All-American Comics
Entry updated 8 June 2026. Tagged: Comics, Publication.
US Comic (1939-1948). DC Comics. 102 issues. Artists include Stan Asch, Jon Blummer, Irwin Hasen, Harry Lampert, Sheldon Mayer, Howard Purcell, Paul Reinman and Al Smith. Script writers include Alfred Bester, Jon Blummer, Bill Finger, Evelyn Gaines, Henry Kuttner, Harry Lampert, Sheldon Mayer, Jerry Siegel, Al Smith and John Wentworth. Alex Toth also drew several strips. Initially 68 pages, down to 52 by the end of its run. At first it mostly reprinted old newspaper strips, normally one page and humorous, plus a couple of longer original adventure strips and a short text story; by the end of the run there were four long strips, with a handful of one-pagers and a short text story.
One of the early long strips was Adventures in the Unknown, adapting stories by Carl H Claudy. #1-#6 comprises his The Mystery Men of Mars (1933) in which Alan and Ted, two "young American students" (introduced to each other thusly: "brains meet brawn"), are selected by Professor Lutyens to join him in exploring the Solar System. He has invented a means to reverse Gravity and built a Spaceship that can reach another planet "by simply 'falling' upwards". They go to Mars, meeting an insect-like civilization that uses Mecha; they discover these insect creatures are the brains of an ancient race housed in Robot bodies. They plan to put our heroes' brains in statues; the Professor is happy to be made Immortal in this way, but Alan and Ted are not: they battle their way back to the spaceship and return to Earth. #7-#12 continues their adventures, adapting Claudy's A Thousand Years a Minute (1933). Another elderly scientist has invented a "Tempomobile" Time Machine, and the pair Time Travel at a speed of "a thousand years a minute" to "over 850,000 years B.C.". Before they depart they notice a Neanderthal skull with a bullet hole in it. In the past they see Dinosaurs and "ape-men" (see Apes as Human); though most are hostile, one ape-man becomes their friend but unfortunately Ted accidentally shoots him in the head. #13-#18 have an adaptation of "The Infra Red Destroyers" (February-May 1936 American Boy), where invading Venusians (see Venus) ride to our planet on artificial meteorites and are aided by an evil Earth Scientist. The strip is absent from #19; #20-#25 have "Rescue on Mars", presumably an adapting "Return to Mars" (September-December 1939 American Boy). They mean to rescue Professor Lutyens, but he ends up saving them when they are captured by the Martian Great Brain (Lutyens having been restored to his original body).
#8 introduces Gary Concord, the Ultra-Man. It is 2239 and Gary becomes High Moderator, responsible for the safeguarding the USA's peace and welfare; his late father, who previously held the post, was born in 1915 and strove to create peace, but too late: a new world war starts in 1950, his laboratory is bombed during an experiment, releasing chemicals that create a foam inside which he is sealed inside, losing consciousness. He awakes in 2174 (see Suspended Animation), bigger and stronger, to find an advanced civilization threatened by a tyrant whom he defeats, then marrying their daughter. When the tyrant makes another bid to rule the world Gary's father (also called Gary) covers the tyrant's lands in an upgraded foam that turns the people meek and docile. Gary (junior) now continues his father's work, dealing with further would-be dictators and other threats including spores from outer space (see Panspermia), one of which grows into a giant humanoid (#15). Last appearance #19.
#16 includes the debut of The Green Lantern. Long ago a Chinese lamp maker turned a meteor into a lamp; later an asylum inmate refurbished it into a green lantern – in both these forms it helped its makers. After the lantern saves his life (and speaks to him; the meteor had also spoken to the lamp maker), engineer Alan Scott turns part of it into a ring, which when worn gives him Superpowers – "if he has faith in himself, for the basis of this strange force is will-power". The ring needs to be recharged every 24 hours by touching the lantern. Alan dons a costume and fights crime (see Superheroes): he can walk through walls, melt steel, fly and so forth. He acquires a comic sidekick, Doiby Dickles ("I ain't even ate me pertators!"). His opponents are usually mundane, though in #61 he faces Soloman Grundy, a murder victim whose body rebuilt itself from swamp debris over many years and is immune to the effects of the Green Lantern's ring (the one thing it cannot affect is wood). Leprechauns appear in #70. #71 has an apparent Mad Scientist who pretends to fill Doiby with concentrated nitro-glycerine. In #72 Merlin brings the Green Lantern and Doiby to King Arthur's era (see Time Travel), though apparently he is a fraud and this is the first of his spells to work. Our heroes meet Roger Bacon, after which a Chinese delegation turns up: they knew he would be there (see Precognition) and have brought the green lantern to recharge his ring, enabling him to return to the present. #77 has radio-controlled robots. From #89 The Harlequin is a recurring villain, with magic spectacles which can Hypnotize, give electric shocks and so forth, though her criminal acts are primarily intended to get the attention of the Green Lantern, from whom she has fallen. The Icicle is an evil scientist who becomes a costumed Supervillain after inventing a freeze Ray with which he can freeze parts of the sea and create bridges of ice (#90). Knodar is a villain from the Green Lantern comic (first appearance #28, 1947); he is from a 2447 CE Utopia but, being bored, decides to become a criminal, visiting 1947 and using advanced technology to aid his crimes; in All-American Comics #100 he escapes from his twenty-fifth-century prison (or rather, museum display) but before returning to the present (that is, 1948) decides to team up with a twenty-third-century female supervillain, the Black Eye Bandit; however, his unreliable time machine takes him to a "city of the future" display in 1948 Gotham, where he mistakes a starlet for the Bandit. She plays along and helps the Green Lantern defeat Knodar. In 1943-1947 Alfred Bester wrote many Green Lantern scripts, possibly about 18 (some credits are uncertain), and Henry Kuttner two or three: Bester's Solomon Grundy tale is probably the best of them, but Kuttner's story in #71 (see above) is amusing (see Humour).
