandrake way through four issues of Weird Comics before yielding knockoff created by Eisner and artist S. R. “Bob” Powell, his slot to “The ,” a legendary lawman of ancient Rome born Stanley Pawlowski. who woke up from an enchanted sleep in 1940, donned a costume, partnered up with Ace the Amazing Boy, and

32 33 Second-string Timely titles Daring Mystery Comics and Mystic Comics saw a long procession of minor super-heroes pass through their pages, never looking better than in the cover art of . TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

due to the thematic contrast of its two lead features. The the Flaming Fury was ordered to bring the Sub-Mariner to title’s star from Day One was “The .” Despite justice. Their battle spanned 22 pages of the following issue, his name, the Torch was an android created by eccentric as Burgos and Everett pulled out all the stops, their creations Professor Horton capable of bursting into flame and con- wreaking havoc across the length and breadth of the Five trolling fire in all its forms. After angrily parting ways with Boroughs. If the conclusion in issue #10 was a bit of a wet his creator, who wanted to exploit his powers for personal firecracker ( Dean persuaded them to shake hands and gain, the “synthetic man” adopted the human guise of walk away), it didn’t detract from the epic excitement—or Jim Hammond (spelled “Hamond” throughout 1940) and the spike in sales—their struggle generated. Future battles joined the New York City police force. Created by Carl Bur- were inevitable. gos, The Human Torch is one of the most arresting visu- The elemental clash of fire and water may have been the als to ever appear in comics, his aesthetic and conceptual key to Marvel Mystery Comics’ cachet, but it didn’t hurt that strength overcoming Burgos’ weaknesses as a draftsman the book had a strong lineup of secondary features. “Ka- and scripter. Neither was an issue for Bill Everett, whose Zar” had been the eponymous star of a 1936 Goodman pulp “Sub-Mariner” was comics’ first great anti-hero. The hybrid written by Bob Byrd. As adapted by Ben Thompson, it was son of a human seaman and a noblewoman of the under- better than the average Tarzan knock-off, with clean art sea empire of Aquaria, the pointy-eared Prince pos- lovingly swiped from Hal Foster. The episode for the Sep- sessed superhuman strength, the ability to breathe in both tember issue (#11) included what may be the first two-page air and water, small wings growing from his ankles that panel in comic books. ’s “The ” began gave him the power of flight, and a colossal case of anger as a run-of-the-mill crimefighting mystery-man but by management issues that led him to declare a one-man mid-year he was tangling with ghouls and giants. “Electro, war on the human race. A fascinating study in adolescent Marvel of the Age” was a brightly colored super-robot in the angst, the Sub-Mariner was capable of destroying the Hol- service of altruistic Professor Zog, its adventures rendered land Tunnel one moment, then rescuing an innocent baby by creator Steve Dahlman in an Art Deco-flavored style. The from the resulting flood the next. Under the influence of title’s few weak spots— Al Anders’ “The Masked Raider,” a policewoman Betty Dean and others, Namor eventually lifeless Lone Ranger imitation, and “The Ferret,” a homely turned his wrath from America to the Axis nations, but not detective with a pet weasel—were easily overlooked and before he clashed with the one being capable of stopping were gone by year’s end. his rampage: The Human Torch! Another key to the success of Marvel Mystery and its sister Comics’ first super-hero story began at the con- titles debuting in 1940 was the cover art of Alex Schomburg. clusion of Marvel Mystery #8’s “Human Torch” episode, as

