golden age Archives

1940 was the Blue Beetle's year.  After launching in June 1939 in Mystery Men Comics #1, Dan Garrett, the Golden Age Blue Beetle would get a newspaper strip starting in January 1940, and his own series which hit newsstands around the same time A radio show started in May 1940 Like a lot of superheroes,[...]

Matt Baker's first South Sea Girl cover for Seven Seas Comics #3 would lead to work on Phantom Lady, Rulah and beyond.

In Seven Seas Comics #4, Matt Baker's South Sea Girl stars in a movie which seems to point to the character's film inspirations.

Printwatch: DC Comics' New Golden Age expands this October with the launches of Wesley Dodds: The Sandman, Jay Garrick: The Flash, and Alan Scott: Green Lantern and to help readers catch up, DC will offer two reprints, on sale this October. Justice Society of America: Gold Edition will reprint the sold-out Justice Society of America issues #1, #2, and[...]

If you've ever wanted a convention-style experience that was just about vintage paper, Collectors Summit sounds like the event for you.  Their upcoming event will be held at Heritage Auction headquarters in Dallas on November 4-5, 2023, and it's geared towards serious collectors of Golden Age to Bronze Age comic books, pulp magazines, original artwork,[...]

After a brief pause, the Harry "A" Chesler comic book line returned to comics in 1944 with Bulls-Eye Comics #11 featuring Lady Satan.

Undeniably, the lure of an intriguing cover plays a significant role in sparking a collector's interest in Golden Age comic books, and the unusual cover of Speed Comics #28 is another great example Published by Harvey Comics at the height of World War II in 1943, the cover here by an unknown artist serves as[...]

In which the elusive Liberty Comics #14 gives us a hook into understanding the sometimes murky world of the comic book industry of its era.

Peterson relates the story of Paul Massilotti, the leader of a ring of check forgers who was captured and convicted in 1937. Jack Cole was a wildly creative and important Golden Age artist whose most famous creation is the character Plastic Man for Quality Comics He was also a regular cartoonist for Playboy magazine later in[...]

Magno the Magnetic Man was the underappreciated star of Ace Periodicals' long-running Super-Mystery Comics title, debuting in issue #1 in 1940

Mel Keefer's cover for the 1953 Toby Press release Tales of Horror #8 features a giant monster rampaging in New York City.

Crime Does Not Pay #33 is one of the most-collected issues of the most notorious series in comic book history.

In 1946, the New York Times reported on tons of missing Uranium in Brazil, a historical incident forgotten by everyone, except for The Shadow.

Bang-Up Comics #1's Lady Fairplay, had "unlimited energetic powers" making her "goddess of chastisement and dreaded foe of the underworld."

Many of the comic books of the early Golden Age were a response to the rising chaos of a world at war, but sometimes, those comic books were not a direct reaction to the war itself.  For example, the Daredevil story written and illustrated by Charles Biro in Daredevil Comics #5 took inspiration from the[...]

The short-lived Major Victory Comics series contains a range of great examples of the Chesler line.  Even the superheroes and adventure characters are off-beat and weird, and tend to be viewed through a horror-tinged lens at times.  Patriotic character Major Victory's origin moment is sparked by a character called Father Patriot, "a spirit born in[...]

Before the X-Men, Professor X was a criminology professor in Captain Flight Comics who knew everything there was to know about crime.

Inspired by World War II, the Korean War, and the looming Cold War, the war comics of the 1940s and 1950s have a strange history behind them.

Spy Smasher remembers the Battle of Wake Island on the cover of Fawcetts's Spy Smasher #8 shortly after that history took place.

Greene is best remembered as the creator of Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, a science fiction novel, radio, comic strip, and comic book franchise that also ran on television 1950-1955, and is one of a handful of series to appear on all four networks of that era (CBS, ABC, NBC and Dumont).  There's a backup feature[...]

Aviation-themed covers were a large part of the early era of L.B. Cole's career as a comic book cover artist.

Fiction House's Ranger Comics launched featuring the Rangers of Freedom, a costumed hero-centric group who faced the villain SuperBrain.

Compton (presumably).  Something of a rarity in the Golden Age, one eyebrow-raising letter in this issue had a reader taking issue with the focus on what he termed as "England's War" and preferred that Victory Comics hero The Conqueror take on Stalin in Russia.  While this issue hit the newsstands several weeks before the US's[...]

Created by Chesler art director Charles Sultan, Punch Comics #1's Sky Chief, was a reflection of the aviation history of the era.

The short-lived Major Victory Comics series contains a range of great examples of the Chesler line.  Even the superheroes and adventure characters are off-beat and weird, and tend to be viewed through a horror-tinged lens at times.  Patriotic character Major Victory's origin moment is sparked by a character called Father Patriot, "a spirit born in[...]

Leslie Charteris gave Avon Publications detailed feedback on the look he wanted for The Saint comic book series in the late 1940s.

One of the most memorable female characters of the Golden Age with an iconic cover by Kida, there are nice copies of her first two appearances in Air Fighters Comics V2#2 (Hillman Fall, 1943) CGC FN 6.0 Off-white pages an Air Fighters Comics V2#7 (Hillman Fall, 1944) CGC VG/FN 5.0 Cream to off-white pages in[...]

Doom" is universally associated with the Marvel Comics supervillain and nemesis of the Fantastic Four, the Golden Age of comic books featured the origins of not one, but two characters bearing the same name.  The first Dr Doom, a super-science supervillain, was introduced in Fox Feature Syndicate's Science Comics #1, intriguing readers with his sinister[...]

The notion of blending supernatural elements with superhero storylines is an underappreciated aspect of the Golden Age.  Long before the Pre-Code Horror era, publishers like Marvely/Timely, MLJ and Chesler were combining these elements to great effect.  A prime example of this fusion is Dynamic Comics #1, published by Chesler in 1941 The introduction of superheroes[...]

It seems almost inconceivable to consider the Golden Age comic book output of MLJ as a whole without discussing Archie and his pals, and that's probably why researching the comic books in this auction surprised me as much as it did.  There's been so much focus on collecting Archie in recent decades, and deservedly so,[...]