Bulletman #11
Bulletman #11 (cover-dated January 1943) holds a notable place in Golden Age history as the comic that carried one of the earliest promotional appearances of the newly assembled Marvel Family — Captain Marvel, Captain Marvel Jr., and Mary Marvel — together in a single Fawcett house advertisement, just weeks after Mary Marvel's debut in Captain Marvel Adventures #18. That war-bonds ad, also featuring Captain Midnight and Spy Smasher, offered early readers their first consolidated look at Fawcett's growing roster of Shazam-connected heroes as a unified promotional front. The issue also advances the ongoing Bulletman mythos in a meaningful way, revealing — in a quiet but resonant moment — that Sergeant Kent already knows the secret identities of Bulletman and Bulletgirl, a plot thread that deepens the supporting cast and adds dramatic irony to every subsequent scene involving him. As Fawcett's second most popular franchise after Captain Marvel, the Bulletman series was a crucial pillar of the publisher's Golden Age output, and issue #11 captures that shared-universe energy at its early peak.
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The Bulletman series was published by Fawcett Publications from 1941 through 1946, running fifteen issues in total and skipping number thirteen. By issue #11, the creative workload on Fawcett's titles was largely handled by writer Otto Binder and artist Nathaniel Nitkin, who were central to the Bulletman solo series during this period. The cover was by Jack Binder, who handled several issues of the series around this time. The stories in this issue were later reprinted with scripts adapted for the Canadian market in Anglo-American Publishing's Three Aces Comics (November 1943) and collected decades later in Gwandanaland Comics #117 — The Complete Bulletman Volume 2 (April 2017).
Trivia · 7 facts
- Cover-dated January 1943, published by Fawcett Publications; cover art by Jack Binder.
- A Fawcett house advertisement inside the issue promotes war-bond purchases and features Captain Marvel, Captain Marvel Jr., Mary Marvel, Captain Midnight, Spy Smasher, and Bulletman together — one of Mary Marvel's earliest appearances in any Fawcett publication, as she had debuted only in Captain Marvel Adventures #18 (cover-dated December 1942), just weeks prior. Key Collector identifies this as the first appearance of the Marvel Family together in one issue.
- First and only appearance of the villain Keyhole Karlos, a blackmailer who has collected damaging secrets on nearly everyone in town and threatens to expose the secret identities of Bulletman and Bulletgirl.
- Sergeant Kent — father of Susan Kent (Bulletgirl) — is promoted to Lieutenant in this issue, and in a reader-only reveal, is shown to already know the secret identities of both Bulletman and Bulletgirl.
- Bulletdog appears as a supporting character alongside Bulletman and Bulletgirl.
- The villain of 'The Fiendish Fiddler' is a hypnotist who uses his violin music to compel people to commit crimes — a single-appearance foe stopped by Bulletman and Bulletgirl.
- Multiple stories from this issue were reprinted: scripts adapted in Three Aces Comics v2#10 (Anglo-American Publishing, November 1943) and the full issue collected in Gwandanaland Comics #117 — The Complete Bulletman Volume 2 (April 2017).
Cast · 19 characters
Full credits
Full plot ⚠ may contain spoilers
▸ Reveal full plot — may contain spoilers
Crooked moneylender Shylocke has killed one of his victims and Bulletman and Bulletgirl are on the case. Bulletgirl is captured and placed into a deathtrap, and Bulletman doesn't realize that he has a limited amount of time to save her.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).