Thread by @Comrade_Bullski

Hello. I know the world is on fire right now, but one of my ways of coping is to talk about pop culture with you fine people, and today I am finally ready to begin the journey.

This is the MLJ/Archie superhero retrospective, the first of a four-part serial.

This is the road to the Mighty Crusaders.

Today in part one, we journey back to the dawn of the golden age, before Archie became Archie and discover the roots and troubled beginning of the company's superhero cast. Death! Drama! Famous creators! Nazis! Swiping! And much more!

The company today known as Archie Comics was founded in 1939 as M.L.J Magazines by three businessmen, Maurice Coyne, Louis Silberkleit and John L. Goldwater all of whom had previous experience with publishing or distribution.

Action Comics had sent shockwaves through the publishing world, showing that the previously minor field of comic books could be big bucks for those willing to invest. Many publishers jumped into the fray in 1939 and 1940, each wanting a slice of the pie.

It may then come as a surprise than when MLJ threw their hat in the ring with their first comic in winter of 1939 it didn't have a caped, muscular man in tights as a headliner but rather... Rang-A-Tang the Wonder Dog?

(Please try to tear your eyes away from the fact that this comic has a strip called "Foxy Grandpa". Focus!)

The full origins of the heroic dog genre is beyond the scope of this article, but suffice to say that by 1939 there were already over 40 movies starring the beloved Rin Tin Tin and his son and successor and it was quite popular to copy the "wonder dog" formula in fiction.

And so Blue Ribbon Comics #1 hit the stands with the courageous dog as the star and your generic slew of backup strips like a Flash Gordon clone, a cowboy strip, a strip about jungle adventure... Blue Ribbon was essentially the stuff you saw as backups in other comics.

What MLJ did have which nobody at the time probably realized was one of the greatest artistic talents of the golden age. They had Jack Cole. Granted, he wasn't doing the lead strip or even anything advertised on the cover, he instead did a couple of small comedy backups.

Even in this inconsequential little strip we can see the future creator of Plastic Man stretch his artistic muscle when he has the main character "transform" herself to fool a crook - a gag that Plastic Man would pull off more than once! And we'll see more of Cole as we continue.

But it was perhaps inevitable that the masked hero would make his way into MLJ's publications as even by issue #2 of Blue Ribbon the strip "Scoop Cody" introduced a masked mystery man named... "The Marvel". We never learn much about him before the strip vanishes.

As a side note: "Scoop Cody" is the protagonist of this strip but he is NOT "The Marvel". Scoop gets bailed out by the Marvel on a few occasions and wants to learn his identity but nothing ever comes of it.

Blue Ribbon #2 also saw the premier of MLJ's very first superhero FEATURE in the form of the immortal... Bob Phantom. Walt Whitney is a reporter who dresses up as Bob Phantom and has the never explained ability to vanish into thin air.

"Bob Phantom" would survive the demise of Blue Ribbon Comics and ended up having a run in Pep Comics before fading away, but the strip was never more than your absolute most cookie-cutter early 40s masked hero stuff with Walt being a very undefined protagonist.

Issue three of Blue Ribbon introduced another MLJ mainstay in the form of the hotheaded military man Corporal Collins. While not an adventurer per se, Collins is a symbol of the MANY military strips run by the publisher including "The West Pointer", "the Midshipman" and more.

At this point I want to stress that I will at times skip around a bit in the timeline in order to follow up on certain narratives and trends, so please forgive me if you sometimes find me skipping back to an earlier date.

Right around when Blue Ribbon #2 hit the stands, MLJ launched their second anthology: Top-Notch Comics. This comic was not headlined by a heroic canine but by another very popular golden age archetype, the heroic magician. This is the coming of the Wizard.

The Wizard was not really a Mandrake clone per se as you shall soon see, but the vast influence of Lee Falk and Phil Davis' dashing, tuxedo-wearing magician was clearly evident in the Wizard's design.

The Wizard strip instantly had more promise as it established that Blane Whitney aka the Wizard is the most recent in a long family line fighting for America, perhaps inspired by Falk's other famous creation the Phantom.

These early Wizard strips have a promising, engaging style inspired by but not too derivative of the great newspaper strips of the era, but alas this energy would not last long.

