Blue Bolt #105
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeBlue Bolt #105 (April–May 1950) marks the moment L. B. Cole's Star Publications hit its creative stride on a title it had only recently acquired: according to GoCollect's key-creator feature, it was by this issue that Cole was 'back to form' after the production pressures of launching the imprint had tested the consistency of his earlier Star covers. The issue packages a genuine piece of pre-Captain America history—a reprint of Joe Simon's very first Blue Bolt story, which gave Simon and, starting with the second issue of the original run, Jack Kirby their first sustained collaboration—inside one of Cole's signature science-fiction cover compositions that mix vivid 'poster colors' against bold backgrounds. It also documents, in real time, an industry in transition: with the superhero craze fading, Cole repositioned Blue Bolt as a backup feature to Dick Cole, signaling the editorial pivot that would eventually carry the title all the way to pre-Code horror. The cover for #105 was later reproduced in Fantagraphics' 2015 retrospective Black Light: The World of L. B. Cole, cementing its place in the record of Golden Age cover design.
In "The Human Lightning Freak," Blue Bolt battles the Green Sorceress, a descendant of black magic practitioners who has harnessed lightning powers and imprisoned them in radium deposits within an underground laboratory. After Blue Bolt is captured and brought to her lair, he discovers the sorceress commands a variety of supernatural creatures and minions, including winged monsters and hungry beasts guarded in cages. Blue Bolt escapes and engages in aerial combat with the flying creatures while a native woman and her people assist him in his final confrontation against the sorceress's forces, ultimately defeating her machinations.
When a Harvard football star named Fred Parrish is struck by lightning during a mountain vacation, he awakens in the hidden laboratory of Dr. Bertoff, who has harnessed the electrical power coursing through Fred's body to transform him into Blue Bolt—a powerful warrior destined to battle the Green Sorceress and her dark magic. As the two forces clash in an underground realm of impossible technology and supernatural creatures, Blue Bolt must navigate treachery, ancient evil, and his own newly discovered powers to prevent the sorceress from enslaving the world.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
In 1949, Novelty Press—facing mounting public criticism over comic-book content—sold its characters and artwork to L. B. Cole, who had been the cover artist for the Novelty-published Blue Bolt Comics. Cole and his business partner, lawyer Gerhard Kramer, used those assets to found Star Publications, with Blue Bolt as the company's first title, continuing the Novelty numbering from issue #102 onward. Cole served as both editor and cover artist for the Star run; the interior of #105 was scripted by Joe Simon, with additional story and art credits going to Doug Allen (attribution uncertain per GCD) and penciler/inker John Junb, making it an early example of Star's hybrid model of newly produced material alongside archival reprints.
Trivia · 7 facts
- Cover art is entirely the work of L. B. Cole, signed by him — a science-fiction composition that mixes the 'poster color' primaries and bold backgrounds characteristic of his Star-era output.
- The lead story, 'The Human Lightning Streak,' is a reprint of the very first Blue Bolt adventure, written and drawn by Joe Simon — the origin in which college football star Fred Parrish is transformed by lightning and an experimental radium treatment into the superhero Blue Bolt.
- The issue also reprints the origin of the Chameleon (Peter Stockbridge), a crime-fighting master of disguise, in a story titled 'Meet the Chameleon,' with art by John Junb.
- Supporting features include Dan'l Flannel and The Target and the Targeteers, the latter battling a subterranean menace — reflecting the anthology format Star used to repackage the Novelty Press back catalog.
- This issue represents L. B. Cole's editorial strategy of demoting Blue Bolt to a backup role behind Dick Cole as superhero readership declined, a repositioning that foreshadowed the title's later shift to outright horror.
- The cover was included in Fantagraphics' January 2015 retrospective Black Light: The World of L. B. Cole, the first career survey of the artist.
- Content from the original Blue Bolt #1 reprinted here also appeared later in The Simon and Kirby Library: Science Fiction (Titan, March 2013) and in Étranges Aventures (Organic Comix, 2013 series) #4 (hiver 2020), showing the continued scholarly and archival interest in Simon's foundational work on the character.
Full credits
Reprints
↩ Reprints Blue Bolt #1 [1] (1940), Target Comics #6 [6] (1940), Target Comics #11 [35] (1943), Target Comics #6 [62] (1945)
Reprinted in Blue Bolt #11 (1953), Blue Bolt #9 (1953), Black Light: The World of L. B. Cole #[nn] (2015)
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