Welcome to our re-read of the first and greatest superhero team in comics ... and quite a bit more!
My plan is to re-read and discuss the Golden Age Justice Society of America, which ran from All-Star Comics #3 (Winter 1940) to All-Star Comics #57 (February-March 1951), and is currently being reprinted in DC's "DC Finest" line.
But, as ever, I am consumed by context. What events brought us to All-Star Comics #3? What characters did editor Sheldon Mayer and writer Gardner Fox have available from which to choose? What else was competing in the superhero space? To achieve that context, I plan to start the discussion at the publisher's beginning, when Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson launched National Allied Publications Inc. in 1935. That was the first step toward the Justice Society — and to DC Comics as we know it today.
So before we even get to the JSA, I'll re-read and open for discussion all the solo stories starring JSA members, mostly from DC's Archives and Famous First Edition series. Which is actually quite a lot! (Although not as much as I'd prefer. I want it ALL!) I'll be writing about non-JSA superheroes created by National, Detective Comics Inc. and All-American Comics Inc. too, like Crimson Avenger and Doctor Occult. I'll also be tipping my hat to some non-powered characters, principally those who managed to appear outside their parent title, like Slam Bradley and Hop Harrigan. That means no re-read for the likes of "Bart Regan, Spy" and "Speed Saunders." Sorry, fellas, but I had to draw the line somewhere — before I found myself doing a deep dive into the history of Ginger Snap.
Speaking of drawing lines, I won't be re-reading Superman and Batman. They are peripheral at best to the Golden Age JSA, and would overwhelm the discussion through sheer volume. The volume issue extends to Wonder Woman as well (Sensation Comics, Wonder Woman, Comic Cavalcade), but she was a major player in the JSA, so I haven't decided yet if I'll include her solo stories. (And I have quite a bit of time to decide, since the bulk of DC"s Golden Age Archives books consist of material published before Sensation Comics #1.) Fortunately, Jeff of Earth-J is already doing a re-read of the Golden Age Superman.
I should note that I'm using cover dates instead of ship dates (not all ship dates are available) and assigning specific months to seasonal cover dates. That is to say, I consider "Spring" to mean March-April-May, "Summer" to mean June-July-August, "Fall" to mean September-October-November and "Winter" to mean December-January-February. I know the books with seasonal dates don't always align with the months I've assigned. But I'm organizing by month, so I have to assign months to seasonal cover dates. The cover date for All-Star Comics #3 was Winter 1940, for example, so I'm going to call it "December." (The actual ship date was Nov. 22, 1940, according to the Grand Comics Database, for whatever that's worth.) It's not necessary for Golden Age books to be in specific order very often, but where they need to be (like Detective Comics #38 and Batman #1), I'll order them properly.
I've tried to be comprehensive, relying on a variety of sources, from online to reprints to "companion" books. A tip of the cowl to some of Luke Blanchard's posts in what amounts to almost an outline for this discussion. But I'm sure I've left out tons, especially reprints that I don't have or can't find, which may be at hand in your collection. I hope folks will do re-reads of reprints I've left out, as well as comment on what I've written. So let's hear what I've missed Legionnaires — and what you think!
Replies
Maybe they were "Famous" at the time but the only names that are familiar are "Mutt and Jeff" and "Tailspin Tommy." And I only heard of them, I never read them!
I think I've made that observation before as well. What's famous about "Little Stanley" and "Somebody's Stenog"? But they weren't going to call the book Random Mediocre Comic Strips We Got Cheap.
Speaking of "Mutt and Jeff," not only did it appear in Famous Funnies, but also in All-American Comics. DC eventually gave "Mutt and Jeff" its own title, which ran for 103 issues, well into the '50s. I think it ran in some other places as well. There's probably a story there I'll never know.
I was given to believe that "comic books" is a uniquely American art form.
Just too subjective to even debate.
Comic books may well fall under the category of things that Americans like to think they invented, but didn't.
I'm also not sure that I would accept Ellison as the FInal Authority on Everything.
I wouldn't accept Ellison as an authority on much of anything, either.
As for comics as an American invention, that feels to me like one of those arguments where someone has already decided on a conclusion, and works backward by adding restrictive criteria until he's right. English comics? They're weekly, don't count. Early manga? Not in color, don't count. Rudolph Toppfer? Uhhh, not the right format. Doesn't count. Eventually the restrictions are such that the only thing that "counts" is an American periodical circa late 1930s.
