True Comics #23
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeTrue Comics #23 (April 1943) holds its place as a representative artifact of the Golden Age's most ambitious experiment in educational comics: a series that deliberately deployed the comic-book format to deliver factual biography, military history, and civics to wartime American children, at a moment when the medium was under sustained cultural attack. As the final issue in the longer 68-page format before the series trimmed its page count beginning with #24, it marks a quiet production watershed within the run. The series it belongs to directly inspired DC Comics' Real Fact Comics and helped legitimize non-fiction sequential art as a viable genre, a lineage that runs forward to modern graphic journalism. Its wartime content — profiling Allied commanders, American military technology, and resistance movements — made it a document of the home-front propaganda landscape as much as a comic book.
This anthology issue contains multiple true stories presented as factual features. "A Race That Stopped a War" recounts how a footrace on the island of St. Martin in 1647 settled a territorial dispute between French and Dutch colonists, with each side claiming the island and agreeing to resolve the conflict through a running race. "Full-Time American: William T. Morris, One Man War Plant" profiles Morris, a factory worker in an oceanside basement facility who produces ship steering wheel spokes as a vital wartime contribution, earning recognition as a patriotic American laborer. Additional shorter features and humorous anecdotes fill the issue, including jokes and true incidents submitted by readers.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
True Comics was the brainchild of George J. Hecht, founder of Parents' Magazine, who launched the series in April 1941 as a direct counter to Sterling North's widely-read 1940 broadside calling comic books a 'national disgrace.' Elliott Caplin — brother of Li'l Abner creator Al Capp — served as managing editor of the series during its wartime years, with Ralph O. Ellsworth as art editor; the editorial board was unusually credentialed, including historian David S. Muzzey and public-opinion pioneer George Gallup. Issue #23 appeared in April 1943 while Caplin was still at the helm, before he left to serve in the Navy in the South Pacific, after which the managing editorship changed hands.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published April 1943 by The Parents' Magazine Press Division of The Parents' Institute, Inc., as part of the ongoing True Comics series (April 1941–August 1950, 84 issues total).
- Issue #23 is the last issue in the original extended 68-page format; beginning with #24, the series dropped to 60 pages, and later to 52 pages.
- A scarcer variant edition of #23 exists with 'TRUE Picture-Magazine' on the cover, distinct from the standard 'TRUE Comics' cover edition — one of at least a dozen issues known to have this variant.
- Managing editor at time of publication was Elliott A. Caplin, with Ralph O. Ellsworth serving as art editor; the series ran under the direct authority of publisher George J. Hecht.
- The series carried an editorial advisory board of academics and public figures — including historian David S. Muzzey and pollster George Gallup — making it one of the first comic series formally overseen by outside subject-matter experts.
- Content throughout the wartime run (including issues around #23) comprised illustrated biographies of Allied military figures, installments of a multi-part illustrated history of America, profiles of wartime technology and resistance movements, and features on notable athletes and historical figures.
- The series was subsequently reprinted in full-color facsimile by Golden Age Reprints (via CreateSpace/Amazon), making issue #23's contents accessible to modern readers.
- True Comics as a whole spawned direct imitators including DC Comics' Real Fact Comics, cementing its role as the template for Golden Age educational/non-fiction comics.
Reprints
↩ Reprints Extra #[nn] (1942)
Reprinted in Daisy Handbook #2 (1948)
Key issues in True Comics
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