Number 2518: Introducing the Target

Target Comics was around for nine issues before the costumed hero, the Target, was introduced in Target Comics Volume 1, Number 10, from 1940. Target Comics are probably mostly collected for the Spacehawk series by Basil Wolverton, although for a 1940 super hero the Target seems right in with the better costumed heroes. He lasted long past the end of the Spacehawk stories. In 1949 the Target was dropped after superheroes lost their mojo.

Target Comics was published by Novelty Press, part of the Curtis Publishing Company, which also published the popular weekly Saturday Evening Post magazine. I'm relying on memory, but I recall reading in Dr Fredric Wertham’s infamous Seduction of the Innocent that a retailer complained to him about having to carry the comic books published by a “slick” magazine publisher, or they would not get that popular magazine to sell. I assume it was, without naming, the Saturday Evening Post to which Wertham was referring.

I may have said before I think that Target is a bad name for a hero, especially with that target on his chest. Could a murderous crook with a gun pass up on the opportunity to make the Target a real target?

The Target story is credited to Dick Wood (as Dick Hamilton), writer, and artist Bob Wood. I have also read that Dick (Frankenstein) Briefer created the feature.

 

Number 2320: Sub-Zero, the frigid hero, and Freezum, his sidekickum

Sub-Zero, whose original name was Sub-Zero Man, was created by Larry Antonette for Novelty Press's Blue Bolt comics, and was one of those super heroes who could use ice as a super power. Think Iceman of the X-Men, which is the character I think of...created by Jack Kirby twenty years after Sub-Zero.

Sub-Zero was an alien sent to Earth. He went through a comet which froze him and his crew, and crash landed at the Salt Flats in Utah. In comic books the more unlikely an origin story the more likely it is that someone will use it.

Sub-Zero took up with a little Eskimo friend called Freezum, who is not as racist in his depiction as, say, Chop-Chop or Ebony, but is still racially insensitive. Freezum is embarrassing in this modern era. I show 'em as I find 'em, folks, but I am apologizing ahead of time in case someone finds the character, and his annoying way of speaking with "um" on the end of most words, too much to take. Since any idea in comic books, good or bad, is likely to be re-used at some point, I remember that Green Lantern had a pal, an Eskimo named Pieface, from the Silver Age revival of Green Lantern. I remember not liking that character in those days, but then I am not fond of most sidekicks, anyway.

Grand Comics Database says that artist John Daly did the penciling and inking on this story from Blue Bolt Volume 3 Number 3 (whole number 27), 1942.

Number 1866: Enter Spacehawk

Last Friday I showed you a Carl Burgos story from Target Comics #5, and today the story that makes the issue so valuable. Basil Wolverton’s Spacehawk is introduced.

“The Creeping Death from Neptune” has been reprinted several times (I have three or four of the reprints in my own collection), but these are scans from the original, which appeared on newsstands in mid-1940. Spacehawk’s mask didn’t last for long, and when it was gone readers found Spacehawk to be a guy who looked a lot like many other comic book heroes of the age, even if in the strip in its early days the creatures Spacehawk encountered — besides a few pretty Earth girls — were as alien as Wolverton’s incredible imagination could make them. In its entry on the character, Toonopedia mentions letters to the editor from parents upset by their children seeing such grotesquerie. While Spacehawk eventually was brought to Earth to fight the enemies of America, the aliens Wolverton drew didn’t get any handsomer.

Number 1865: Manowar, the White Streak

A couple of days ago I showed a retold origin of the Human Torch. The original Human Torch was created by Carl Burgos when he was freelancing with the Funnies, Inc. comic art shop. As comic fans know, the Torch and Sub-Mariner, by Bill Everett, appeared in Marvel Comics #1 (title changed after that first issue to Marvel Mystery Comics) in 1939. Burgos had a long career in comics, but like several other creators, never had a character again that was as popular or long-lasting as the Human Torch. For instance, he also created Manowar, the White Streak, for Target Comics.

Don Markstein’s Toonopedia gives an overview of the history of the double-named superhero, without telling of an origin. So this story, written and drawn by Burgos for Target Comics #5 (1940), is a what-you-see-is-what-you-get tale...it is what Manowar, the White Streak does, kick the asses of “warmongers.” I have to say, despite the confusing name(s) and no origin, I can get behind a superhero whose superpower is used to put down warmongers.

Bill Everett did the dynamic cover illustration featuring the character.