Would those examples you cite (with which I am wholly unfamiliar) be accepted as "comic books" within the context of this discussion?
Nevermind.
I will reply but I'm about to lose my connection, forgive me.
MARCH 1937
DC's third comics periodical, Detective Comics, is the first DC title to have a theme, but not the first in the field to do so, or even the first to focus on detectives. (Comics Magazine Company's Detective Picture Stories ran ffrom December 1936 to April 1937.) To finance the book, Wheeler-Nicholson partnered with Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz to form Detective Comics Inc. Wheeler-Nicholson was subsequently forced out just prior to the release of Action Comics #1, and Detective Comics Inc. absorbed National Allied Publications Inc. and its two titles.
'DETECTIVE COMICS' #1
Slam Bradley
The cover depicts a "Yellow Peril" stereotype by Vince Sullivan, likely referring to the Slam Bradley story.
Full issue reprinted in Millennium Edition: Detective Comics #1 (2001).
Real Name: Samuel Emerson Bradley
Created by: Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster
Debut story: Untitled by Siegel and Shuster (13 pages)
Where I read it: The Greatest Golden Age Stories Ever Told (1990).
Significance: Appeared outside his parent title in the Golden Age, and exists in the current DC Universe
Slam Bradley is a two-fisted, hard-boiled private detective, described in his this debut story as an "ace free lance [sic] sleuth, fighter and adventurer." His sidekick Shorty Morgan is described as a "would-be detective, who admires Slam almost to idolation." Shorty is so short and cartoonish that he practically qualifies as a chibi.
Slam's introduction is mid-battle, which is apt, since he apparently fights a lot. He is fighting a bunch of Asian-looking men in Chinatown (which the narrator calls "Celestials"). He's depicted as really enjoying it, and annoyed when the police break in and help him. "Hey! What's the idea of bustin' in on a private fight?" he says. "Wotta scrapper!" one cop says, which inadvertently lampshades the raison d'etre of the strip.
The police are there to fetch Slam to the station, because a rich woman, Rita Carlisle, told the chief she has a job for Slam. (I write off the police chief pimping for a civilian as an artifact of the era, or simply story shorthand.) Bradley is outraged when he finds out the job is protecting Rita's small dog, Mimi. Later, he gives the job to Shorty, who incompetently allows the woman to be kidnapped by Chinatown criminals. Shorty calls Slam, and they must investigage a spooky underground maze full of traps.
I might as well mention this now: The chief Chinese crook is named Fui Onyui, which was probably hilarious in 1937. But later Shorty uses the term "Chink," and Slam uses "yellow rats" and "ash-faced amoeba." At that point, when the narrator just says "Chinaman," I'm relieved.
Eventually it's Shorty who catches Fui, and Slam makes Shorty a full partner, setting up the status quo of the series. The rich woman wants to see more of Slam (in the wink-wink, nudge-nudge way, probably, although it's hard to tell in kid-lit). But Sam blows her off. “Sorry, Rita! Shorty and I love trouble — but not ‘women trouble.’ See you later — maybe!” I'm sure that went over big with the pint-size set. Girls have cooties, you know.
Anyway, I suspect DC had high hopes for Slam. He was created by Siegel and Shuster, after all. And he was chosen to appear in both issues of New York World's Fair Comics with a bunch of superheroes. He was almost always in the anchor spot of Detective Comics. I suppose that faith is justified, as Slam is still part of the DC Universe almost 90 years later.
Fun Facts:
Golden Age appearances: Detective Comics #1-152 (March 1937-June 1949), 1939 and 1940 New York World's Fair Comics [#1-2]. Most have never been reprinted.
Current status: Slam was revived in Detective Comics #500 (March 1981) pretty much unchanged, except for being about 30 years older and a lifelong Gotham City resident (instead of Cleveland). As far as I know, he is still a supporting character in the Bat-titles.
Real name: Cyril Saunders
Created by: E.C. Stoner
Debut story: "The River Patrol" by Creig Flessel (6 pages)
Where I read it: Read All Comics
Significance: Related to two Hawkgirls, still part of the DCU.
"In every large city there are the G-men — in every large harbor there are G-men known as the Harbor Police. 'Speed' Cyril Saunders is a special operative in a unit of the River Patrol."
