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 2322: Wolverton’s early apocalypse

Page 4 of this early Spacehawk, by Basil Wolverton, reminds me of Wolverton’s later apocalyptic drawings for his church. In the 1950s the Worldwide Church of God, under the leadership of radio preacher Herbert W. Armstrong, commissioned Basil Wolverton, who was then an elder in Armstrong’s church, to do his unsettling series of scenes from the end of the world...or at least Armstrong and Wolverton’s vision of same. Even though it was over a decade after drawing Spacehawk that Wolverton did the drawings, it looks as if apocalyptic visions were in his mind while drawing the early episode.

My father, Big Pappy, subscribed to Armstrong‘s The Plain Truth magazine, where these illustrations first appeared. Those drawings, and Basil Wolverton’s illustrations of biblical scenes, were probably the first work by Wolverton I ever saw.

Spacehawk is a demigod, flying in his spaceship, seeing and defeating evil. It appears that Wolverton may have been channeling some of his religious philosophy under the guise of science fiction. That is not unusual in itself, and Spacehawk may have some of those elements, but it is not preachy.

From Target Comics #8 (1940):

Number 2268: Bad old Doctor Time

We begin our December posts with a reminder that time is a relentless and persistent enemy. I think about it a lot. It is one of the reasons I found this story of the Target and the Targeteers appealing; they kick Doctor Time’s butt.

[SPOILER ALERT] When Doctor Time tells his story he says he had invented a serum to stay young, but was framed for murder. He was sentenced to 99 years and got out of prison at age 124! Then to get revenge he created a reverse formula, making people old. As I now know, all too well, no one needs to make a formula to make people old. On the other hand, Doctor Time should have gone into business with his youth formula. That would be a much better revenge. Anyone with such a formula would make himself rich as Croesus, and hopefully without having to be an ugly green criminal with stereotyped Asian henchmen. [END SPOILER]

The art is by Bob Wood, for whom time was not kind. Later in life he killed a woman in a hotel room while on an alcoholic binge. He ended up in prison.

The Target and his two buddies were business partners, and had a long-time career in Target Comics. Wood went on to draw the Claw when he went into business with Charles Biro on Daredevil Comics and other titles for Lev Gleason. This story looks like something Biro may have had something to do with, uncredited. I have seen more than one Biro story go along at a regular pace and then wrap up on the final page by cramming everything into several panels.

From Target Comics Volume 2 Number 5 (whole number 17, 1941):

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.