Wow – we finally get to move on from August 1939 to September 1939! Gary Concord, the Ultra-man debuted in All-American Comics #8 and was created by “Don Shelby”, a pseudonym of Jon L. Blummer. He took some interesting elements of Buck Rogers, Doc Savage and Superman and rolled a new character set in the […]
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In Adventure Comics #42 (August 1939), Wayne Boring gets credit alongside Jerome Siegel for “Federal Men”. It sounds like Boring had been “ghosting” already for Joe Shuster, so I’m not sure why he was suddenly openly credited here.
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In August 1939, Shock Gibson appeared in Speed Comics #1 by Brookwood Publications (later absorbed by Harvey Comics). Lightning struck chemicals which splashed on poor Charles Gibson, gifting him with incredible strength (and apparently invulnerability). The next logical step, of course, in the Golden Age of Superheroes is to don a skin-tight red costume, and […]
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Another final interesting moment in August 1939 came from Amazing-Man Comics #5 (Centaur Publications) and the debut of “Amazing-Man”. The Amazing-Man was also know as Aman, also known as “The Green Mist”. He was raised and trained by seven Tibetan monks to a “superhuman degree of physical and mental ability”. His creators were probably Bill […]
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Superman‘s powers continue to expand, as indicated in this panel from Action Comics #17 (August 1939). Thanks to his invulnerability to fire, he nearly single-handedly foils an arson attempt on a steamliner ship, arranged by the Ultra-Humanite.
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The third superhero introduced in Marvel Comics #1 (August 1939), was The Angel, created by Paul Gustavson. The Angel that would not see success beyond the Golden Age of Comics, though he did give his name to one of the original X-Men, much like The Human Torch was reborn as a different character in the […]
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Marvel Comics #1 (August 1939) also introduced another character that would live beyond the Golden Age of Comics: Namor, the Sub-Mariner created by Bill Everett. Namor debuted a full two years before that other famous aquatic superhero, Aquaman. Like the Human Torch, his origin was pretty unique: Namor is a young prince of the deep […]
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August 1939 saw the birth of another comic book company, Timely Comics, the company that would eventually be renamed Marvel Comics many years later. Marvel Comics #1 hit the stands introducing a unique superhero character, The Human Torch, created by Carl Burgos. This version of the Torch was a synthetic human (an android) created by […]
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The Batman introduced two new gadgets in Detective Comics #31 (August 1939): The Bat-Gyro and the Bat-arang. It is also revealed that Bruce Wayne has a fiance named Julie Madison who is hypnotized by the second villain in Batman’s rogue’s gallery: The Mad Monk. In just five issues, Gardner Fox and Bob Kane have done […]
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In Action Comics #16 (August 1939), Zatara ventures into space and lands on the planet Saturn, where he encounters a bald, green-skinned man wearing a cape and a distinctive cross across his chest that very much resembles the Martians of the Martian Manhunter era.
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