Greg Clark Noir Art

  LEGENDARY HEROES #37 THE AVENGER In the late 1930s Street & Smith publishers were experiencing a downturn in readership and had to cancel a bunch of their pulp magazine titles.  These titles simply didn't capture the loyalty among readers that their two most popular creations enjoyed, The Shadow and Doc Savage.  So the publishers set out to create a new hero that would combine elements of their two bestselling pulps.  They sought the advice of Lester Dent, who wrote the Doc Savage stories under the name Kenneth Robeson, and Walter B. Gibson, who wrote The Shadow under the name Maxwell Grant.  Paul Ernst was hired to write The Avenger, the new hero, and he met with Dent and Gibson who gave him their advice, with Dent concentrating on character development and Gibson on story plotting.  Paul Ernst would write The Avenger stories under the house pseudonym of Kenneth Robeson, hoping to give the impression that the successful author of Doc Savage was also writing this new title. 

  LEGENDARY HEROES #36 THE BLUE BEETLE The Blue Beetle was an interesting comic book character that seemed to always be flirting with huge success, without attaining the fame and notoriety of the rival DC characters of Superman and Batman.  Perhaps if the character had been in more capable hands the outcome might have been different.  The story of the Blue Beetle's creation begins with Victor S. Fox, born in England in 1893 and who immigrated to America with his family in 1898, eventually settling in NYC.  Some sources hint at a criminal past to Fox, as court records show that a Victor S. Fox was arrested in 1929 for illegal stock trading, but there's no way to prove that this was the same man.  What is certain is that Fox became an accountant at DC comics where he saw the vast sums of money that were being made by this new thing called comic books, and he decided to start his own company.  He and partner Bob Farrell launched Fox Feature Syndicate in the late 1930s and contract

  LEGENDARY HEROES #35 HOP HARRIGAN Hop Harrigan was the creation of Jon L. Blummer and appeared in the April 1939 issue of All-American Comics #1, a title published by the All-American Publications comic book company owned by Max Gaines.  Gaines is often credited with being the creator of comic books, publishing the first mass market book in 1934 called Famous Funnies.  All-American Publications was sort of a subsidiary of Detective Comics, and ownership in both companies had some crossover.  Even characters created by All-American would also appear in DC comics like The Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Doctor Mid-Nite, The Atom, and Wonder Woman.  Gaines had a partner Jack Liebowitz who was also part owner at DC, and Gaines sold out to him in 1944 so that he could start his own company Educational Comics.  When Max died in a boating accident his son William Gaines took over EC comics and created some of the greatest comic books in the history of the industry, including Mad magazine.  A

  LEGENDARY HEROES #34 BATMAN The success of Superman had the comic book industry scrambling to create more superheroes and Detective Comics (DC), publishers of Superman, was no exception.  In response to DC's request Bob Kane created Batman in early 1939 and almost from the start there was controversy.  Kane's collaborator and Batman's co-creator Bill Finger recalled that Kane showed him, Finger, an early conceptual drawing, and Finger said that it looked a lot like Superman.  Kane's Batman wore a red suit and boots, swung on a rope, and wore a domino mask with two stiff wings sticking out of his suit like bat wings.  Finger suggested losing the red union suit and changing the color scheme to something more ominous like grey and black, adding a cape and cowl to replace the mask and wings, and giving the character gauntlets to wear.  Batman debuted in Detective Comics #27, the May 1939 issue that hit the stands on March 30 of that year. A short time later Black Book Det