#19 marks the first appearance of the Mighty Atom. Al Pratt is meek and short (the latter quality having him dubbed as "Atom Al" by his college friends) but a down and out ex-fight trainer repays his kindness by training him: Al becomes fit and exceptionally strong, so he puts on a costume and fights crime. In #21 the villain can "transmute my will into any person's body", making them his obedient slaves; #40 has a ray that drives people insane. Last appearance #72, but absent from #62-#69. #25 introduces Dr Mid-Nite. Dr. Charles McNider is blinded by a gangster's bomb, but finds he can see in the dark (and invents "infrared glasses" to see in the daylight, though out of costume he pretends to be blind). He becomes Dr Mid-Nite, often accompanied by an owl and armed with "blackout bombs" whose smoke only he can see through. In #52 a "metabolism machine" ages people; #54 has a shrinking device (see Miniaturization), which Dr Mid-Nite uses on himself to enter a patient's body to remove a lodged bullet. #56 has a rain-making machine (see Weather Control); in #91 villain Dr Light uses a Ray Gun that controls the growth of plants and flowers whilst #93 finds a village stuck in the eighteenth century due to a curse. In #98 the Sky-Raider and his dog sled can fly thanks to helium capsules which also make safes portable; he is armed with a gun that fires plastic cement.
Scribbly – first appearance Popular Comics #6 (1936) – was a humorous non-genre strip about a "kid cartoonist", but becomes of interest from #20 when two children are kidnapped by gangsters; the police do nothing owing to lack of evidence, but when one of the mothers, the matronly Ma Hunkel, learns about the Green Lantern from Scribbly she becomes thoughtful. Shortly after the Red Tornado appears, rescuing the kids (who have in fact been terrifying the gangsters and will become the Tornado's sidekicks, The Cyclone Kids). She wears an upside-down stewpot on her head, a cape, green shorts, red long johns and carpet slippers; everyone assumes the Red Tornado is male. The strip was renamed "Scribbly and the Red Tornado" from #23, and ran until #59, when the creator, Sheldon Meyer, wrote he was getting "a little tired" of the format so drew all the characters as animals (Scribbly a horse, Ma Hunkel a large hen). The Red Tornado is important as a very early example of both the female Superhero (see Miss Fury) and a Parody of the superhero genre. This Red Tornado should not be confused with the very different later DC superhero of the same name.
#27 brings Sargon the Sorcerer, an actual sorcerer who pretends to be a stage magician to hide the fact; his power comes from a ruby which enables him to control anything he touches. Last regular appearance #50, plus a one-off strip in #70. The Black Pirate, who first appeared in Action Comics #23 (1940), has strips in #72-#102 and is a masked British swordsman (accompanied by his son Justin) who fights evil in the seventeenth century. Atypically, #83 has an Alien asking The Black Pirate for help: savage hill people are stealing his people's food and, though living in a Utopian city, the populace is decadent and lazy. #95 finds the swordsmen in the Urals where prehistoric creatures are frozen in a glacier; a man unwisely frees a giant bird thinking to eat it, but it revives and wants to eat him. Other strips include very occasional genre elements: for example, Ben Webster #19-#20 has a robot, whilst one of the long running Hop Harrigan strips (#1-#99) has pilot Hop foil a dictator's plan to take over the world by discovering his uranium mining operation, whose miners wear a coating that turns their skin green but "protects us from the weather and any radium emanations from the uranium ore". Winky, Blinky, and Noddy are a parody (or rip-off) of the Three Stooges (see Three Stooges Films), who first appeared in All-Flash #5(1942) and have strips in All-American Comics #73-#82: in #80 a professor, making a study of morons, gives the trio toys to play with and they use them to build an Antigravity device and a Dimensional portal. [SP]
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