Cyclone Comics #2
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeCyclone Comics #2 (July 1940) is the second installment of one of the most genuinely obscure and independently produced anthology titles of the early Golden Age, published by Worth Carnahan's Bilbara Publishing Company at the precise moment superhero comics were still defining their own grammar. The issue carried forward an unusual stable of characters — most notably Volton the Human Generator, a static-electricity-powered hero that artist Charles Quinlan would later connect, in name only, to a completely different Volton at Holyoke's Cat-Man Comics — making the Carnahan run a curious footnote in the genealogy of shared character names across competing publishers. Its survival in any condition is a testament to how thinly distributed small-press Golden Age anthologies were, and the full five-issue run it belongs to is considered an underappreciated slice of pre-war comic book history.
Cyclone Comics #2 is an anthology featuring multiple adventure stories. "Tornado Tom" follows the titular character as he battles Boss Wilkie's gang, who are attempting to monopolize the milk delivery business in town by intimidating drivers and raising prices. Tom engages the criminals in a fierce brawl at a milk truck, ultimately defeating them and reporting their scheme to authorities. The issue also includes several other short hero and adventure features, as indicated by the cover's table of contents listing "Kingdom of the Moon," "Ted Cameron and Volton," "King Anthony," "State Trooper," "Nick Nelson," "Red Knight," and "Mister 'O'" among its stories.
In the strange, volcanic land beyond the Antarctic ice, a race of tiny humans builds a giant animated doll to confront an unseen threat. The story follows their desperate creation, a towering figure of clay and fire, as it moves through their world—its purpose unknown, its power untested.
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Cyclone Comics was produced by Worth Carnahan operating through the Bilbara Publishing Company, with artist Charles Quinlan as his primary creative collaborator — a partnership later documented in an interview with Carnahan's daughter Cynthia Woody published in Comic Book Marketplace #71 under the title 'The Unknown Publisher: Worth Carnahan.' Quinlan, better known for his later work on Cat-Man Comics and the Holyoke period of Blue Beetle, brought a distinctive and inventive style to the book's superhero feature, Volton, while the series also drew on contributions from at least one other credited artist, C. Winter (also signed 'CW,' though the same 'WC' monogram throughout the run has caused attribution debates between Winter and Carnahan himself in GCD indexer notes). The series ran for five issues in 1940 before Carnahan ceased publishing, and has historically been misattributed to Holyoke solely because of Quinlan's later involvement with that company.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Cover-dated July 1940, published by Worth Carnahan's Bilbara Publishing Company; one of only five issues in the entire Cyclone Comics run.
- Continues the second chapter of Volton the Human Generator (alter ego: scientist Guy Newton), whose power derived from a device that harnessed static electricity in the human body — a concept created by Charles Quinlan, possibly in collaboration with Worth Carnahan.
- The Volton of this series is an entirely different character from the Volton who later appeared in Holyoke's Cat-Man Comics; only the name was carried over by Quinlan when he moved to that publisher.
- Also continues ongoing anthology strips introduced in issue #1: Tornado Tom (a tall-tale-influenced American folk hero), Mr. Q, Koroo the Black Lion, Sergeant 'Buzz' Sawyer State Trooper, and the interplanetary serial Kingdom of the Moon.
- The Red Knight of the First Crusade serial, introduced in issue #1, was also carried across the run, representing one of the earliest sustained historical-adventure strips in a Golden Age superhero anthology.
- Some interior art in the series is signed with a 'WC' monogram, attributable either to Worth Carnahan or to artist C. Winter (also initialed 'CW') — a creator-attribution ambiguity that GCD indexers have flagged but not definitively resolved.
- Material from the Cyclone Comics run was later reprinted in the Samuel E. Lowe & Co. Mighty Midget Comics series (circa 1943), confirming the strips had enough commercial appeal for a second life in digest format.
- The series is now in the public domain and is available for reading and download on Comic Book Plus and the Digital Comic Museum, making it accessible to researchers despite its extreme scarcity in original form.
Full credits
Reprints
Reprinted in Pat Wilton and His Flying Fortress [Mighty Midget Comic] #[nn] (1943), Tornado Tom [Mighty Midget Comic] #[nn] (1943)
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