Hit Comics #18
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeHit Comics #18 (cover-dated December 1941, on sale October 3, 1941) is a genuine double-debut issue for Quality Comics, introducing both Stormy Foster — the Great Defender — and the Ghost of Flanders in the same package. Stormy Foster's concept of a meek drugstore clerk empowered by a super-vitamin sat squarely in the Golden Age tradition of chemically-enhanced heroes pioneered by Hourman and the Blue Beetle, but his pharmacy-counter origin gave it a distinctly working-class, everyday-American flavor that set him apart from his caped contemporaries. The Ghost of Flanders, a WWI soldier believed dead who resurfaces as a masked WWII vigilante operating from a hidden crypt beneath the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, is one of the more conceptually haunting characters of the era, drawing a direct emotional line between the two World Wars at the precise historical moment America stood on the brink of entering the second one. Together, the two debuts make this issue a defining snapshot of Quality's anthology formula at its most inventive.
Hit Comics #18 is an anthology featuring multiple heroes. The Red Bee story involves the character battling criminals and escaping from a scuttled launch by straining ropes to break free, ultimately pursuing the mob to waiting lifeboats. The Hercules story depicts the mythological hero battling thugs and enduring various physical hazards, including sand attacks, spinning saws, and sharp discs hurled by adversaries. The Ghost of Flanders storyline features an aerial dogfight between planes, with the protagonist pursuing a fleeing spy and later discovering a burning wreckage on an island.
When thieves target Doc Vaughn's drugstore, young clerk Stormy Foster dons a fake moustache and takes a super-vitamin that unlocks his hidden strength—just in time to face the chaos. With Doc Vaughn, Ah Choo, and Detective Cooper caught in the crossfire, the real danger may not be the robbers, but the sinister forces behind them, including the mysterious Oshinto Karu and the enigmatic Doc Falk.
In this 1941 tale from Hit Comics #18, the Ghost of Flanders—Rip Graves, presumed dead since the First World War—rises from his crypt beneath the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to thwart a Nazi sabotage plot. As Fifth Columnists Fritz, Carl, Rudolf, and Eric attempt to steal vital defense plans from Fort Brigg, the spectral hero emerges to stop them, his origin still shrouded in wartime mystery.
In "null," Joe Hercules steps in when two monument works employees struggle with a heavy tombstone, only to uncover troubling welts on their backs. As he investigates further, the hero uncovers a hidden exploitation at the works—where the foreman and manager are abusing workers, siphoning their wages, all while the owner remains unaware.
ComicBooks.com Value
Show all 15 grades ▾
Find on ebay
Read it digitally
Sell my copy
Have this issue — or a whole collection? Get a fair offer from us, skip the marketplace fees and the hassle.
We Buy Collections ▸History
Hit Comics was a monthly Quality Comics anthology edited by S. M. Iger, produced largely through the Eisner-Iger studio pipeline and published under the 'Comic Magazines Inc.' indicia. Issue #18 hit newsstands on October 3, 1941 — more than two months before Pearl Harbor — meaning both of its new characters were conceived and drawn in a nation still technically at peace but already deeply war-anxious. Reed Crandall, who had come to Quality through the Eisner-Iger shop and whose fine-lined illustration style made him a rising star at the publisher, was tapped to provide the cover; George Brenner — a Quality veteran who created The Clock, widely credited as comics' first fully masked hero — wrote and drew the Ghost of Flanders feature under his pseudonym 'Wayne Reid,' while Max Elkan handled art duties on the Stormy Foster lead strip.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance of Stormy Foster (the Great Defender), a vitamin-powered superhero created by Max Elkan, who would headline Hit Comics from #18 through #34 (1941–1944).
- First appearance of the Ghost of Flanders — Rip Graves, a WWI soldier believed killed at Flanders who operates as a masked WWII vigilante from a secret crypt beneath the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier — written and drawn by George Brenner under the pseudonym 'Wayne Reid'; the strip ran through Hit Comics #25 (1942).
- The Ghost of Flanders used a red poppy as his personal symbol, a direct reference to the Second Battle of Ypres and the Flanders Fields poem, embedding World War I memory into a WWII superhero narrative.
- Cover art is by Reed Crandall, one of Quality's premier artists, who worked extensively across the publisher's titles including Doll Man, Blackhawk, and Hit Comics.
- Additional contributors to the issue include Jack Cole (Dan Tootin humor strip), Klaus Nordling (Bob and Swab), Witmer Williams (Red Bee), and Alex Blum (the Strange Twins), making it a showcase of Quality's deep creative bench.
- George Brenner, the Ghost of Flanders' creator, is historically notable as the originator of The Clock (1936), recognized as the first fully masked hero in American comic books.
- Stormy Foster's disguise as the Great Defender consisted only of a fake mustache — a deliberate inversion of the secret-identity convention — and his powers required repeated doses of his supervitamin rather than a permanent transformation.
- The Stormy Foster lead story from this issue was later reprinted in Gwandanaland Comics #1067 (Stormy Foster: The Great Defender) and in the Fantagraphics anthology Take That, Adolf!: The Fighting Comic Books of the Second World War (2017).
Full credits
Reprints
Reprinted in Men of Mystery Comics #91 (2013), Take That, Adolf!: The Fighting Comic Books of the Second World War #[nn] (2017), Gwandanaland Comics #1067
Key issues in Hit Comics
Reviews
Reader reviews
No reader reviews yet.