More Fun Comics #65

History

By the time #65 went to press, More Fun Comics — DC's oldest continuously published title, tracing back to New Fun #1 (1935) — had pivoted hard from its humor-and-adventure anthology roots to become a superhero showcase, anchored by the supernatural headliners it had introduced beginning with The Spectre in #52 (February 1940) and Doctor Fate in #55 (May 1940). The Spectre's installment was scripted by Jerry Siegel (co-creator of Superman) and illustrated by Bernard Baily, who co-created the character and drew it throughout its entire Golden Age run through #101; the Doctor Fate segment was the work of writer Gardner Fox and artist Howard Sherman, who, as Fox later recalled in a 1987 interview, handled the Fate stories from the character's debut forward. Whitney Ellsworth served as editor for the anthology at this time, overseeing a large stable of short backup features including Congo Bill, Radio Squad, Captain Desmo, Biff Bronson, Lance Larkin, and Sergeant O'Malley of the Red Coat Patrol, each handled by separate creative teams — a production model typical of Golden Age anthology comics.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Cover date: March 1941; published by Detective Comics, Inc. (the corporate predecessor of DC Comics); cover art by Bernard Baily.
• The Spectre story — titled 'Dr. Mephisto' — was written by Jerry Siegel (co-creator of Superman) and drawn by Bernard Baily (co-creator of the Spectre), the same team that launched the feature in More Fun Comics #52 (February 1940) and continued it through #101 (February 1945).
• The Spectre story showcases a signature piece of Golden Age excess: Jim Corrigan flies a crook named Jimmy Groggins to Mars, where a Martian dinosaur swallows them both to break the crook's resistance — an example of the feature's early, anything-goes supernatural register.
• The Doctor Fate feature — 'The Fish-Men of Nyarl-Amen' — was written by Gardner Fox and drawn by Howard Sherman, the creative duo who produced the character's monthly stories from his debut in More Fun Comics #55 (May 1940) onward; this story appears just two issues before Doctor Fate's formal origin was published in #67 (May 1941).
• The issue is a dense Golden Age anthology containing at least eight separate features alongside the two supernatural headliners: Congo Bill (with Professor Kent), Radio Squad (Larry Trent and Sandy Keene), Captain Desmo, Biff Bronson (with Dan Druff), Lance Larkin, Detective Sergeant Carey, and Sergeant O'Malley of the Red Coat Patrol.
• The Spectre's 'Dr. Mephisto' story was collected in the hardcover Golden Age Spectre Archives Vol. 1 (DC, 2003), which reprinted the character's consecutive More Fun Comics appearances from #52 through #70.
• The Doctor Fate story 'The Fish-Men of Nyarl-Amen' was likewise collected in the Golden Age Doctor Fate Archives Vol. 1 (DC, 2007).
• More Fun Comics as a series is historically significant as the first American comic book to feature solely original material rather than newspaper strip reprints, and #65 falls squarely within its peak superhero period, which also produced the first appearances of Green Arrow, Aquaman, Johnny Quick, and Superboy in later issues.

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