As we covered not long ago, Airboy was one of the most successful characters of the Golden Age of Comics. Not quite a super hero, more an adventurer aviator, the characters was perhaps better positioned to adjust to the changing tastes of the evolving audience, particularly in the postwar period. Created in 1942, AIRBOY COMICS … Continue reading The Last Airboy Story
As we recounted in passing last time, the arrival of creator Joe Simon and Jack Kirby to the Sandman strip that had been running in the back pages of ADVENTURE COMICS swiftly turned it into a popular feature once again. The stories were much improved, with a thematic thread of dreams running through them all, … Continue reading The Last Sandman Story
The Sandman was introduced in NEW YORK WORLD'S FAIR COMICS #1 and immediately became the featured player in ADVENTURE COMICS staring with #40. He was a character steeped in an old formula and clearly influenced by the radio hero the Green Hornet. Like the Hornet, his main weapon was a gas gun, and he battled … Continue reading The First Sandy Story and the Super-Heroification of the Sandman
By the time 1946 rolled around, the excitement over costumed super heroes had cooled considerably on the nation's newsstands. With the war over, the active servicemen who needed portable easy-to-read entertainment went back to public life, and sales of super hero titles fell sharply. Other genres, such as teen humor, funny animals, crime, romance and … Continue reading The Last Starman Story
We spoke a bit previously about Johnny Quick, DC's alternative super-speedster who occupied the back pages of first MORE FUN COMICS and then ADVENTURE COMICS during the Golden Age of Comics. Johnny was a long-running second banana character whose adventures were typically better-drawn than the company's more mainstay fast hero, the Flash. But also, as … Continue reading The Last Johnny Quick Story
It cannot be overstated just what an enormous phenomenon Superman became almost instantly upon his first story being published in 1938. Within the span of only three years, the character would have his own self-titled magazine (something unheard of in the field before then) as well as his regular home in ACTION COMICS, a daily … Continue reading The First Superman Knock-Off and the Perjury of Will Eisner
Predating Captain America and a horde of other lesser lights, The Shield was the first patriotic-themed super hero of the Golden Age of Comics, debuting in PEP COMICS #1 in 1939. He was billed as a "G-Man Extraordinary", and over the next eight years, he'd carry on the fight against evil, losing his Superman-inspired super-powers … Continue reading The Last Shield Story
After the peak sales period of the war years, the postwar period saw the changing tastes of returning G.I.s and the public at large impact on what was available at the Newsstand. Costumed super heroes had lost a lot of their popularity with the general public, no longer having a colorful, unifying enemy like the … Continue reading The First Two-Gun Kid Story
Wildcat was one of the great second banana super heroes of the Golden Age of Comics--one who has become ostensibly more popular in more recent years than he was when his series was running in the back pages of SENSATION COMICS. Wildcat was champion prize-fighter Ted Grant who was inspired by the example of Green … Continue reading The Last Wildcat Story
As opposed to the Flash and the other members of the Justice Society of America whose solo series all were discontinued in the pages of the anthology series they were a part of, Green Lantern actually made his final Golden Age solo appearance in his own title, which outlasted ALL-AMERICAN COMICS' transformation into ALL-AMERICAN WESTERN … Continue reading The Last Green Lantern Story
The Tom Brevoort Experience 