Undercover Archie

TOP NOTCH COMICS #9

(On Newsstands in August 1940)

Try as they might, the Wizard just never caught on quite the way the Shield had, and costumed superheroes were becoming all the rage, so in Top Notch Comics #9, MLJ introduced the BLACK HOOD! 

You think maybe they were going all out on this one? They gave the Black Hood’s name a bigger font and placement than the title of the book! Not my favorite first appearance covers, but...

(from Top Notch Comics #9 - on newsstands August 1940, artwork by Edd Ashe?)

What a splash page!!! Al Camy’s art and the Abner Sundell (as Cliff Campbell) story, look suspiciously like a Batman comic. The Caped Crusader was all the rage in Detective Comics (and the recently released #2 of his own book), and thus was born MLJ’s slightly cooler version of masked vigilante!

Yes, I said it! Slightly cooler!

(from Top Notch Comics #9 - on newsstands August 1940, artwork by Al Camy)

Ummm…. and the Skull looked suspiciously like Batman’s new nemesis the Joker (appearing in Batman #1 back in April).

The Skull though… is MUCH cooler!

(from Top Notch Comics #9 - on newsstands August 1940, artwork by Al Camy)

So… the Skull frames popular good guy Policeman Kip Burland, and when Kip tries to clear his name, the Skull has his henchmen pump 8 slugs into him and dump him in the forest. An old man nurses him back to health and teaches him all he knows about science and knowledge, so that he can become the greatest crime fighter the world has ever known!

(from Top Notch Comics #9 - on newsstands August 1940, artwork by Al Camy)

More gruesome Golden Age death… courtesy of the Skull!

(from Top Notch Comics #9 - on newsstands August 1940, artwork by Al Camy)

Meanwhile, over in Harry Shorten and Bob Wood’s ‘The Firefly’, our hero gets caught ‘hanging around!'

(from Top Notch Comics #9 - on newsstands August 1940, artwork by Bob Wood)

 Meanwhile, the Wizard gets bumped to the 5th spot in the book, and Roy, the Wonder Boy is taking a bigger part of the story up. Though here a couple of gangsters teach him about playing with fire!

(from Top Notch Comics #9 - on newsstands August 1940, artwork by Edd Ashe)

Over in Bob Phantom, it’s about time someone got an axe to the head!

(from Top Notch Comics #9 - on newsstands August 1940, artwork by Bernard Klein)

And my favorite Bob Phantom villainess, Ah Ku has returned!

(from Top Notch Comics #9 - on newsstands August 1940, artwork by Bernard Klein)

BLUE RIBBON COMICS #7

(On Newsstands in August 1940)

Over in Blue Ribbon Comics #7, it would be hard pressed to follow up that issue of Top Notch, but we DID get the Fox on the cover! Along with the blurb: Extra! War!!!

(from Blue Ribbon Comics #7 - on newsstands August 1940, artwork by Ed Smalle)

Though the level of excitement in the Fox didn't quite match up with the cover!

(from Blue Ribbon Comics #7 - on newsstands August 1940, artwork by Irwin Hasen)

But Corporeal Collins DID bring us war, in what is maybe one of the earliest Nazi symbols in comics!

(from Blue Ribbon Comics #7 - on newsstands August 1940, artwork by Charles Biro)

And over in Loop Logan we see it again! The war in Europe is heating up, and comics can no longer hold back!

(from Blue Ribbon Comics #7 - on newsstands August 1940, artwork by Frank Volp)