The rest of Top-Notch's initial features are the usual melange of detectives, military strips, awful comedy strips and even a short second strip about an actual crime-fighting magician called... "The Mystic". It's as generic as you can imagine.

Even this long before Pearl Harbor the primarily Jewish MLJ are not afraid to hide their conviction. Top-Notch #2 sees the Wizard destroy a bomber clearly bearing nazi swastikas even at a time when the US was still neutral in the boiling world war.

Back in Blue Ribbon Comics, issue #4 introduces another ongoing superhuman adventurer in the form of Hercules. Quite literally the Greek demigod returned to earth, this was another curious trope that was reused by many comic books of the time.

Before superheroes completely blot out all these early strips I want to take a moment to share the cover of Blue Rubbon #5 where Collins goes absolutely nuts with THREE machine guns at once.

Side note: My good friend @TalkinLadyShiva assumed this cover meant that Collins was a WW1 strip given that the hardware and uniforms are very much of that era. But nope. Laziness or inability to find references for more "modern" military gear? You decide.

Blue Ribbon and Top-Notch however were little more than a prelude to MLJ's big seller, debuting in spring of 1940 and almost immediately taking off. Pep Comics starred not one but TWO colorful superhero features, and things would never be the same.

The Shield literally rips through the page and curiously only has a text scroll explaining his origin in his first strip. Joe Higgins "G-Man Extraordinary"wears a bullet-proof suit that also endows him with superhuman powers and he uses this to shield the US.

The Shield feature certainly sticks out with his great design and the way he uses his powers in combat, though the strip itself is a fairly ordinary one about a not-German spy ring. And this is also as good of a time to talk about the artist behind the Shield, one of MLJ's greats

Irv Novick was one of the most prolific artists working for MLJ during the period, drawing hundreds of strips for them before going off and making a name for himself with other companies, including memorable work for DC Comics. His style was in its infancy here, but already good.

The second superhero in Pep Comics #1 was the Comet, drawn by none other than Jack Cole! Cole's early style is cruder than his future work for Lev Gleason and Quality but he certainly has a sense of style and composition beyond what we've seen so far from MLJ.

Other than Cole's fascinating art, the Comet strip is notable for just how absolutely ruthless the main character is. Chemist John Dickering hasn't had his amazing cosmic powers long before he starts literally melting criminals with his eyebeams.

Following on the heels of the previous titles Zip Comics joined the MLJ lineup in spring 1940 only a month after Pep and was the fourth and final MLJ anthology comic of the era. Following in Pep's footsteps this new comic also had a superhero headliner - Steel Sterling!

Yes, long before a certain last son of Krypton adopted the "Man of Steel" moniker the ORIGINAL "Man of Steel" was scientist Roger Sterling who endowed himself with amazing powers by diving into a specially prepared vat of molten metal.

Steel is also the first of the MLJ heroes to have something of a nemesis in the form of the Black Knight, an eccentric gangster with a penchant for medieval imagery and a curiously brown and yellow outfit. The two would clash a few times in Steel's early strips.

The artist on Steel Sterling was another golden age great - Charles Biro. Mostly forgotten today, Biro created the enduring character Airboy and provided excellent art on the revamp of Lev Gleason's original Daredevil, including the iconic "Daredevil Battles Hitler" first issue.

Not every strip is a winner. Steel's backups in Zip Comics included the eminently forgettable Scarlet Avenger and his frankly awful red and green look...

...and the hilarious named "Mr. Satan" (no relation to the Dragonball character I assume) who despite his name has nothing to do with anything supernatural. Neither would last long.

Before we continue I want to just show off how fun and energetic Biro's art is. He has a hint of C.C beck about him and his cover compositions are always a treat. And there's the Black Knight menacing Steel again!

Going back to Blue Ribbon for a moment, while it wasn't even advertised on the cover, issue #4 saw the first appearance of one of MLJ/Archie's most enduring superhero... the Fox! This guy is still around to this day! Another heroic reporter, too.

Paul Patton's first costume leaves a lot to be desired and thankfully he dropped his "YAH YAH YAH" battlecry after a few appearances, but this was the origin of the character no less. Art by Irwin Hasen who would create a similar character in 1942 for DC in the form of Wildcat.

