Hit Comics #5
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeHit Comics #5 is one of the most artistically distinguished covers of the entire Golden Age, featuring Lou Fine's dynamic illustration of the Red Bee wrestling a swordfish — a composition drawn directly from that issue's interior story, a relatively rare choice for Quality Comics covers at the time. Fine's cover work here is considered among his finest contributions to the medium; both Will Eisner and Jack Kirby publicly admired Fine's draftsmanship, and this issue stands as a prime exhibit of that talent. The issue also preserves the only period in which the Red Bee — an eccentric hero created by one of the very few women working in comics at the time — was prominently featured across consecutive cover appearances (issues #1, #5, and #7), cementing the character's oddly lasting cultural footprint despite modest in-story reception. As a densely packed Golden Age anthology, it offers a snapshot of Quality Comics at full creative stride, with the Iger studio's assembly-line production model deploying over a dozen contributors across genres spanning superhero, crime, sci-fi, humor, and adventure.
Hit Comics #5 is an anthology featuring multiple characters and stories. The Red Bee pursues criminals to the twentieth floor of a building, using his specially designed auto-gyro to reach high altitudes and apprehend his targets. The Strange Twins, operating as the Neon, engage in action across Arabian settings and navigate complex criminal schemes involving pursuit and combat. Jack and Jill encounter torture chambers and theatrical settings while escaping from Chinese antagonists, with Jack fleeing through a dressing room as he attempts to evade his captors.
Hercules goes undercover at an auto plant plagued by deadly "accidents" to uncover the sabotage orchestrated by rival industrialist Wolf Stead, who's trying to prevent owner Judd Haskin from meeting a critical production deadline. As workers fall victim to hidden traps on the assembly line and in the testing field, Hercules must battle Stead's gang and stop their scheme before they escape with the evidence hidden inside the finished cars.
A lonely Scottish moor holds dark secrets in "The House on the Moors," a tale told by The Old Witch herself—a desolate homestead where mysterious lights burn by night and no living soul dares approach. When a young couple moves into the old McDuff home, they awaken forces far more sinister than they bargained for: the restless ghosts of two brothers locked in a deadly struggle for mastery of the house itself. What begins as strange occurrences quickly spirals into a supernatural battle that threatens to consume the newcomers along with the cursed home.
Blaze Barton's long-awaited maiden voyage to Mars turns hostile when a mysterious blanket of black smoke obscures the planet and a fleet of enemy rockets forces his ship down. Taken prisoner by the Martian king and his forces, Blaze must find a way to escape and overcome the alien ruler's superstitious fear of electricity. His ingenuity and courage may be the key to bringing progress—and hope—to an enslaved world.
When a mysterious powder drives the citizens of the city into violent madness, Neon the Unknown must track the sinister plot back to its source—and discover who's behind this coordinated attack on America before the enemy strikes again. Racing from the streets to a secret factory in Nova Scotia, this man of mystery faces foreign agents bent on destabilizing an entire nation, all while a clock ticks against a cure. With the city held in a paralyzing grip and enemy planes ready to invade, Neon must find the formula to save his people—and stop the conspiracy at any cost.
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Hit Comics #5 was assembled through the S. M. Iger Studio's assembly-line production system, which divided scripting, penciling, inking, and lettering among separate specialists — a workflow Eisner and Iger pioneered and that became an industry standard. The issue was edited by S. M. Iger and published under the Comic Magazines Inc. indicia, the legal publishing entity behind the Quality Comics brand. The cover was painted by Lou Fine, who had recently become one of the most sought-after artists in the medium after Will Eisner departed the Eisner-Iger partnership to launch The Spirit in mid-1940, leaving Fine and others to carry Quality's visual identity. Toni Blum — who wrote the Red Bee under the pun pseudonym 'B. H. Apiary' (an apiary being a beehive) — was a rare female voice in an almost exclusively male industry and the only woman then on staff at Quality.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Cover date: November 1940; on-sale date: September 4, 1940 (confirmed via the Catalog of Copyright Entries).
- Cover art is by Lou Fine, depicting the Red Bee wrestling a swordfish — a scene taken directly from the issue's interior Red Bee story, titled 'Flatboat No. 96.'
- The Red Bee (Rick Raleigh), whose strip runs through Hit Comics #24 (October 1942), was created by writer Toni Blum and artist Charles Nicholas Wojtkoski, debuting in Hit Comics #1; this is his fifth appearance.
- The Red Bee's secret identity is Rick Raleigh, an assistant district attorney in Superior City, Oregon, who fights crime using trained bees (including a favorite named Michael, kept in his belt buckle) and a 'stinger gun' — no superpowers.
- Interior story credits across the issue include work by Nick Cardy, S. M. Iger, Alex Blum, Toni Blum, Maurice Gutwirth, John Celardo, Charles Nicholas, Charles Sultan, Klaus Nordling, Dan Zolnerowich, Bob Powell, and Lou Fine.
- The issue's Red Bee interior story is credited by the Grand Comics Database to Charles Nicholas Wojtkoski (under the pseudonym 'B. H. Apiary' for the script, attributed to Toni Blum).
- Hit Comics #5 is one of three early issues (along with #1 and #7) to feature the Red Bee on a Lou Fine cover, making it part of the most artistically admired run of covers in the series.
- Quality Comics (and thus Hit Comics) was acquired by DC Comics in 1956; the Red Bee character subsequently fell into public domain, and a legacy version — Jenna Raleigh, grandniece of Rick — debuted in Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters #5 (2007). The original Rick Raleigh Red Bee was retroactively incorporated into DC continuity via All-Star Squadron.
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Reprinted in Ace Comics Presents #4 (1987)
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