Exciting Comics
Entry updated 4 March 2024. Tagged: Comics, Publication.
US Comic (1940-1949). 69 issues. Better Publications Inc/Nedor Comics. Artists include Ken Battefield, Al Camy, Maurice Gutwirth, George Mandel, Bob Oksner, Max Plaisted, Kin Platt and Alex Schomburg, with Frank Frazetta and Leo Morey also providing a few strips. Script writers include Robert Leslie Bellem, Al Hartley, Richard Hughes and Charles S Strong, with eventual mainstream novelist Patricia Highsmith also writing a few. Initially 68 pages (with 6-8 strips), eventually going down to just over 50 (5-6 strips); the last two issues had only 36 (3-4 strips). There were a few additional short strips, short text stories and brief factual pieces.
Exciting Comics' strips were a mixed bag of genres – crime, Western, adventurer, Humour, news reporter and War, the latter dominating when the USA entered World War Two; they included sf, though predominantly of the Superhero kind. The first issue had a one-off, Major Mars, a vigilante Scientist and "inventor of Crag, the Robot endowed with a synthetic brain" (see AI): he is "dedicated to the maintenance of peace among the planets". Tasked by the President of Earth to investigate a plague that is turning Jupiter's colonists into beasts, he discovers the "Space Emperor" is responsible: he wears a "magic" belt of the "super-race" that once dwelt on the planet and is worshipped by the native Jovians, who are encouraged to rebel against the colonists. It turns out he is the colony's human vice-governor, who found the belt and now plans to rule the universe. Also in #1 is The Mask: when District Attorney Tony Colby is blinded with acid an operation eventually cures him, and now he can "see anything in the dark, a reward for my months of blindness". He wears a mask and fights crime, but as Colby still pretends to be blind. Unlike Major Mars, The Mask would appear in subsequent issues, but his Superpower is dropped; he last appears in #20. #2 introduces The Space Rovers: it is 1940 and Dr Matthew has invented the first interplanetary Spaceship; while showing his friend Jane around the craft, Jane is forced to launch it early to prevent its theft. The pair go on to have colourful planetary adventures in our Solar System: these include a Mercurian's (see Mercury) attempted live vivisection of Jane to find why humans live so long, and tentacled Alien jellyfish in robots ransacking Venus of its natural resources. The strip last appears in #10. Son of the Gods has Dr John Thesson, a modern-day man who is a descendant of Theseus (see Mythology); when he wears the Ring of Poseidon he becomes very strong and bulletproof. His opponents are usually mundane, but in #6 a masked cabal tries to take over the world using the self-explanatory "submaplanes" (see Technology); Thesson last appears in #8. Also in #2 is The Sphinx: "society playboy" Ellsworth Forrester's alter ego is the masked crime fighter The Sphinx, strong enough to punch through steel (the source of his strength and name are unexplained). He lasted until #14.
#9 introduces the superhero The Black Terror, who stayed with the comic for the rest of its run: mild-mannered, bespectacled Bob Benton (Clark Kent in all but name, though a druggist by profession) is trying to invent a tonic for the run-down (see Medicine), but formic acid is accidentally added by his young protege Tim and, after trying it, Bob declares "I feel like live steel is pouring into me" – he has become super-strong. Donning mask, black uniforms with a skull and crossbones, plus a red and blue cape, the pair (sometimes referred to as the "Terror Twins") fight crime, then agents of the Axis powers. Adventures are initially mundane, but become increasingly fantastical: #16 has a Hypnotic gas; #19 aliens wishing to conquer the Earth; #22 a Nazi Weather Control device; #24 people turned into hulking brutes; #25 remote-controlled robots; then came devices that make dreams real (#26), control minds (see Psionics) (#30), tear out rocks and sends them crashing like meteorites into a target (#35) and create earthquakes (#37); a machine that can Shapeshift a person's appearance to imitate another's (#38); giant robots that transform into planes appear in (#39) (they are controlled by people inside them, so might be deemed Mecha); and an Invention that transmits hypnotic waves and images (#50). A new superhero, The Liberator appears in #15, the also mild-mannered and bespectacled Nelson Drew; a college chemistry lecturer, he discovers an Ancient Egyptian palimpsest containing the formula for Lamesis, a chemical that "gives a man the physical characteristics of his ideal". After making up the formula he accidentally spills it on himself and transforms, becoming muscular and handsome ... but this rips his clothing, so he steals a patriotic masquerade uniform. Soon he is calling himself The Liberator and beating up Axis agents. In #19 a Japanese scientist