The story begins with Speed being called in because three dead Chinese men have been found in the harbor. (They are later described as "real Oriental Chinamen.") He hangs out at the harbor undercover as a stevedore, and notices a ship that never comes into port. He boards the ship and is caught. and thrown overboard. He's three miles out, and expected to drown, but he swims to shore. He hires a small boat and goes back to the ship, run by a Cap'n Scum. (No subtlety here!) Scum is sneaking in Chinese nationals, but throwing the sickly ones overboard. (Evidently, human trafficking is nothing new.) Saunders captures the gang at gunpoint.
This was pretty standard Golden Age adventure stuff, and I imagine Speed would be lost to history if he hadn't had the good fortune to debut in Detective Comics #1, instead of, say, Keen Detective Funnies.
Golden Age appearances: Detective Comics #1-58 (March 1937-December 1941).
Fun facts:
Golden Age appearances: Detective Comics #1-58 (March 1937-December 1941).
Current status: The last time I saw him was in JSA #2 (September 1999). He was alive, albeit old.
Real name: Cosmo. No surname was ever revealed.
Created by: Sven Elven
Debut story: Untitled by Sven Elven (6 pages)
Where I read it: Read All Comics
Significance: None outside of being published in Detective Comics #1.
A clever jewel thief named Taro has threatened to steal the "Rhangwa" pearls from a rich man, Gregory Dillingwater. The police decide to call in Cosmo because "Taro has been playing without department like a cat with a slow-witted canary!" We see Taro disguise himself as a policeman to reconoiter the police protection around Dillingwater. Then we see him as a fruit peddler with an egregious Italian accent. The "peddler" calls on the butler, Buckley, at the back door, overpowers him, and takes his place. "Buckley" puts drugs in the rich man's drink, and he appears to pass out. However, "Dillingwater" is really Cosmo, and faked drinking the drug. He overpowers Taro and it's case closed.
Weirdly, Taro seems like the phantom of disguise here.
Fun fact: "Sven Elven" sounds like a name from the Lord of the Rings, and that's because it's a made-up name. Hubert Frykholm immigrated to the U.S. from Sweden and changed his name. He illustrated a book on lingerie in 1933, worked at Detective Comics Inc. in its early days, and ended his comics career at Fawcett in 1940. He worked elsewhere until retirement in the 1960s, and died in a Vermont farming accident in 1969.
Golden Age appearances: Detective Comics #1-37 (March 1937-March 1940).
Current status: Never made it out of the Golden Age, AFAIK.
Bruce Nelson
Created by: Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson and Tom Hickey
Debut story: "The Claws of the Red Dragon" by Wheeler-Nicholson and Hickey (13 pages)
Where I read it: Read All Comics
Significance: None outside of being published in Detective Comics #1.
Nelson is a rich amateur detective in New York City. In this story, Wheeler-Nicholson attempts to build up tension over a number of pages as Nelson is unable to get served in a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco. Then a couple, a German man and his beautiful daughter, come in and get served instead. Nelson and the new guy have identical rings, which I guess is a plot point. I'll never know, because this interminable story, with lurking "Yellow Peril" the only conflict, ends with all the white people kidnapped. I have never read what happens next.
Fun fact: Wheeler-Nicholson adapted this from his own pulp story, "The House of Fang Gow," published in Street and Smith's Top-Notch. Fang Gow is also the antagonist in the Barry O'Neill strip, which began in New Fun #1.
Golden Age appearances: Detective Comics #1-36 (March 1937-February 1940).
Current status: Never made it out of the Golden Age, AFAIK.
Real name: Bartholomew Regan
Created by: Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster
Story: Untitled by Siegel and Shuster
Where I read it: Read All Comics
Significance: Created by Siegel and Shuster
This isn't Bart's debut story — that would be an untitled story by Siegel and Shuster in The Comics Magazine Co.'s The Comics Magazine #2 in June 1936. But it is an "origin" story of sorts, with Bart being publicly fired by whatever federal agency he works for so he can be surreptitiously "transferred to the secret spy detail."
"You realize of course, you will not represent the United States officially, that if you get in a tight spot we will not be able to recognize and assist you," his boos says in a speech that wouldn't seem out of place in a Mission: Impossible intro. "You've got to sacrifice your personal life and all thoughts of marriage." Dutifully, Bart calls up his fiancee, Sally Norris, and breaks it off.
