During World War II a lot of comic strip heroes fought the Axis. Captain Midnight first appeared on radio and made his debut in the comic books in Dell’s The Funnies no. 57 in July 1941 by artist Robert Brice. In 1942 Midnight changed publishers to Fawcett, home of Captain Marvel, and made his appearance in a Chicago-Sun newspaper strip signed Jonwan. Two more strips from 1942 were Race Riley and the Commandos by Milburn Rosser and Captain Yank by Frank Tinsley which originally ran under the title Yankee Doodle. In these samples from 1943 Lt. Dick Calkins Buck Rogers took on the Shintos, a super race whose uniforms were decorated with a backwards swastika. Don Winslow of the Navy was by Frank V. Martinek and the comic book was also produced for Fawcett comics. Russell Keaton’s Flyin’Jenny also had a Fawcett connection in the person of artist Marc Swayze, who pens a regular column for Alter Ego called “We Didn’t Know it was the Golden Age.” Last we have the marine Stony Craig by Frank H. Rentfrow and artist Bouchard.
A fascinating overview. I've never seen much of Captain Yank, though I admired Tinsley's Bill Barnes illustrations in reprint magazines (I even sneaked one of Bill's superplanes into an episode of the TV cartoon "The Hurricanes.")
ReplyDeleteI've seen "Jonwan" identified as Erwin L. Hess, though I don't know Hess' work well enough to confirm or deny.
I can't get over how bad the artwork is on that Buck Rogers strip!