In Whiz Comics #25 (November 1941), Fawcett introduces Captain Marvel Jr, aka Freddy Freeman, a crippled boy who became the second official member of the Marvel Family. It seems like Fawcett began to realize how big of a hit Captain Marvel was starting to become and had plans to spread it around with new characters, […]
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More Fun Comics #73 (September 1941), brought the debut of two new DC characters that are still having adventures to this day, 78 years later, including having adventures on the big and the small screens. Green Arrow, aka Oliver Queen, was created by Mort Weisinger and George Papp. He was a shallow copy of Batman, […]
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Continuing my streak of hard-hitting investigative comic book journalism, is the elevator boy in Action Comics #38 (May 1941) the first true appearance of Jimmy Olsen? We have red hair, bowtie and green coat! At this point in history, Jimmy Olsen existed as a character in the Superman radio show for about a year and […]
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Joe Simon and Jack Kirby have their first hit with Captain America #1 (December 1940). Captain America is the first character to star in his own comic book, not as a try-out feature in another book, and comes complete with a fully-fleshed out (and interesting) origin, a sidekick and an iconic villain (the Red Skull) […]
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Marvel decided to introduce a sidekick in Human Torch #2 of Toro, a human boy. Toro had all the powers of the Human Torch. [I discovered later that this comic came out in December of 1940 – thus this entry is a little bit out of order]
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In Detective Comics #38 (March 1940), Batman gains a youthful sidekick as he rescues the newly orphaned Dick Grayson and trains him to become Robin, the Boy Wonder. Robin was co-created by Bob Kane, Bill Finger and inker Jerry Robinson. This issue marks the start of shift to a lighter tone for Batman, one in […]
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Sally Norris is mostly definitely not a damsel-in-distress and is continuing to prove her worth as Bart Regan’s partner / sidekick in “Spy”, by Detective Comics #9 (October 1937). She bails out her boyfriend with tear gas from her purse (!) and rescues everyone.
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By 1937, Siegel & Shuster had five comic strips going in National Allied Publications / DC Comics. “Spy” debuted in Detective Comics #1, but the dynamic between Bart Regan (newly minted spy for Uncle Sam) and his ex-fiance Sally Norris started taking shape in the second issue, March 1937. Sally became Bart’s reluctant sidekick / […]
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In February 1937, Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, the owner of National Allied Publications, put out its third comic book title, Detective Comics. The book was published by “Detective Comics Inc” due to a partnership Wheeler-Nicholson entered into to get out of some debt. Detective Comics was notable for having much longer stories than was normal for the […]
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