In autumn of 1940, Top-Notch Comics #7 and Pep Comics #4 heralded something very unusual into burgeoning world of the MLJ superheroes - a crossover!

It really isn't much as the Wizard and the Shield only exchange some information on each other's cases and don't even team up, but it does establish the characters exist in the same universe and acts as a prelude of things to come.

Indeed, around the same time MLJ began publishing Shield-Wizard Comics, their first pure superhero book. As the title indicates, this comic was packed from end to end with new stories about the two stars of Pep and Top-Notch, though sadly they didn't really interact much here.

Shield-Wizard Comics #1 is actually the first time the Shield's origin is fully shown as opposed to just being discussed, and we learn her at least some of his powers come from special treatments rather than just his uniform, a slight retcon.

The full origin sequence is quite dramatic, and the part with the chemical treatments and rays may seem familiar...

Since the Shield predates Captain America by a wide margin and the two do share some similarities beyond the cosmetic it is always tempting to think that Cap may have been more than a little "influenced" by the Shield.

It is certainly well-documented that MLJ were not amused by how similar Cap's first shield was to the Shield's chest emblem and threatened a lawsuit, which caused Marvel to alter Cap's weapon into its signature circular shape by his second appearance.

Apparently both Simon and Kirby were happy with this change, as the round shield was a lot easier to draw and looked more logical when thrown, so everyone wins!

The only other thing I want to say about Shield-Wizard Comics right now is that it had a very promising idea in its first issue where it showed the adventures of historical ancestors of the Wizard, such as his revolutionary war counterpart. Sadly this idea was quickly dropped!

Immediately following the Shield crossover and the first issue of Shield-Wizard, the Wizard not only acquired a sidekick but also a new costumed co-star in the pages of Top-Notch #8, fall 1940.

It is a bit odd to see the very standoffish Wizard suddenly adopt a plucky sidekick in the form of "Roy the Super-Boy" but such was the immense influence of Batman and Robin at the time. Unfortunately Roy's introduction also marks a decline in the already mediocre Wizard strips.

From this point on, the Wizard becomes less of the dashing spy he was in his early strips and the emphasis on his ancestors also vanishes, replaced by generic crooks and robbers stuff.

As mentioned issue 8 also introduces the Firefly whose costume and modus operandi has nothing to do with insects whatsoever.

I mean the strip claims Harley Hudson's physical abilities come from studying insects, but in practice he is little more than just another costumed strongman and he only lasted a meager six issues.

However almost as if sensing the Wizard's decline, Top-Notch #9 bombastically introduces another new superhero with a cover feature and all, something that MLJ never tried before. His name even crowds out the logo!

It's so strange to me that MLJ seemed convinced that the Black Hood would be a hit right out of the gate and even weirder that they were right about it. The Hood would go on to be one of the most popular superheroes of the MLJ stable and persists to this day.

Although subsequent iterations have added a lot of lore to the Black Hood's origin, in this first tale he is simply a heroic patrolman named Kip Burland who runs afoul of the sadistic Skull, who leaves him for dead.

Nursed back to health and taught the art of combat by an old hermit with a vendetta against the skull, Kip returns to the city as the Black Hood.

The Skull has also framed Burland who is now forced to live under an alias, unable to see his family or loved ones and only able to operate as the Black Hood. He thwarts the skull and it's a pretty darn good golden age origin story!

The Black Hood continued battling the Skull regularly and the fiend would often escape from seemingly certain death in true serial fashion. The Skull also has some similarities to the not yet created Red Skull such as his ability to leave his victims with a skull-face.

Probably MLJ's most recognizable villain, the Skull even managed to sneak onto a cover or two that had nothing to do with the Black Hood such as Shield-Wizard #6! Unfortunately he never actually battled the Shield or the Wizard in any story.

1940 also saw the introduction of a couple of more blatant Mandrake clones such as Zambini the Miracle Man who also seemed to borrow from DC's Zatara except Zambini's "magic" language is MUCH sillier.

I also neglected to mention that Pep #1 started a backup strip called "The Press Guardian" where a garishly dressed superhero called the Falcon did the usual mystery man thing. Falcon would later adopted a Spirit-esque mask and suit combo instead which looked much snappier.

