All Teen Comics #20

History

The issue was released on October 31, 1946, with a January 1947 cover date, under the editorial oversight of Stan Lee, who was managing Timely's broad genre pivot away from wartime superheroes. Publisher Martin Goodman had recognized that superheroes were fading commercially in the post-war era and was aggressively shifting titles toward romance, horror, Westerns, and teen humor to attract new reader demographics, including young women. All Winners Comics — whose previous issue (#19) had starred the All-Winners Squad — was retitled as All Teen Comics for this single issue before immediately becoming Teen Comics with the following number, reflecting how fluid Timely's branding was during this transitional period. Art duties were split among Mike Sekowsky (cover), Al Jaffee (penciler and inker), and Frank Carin — all veterans of Timely's humor bullpen, which had included future MAD Magazine contributors.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Published by Timely Comics (Marvel's Golden Age predecessor) with a cover date of January 1947; the actual on-sale date was October 31, 1946.
• Continues the numbering directly from All Winners Comics, the title that had featured Timely's first superhero team, the All-Winners Squad — making this the single-issue transition point between a superhero anthology and a teen-humor title.
• Immediately renamed Teen Comics beginning with the following issue (#21), meaning All Teen Comics existed as a title for exactly one issue.
• Features four teen-humor strips: Patsy Walker (with Hedy Wolfe, Buzz Baxter, Buzz's mother Dorothy Walker, and Nancy Brown), Georgie, Willie, and Mitzi Martin.
• Mitzi Martin appears here after previously serving only as a backup feature in Frankie Comics — this issue marks her more prominent ongoing placement.
• Patsy Walker, Hedy Wolfe, Buzz Baxter, and Dorothy Walker all have Earth-616 appearances listed for this issue in the Marvel Database, cementing it as part of the canonical timeline that would eventually produce the superhero Hellcat.
• Defenders #89 later established that Patsy Walker stories published between 1944 and 1965 — including the story in this issue — were retroactively the fictional in-universe comic books written by Dorothy Walker, loosely based on her daughter Patricia's real life.
• Art credits include Mike Sekowsky on the cover, and Al Jaffee and Frank Carin as pencilers and inkers — Jaffee would later become a celebrated MAD Magazine cartoonist, while Sekowsky went on to significant work at DC Comics, most notably revamping Wonder Woman in the late 1960s.