CoronaVirus Comics HIT COMICS "Red Bee vs the Medical Grafters"

Besides Plastic Man, numerous Quality Comics characters fought to protect America from medical threats...

...whether from other countries or right here in the good ol' USA!

This never-reprinted story from Quality's Hit Comics #2 (1940) was written by Toni Blum (one of the few women writing comics during the Golden Age) and but the artist under the "B H Apiary" pen-name is unknown.

(An apiary is a group of separate bee hives close together)

While other characters like The Crimson Avenger and The Sandman borrowed The Green Hornet's "wanted criminal in a fedora and overcoat" motif, the Red Bee took the "colorful insect wanted by the police" concept and went in a different direction...a skintight costume and actually using live insects!

Besides trained bees (can you actually train bees?), the two-fisted adventurer used a "stinger" gun that shot tranquilizer darts (paralleling the Green Hornet's knockout-gas gun)!

(Note that bees, wasps, yellowjackets, and hornets are all from the same sub-species of insects.)

Quality's editors must've thought the concept was a winner, since the Red Bee was cover-featured on Hit Comics' first issue, plus a run of several consecutive issues a few months later.

(Most of the time, characters were rotated, with each one getting a cover every 3-4 issues!)

Despite the promotional push, the Red Bee disappeared after Hit #24.

Please Support Hero Histories

Visit Amazon and Order...

League of Regrettable SuperHeroes

(including the Red Bee!)

CoronaVirus Comics PLASTIC MAN "Fight Against Germ Warfare!"

Perhaps the least-likely superhero to deal with either the Korean War or biological warfare...

...was the usually light-hearted Ductile Detective, Plastic Man!

As you can see, this never-reprinted tale from Quality's Plastic Man #38 (1952) is a loooong way from his usual surreal antics.

After World War II, while most surviving superheroes were going from serious to light-hearted, Quality's characters took a dive into the Dark Side of the pool, following whatever trend was popular at the moment!

Monsters (including vampires, zombies, and werewolves), Korean/Russkie/Chinese Communists, and aliens from outer space became their primary opponents!

For other characters like Blackhawk and Kid Eternity, it wasn't much of a transition since they had battled fairly realistic Nazis and Japanese both on the battlefield and on the homefront, but the usually-fun Plas went through a particularly-jarring change as writer/artist Jack Cole departed his creation early in 1950!

The decidedly non-humorous trend continued until Plas was laid to rest in 1956.

Though DC bought up the Quality Comics line that year, the only titles they continued were Blackhawk, G.I. Combat, Heart Throbs and the short-lived Robin Hood Tales.

Plas languished without even a reprint until he was revived in 1966 in all-new stories in a short-lived series!

(Note: around the same time, IW/Super Comics reprinted several issues of Plas's Golden Age book since they had purchased the actual printing plates from a facility where they had been abandoned by Quality.

The timing appears to have been a coincidence.)

Since then, he's been revived and revamped several times under a variety of creatives including Kyle Baker and Phil Foglio, and eventually incorporated into the DC mainstream universe.

Please Support Hero Histories

Visit Amazon and Order...

Plastic Man 80-Page Giant

Featuring classic tales from each of his eras (Golden Age/Silver Age/Bronze Age)

WEREWOLF HUNTER "Priestess of the Spider Death" / "Mistress of the Web"

It's a double-feature Halloween treat...

..with two versions of the same tale, true believers!

The original version of this terrifying tale is from Fiction House's Ranger Comics #15 (1944)!

But, when it was re-presented in Fiction House's Ghost Comics #3 (1952), not only was it partially-redrawn (beginning at page 3) to remove a page of story, it was re-written (from the splash panel onward) as well!

Fiction House did a lot of this sort of editing when reprinting material in the late 1940s since th earlier magazines, like Rangers Comics, were 60 pages, but the later books like Ghost Comics were only 36 pages!

Lily Renee illustrated the original version.

But, judging from the crudeness of the art modifications, she didn't work on the modified reprint!

BTW, we're part of the amazingly-kool CountDown to Halloween 2019 Blogathon!

Click HERE to see the other pround participants!

Please Support Hero Histories

Visit Amazon and Order...

Lily Renee, Escape Artist

by

Trina Robbins

WEREWOLF HUNTER "Puppets of the Witch Queen"

After a round-robin of various artists...

...the series settles down with the woman who would become the strip's signature artist, Lily Renée!

As we mentioned last week, the new artist, Lily Renée escaped real-life horror!
In 1938, after the Germans annexed Austria, the then-teenage Lily Renée Willhelm was sent by her parents to England.
In 1940, she was reunited with her family (who escaped from Austria) in NYC, and finished high school.
Lily had an artistic flair, so she became both a clothing catalog model and illustrator.
In 1943, she answered an ad from pulp/comic publisher Fiction House for an illustrator.
With most of their regular contributors in the military, the editors immediately put the young artist to work on several existing strips including the sci-fi series Norge Benson and Lost World, the horror strip Werewolf Hunter, and wartime spy series Senorita Rio!
After the war, Lily married fellow artist Eric Peters and collaborated with him on St John's Abbott & Costello comic series in the late 1940s!
Trivia: in interviews, Lily stated she tried to steer the Werewolf Hunter strip away from lycanthropes since she claimed she couldn't draw them well!

BTW, we're part of the amazingly-kool CountDown to Halloween 2019 Blogathon!

Click HERE to see the other pround participants!

Please Support Hero Histories

Visit Amazon and Order...

Lily Renee, Escape Artist

by

Trina Robbins

WEREWOLF HUNTER "Tentacle Terror from Beelzebub's Void!!!"

Now is that a catchy/kitchy title, or what?

For a guy called "Werewolf Hunter", Prof Broussard doesn't spend much time actually hunting werewolves!

This never-reprinted tale from Fiction House's Ranger Comics #13 (1943) takes Broussard even further afield thanks to future Supergirl artist Jim Mooney, though the writer using the pen-name "Armand Weygand" remains unknown!
But the biggest change will occur next week as an artist who escaped real-life horror takes over the strip!

BTW, we're part of the amazingly-kool CountDown to Halloween 2019 Blogathon!

Click HERE to see the other pround participants!

Please Support Hero Histories

Visit Amazon and Order...

Cycle of the Werewolf

by

Stephen King & Berni Wrightson