At this point MLJ would refer to their titles as "The Big 5" in advertising and promotions, with the Black Hood already having ousted the Wizard from the cover spot in Top-Notch. I shall return after a short break to talk about the big year of 1941!

Let's first talk a little about brutality and horror in golden age comics. While MLJ's stories had initially been rather tame, average adventure stuff, they were already veering into lurid, explicit depictions of death and carnage by 1940.

The Comet was certainly the vanguard of this, as even by issue #3 of pep he had been hypnotized into killing dozens of innocent people. It's weird to me that he considers himself "framed" when he actually IS a murderer under his own volition, but it's an excuse for drama.

With the increasing pressure of competitors, MLJ chose to really invest in the dark, weird and horrifying to stick out from their competition in a similar manner than Marvel would in the same period.

In Pep Comics #11, published at the very end of 1940, Shield followed the Wizard in adopting a costumed sidekick in the form of Dusty the Boy Detective who if anything is an even more blatant Robin clone than Roy was.

Shield witnesses Dusty becoming an orphan as part of a crime wave orchestrated by the weird villain called the Vulture and predictably takes him in.

The Vulture also becomes Shield's first real arch-nemesis with this story, appearing in several tales afterwards and always having a bit of a personal connection to the heroes due to his part in Dusty's origin.

Blue Ribbon had been the first MLJ comic but had failed to establish a cover feature superhero (with the Fox never managing to fully oust Rang-A-Tang) but with issue #9 and the introduction of Mr Justice that streak was broken.

The ghostly avenger Mr Justice seemed to be very clearly based on DC's the Spectre who had premiered about a year prior, and shared his gruesome way of dealing with crime and often cold demeanor.

The spirit of the murdered prince James has returned as Mr Justice and would carry many of the trademarks of MLJ's more successful strips.

Mr Justice's archenemy is none other than the Devil himself (not an unusual thing for a golden age hero) and a long series of stories sees the heroic ghost trying to destroy the Devil's main agent on earth, the grisly possessing demon known as the Green Ghoul.

Overall Mr Justice had a fairly short run in MLJ's history but his appearance and dark stories made him memorable for the time. He would however end up being supplanted as the cover feature of Blue Ribbon by...

...Captain Flag! I want to discuss him now, slightly out of order, because he so perfectly embodies the increasing emphasis on horror and grisly crimes that was so prevalent at MLJ in 1941 and on.

Socialite Tom Townsend runs afoul of the sadistic Black Hand who can seemingly kill with a touch who tortures Tom and his father before murdering the older man right in front of Tom's eyes...

Before he can be killed as well, Tom is carried to safety by an absolutely monstrously huge eagle. This kind of thing happened in the golden age!

Following his unexpected avian rescue, Tom trains himself to peak physical condition in the mountains before returning to civilization to hound the Black Hand as Captain Flag.

Perhaps this era of MLJ's superheroes can be exemplified by this page from a later Blue Ribbon issue, where Captain Flag rescues the Black Hand only to unceremoniously hang him on the spot for his crimes. And that isn't even your schtick, flag! Geeze!

Not all new characters were necessarily this lurid. In Zip Comics #10 Steel Sterling (who had at this point dispatched the Black Knight permanently) fought a snake-themed villain called the Rattler together with a fire-eater called Frank Verrano or "Inferno"

While Inferno would not return to Steel's strip, in an unprecedented move the character became a superhero himself in the pages of Blue Ribbon #13 in late spring of 41, and continued there as a backup for Mr Justice and Captain Flag alongside the Fox.

As a side note, despite never making a reappearance in an actual story that I could find, the Rattler would make numerous cover appearances following his death where he menaced Steel and looked extremely formidable.

A little bit before Inferno's solo debut, Pep Comics #12 in early 41 saw the unremarkable debut of Fireball, a fireman who somehow acquired the power to absorb open flames but never had the fortune of having a very interesting strip.

There was one notable thing about Inferno and Fireball, however. Both strips were drawn by Paul Reinman, a very prolific artist who will become EXTREMELY important in part two when we reach the silver age. He started out doing backup strips like this.

Another character introduced late in the year was Black Jack. At this point the four anthologies were increasingly cutting their non-superhero content by adding new features, with Black Jack proudly introduced with a great Novick cover.