42 43 Beck’s clean, open style illustrated them with a diagrammatic clarity understandable to even the young- est reader. With a poor but virtuous boy protagonist straight out of Hora- tio Alger cast in the Lucky Hans role in a modern-day fairy tale, combined with the simplicity of a memorable magic word that in essence allowed Billy to serve as his own genie, the strip had an entirely different look and feel from the sci fi origin and pulpish ambience of Superman. That didn’t stop Detective Comics’ lawyers from filing suit on the familiar charge of copyright infringement. The legal battle would continue for over a decade. Much of the good captain’s time in his first year was spent thwarting the plans of his arch-foe, an ugly little mad scientist in a pharmacist’s jacket named Sivana, and his ally, the toothsome Beautia, Empress of . Other foes faced in 1940 included the Fagin-like , modern day pirates Captain Death Even the youngest reader could follow C.C. Beck’s storytelling, as in this first confrontation between and Professor Skull, a tribe of super- Captain Marvel and his arch-enemy, Sivana. TM and © DC Comics. human cavemen frozen in the Arctic since the Pleistoscene Era, and Dr. Billy into the mighty Marvel (or Mar- the roster of unforgettable characters Allirog, a gorilla with human-level vel to Billy should the Captain be the the strip featured in its 13-year run. one to shout “!”). His role intelligence. Allirog was featured in in the spoiling of a criminal genius’ From the very first episode, Captain Special Edition Comics, a one-shot scheme to blackmail the nation with Marvel stood apart from his super- issued in the summer as a test bal- his “radio-silencer” won Billy a job heroic brethren. Parker’s scripts loon for a solo title starring the hero as a radio reporter for WHIZ. The were a breath of fresh air, provid- Sivana soon nicknamed “The Big Red station’s president, Sterling Morris, ing plenty of excitement and action Cheese.” made up the entire supporting cast without taking themselves or the throughout 1940, giving little hint of genre altogether seriously, while

Fawcett experimented with alternate formats in 1940, as with the bi-weekly 36-page Nickel Comics and the oversized . TM and © respective copyright 52 53 owners. Countdown to Cataclysm

It is an image familiar to comics aficionados: a powerfully built man clad in red, white and blue chain mail, protected from gunfire by a metal , bursts into the war room of the German High Command and delivers a crushing right jab to the jaw of a terrified Führer, a redundant caption exclaiming “Smashing through, Captain America came to face with Hitler!” There is nothing subtle about the image, nothing restrained or polite. It is an unapolo- getic exemplar of the “cheap political propaganda” Ster- ling North sneered at in his indictment of the comic book industry. Captain America Comics #1 (cover dated March 1941) hit the newsstands late in ‘40. It sold nearly a million cop- ies, instantly becoming Timely Publications’ best-selling title, and made stars out of co-creators Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. “The time demanded it,” Kirby explained in a 1970 interview. “The country was almost at war; we needed a super-patriot” (Steranko 53). Their flag-draped super-sol- dier served as both herald and epitome of the industry’s embrace of patriotic themes. If war was coming, comic books were ready. So, increasingly, were the American people, though cling- ing to the hope the United States could avoid direct involve- ment in the fighting overseas. Polls showed 80% of the populace supporting the Lend-Lease program and other initiatives to shore up Britain as she suffered through relentless bombing and U-boat predation. Nevertheless, isolationism remained a significant factor in the public dialogue. The America First Committee had begun life as an anti-war movement at Yale University that quickly spread to other campuses, but by 1941 it had fallen under the influence of the same reactionary industrialists, finan- ciers, and media moguls who had bitterly opposed Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal from the beginning. Anti-- ish sentiment ran high in this group, leading America First to oppose aiding the UK with money or materiel, resources they contended should be devoted to the nation’s own defenses. Heading the aid-for-England forces was the Cen- tury Club, a New York-based private organization of “mov- ers and shakers in the East Coast’s top journalistic, legal, financial, and intellectual circles” (Olson 139), many of them combat veterans of the earlier World War, all pro- British and fervently anti-fascist. Internal dissension over CHAPTER TWO priorities and tactics led to the club’s disbanding early in 62 63 ‘41. It was replaced in April by Fight for Freedom, a more militant movement that advocated direct mil- itary action, criticized Roosevelt and Congress for their caution, and labeled America First a Nazi front. Historian Lynne Olson, author of Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America’s Fight Over World War II, observes that “most of [America First’s] lead- ership and members were … decent, honest, sincere citizens who passionately believed that foreign entanglements were bad for the United States” (235), but FDR didn’t see it that way: “In his May 26[, 1941] fireside chat, Roosevelt contended that attacks on the government’s … foreign and military policies were not part of ‘a wholesome political debate of honest and free men,’ as [Charles] Lindbergh and other iso- lationists maintained. Instead, those assaults were connected to the ‘clever schemes of for- eign agents’ … To preserve the country’s unity and safety, he said, Americans must combat this new Fifth Column with all their might.” (105) America First was the loudest section of the isola- tionist chorus, but it was by no means soloing. A number of militant mothers’ groups staged angry protests in the halls of Congress and on the streets of Washington, where they hanged interventionist Senator Claude Pepper in effigy. Passions on both sides rode high. Protests and counter protests at each other’s rallies frequently erupted into violence. The controversy raged throughout the year until the became moot in the early morning hours of December 7. Joe and Jack vs. the Axis Captain America was not the first costumed hero to dress himself in the nation’s colors—M.L.J.’s Shield Many heroes to follow would steal elements from Captain America’s origin story, and Quality’s preceded him—but he was but none would match, let alone surpass, the Simon & Kirby prototype. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. the one whose adventures captured the imagination of American kids, the one whose sales guaranteed a them a terror to spies and saboteurs!” No sooner had this horde of patriotic copycats. Some forty such characters had serum transformed the scrawny young patriot into a tall, appeared by year’s end. A handful—Better’s The Fighting muscular Adonis than a Nazi mole within the project assas- Yank, Fawcett’s Minute-Man, and DC’s The Star-Spangled sinated its creator, grandfatherly Professor Reinstein. Alas, Kid among them—proved viable characters in their own Reinstein had not the formula to paper. There right. Many—Dynamic’s Yankee Doodle Jones, Fiction would be no army of super-soldiers. After intensive train- House’s Captain Fight, Helnit’s Man, Harvey’s Cap- ing under the military’s best instructors, Rogers was given tain Freedom, and Timely’s own The Defender, to name but the rank, name, costume, and shield of Captain America. five—were shameless imitations, unimaginatively aping His true identity known only to the top brass, “Cap” hid in the new hero’s name, costume, setting, origin, villains, or plain sight as a bumbling buck private, the bane of hard- all of them at once. What they couldn’t duplicate was the bitten Sgt. Duffy’s existence. When orphaned Camp Lehigh one element that made “Captain America” click with read- mascot Barnes stumbled on Steve’s secret, the boy ers: the storytelling magic of Simon and Kirby. inexplicably won the right to don his own costume and go into action with him. With the addition of gutsy FBI agent As a wave of sabotage and other acts of subversion swept to the cast later in the first issue, the stage was across the United States, a pure-hearted but frail 4F named set for a series that redefined how action was depicted in Steve Rogers volunteered as a test subject for a secret gov- comic books. ernment-sponsored experiment. He was injected with a chemical formula capable of “rapidly building his body and The initial idea was apparently Joe Simon’s—he reportedly brain tissues, until his stature and intelligence increase to designed the lead characters before coming to Timely— an amazing degree,” making him “the first of a corps of but it was the unleashed imagination, breakneck pacing, super-agents whose mental and physical ability will make and electrifying action scenes of partner Jack Kirby that

