As I’ve pointed out in past posts, many of the pulp publishers also had comicbook lines as well, several of which made use of their pulp characters. One of these is Ace Magazines, which launched comicbooks as Ace Comics in 1940 with a focus at first on superheroes.
Some of their superheroes were based on their pulp characters. The major one for them was The Raven, which was based on The Moon Man. He was used more as a filler character than as a lead. Thanks to the collection from Pulp 2.0 I was able to read them all with some additional related articles.
While not a major character in their line, Ace Comics published 18 stories from 1940 to ’42. They did make changes to The Moon Man and his associates in creating The Raven. Det. Sgt. Stephen Thatcher (son of the police chief) became Det. Sgt. Danny Dartin (d’Artagnan, get it?). Love interest Sue McEwan (daughter of Thatcher’s boss) became Lola Lash (daughter of Danny’s boss Capt. Lash). Ned “Angel” Dargan, who assisted The Moon Man, became Mike Collins. Captain McEwan (Thatcher’s boss) became Capt. Lash, who overtime became the police chief.
While Mike knew the identity of The Raven from the first, unlike Angel, Lola like Sue doesn’t know who The Raven is at first, but finds out in an early story. Most of the stories are based or adapted from The Moon Man stories, though a handful are original.
The biggest change is the outfit. I guess The Moon Man’s outfit wasn’t considered colorful enough for comics, which I can accept. At first, The Raven’s outfit is an all-purple cloak with hood and gloves, with only the eyes exposed. The Raven’s logo is a full black raven on a yellow disk on his hood. With the third story, the outfit is changed to what most know him in: an all-purple suit, with cape and half mask with a new raven logo, just the head, on a yellow disk on the forehead of his mask as well as on his chest. And no gloves (a thread that ran thru many of the Moon Man stories was they had a thumbprint, and hoped to figure out who he was from that).
The stories are short, about seven to 10 pages. Because of different artists over time, there are changes in the characters.
The collection from Pulp 2.0 is excellent, in no small part by the contributions of others. Editor Bill Cunningham has done a lot of work to clean up the artwork rather than just do a straight reprint of it, even showing what they had to do. Too often early comics did a poor job of color printing, with the colors not matching up with the linework. But here they took the time to fix this. Andrew Salmon, who is a Moon Man expert and contributed the articles that ran in the Altus Press (Steeger Books) reprints, provides background on the series, and introduces each story, giving information on what stories they are based on.
And pulp researcher David Saunders, son of pulp artist Norman Saunders, profiles art director Adolphe Barreaux. That article actually give a lot of information on pulp comics at the time.
Barreaux had established a comic studio, probably the first, and was the art director for Harry Donenfeld‘s spicy pulps. He was responsible for establishing Sally the Sleuth and all the rest of the comics that ran in them. With Vera Ray being named for his wife. But he also provided the comic strips that ran in the Thrilling pulps. Six Gun Sandy from Thrilling Western (16 stories) and Ace Jordan from Thrilling Adventure (58 stories) was mentioned. I assume his studio was also responsible for Zarnak in Thrilling Wonder Stories, as the same artist did both Ace and Zarnak. Were there other comics in the Thrilling pulps?
As I’ve noted elsewhere, I’d like to see more of these comics that ran in the pulps, and more research on them. This is a great collection to obtain.
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