Black Jack was Jonathan Jones, a cop who had the misfortune of being sealed in an airtight room by the mob. He used his trusty black jack card to carve a tiny sliver that allowed him to breathe until he could be rescued...

...and naturally adopted his lucky card as his new identity and became Black Jack, scourge of the underworld. A cool costume, but Black Jack was just another in a long line of so-so backup superhero strips.

Before we talk about the big thing to shake up MLJ's stories in 41 I should also mention that they also added Jackpot Comics to the mix this year, a title that assembled a bunch of popular characters from their anthologies into one comic.

I'm going to talk more about one particular story from Jackpot in a bit, but until then bask in this glorious cover of the Black Hood and Steel Sterling teaming up against the unholy alliance of the Skull and the Rattler (which of course never happened in the issue).

However it's time for us to talk about something truly remarkable which happened in Pep Comics #17, published in summer of 1941. The cover announces a new character in the Hangman but tells the reader nothing of who he is...

The story opens with a Hangman title and pinup... but we see the Comet streaking into the police station with a captured thug. What's going on here?

Escaping the police (he's still a wanted murderer) the Comet is greeted by his brother Bob and the two brothers have a brief reunion.

When vengeful gangsters open fire on Bob, the Comet streaks to the rescue and is riddled with gunfire!

And so John Dickering, the Comet... dies. Unceremoniously, on a couch in his home. After being shot to death. In his OWN comic strip. His brother vows revenge.

Bob becomes the Hangman, dedicated to bringing justice to criminals who seek to avoid it. This is to my knowledge the first time ever that a superhero from an ongoing strip has been killed off and replaced!

The brutal methods of the Hangman seemed to resonate with the spirit of MLJ's other heroes and the Hangman would continue on for many years, even briefly having his own title before the Black Hood co-opted it. And he's still around today!

While not really a "superhero" strip, I also want to briefly touch on the Madam Satan strip which first appeared in the issue before the Comet's death, Pep #16. This is another strange trope, where a woman is resurrected by Satan to do his bidding on earth.

Madam Satan is VERY similar to Marvel's Black Widow strip which first appeared in Mystic Comics #4 in 1940 but I have no idea of Madam Satan is an actual ripoff or if they both draw from the same source, whatever that may be.

In contrast to Black Widow, Madam Satan doesn't have a costume, instead appearing somewhat similar to Fletcher Hanks' Fantomah in her quest to drag souls to hell. A curiosity, but versions of this obscure character have appeared on Riverdale and in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina!

Before the end of 1941, Top-Notch Comics #19 also dared to shake up the status quo of the Black Hood. In a complicated battle the Hood manages to get a confession from the Skull and sends him to the electric chair, thus exonerating Kip Burland and allowing him to reclaim his life

This coincided with the Black Hood getting his own pulp magazine (which had a few different titles during its run) and it seemed the Hood was at this point easily the most popular MLJ hero.

1942 was in general a turning point for many golden age publishers. At this point the draft had depleted the ranks of the artists and writers who had made comics a blockbuster success in 1938 and 1939 and their shoes were increasingly filled by amateur craftsmen new to the art.

One result of this was that the art in many MLJ features declined, and often the new artists were swiping more and more from older comics. Simon and Kirby were at this point popular targets with older artists like Alex Raymond and Hal Foster still being used extensively.

One PARTICULARLY blatant swipe is the Black Hood story from Jackpot Comics #7 (fall 1942) where the Hood battles a villainous piper.

This story features COPIOUS amounts of swiping and even a narrative that imitates the Red Skull story from Simon & Kirby's Captain America Comics #7, published a year earlier. And this isn't even the only case.

Another story from a 1942 issue of Pep has a man dressed as a werewolf in a story that imitates Simon & Kirby's "The Phantom Hound of Cardiff Moor". This sort of blatant swiping becomes increasingly common during the war years and leads to the MLJ strips feeling more derivative.

The publisher also tripled down on the nazi threat which had been slowly increasing in frequence, with every MLJ hero fighting a garish nazi supervillain at least once and often multiple times like the Hangman's war against Captain Swastika.

Or the Shield and Dusty clashing with the sadistic Strangler...