62 63 May 1: Citizen Kane—written, directed, and starring Orson Welles—premieres at a movie theater in New TIMELINE: 1941 York City before gaining wider release later in the year. The film will garner nine Academy Award nominations, A compilation of the year’s notable comic book history events alongside winning the award for Best Writing, Original Screenplay. some of the year’s most significant popular culture and historical events. (On sale dates are approximations.) March 28: The first chapter of January 17: The first issue of Fawcett’s new the Adventures of Captain Marvel quarterly, Captain , arrives at is released to movie theaters. newsstands. It includes a Captain Marvel story Distributed by , written by Joe Simon and drawn by Jack Kirby -chapter film serial and . stars cowboy actor Tom Tyler as Captain Marvel and Frank Coghlan Jr. as Billy Batson. May 2: Quality’s #1 features a story written by and drawn by Chuck Cuidera that introduces a team of international fighter pilots called Blackhawk, soon to become April 15: Lev Gleason publishes one of ’ most popular series. Battles Hitler, written and drawn primarily by Charles June 22: Germany launches Operation March 17: Timely’s Captain America Comics Biro and Bob Wood in which Barbarossa by invading the Soviet Union. #3 arrives at newsstands. It includes the first several Lev Gleason heroes Despite initial decisive victories, the opera- professional work of in the form of a help Daredevil dismantle Hitler’s tion will ultimately fail and contribute to two-page Captain America text story. armed forces. Germany’s defeat in World War II.

