Red Raven Comics
Entry updated 9 November 2026. Tagged: Comics.
US Comic (1940). Timely Publications (see Marvel Comics). One issue (#1). Artists include Dick Briefer, Jack Kirby and R Louis Golden. Script writers include Martin Bursten. 68 pages, with seven strips and a short text story. The numbering was continued in The Human Torch.
Though only lasting one issue, Red Raven Comics can boast Jack Kirby's first cover and his first work for Marvel; he also drew three of the strips. Contents comprised all-new characters, only one non-genre: that exception (Officer O'Krime) being the only one to earn a second strip. Red Raven would very occasionally guest in other Marvel series (such as X-Men #44, 1968). Red Raven Comics #1 is a fairly solid issue, better than many of its era, with The Eternal Brain the most interesting strip.
The opening strip has an aeroplane crashing on a floating Island in the clouds, with the bird-men inhabitants taking the only survivor, a baby, to their king, who reflects on how man has descended from the apes and, on "this Gravity-free island", his people from birds. Evolution also acts quicker on the island: over the years the boy, named Red Raven for his red hair, evolves "a far superior brain and body". At twenty the king presents him with artificial bat-like wings (see Flying) and tells him to return to his people to devote his life to "eradicating the elements that make for unhappiness in their world". His first adventure as a Superhero involves the theft of gold reserves, which are causing unemployment and poverty (see Economics).
A Scientist is "seeking a formula to nourish the human body by electrical currents instead of food" when a bolt of lightning hits his experimental subject, Bruce Bavelle: his body now has two electrical currents flowing in opposite directions and by crossing his wrists Bruce can spin furiously like a top. The Human Top is born, and he follows the scientist's advice to use his Superpowers to fight crime (he can break through walls, raise himself and objects into the air and suchlike). The third strip is Mercury in the 21st Century: the god Jupiter (see Gods and Demons) is angered by Pluto's stirring up of War in our century, so decides to send Mercury to foil him. Pluto is currently in the guise of Rudolph Hendler, dictator of Prussland, though he normally looks like Satan and revels in humanity's killing and maiming: "Man is as gullible as ever ... it is only his uniform and his weapons that change" (see Optimism and Pessimism).
Comet Pierce is a Spaceship racer (see Games and Sports) in 2150 CE, whose Rocket is sabotaged by a rival, forcing him to crash-land on an Asteroid where he fights an Alien Monster before being rescued by a beautiful woman, who kisses him ("the realization of a burning desire") then gifts him the "solar engine" which travels at the speed of light. After winning the race he seeks out the woman, whom he identifies as Queen Laraina of a Martian (see Mars) state conquered by a tyrant, and pledges to help her free her country. Magar the Mystic had disappeared 50 years ago but now emerges from "the ancient tombs of the Pharaohs" (see Ancient Egypt in SF) with the power to "communicate with the dead and re-create the great men and women of history for a definite period" (see Reincarnation), albeit temporarily. He helps the French defeat a German attack with the help of, amongst others, Houdini and Edison (spelt Edisan throughout), forcing the Germans to surrender and return their stolen territories, thus presumably ending World War Two in 1940.
Professor Carmody has been successfully "emulating the experiments of Col. Charles Lindbergh, a half century after the war hero had experimented with mechanical substitutes for human organs" (see Medicine). (Lindbergh invented a glass perfusion pump and had described an artificial heart in his 1938 book The Culture of Organs [1938], written with Dr. Alexis Carrel.) But the professor is assaulted and his beautiful daughter Mary kidnapped by agents of the Emperor of Mongolia for his harem. Dying, Carmody instructs his assistant Jim to transplant his brain into the artificial heart which has kept a Dog's brain alive for five years. Apparently the device can keep brains alive "indefinitely", and so the The Eternal Brain comes into being (see Brain in a Box). A "Telepathy receptor" is attached, which not only allows him to communicate but acts as a distance viewer, enabling him to locate his daughter in Mongolia. Jim acts as the professor's legman, using another of his Inventions, a rocket ship, to free Mary; she is unhappy about what happened to her father and blames Jim. [SP]
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