working at his university invents a cosmic Ray and plans to turn it on his host country, despite assuring colleagues he has no interest in politics. Other Japanese students support him: a Japanese-American who protests is murdered. In the next issue Nazi agents steal a ray, invented by another of the university's scientists, that can vaporize steel. Subsequent stories are more humdrum; The Liberator's last is in #35. #22 brings the The American Eagle, "Democracy's Champion", whose origin story (where he is "accidentally endowed with the strength and buoyancy of an eagle" – that is, flight) had appeared in the previous month's issue of America's Best Comics (September 1942). In his first Exciting Comics tale a scientist invents a machine that can resurrect the dead, which the Nazis decide to steal because the resurrected are impervious to bullets and "can assume any size" (see Great and Small). Save for a televiewer, stories are humdrum for a while – though two Japanese soldiers turn up in #36 in a horse costume with its head painted gold and a machine gun in the mouth, a ploy to frighten the superstitious locals; following which the Nazis use a manned Rocket ship that flies across the Atlantic to bomb America (#37), a freeze ray (#38), and cannons that fire rocks – initially mistaken for meteorites – at American cities (#50).
#39 introduced Kara the Jungle Princess. Jane Howell, an American army nurse working in New Guinea as World War Two ends, is given a powder by a grateful local witch doctor which makes her invulnerable. When her homebound plane crashes in the nearby mountains, it releases the waters that had long ago drowned the City of an Immortal Lost Race, who declare her their vanished princess, Kara. Adventures are had, usually frustrating the plots of Targala, the Archpriest of the nearby Temple of Doom, which frequently involve Magic as well as Monsters, winged men and suchlike: one featured a drifting floating island with exotically evolved flora and fauna. Yet another superhero, The Scarab, turned up in #42: his origin story had been told earlier that year in Startling Comics #35: Peter Ward is an Egyptologist whose magic scarab ring, when rubbed, gives him superpowers, such as flight. He fights crime, with occasional genre elements including chemically-resurrected mummies (see Zombies); he lasted until #48.
Peace in 1945 did not bring an immediate end to World War Two stories, but #51 (September 1946) saw a shake-up: The popular Black Terror stayed, but departures included The American Eagle and Kara the Jungle Princess. A new series introduced socialite Diana Adams, who as Miss Masque fought mundane crime dressed in a mask, a short red dress and a hat, but had no superpowers. She moved to America's Best Comics after #54, and was revived a few times from 1991 (including by Alan Moore). Judy of the Jungle debuted in #55. Her widowed naturalist father brought her up in the Congolese jungle, teaching her to despise people. Acclimatized to jungle life, she is a female Tarzan able to kill lions, leopards and crocodiles with her dagger (see also Sheena, Queen of the Jungle). When her father is shot by an international gangster his dying words are: "Live for revenge, Judy ... and remember, trust no man." She promptly falls for "special government criminal agent" Pistol Roberts, but does kill the murderer. Her adventures tend to be non-fantastic, though there is a "remote jungle tribe, banished from Egypt 2,000 years ago" who have been able to increase their lifespan by 50 years. In #59 someone attempts to capture Judy to put her in a Zoo – the art here is by Frank Frazetta, one of his earliest comic pieces. Such was Jane's popularity that she also began to have text stories too, and was the cover star #56-#66. This era's Black Terror's stories are less fantastic, though one has criminals faking an Invasion from the Moon to rob a bank, and another begins in 2020, where a grandfather tells his grandson of his meeting with the superhero in 1949 (this framing device is padding as the anecdote itself has no sf or fantasy elements). The last strip in the last issue is "Man's First Boat", a fictionalized account of the Invention of boats by cavemen (see Anthropology).
Given the amount of advanced Technology available to Germany and Japan in Exciting Comics' stories, if they had used it on the battlefield instead of for sabotage they would likely have won the war. The portrayal of the Japanese in these strips is offensive, as are those of many other non-white races (see Race in SF). Save for the reasonably good covers, the early artwork is rarely above competent – though that for Space Rovers is solid – but there is some good work towards the end of the comic's run. Sadly that is the era with least fantastical content; for example, most of its Black Terror stories do not really require a superhero. [SP]
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