Greg Clark Noir Art

  LEGENDARY HEROES #48 THE BLACK HOOD MLJ Comics was founded in 1939 by Maurice Coyne, Louis Silberkleit, and John Goldwater.  The initials of their first names formed the MLJ of the company name.  They started out publishing superhero comics and one of the most popular characters was the Black Hood, created by Harry Shorten and premiering in Top Notch Comics #9 in October 1940.  The character was so popular that it soon began appearing in a pulp magazine.  This was an unusual twist in that several pulp heroes like The Shadow and Doc Savage made the transition to comic books, but not the opposite.  Black Hood Detective appeared as a pulp in September 1941, and was renamed Hooded Detective with the next issues in November 1941 and January 1942, before ceasing publication.  All three pulp novels of the Black Hood were authored by G. T. Fleming-Roberts, a well established pulp writer.  Despite the short run in the pulps, the Black Hood gained in popularity and was given his own title in 1

  LEGENDARY HEROES #47 WONDER WOMAN In an October 1940 article in Family Circle magazine, psychologist William Moulton Marston discussed the unfulfilled potential of the comic book medium.  Max Gaines of DC Comics saw this article and hired Marston as an "educational consultant" for DC.  Marston was already famous for inventing the polygraph machine and decided to create a new type of hero who would triumph over evil, not with fists, but with love.  His wife Elizabeth said, "Fine, but make her a woman".  Marston pitched the idea to Gaines who gave him the go-ahead, and Wonder Woman was born.  She was an unconventional hero, a liberated woman with the character and strength of Superman but with the allure of a beautiful woman.  Marston's personal situation played a role in his creation, as he based the resemblance of Wonder Woman upon his wife Elizabeth and their "life partner" Olive Byrne.  His stories also included his ideas on DISC theory - Dominance

  LEGENDARY HEROES #46 PHANTOM LADY One of the first super heroine characters of the Golden Age, Phantom Lady was produced for Quality Comics by the Eisner-Iger Studio and drawn by Arthur Peddy.  Phantom Lady made her debut in Police Comics #1, August 1941, in the same issue that saw the first appearance of Plastic Man by Jack Cole.  Phantom Lady was the alter ego of Sandra Knight, a beautiful Washington, D.C. debutante and daughter of a U.S. Senator.  Her outfit which consisted of a green cape and a yellow one-piece bathing suit, was a deliberate tactic to distract her male foes.  She used a "black light projector" to blind her enemies and make herself "invisible", and drove a car whose headlights would also project black light when needed.  Sometimes she was assisted in her fight against criminals by her fiance Donald Borden, an agent of the U.S. State Department.  Phantom Lady appeared in Police Comics until October 1943. After Quality stopped publishing the adve

  LEGENDARY HEROES #45 BLACKHAWK Blackhawk was a long-running comic book series first at Quality Comics and later at DC.  The character was primarily created by Chuck Cuidera with additional assistance from Bob Powell and Will Eisner.  The exact nature of the individual contributions of Eisner, Powell and Cuidera will never be known, though credit was sometimes contentious between Eisner and Cuidera, each of them taking major credit at different times.  Blackhawk debuted in Military Comics #1 in August 1941 and was given it's own title in the Winter 1944.  Blackhawk ran in Military Comics (later renamed Modern Comics) until issue #102 in October 1950.  When Cuidera joined the service in 1942 (Eisner was drafted as well) Reed Crandall took over the art beginning a long association that would last until 1953.  Crandall, one of the great comic illustrators, turned Blackhawk into a classic and it was during this time that Blackhawk hit it's sales and popularity zenith.  During the