Exciting Comics #31

Alex Schomburg's cover for this 1944 Pines publication captures the Black Terror — skull-and-crossbones emblem blazing on his chest — manning a machine gun atop a bullet-riddled Red Cross ambulance as an enemy aircraft bears down from the skies above. Inside the cab, a masked hero and a soldier brace against the onslaught, their tense expressions conveying the desperate stakes of the situation. With a story titled "Attack on the Red Cross," this wartime issue of Exciting Comics puts the "Nemesis of Crime" square in the middle of the global conflict, reflecting the patriotic urgency that made superhero comics such a vital part of the home front in 1944.