Only she's not having it. "He doesn't fool me. I know he still loves me — well, he'll soon learn I'm hard to shake off." And later, "He'll find tossing me aside harder than he imagines!"
She shows up at a party where Bart is in disguise as young Army officer Captain Markham, pretending to fall for the charms of foreign spy Olga Galinoff, so he can trap her. Sally's presence complicates matters. When Captain Markham and Olga leave, Sally is in hot pursuit. The story is continued, so I don't know how it resolves, but I do know that eventually Sally joins Bart as his partner in the espionage game in what I imagine to be a sort of a Nick-and-Nora relationship.
Legionnaire Luke Blanchard recommends the strip. It works as screwball comedy, although if taken straight Sally is a crazed stalker.
Golden Age appearances: The Comics Magazine #2 (June 1936); Detective Comics #1-77, 81-83 (March 1937-January 1944).
Current status: Never made it out of the Golden Age, AFAIK.
OTHER STRIPS
Bret Lawton, "world-traveling detective," is printed in B&W and only lasted two issues. This first one takes place in Peru, and is of the usual "myserious Incas" variety.
Buck Marshall, Range Detective, is printed in B&W. Marshall is a Western character, who lasted through issue #36 (February 1940). I hope at some point he becomes a U.S. marshal, so he can be Marshal Marshall.
MORE FUN COMICS v2 #7 [#19]
Doctor Occult: I'll tackle this story in my next post.
NEW ADVENTURE COMICS v2 #12 [#14]
Nothing pertinent to this discussion.
Full issue reprinted in Millennium Edition: Detective Comics #1
Ah, I remember the year 2000. I would buy my comics on Wednesday, but I wouldn't have time to read them until Saturday morning.
And I always started off with that week's "Millennium Edition."
The third time was the charm for Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson. Detective Comics was his first title which launched as a recognizable "comic book." Comics scholar Les Daniels describes New Fun (More Fun) and New Comics (Adventure Comics) as "scattershot periodicals," but he says Detective Comics "marked a turning point in the development of a fledgling industry," and I agree. What's more, Detective Comics was the first to tie all of its stories to a theme, the popular "mystery" genre. Even Detective's cowboy hero, Buck Marshall, is billed as a "Range Detective." Here are a few more quotations from the "Battle of the Ages" roundtable.
Tony Isabella: "I can't disagree about the importance of New Fun in truly launching the transition period, but I think Detective Comics #1 is the comic that made the initial transition work."
Captain Comics: "I do agree with Tony that everything sorta jelled into the first solar system with Detective Comics #1. It was the first comic book to combine new material, a recognizable format, newsstand sales, and a theme. It was clearly an American comic book -- and the first one strong enough to endure from the Golden Age to the present. Other early stars went nova, but Detective Comics is still burning brightly and will probably do so long after I'm gone."
Les Daniels (not of the "Round Table") goes on to say: "The first thing readers noticed about this new comic book was the sinister Asian gentleman on the cover, drawn by editor Vin sullivan. The entire issue was full of Asian villains, which one hero refers to as 'real oriental Chinamen.' In that era, such casual racism was not too unusual, and in this case may have come less from personal prejudice than genre conventions. Perhaps the most popular bad guy around in 1937 was Dr. Fu Manchu, the pulp creation of author Sax Rohmer. The writers of this issue, and many other comics and pulp stories besides, were proabably imitating Rohmer in the hope of scoring a success."
By 1938, Detective Comics had enough money to license appearances by the real Dr. Fu Manchu (see reprints of Detective Comics #27). [ASIDE: I recently read a few "Epic Collections" of Marvel's Master of Kung Fu and remarked that I was wholly unfamiliar with Rohmer's Fu Manchu. That statement turns out not to have been entirely true.]
Historical Note: Even though Detective Comics #1 came out more than a year before Action Comics #1, Siegel & Shuster's Superman actually pre-dated their Slam Bradley, because the pair were shopping the Man of Steel around to newspaper syndicates at this time.
NOTE, too, the cover blurb: "BRAND NEW! Action-Packed Stories in COLOR!"
Except that two of the strips were NOT in color. That's true of Action Comics #1 as well.
Detective Comics #1 is mostly color. I was using color as an initial criterion as the medium was being defined.
Of course, many comics today are b&w and I still consider them "comic books."
Oh, I'm not worried about that. I was actually kinda wondering why DC was crowing about having color when there were some strips in B&W.
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