JANUARY FEBRUARY MARCH APRIL MAY JUNE

May 14: Quality’s Police Comics #1 introduces several new characters including S.M. Iger and ’s Firebrand, Arthur Peddy’s , Paul Gustavson’s The Human Bomb, and most notably, Jack Cole’s .

January 23: Testifying before the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs, aviator Charles Lindbergh proposes May 1: introduces CheeriOats, the United States negotiate a neutrality pact with Ger- soon to become one of the country’s most many. His views are criticized by President Roosevelt. popular breakfast cereals, especially once its name is changed to Cheerios in 1945. Captain Marvel, Dr. Fate, Firebrand, the Human Bomb, Phantom Lady, Plastic Man and Superman TM and © DC Comics. fanned that spark into a wildfire. In his 2011 memoirs, Simon recalled: “I turned Kirby loose on the artwork, and [the result] was something different. The layout was different, the whole format was different from anything that was being published. After Captain America, the whole business was copying the flex- ibility and power of a Kirby drawing.” (89) Execution was everything. Joe and Jack’s plots were not always original (neither creator was adverse to cribbing ele- ments of Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, classic War- ner Brothers gangster movies, or even the previous year’s “Batman” stories) but the end result was. Kirby’s figures had an innate power that could not be contained within the panel borders, exploding off the page in a cacophony of mayhem. Cap and Bucky seemed to defy gravity as they leapt, dove, and charged headlong into battle, foes buck- ling left and right beneath a furious of fists, feet, and shield that made Batman and Robin look like Abbott and Costello. Knowing they had a winner on their hands, Simon and Kirby negotiated a deal with Timely publisher Martin Goodman, who knew it too, giving them 25% of the title’s net profits. Despite its military milieu, the “Captain America” series Jack Kirby’s dynamic fight scenes changed how action was a horror strip in super-hero drag, its panels chockful was depicted in comic books. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

64 65 July 1: After the Federal Communications Commission September 25: DC’s #73 intro- October 25: DC’s All- #8 includes a nine-page insert that authorizes commercial television, both NBC and CBS duces three new heroes, all created by editor Mort previews a new heroine created by Dr. William Moulton Marston: begin broadcasting in New York City. Weisinger: (drawn by ), Green . Her story continues two weeks later as the lead (drawn by George Papp), and feature of Sensation Comics #1. (drawn by Ed Moore and Chad Grothkopf).

September 26: Produced by Fleischer Studios, the first Superman cartoon is released to movie November 28: Fawcett’s December 11: theaters. It will earn an Academy Award nomina- #25 includes Germany and Italy tion for Best Short Subject: Cartoons. a story written by Ed declare war on the Herron and drawn by C.C. United States, which Beck and that responds in kind. introduces Freddy Free- man, a boy crippled by the villainous Captain Nazi but subsequently transformed by the Shazam into Captain Marvel Jr.

JULY AUGUST SEPTEMBER OCTOBER NOVEMBER DECEMBER

September 28: Boston Red Sox outfielder December 7: Japan launches a Ted Williams ends the baseball season with surprise attack on the United States a batting average of .406. It will become the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. last time any major league baseball player The U.S. fleet is crippled and over will hit over .400 for a season. July 17: For the first time after 2,400 American servicemen die as a 56 consecutive games, New York result of the attack. The United States Yankees outfielder Joe DiMaggio declares war on Japan with President fails to get a hit. His hitting Roosevelt proclaiming December 7 as streak, which has earned national October 15: M.L.J.’s #22 includes a “a day that will live in infamy.” interest, sets a major league story written by Victor Bloom and drawn by Bob baseball record. that introduces a redheaded teenager that will soon become one of the most famous characters in comic book history: Archie Andrews. December 17: Leading Comics #1 groups together seven DC Comics’ heroes—the , and Speedy, the , Star Spangled October 31: Walt Disney’s fourth full-length animated film,Dumbo , Kid and Stripesy, and the —as the Seven debuts in a New York City theater before gaining wider release a Soldiers of Victory in a story written by , week later. The story of a ridiculed circus elephant whose enormous Jerry Siegel, and Jack Lehti, and drawn by Lehti, Mort ears allow him to fly grosses $1.6 million at the box office, making it Meskin, George Papp, Hal Sherman, and Creig Flessel. the most financially successful Disney film of the decade.

