Flame, The
Entry updated 17 November 2025. Tagged: Character, Comics, Publication.
US Comic (1940-1942). Fox Publications, Inc. 8 issues. Artists include Arturo Cazeneuve, Lou Fine, George Tuska and Chuck Winter. Scriptwriters include Will Eisner and Nathaniel Nitkin. 68 pages, with 6-7 long strips per issue, plus a short text story.
The titular Superhero The Flame had originally appeared in Fox Publications' Wonderworld Comics (1939-1942). The Flame #1 consists only of stories featuring The Flame, all but one strip reprinted from Wonderworld (the text story seems original); from #2 there would be 3-4 original strips starring The Flame (save for a single reprint in #2) plus 2-4 other strips; in #2 and #3 these were reprints, but from #4 they were new stories, though often featuring characters from the publisher's other comics.
Following the passage of a tidal wave along the River Yangtze, Buddhist priests (see Religion) find a basket containing a missionary's baby and declare the boy to be the "new High Grand Lama". When he becomes an adult, they confer upon him "the power over flame" and send him into the outside world "to use it for good against evil" with a red and yellow costume and a gun which shoots fire (see Weapons). His Superpowers being able to walk on and travel through fire – such as appearing from a lighted match – and to heat his body enough to melt walls.
Plots mainly involve criminals, spies and saboteurs, but there are some genre elements aside from the hero himself: in #1 these include Lost Races and a new atomic-based Power Source used to build spiderlike Mecha. The text story has Aliens, also spider-like, landing in a Spaceship and killing people with a cold blue fire: The Flame burns them to death by creating a forest fire. #3 has a Mad Scientist inventing a growth serum to turn himself into a giant (see Great and Small), and so kill his enemies. The foe in #4 is Doctor Drool, executed for murder but who arranged to be brought back to life (by scientific means) to gain revenge on those who convicted him, by scaring them to death. He also appears in #5. #7 has a scientist inventing a "new and deadly inflammable dust gas", but the military refuses to use it; the scientist accepts it is too potent, but his assistant decides to sell it to the Nazis. #8 introduces The Finger of Frozen Death, a Supervillain who has freezing powers thanks to an invention stolen by a scientist's brother (who lies low by entering Suspended Animation). The Devil of the Deep works for the Nazis and uses Technology to send tidal waves crashing into America's coastline. Another tale's villains use a deadly green gas which causes flesh to instantly decay.
Of the non-Flame stories, some are sf or Fantasy. In #3 the American spy K-51 halts an Asian attempt at world conquest using a machine which broadcasts brain-destroying sound waves (originally in Wonderworld Comics #3). In #4 Dr Mortal, "brilliant scientist and enemy of mankind" who also appeared in Weird Comics, uses the "new radium element" found in a meteorite to turn an assistant into a "claw dwarf", enabling him to ride a vulture and steal a painting. #4-#8 includes a strip featuring another Weird Comics regular, Voodoo Man. #5-#6 has Zanzibar the Magician, "an American philosopher who fights the forces of crime and evil with the Magic of Indian fakirs" (he usually appeared in Fox's Mystery Men comic). #7's original strip "The Yank and the Rebel" has two soldiers on opposing sides of the US civil war fall into a radioactive pool at the bottom of a fissure, to awake in 1941 (suggesting suspended animation) and become involved in World War Two, learning to cooperate; they also appear in #8. The text story in #7, "Revolt of the Minerals", has a Robot appearing in a professor's laboratory to declare he is "Master of the Minerals", explaining that minerals are both conscious and unhappy at humanity's treatment of them, so have decided to take over the Earth; the robot is destroyed by acid.
The Flame was one of the earliest golden age superheroes, having debuted in the July 1939 issue of Wonderworld Comics. Though the comic has some of the racism typical of this era, in #7 The Flame fights the "All American League" who kill foreign workers and argue those who refuse to join them are traitors. [SP]
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