The advent of World War II and the patriotic fervor that hit the nation swiftly became a driving force behind comic books. It was clear almost immediately that young readers, with no other real way of engaging the enemy and helping with the battle effort, wanted to live those experiences vicariously through stories. Consequently, all manner of patriotic characters appeared, including a number of existing strips that were retooled to showcase a more patriotic flavor. Such was the case with the one we’re going to look at today.
Rusty Ryan of Boyville had been an unremarkable filler strip staking out the back pages of FEATURE COMICS for about a year. It appears to have been the creation of Paul Gustavson, who is better remembered today for The Angel, a feature he originated for Timely’s MARVEL MYSTERY COMICS who was consequently Marvel’s first costumed hero. Rusty was an orphan kid who stayed at Boyville, a community of orphans organized by retired seaman Cappy Jenks. Scrappy Ryan and his buddies would get into scrapes foiling criminals and the like. It wasn’t all that notable a strip, and often didn’t merit a mention on the cover, despite the fact that a dozen other strips in the magazine were thus showcased.
But things got a bit wilder in the story in FEATURE COMICS #45. By this point, Captain America had only recently debuted and was a smash hit thanks to the electrifying storytelling and artwork of the team of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. Creators and publishers all across the field geared up to turn out their own knock-off creations–enough so that, at one point, Timely publisher Martin Goodman ran a house ad featuring an angry Cap shaking his shield at the audience and warning any infringers that Timely would come after them legally if they attempted to copy Captain America. This was no idle threat, but in the case or Rusty Ryan, amazingly it seems that it was allowed to proceed regardless of some flagrant imitation.
In this story, in response to the arrival of a Nazi Fifth Columnist who has come to Boyville in the hopes of uniting it behind Axis ideals, Rusty organizes a group of his friends into the Boyville Brigadiers, and they adapt their school football jerseys into fighting costumes. The thing is, those costumes are almost exact duplicates of Captain America’s attire. The chest symbol had two smaller stars bracketing the central large one, and the sleeves were blue rather than white. But to any eye, the Boyville Brigadiers looked like an assembly line version of Captain America.
Rusty Ryan and the Boyville Brigadiers continued their anti-Nazi efforts all throughout the war. And while they left their Captain America uniforms behind in the postwar period, they continued to appear in FEATURE COMICS through #135 in 1948–a pretty staggering run for a strip that had been entirely forgettable for its initial year.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
That’s a fine writeup, Tom. I’m fairly familiar with Captain America’s WWII exploits, as well as how often a popular character would inspire knockoffs, but this is the first time I’ve heard of Rusty and his pals. Good stuff.
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I’ve seen a smattering of these strips. My guess would be that Goodman didn’t care about the infraction because the Ryan feature was never featured on covers (my unchecked impression). Maybe Goodman couldn’t legally claim that FEATURE was using the image to sell more copies of the Quality mag without that clear display of infringement? Supposedly Joe Simon, with or without Goodman’s input, modeled Captain America’s first shield after the design of the Shield’s chest design, but Timely and MLJ settled the issue sans litigation by having the Cap shield remodeled.
I think Rusty and his buddies remained pretty dull for their run, but in postwar years they added two comical characters to the mix: a zoot suited Black American and a conniving Arab guy, and both continued to follow Rusty around on his globe hopping adventures. One’s mileage may vary as to whether either of the two new additions were any good. But they weren’t as dull as the serious heroes, and probably reflected Quality’s growing emphasis on humor.
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I got curious about the transition. FEATURE #102 (Sept 46) has the last story for Rusty and his Brigadiers in costume, alongside the two comedy types. In #103, the Brigadiers are gone without explanation, leaving Rusty (clad in more or less realistic clothes) and the two funny guys. I imagine that ensemble remained in place till the end of the run but am not moved to check.
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That’s cool, but let’s not pretend like Captain America wasn’t “inspired” by The Shield, literally “wearing” his design as his…shield , the original one. And from Batman and Robin and from others (including original The Superman 1933 origin).
This comics business really was bunch of friends from “different” corporations choke holding other people through legal means. Just like how Fawcett was forced to close Captain Marvel and before that how other Superman “rip-offs” (at the same time they made Siegel say that Superman wasn’t inspired by Wylie’s Gladiator when Phillip was suing them, which “even” Jerry later on “admitted” (it is literally 2+2 logic) himself in his unreleased memoir in 1978 creation of super hero) , in similar way DC could also easily sue Marvel that Iron Man ripped off Metalo, Metallo and Batman. Hell, Batman itself was “allowed” to coexist with Black Bat returning to the print back in 1939 simply because one of the guys worked for both at a time. Crony “capitalism” !
Very unfortunate when champions for justice are sold by unjust people. But such is this world unfortunately. For now.
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I’m familiar enough with Gladiator to say while the influence is obvious, Superman stands on his own.
Likewise I don’t buy Tony Stark as a knockoff of Batman’s secret identity. In those days Bruce Wayne lived off his money but even managing it was left to other people. That’s a far cry from Tony Stark, self-made millionaire tech genius.
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