of sadism, monsters, torture, mass ing Simon and Kirby’s run dealt with murder, war crimes, and wholesale the Pacific War at all, most of their ire destruction. Whether Axis agents, being reserved for the Third Reich. homegrown fascists, costumed serial That ire was returned. Joe Simon killers, or mad scientists and their cre- recounted the harrowing backlash in ations, the gruesome outer appear- his book The Comic Book Makers: ances of Kirby’s villains reflected their inner malevolence, none more “[W]e were inundated with so than the ne plus ultra of Nazi men- a torrent of raging hate mail ace, The Red Skull. The title’s only and vicious obscene phone recurring bad guy, allegedly inspired calls. The theme was ‘death by the maraschino cherry atop a hot to the Jews’ … Finally we fudge sundae (though there had ear- reported the threats to the lier been a Doc Savage pulp novel with police department. The result that title), the Skull killed without was a police guard on regular remorse or mercy anyone who inter- shifts patrolling the halls and fered with his unspeakable plans, offices.” (92) embodying in a single horrific avatar the lust for power and naked hatred If he or Jack Kirby were intimidated, at the heart of Nazism. Surprisingly, it didn’t show. “Captain America” given the dictator’s prominence on continued to call attention to the Nazi the first two covers, Hitler himself threat. appeared only once in the 1941 issues. A fan club, the Sentinels of Liberty, Cap beat him up, of course, while offered a membership card and tin Bucky whaled on Hermann Göring. The Red Skull was not only one of the most memorable comic book villains of the 1940s but one of the most badge (now treasured collectibles) for The Red Skull had no Japanese coun- imitated. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. a dime and a pledge to “fight spies and terpart. In fact, only two stories dur- 64 65 Everett could handle alone. Other art- ists and scripters began pitching in, including a Funnies, Inc. staff writer with a big future named Frank Mor- rison “Mickey” Spillane. The Human Torch title, which issued two #5s this year to correct the numbering anom- aly caused by its beginnings as Red Comics, found Carl Burgos in similar straits. Harry Sahle stepped in to help pencil the fourth and first fifth issues, and Spillane contributed a to issue #6 (Winter). The high point for the year was the full-length story in the second fifth issue (Fall) that teamed the Torch and with Sub-Mariner, The Angel, Ka-Zar, and The Patriot in an adventure that took the fiery pair around the world. Ever- ett and Burgos’ production woes were compounded by the introduction of All Winners Comics, a quarterly Timely had better success with new titles starring its most popular characters. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. showcase title spotlighting all three Timely titans, backed by Marvel Mys- them with the first of Simon and Kir- who set in motion the events that tery’s Angel, Mystic’s by’s takes on the kid gang genre. Co- turned the Timely editorial offices and , and U.S.A.’s . starring alongside the costumed duo upside down. Troubled by what he were a quartet of Sentinels of Liberty: saw in the company books, Coyne Another new title, Young Allies, Jefferson “Jeff” Sandervilt was the went to Joe Simon and Jack Kirby (by shoved boy Bucky and Toro brainy kid, Percival Aloysius “Knuck- now credited as the line’s art direc- to the forefront, teaming les” O’Toole the tough kid, tor), and exposed their boss’ financial Henry “Tubby” Tinkle the fat duplicity: kid, and (alas) Whitewash Jones “‘I’m sorry about those royal- the harmonica-playing, water- ties,’ [Coyne] told me, ‘You’re melon-loving, racist-caricature getting 25%, but only after kid. This improbable sextet they deduct all the fees and proved surprisingly effective, salaries for the whole com- defeating no less than The Red pany.’ Martin Goodman was Skull in their debut outing charging all his expense to (albeit with some last-minute one title—Captain America. assistance from Cap and the So by the time the ‘profits’ Torch). Stan Lee assumed the were accounted for, they had scripting with issue #2 and been eaten up by the cost set Toro and Bucky to argu- of running .” ing over who was the team’s (Simon 112) leader. Sharpening this shtick, Lee also turned out prose stories for All Winners and U.S.A. that teamed up each title’s heroes—all of whom, of course, bickered. These assignments were, if nothing else, a chance for the young writer to familiarize himself with the company’s many super-characters. It was knowledge he would need before the year was out. Maurice Coyne, the ‘M’ in M.L.J., was also the accoun- Led by boy sidekicks Bucky and Toro, “The Young Allies” was one of comic The bookkeeping shenanigans of Timely publisher books’ first kid gangs. Though other hands produced the stories, the team tant for Martin Goodman’s Martin Goodman eventually cost the company the was created by Simon & Kirby, soon to prove themselves the masters of publishing line. It was he services of the red-hot Simon & Kirby. that genre. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

