Superman's Golden Age Publishing History

As mentioned in the third episode of the Superman & Captain Marvel Power Hour Podcast, for ease of aligning Superman's Golden Age publishing history with the 1953 halt of Captain Marvel's publication from Fawcett, I'm just going to settle on covering Superman's publishing history up through books cover dated 1953. Oh course a case could be for Superman's Golden Age era ending at a number of other ear marks, such as 1947's World’s Finest #32, which marks the final story written by Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel before he would return to DC and the Last Son of Krypton over 10 years later. One could also make the argument the end of Superman’s Golden Age with books cover dated January 1945, with the introduction of Superboy, a dramatic and significant change to Superman’s origin? After all, the Superman with a past of being Superboy is an Earth-One take on the character, and NOT part of the Earth-2 character’s history.

So with that in mind, let’s jump into Superman’s comic publishing history starting with Action Comics #1, that went on sale the first week of May 1938 up through the character's final 1953 cover date appearance in Action Comics #187. Action Comics debuted as a 64 page anthology book that also contained  the adventures of 6 other characters, including the magician Zatara. Superman grabbed the cover spot in Action Comics’ debut, something that wouldn’t happen again until Action Comics #7. He also had the cover spot on issues #10, #13, #15, and #17, before finally taking over as the sole control of the Cover with Action Comics #19, which went on sale the last week of October 1939. Superman was in every issue of Action Comics, and since I’m covering his exploits in the Golden Age up through 1953, the final issue cover dated 1953, would have been Action Comics #187, that went on sale October 30^th 1953, which featured the Superman story “Superman’s New Super Powers”

When 1939 rolled around, Superman’s popularity had already risen quite a bit, in addition to his monthly adventures in the pages of Action Comics, you could also follow his adventures daily in select Newspaper comic strips across the country. The Superman Daily Newspaper strip began on Monday January 16^th 1939. After the success of Action Comics #1 in June of 1938, and the skyrocketing in popularity of the character Superman, just 7 months later Siegel & Shuster were finally able to take their creation Superman into the publishing market they had hoped for all along, the syndicated Newspaper Comics arena!

It's crazy to think about nowadays, but in 1938, when Superman first debuted, comic books were still in their infancy, and considered second tier to the syndicated comic strips in newspapers. The newspaper comic strips had much higher circulation, and in turn shelled out a lot more money. Those comics that weren't deemed popular or good enough for Newspaper syndication, such as Siegel and Shuster's first Superman story, had to settle for repurposing their stories for comic books. Once Superman caught fire in the pages of Action Comics, Siegel and Shuster's dream of a syndicated Superman comic strip became a reality. The daily strip ran continuously from its January 1939 debut all the way until 1966, and it was joined by a full color Sunday strip that began on Sunday November 5^th 1939.

That wasn’t the only new publishing avenue for the Last Son of Krypton, in May 1939, just a year after his debut in Action Comics #1, Superman top an unprecedented milestone, his own comic magazine devoted solely to his adventures. Superman #1 went on Sale May 18^th 1939, and started as a quarterly book. Starting with the book cover dated 1941, the book moved to bi-monthly,  a publishing schedule it was still on in 1953, meaning the final issue of Superman with a 1953 cover date was Superman #85, which contained 3 different Superman stories.

But it wasn’t just Action Comics, the Newspaper Comic Strip, and Superman that chronicled Superman’s comic adventures. He would soon be added as an ongoing feature in World’s Best Comics in February 1941, that series was renamed World’s Finest Comics with the 2^nd issue of this quarterly series. In 1946 World’s Finest Comics switched to a bi-monthly schedule that it still had in 1953. The last issue of World’s Finest with a 1953 cover date was issue #67, that went on sale in late September. Now World’s Finest is best known as a Superman & Batman team-up book, but even though the Man of Steel and the Caped Crusader appeared together on every comic, they didn’t actually appear together in the same story until 1952’s Superman #76, and they wouldn’t actually team-up together in the World’s Finest title, until 1954’s World’s Finest Comics #71.

And of course, like Captain Marvel, Superman, being the very popular character that he was, starred in a number of other comic specials, including both the 1939 and 1940 New York World’s Fair Comics. On the cover of the 1939 World’s Fair issue Superman is miscolored, and the cover of the 1940 World’s Fair issue marks the first time that Superman & Batman ever appeared on a cover together. If you’d like to hear about the content of these comics, I recommend you go check out the podcast Comics in the Golden Age from Michael Lane and his cousin Chris, they covered those issues in Episode 16 & 17 of that fantastic podcast.

In addition to the 2 issues of New York World’s Fair Comics, Superman also starred in the DC Promo comics Superman’s Christmas Adventure #1, which was a promo comic given out at department stores like Macy’s or Baileys in December 1940, and was then reprinted and re-issued with a touched up cover in 1944. I actually covered that story just a couple months ago in Episode 4 of my Tales from the Golden Age podcast. There was also a 2^nd Superman Christmas Adventure, containing a new story, comic published in 1944. But those weren’t the only 2 special promo Superman comics, there was also the 1942 miniature Superman Py-Co-Py Toothpaste comic and the 1948 four page Superman and the Great Cleveland Fire comic.

