Greg Clark Noir Art

  LEGENDARY HEROES #29 THE DOMINO LADY During the 1930s there were over 300 different pulp magazine titles published in America with subject matter that could appeal to most anyone, especially if you were a man.  I've never seen any demographics to confirm this but I suspect that women were never a target audience.  Which makes The Domino Lady quite unique in the history of the pulps, because she was the only costumed pulp heroine to star in her own series.  Women were seldom the headliners in pulp stories.  The Domino Lady first appeared in the May 1936 issue of Saucy Romantic Adventures.  The magazine title was one of the "spicy pulps", a genre that featured risque short stories and covers that showcased women in a state of undress.  Actually the stories were pretty tame by today's standards, but in the 1930s any story that had a woman semi-dressed or (heaven forbid) undressed in front of a man was considered pretty hot stuff.  The stories were ...

  LEGENDARY HEROES #28 SHEENA, QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE In the late 1930s two popular forms of media came into existence - paperbacks and comic books.  Comic books were so popular that publishers were scrambling to get into the market with their own titles.  While the original comic books were mostly reprints of newspaper comic strips, publishers recognized the need for original material.  To help fill that need was the enterprising comic art studio of Jerry Iger and Will Eisner.  They produced comics on demand for publishers and syndicates.  And Will Eisner created "Sheena, Queen of the Jungle" for the British magazine Wags which debuted in issue #46 in January 1938.  Sheena was distributed to Wags by the Editors Press Service and to conceal the fact that the Iger - Eisner studio only consisted of the two of them, Eisner signed the stories "W. Morgan Thomas".  Sheena came to the United States in September 1938 in Jumbo Comics #1 published by Fiction H...

  LEGENDARY HEROES #27 THE PHANTOM The Phantom was a newspaper comic strip created by Lee Falk who also created "Mandrake the Magician".  The strip was syndicated by King Features and debuted on February 17, 1936.  Falk drew the first two weeks of comics, then Ray Moore took over the duties.  Moore was an assistant to Phil Davis on the Mandrake strip.  A Sunday page was added to newspapers on May 28, 1939.  During Moore's WWII service his assistant Wilson McCoy took over.  When Moore returned from the war he resumed his job of illustrating The Phantom until 1949 at which point McCoy took over permanently.  Following McCoy's death in 1961 noted comic book artist Carmine Infantino drew the strip until Sy Barry was chosen as a successor.  Barry would draw the strip until 1994 at which time Barry's assistant George Olesen took over.  Lee Falk scripted the stories until his death on March 13, 1999 and his wife Elizabeth finished the adventure...

  LEGENDARY HEROES #26 THE GREEN HORNET "The Green Hornet" was a radio series created by the same people and radio station that created "The Lone Ranger".  George W. Trendle and Fran Striker of WXYZ in Detroit decided to capture lightning in the bottle once more...and succeeded.  The drama focused on Britt Reid, the debonair newspaper publisher of The Daily Sentinel who, with his faithful valet Kato, became the masked vigilante The Green Hornet at night to fight crime.  The vigilante nature of the crimefighter resulted in his being considered an outlaw by the police.  This designation sometimes aided him in his fight against the lawless, as they considered him a criminal too.  Kato was originally of Japanese nationality, but as the United States crept closer to WWII his nationality was changed to Filipino.  It was also revealed that Britt Reid was related to the Lone Ranger.  The Lone Ranger's nephew was Dan Reid, father of Britt, which made him t...

  LEGENDARY HEROES #25 GANG BUSTERS This classic radio drama opened each episode with a barrage of blaring sound effects - a shrill police whistle, the sound of marching feet, a wailing police siren, a loud burst of machine gun fire and squealing car tires - then an authoritative voice would announce "Gang Busters!" and the title of that evening's police case, followed by more blasts of a police whistle.  It was this loud, intrusive introduction that led to the catchphrase "coming on like Gangbusters". In addition to the pulps, true crime magazines were very popular in the 1930s as were the thrilling real-life exploits of Depression desperadoes like John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, and Bonnie & Clyde.  Producer-Director Phillips H. Lord felt that there should be a place on radio for true crime dramas and produced a show called "G-Men" that dramatized actual FBI cases with the official sanctioning of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.  But along with Ho...