69 Comic Books Go To War “Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the empire of Japan. The United States was at peace with that nation and, at the solici- tation of Japan, was still in conversation with its government and its emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific. … [T]he dis- tance from Hawaii to Japan makes it obvious the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time, the Japanese government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace. … [A] lways will our whole nation remember the char- acter of the onslaught against us. No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.” With those words, spoken to Congress in emergency ses- sion and, by radio, to the nation, Franklin D. Roosevelt asked the assembled legislators to declare war on the Japanese Empire. The outrage and defiance in the president’s voice that Monday morning echoed the reaction of the nation’s citizenry. Isolationism was off the table now, rendered irrelevant by Pearl Harbor and the subsequent declarations of war on America by Hitler and Mussolini. On January 1, 1942, the United States stood with Great Britain, China, the Soviet Union (now an ally since the Third Reich’s attack on its erstwhile treaty partner the previous summer), Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, three Carib- bean nations, five Central American countries, and the governments-in-exile of Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Norway, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, and Greece in issuing the Declaration By United Nations, each signatory pledging “to employ its full resources, military and eco- nomic, against … the Tripartite Pact [i.e., the Axis powers]” and “not to make a separate armistice or peace with the enemies.” Even as the Allies concentrated their individual and collective war efforts, Nazi Germany was implement- ing the “Final Solution,” the systematic extermination of Jews and other peoples Der Führer deemed “inferior.” The names of the concentration camps in which they died— Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald, and too many more— survive down to the present day as synonyms for genocide. Seven decades of accumulated hindsight have made the outcome of the Second World War seem inevitable, but 122 123 Relax: Read the Comics!

The question of when the war would end could not yet be answered, but by the summer of 1943 it was becom- ing evident to all but the most dedicated pessimist which side was going to win. Costly but critical Allied victories on three fronts shattered the myth of Axis invincibility. The Japanese Empire, which claimed nearly a tenth of the planet’s surface, had banked on the United States’ com- mitment to the Allies’ “Europe first” strategy to delay the Yanks long enough to make its stranglehold on East Asia and the Pacific irreversible. Had Prime Minister Hideki Tojo and his fellow militarists known that Ameri- can cryptographers had cracked the Empire’s top secret Purple Code, they would have realized the futility of that hope. A costly-for-Japan stalemate at the Battle of the Coral Sea the previous May and the Battle of Midway a month later, which cost the Navy four aircraft carriers and the 248 planes aboard them, forced the warlords to dig in their heels, switch strategies, and contest control of their conquests island by island. The Allies’ six-month- long effort to clear the island of Guadalcanal made it clear that Japanese troops, indoctrinated to consider surrender dishonorable, would resist their advance to the last man. The folks back home got a measure of revenge on April 18 when the airplane carrying Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who planned and oversaw the raid on Pearl Harbor, was shot down, his whereabouts betrayed by intercepted code messages. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Win- ston Churchill met in Casablanca, Morocco, in January to discuss their next move following the reclamation of French Africa from its Nazi and Fascist overlords. Despite an unsettling rout at February’s Battle of Kasserine Pass, armored infantry commanded by Gen. George S. Patton teamed with British forces led by Lt. Gen. Bernard Law Montgomery four months later to trap Rommel and his Afrika Korps between them, costing Germany and Italy over a quarter million troops dead or captured. Another 300,000 German casualties fell during the five-month of Stalingrad, as much victims of Adolf Hitler’s delusions of grandeur—Der Führer refused to heed the warnings of his military staff—as of the Russians severing their supply lines. The Soviets desperately wanted the Allies to open a second front on Germany’s western flank, but had to set- tle for the strategy Churchill and Roosevelt agreed on at the Casablanca summit: a drive through the Third Reich’s underbelly by way of Italy. Meanwhile, the once-feared