 

Captain Marvel's Golden Age Publishing History

Captain Marvel made his first appearance in Fawcett's Whiz Comics #2 (actually Whiz Comics #1, listen to the 2nd Episode of the Superman & Captain Marvel Power Hour Podcast for details), and continued to be a mainstay in Whiz Comics for the duration of its publishing history. The series ran from February 1940 (first issue, Whiz #2* actually went on sale in December 1939) and ended with issue #155 in early 1953. In addition to featuring Captain Marvel every issue, the anthology series also starred other prominent Golden Age Fawcett action heroes like Golden Arrow, Spy Smasher, Ibis the Invincible, and Dan Dare. It wasn't long before Captain Marvel's popularity rose to Superman-like levels, warranting his own solo comic book as well, under the name Captain Marvel Adventures, which debuted in January 1941, just 13 months after the World's Mightiest Mortal broke onto the scene. Like all comics at the time, Captain Marvel Adventures was still an anthology title, meaning that most issues featured 3-4 tales starring the World's Mightiest Mortal. Captain Marvel Adventures ran a whopping 150 issues before ending in August 1953. During that time, the series even eclipsed Superman's sales numbers, becoming the highest circulated comic book magazine of the Golden Age!

Now as Captain Marvel's popularity grew, so did the demand for his supporting characters like Mary Marvel and Captain Marvel Jr. Both characters were featured in anthology books starring other characters like Wow Comics (Mary Marvel) and Master Comics (Captain Marvel Jr.) as well as their own solo series. But even that wasn't enough, a third ongoing comic book starring all 3 wielders of the Power of Shazam was launched in 1945 titled Marvel Family. This series ran 89 issues and followed the adventures of Captain Marvel, Mary Marvel, Captain Marvel Jr., and the man they affectionately referred to as Uncle Dudley. This series like Whiz Comics and Captain Marvel Adventures, also ceased publication in 1953, when Fawcett had decided that the ongoing "Likeness Suit" with DC was no longer worth continuing from a financial standpoint.

In addition to the Whiz Comics, Captain Marvel Adventures, and Marvel Family ongoing series starring Billy Batson and his super-powered other self Captain Marvel, Captain Marvel also headlined a number of special anthology series comics and promotion comics.

There was the 8 issue series America's Greatest Comics, that ran 100 pages and featured Captain Marvel alongside other fascist smashing patriotic heroes like Bulletman (another one of my favorites), Minute Man, Spy Smasher, Captain Midnight, Golden Arrow, and Mr. Scarlet. This quarterly title debuted in the fourth quarter of 1941 and ran until the summer of 1943.

Those 100 pagers paled in size to the enormous 300+ page counts of the Gift Comics and X-MAS Comics. The series Gift Comics ran 4 issues, released irregularly from 1942 to late 1949, the first 3 issues boasted a whopping 324 page counts, with the 4th issue much smaller in size but still containing 144 pages. X-MAS Comics is just like it sounds, another huge anthology series, released fairly regularly around the Christmas season every year. Like Gift Comics, the initial issues of X-MAS Comics boasted over 300 pages of content. The series debuted in November 1941, and then saw issue #2 released in December of 1942. After that, the series took a 5 year hiatus before returning in 1947, and then having an annual released starting with issue #4 in November 1949, through issue #7 in November of 1952. I would suspect that the hiatus of the title after the second issue in 1942 was perhaps due to paper shortage during World War II. Obviously that would make it a little more difficult to pump out a 300+ page publication in high print runs.

The X-MAS Comics series weren't the only Christmas-themed comics to star the Big Red Cheese, in addition to the giant X-MAS Comics issues and the holiday themed stories from his Captain Marvel Adventures ongoing title like CMA #19 & #42, there was also the 196 page one-shot Holiday Comics #1 from 1942. Unfortunately very few of these giant anthology comics seemed to survive to present day, so the exact contents of each issue are not known. There are rumors that the exact contents, or order they appeared in, may have varied slightly from copy to copy, that's bound to happen when you're talking about a 300 page comic book decades before the idea of a trade paperback or hardcover collection was even dreamed about for comic material. Given the nature of a lot of holiday themed comics, even into the mid 1970's, it's reasonable to assume that in addition to comic stories, these collections also probably had games and activities inside for children. Other one-shots include 1940's Special Edition Comics #1 and the 1950 one-shot Captain Marvel and the Good Humor Man.

Between these three monthly titles and numerous specials published over a 14 year span, Billy Batson had upwards of 500 hundred adventures as the World's Mightiest Mortal. Think about that, HUNDREDS of stories. I'd have to go back and count, and perhaps some day I will, but I would estimate it's somewhere in the ballpark of 700 stories from his Whiz Comics debut in December 1939 to when Fawcett ceased publication of Captain Marvel with Marvel Family #89 in September of 1953. This would make Captain Marvel both the most prominently published and highest selling comic book character during the Golden Age!