The creation of new characters had slowed down since the previous year, but Zip Comics #27 in summer of 1942 saw the introduced of the masked detective known as the Web, in reality criminologist John Raymond.

The most notable thing I can say about the Web at this point in time is that the artists could never decide what his hair color was, as it fluctuated wildly. Also check out Steel Sterling's enemy "Baron Gestapo" over there. MLJ loved over the top nazi villains.

Pep Comics #30 in the fall of the year saw the second to last costumed feature that MLJ would introduce during their run in the form of Captain Commando and the Boy Soldiers. This strip is definitely derivative of the Boy Commandos and similar.

It's ironic that MLJ who had led the charge and created several archetypes of their own early on had at this point largely resorted to just copying popular ideas from competitors, but then again that's how it's always been.

But all of this was for naught and these new characters were already too late, because the character that would end them all had quietly debuted in the very final issue of Pep of 1941 (issue #22) in the form of Archie Andrews.

What can I say about Archie that hasn't been said before? He somehow managed to quietly build enough of a following to throw out the Shield from his own comic and turn MLJ into Archie Comics, a titan in the publishing world.

It's fascinating and baffling that this innocent strip about teens having mundane adventure in sleepy Riverdale, far from the death and gore and gruesome nazi villains of the MLJ heroes would be the one that overtook them all and defined the publisher entirely.

1942 was actually a year when superheroes began to decline at various publishers. The long-running Top-Notch Comics became Top-Notch Laugh with #28 in summer of 42, replacing the Wizard and Roy with a bunch of goofy comedy strips like Pokey Oakey.

And uh please excuse the racist caricatures here. I have tried to avoid this as much as possible but the MLJ comedy strips are absolutely littered with them. Different times and all that but yeah.

Within a year, most of the MLJ hero strips would be gone, increasingly replaced by comedy strips or gone entirely such as when Blue Ribbon Comics quietly folded in early 1942. To think splash pages like this coexisted with Archie and his funny animal cohorts.

As 1942 drew to a close, the MLJ heroes were fading. A few still held strong, but you could almost sense the turn of the tide in the comics. The Shield delivers a speech to Hitler that his days are numbered while showing the body of the dead villain the Hun.

Zip Comics #39 in 1943 sees the final MLJ superhero in the form of the Red Rube, briefly taking up a spot in Zip Comics with Steel Sterling.

Who is Red Rube? He's Billy Batson, that's who. A child-friendly character who turns into the big muscular hero when he yells "Hey rube!" and engages in very tame. funny adventures. That this last gasp imitates Fawcett's more innocent style is telling.

The Black Hood almost seems like he can resist the tide as he takes over the Hangman's comic as his own for a while, but even he is not immune.

In Black Hood #19, published in 1946 and long after most of his contemporaries have faded into limbo, Kip Burland has his secret identity revealed to his confidants.

In this the final issue of his solo comic, he gives up his costumed identity and instead becomes a private eye in plains clothes, a direction that only lasted a handful of stories until he too vanishes.

The Shield and Dusty are the last to go, managing to hold out in increasingly generic and boring stories until 1948 when they vanish. They had at that point not even been mentioned on a cover for years as Pep had truly become "the Archie comic".

And with that, it was over. MLJ had renamed itself Archie Comics in 1946 but the truth was obvious to anybody who paid attention. Superheroes were no longer in style and the brutal, gory stories that had made up the bulk of MLJ's superhero output were a thing of the past.

And having read most of these stories for this review, I can honestly say that I understand why the readers turned to Archie and his friends in 1942. The derivative and frankly boring turn the superhero features took must have been off-putting even to kids reading.

The curious irony of the Madam Satan feature being the one to be replaced by Archie has not escaped me.

But do not despair, my friends. For while the wait will be long, the Archie superheroes will return. Hope still burns in the bright, new silver age.

And that concludes tonight's presentation. I shall take this opportunity to tell you all that the MLJ Companion published by TwoMorrow's was an absolutely invaluable source for this thread, and is well worth checking out for anybody interested in diving deep into these heroes.

Next week we plunge onwards into the silver age and the dawn of Radio Comics.

Thank you for reading, and as always feel free to sound off, ask questions and make corrections.

Bullski out.