176 177 The Paper Chase D-Day. It is now as much the stuff of legend as of history. On June 6, 1944, over 156,000 American, British, Canadian, and ANZAC troops participated in the largest amphibious assault of all time, storming the beaches of Normandy. After months of planning and preparation, the Allies had finally begun their invasion of Hitler’s Fortress Europa. Just two days before, American forces under Gen. Mark Clark captured Rome. This was welcome news in the hard- pressed Soviet Union, where the two-year siege of Lenin- grad had at last been lifted and the Red Army was busy recapturing the Crimean Peninsula from the Germans. In the Pacific, the Empire of Japan continued to lose ground, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps taking the Marshall and Admiralty Islands, laying waste to the enemy’s warships, and establishing an airbase in the Aleutians from which to launch bombing raids on the Japanese homeland. None of IF YOUthese ENJOYED were easy THIS victories, PREVIEW, each claiming CLICK the livesTHE of LINK thou- sands of soldiers, sailors, and airmen, but victories they wereBELOW nevertheless. TO TheORDER war was THIS far fromBOOK! over but its end was no longer a distant dream. As the United Nations continued to hammer at the edges of AMERICANAxis territory, the availability of certain resources became COMICof critical importance BOOK to the war effort. This included pulp paper and two key ingredients in its manufacture, chlorine CHRONICLES:and sulphur. Comic book publishing houses found their newsprint quotas lowered once again, this time to 75% 1940-1944of their 1942 levels. This triggered a new round of cancel- The Americanlations, Comic Book reduced Chronicles frequencies, continues its am- and cut page counts. A new bitious series ofstandard FULL-COLOR of HARDCOVERS 52 pages, where for aTwo dime- swept across the indus- Morrows’ top try,authors with document only every a fraction decade of comic still offering 60 pages when their book history from the 1940s to today! KURT F. MITCHELL and consultantDecember-dated ROY THOMAS composed issues this volume arrived at newsstands. Despite this about the “Golden(and, Age” paradoxically, of the comic book industry, because a of it), the industry was still five-year periodbooming. that presented Every the earliest comic adventures book publisher in business at the of such iconic endsuper-heroes of 1943 as Batman, was stillCaptain in Marvel, business a year later. Detective/All- Superman, and Wonder Woman. It was a time when America’s entry into World War II was presaged by the arrival ofAmerican, such patriotic do-goodersDell, Fawcett, as Will Eisner’s Eastern Uncle Sam,Color, Harry Novelty Shorten and Press, ’s and The Shield, andParents’ Joe Simon andMagazine Jack Kirby’s Press,Captain America. as divisions It was when of teenage larger culture publishing found expression in aempires fumbling red-haired or affiliates high school ofstudent major named printers Archie Andrews. and/or But mostdistributors, of all, the first five years of the 1940s was the age of the “packagers” when studios headed by men like Harry A Chesler, Will Eisner,were and assured churnedof a reliable out material supply for a plethora of paper. of new comic Several book companies compa - that publishednies the entire followed gamut of Timely’sgenres, from funnylead animal in diverting stories to crime paper tales to to jungle their sagas com to - science-fictionics adventures. from theirThese are pulp just a fewlines, of the as events pulp chronicled sales incontinued this exhaustive, to full-color slump hardcover. Taken together, Chronicles forms a cohesive, linear overview of the entire landscapein of the comics face history, of competitionsure to be an invaluable from resource for ANY comic books. book enthusiast!For most players in the industry, it was a year of stability. Fawcett, (288-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $45.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-089-2Fiction House, • (Digital Parents’, Edition) Eastern $15.95 • Diamond Color, Order Family, Code: FEB192024 Crestwood, http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=95_94&products_id=1404and neither cancelled nor launched a title in 1944. Minor lines like Hillman, Et-Es-Go, and Ace were able to juggle their quotas judiciously enough to add new books to their schedules.

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