America's Best Comics #1 (7)
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeAmerica's Best Comics #7 (October 1943) is a wartime Golden Age anthology that captures Nedor Comics at the height of its WWII-era output, packing several of the publisher's most durable heroes—the Black Terror, Doc Strange, Pyroman, and American Eagle—into a single 60-page issue. Its greatest historical distinction is the debut of Thunderhoof, an origin-story feature that expanded Nedor's roster beyond costumed superheroes into animal-protagonist territory, an unusual move for a superhero anthology of the period. The cover, one of Alex Schomburg's signed wartime pieces for the Nedor line, represents the artistic sensibility that defined the look of Golden Age war-era comics. Because all Nedor material eventually entered the public domain, this issue's characters have enjoyed a remarkably long creative afterlife—from AC Comics' Femforce in the 1980s to Alan Moore's Terra Obscura in the 2000s.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
The series was produced under publisher Ned Pines, whose interlocking company names—Nedor, Better Publications, Standard—covered a comics operation active from 1939 to 1956. Writer-editor Richard E. Hughes, the primary creative force behind the Nedor superhero line, scripted the Thunderhoof origin story in this issue alongside artists including August Froehlich and Maurice Gutwirth. Alex Schomburg, already the defining cover artist of the wartime era across both Timely and Nedor titles, signed his work on this cover—one of many he produced for the America's Best Comics series during the war years.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published October 1943 (cover date) by Nedor/Better Publications; Library of Congress copyright date recorded as August 12, 1943.
- First appearance of Thunderhoof, a horse character, in the story 'The Origin of Thunderhoof,' scripted by Richard Hughes with art by August Froehlich.
- Cover art by Alex Schomburg (signed), one of the foremost Golden Age cover artists, who regularly illustrated the America's Best Comics series for Nedor throughout the war years.
- The issue is a 60-page, full-color anthology featuring recurring Nedor heroes: the Black Terror (two separate stories—'The Return of Hannibal' and 'At War In the Atlantic'), Pyroman, Doc Strange, and American Eagle.
- The Black Terror was Nedor's flagship character and the consistent lead feature of America's Best Comics; his alter ego is pharmacist Bob Benton.
- Multiple text prose stories appear alongside the comic features, including 'Buckskin Boy,' 'R.A.F. Pilot,' and 'Treasure Map,' reflecting the hybrid pulp-magazine/comic-book format typical of Nedor publications.
- Content of this issue was later reprinted in Take That, Adolf!: The Fighting Comic Books of the Second World War, published by Fantagraphics in 2017.
- Because the Nedor Comics properties entered the public domain, characters from this issue's roster were revived by AC Comics (Femforce) in the 1980s and by Alan Moore in Tom Strong and Terra Obscura in the 2000s.
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Reprints
Reprinted in Take That, Adolf!: The Fighting Comic Books of the Second World War #[nn] (2017)
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