Exciting Comics #1
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeExciting Comics #1 (April 1940, Nedor/Better Publications) launched one of the Golden Age's most important superhero anthology titles, introducing The Mask, Jim Hatfield, Sgt. Bill King, and Dan Williams to newsstands in a single 68-page package — a bold opening move for publisher Ned Pines's comic-book division at a moment when the industry was still defining what the superhero anthology format could be. The series would go on to birth the Black Terror in issue #9, Nedor's flagship hero, whose success was directly responsible for converting the title to a monthly schedule and anchoring the entire Standard/Better/Nedor publishing line for the rest of the decade. All characters in the series eventually fell into the public domain, making Exciting Comics a wellspring for later revivals by AC Comics, Eclipse, Alan Moore's Terra Obscura, and Dynamite Entertainment's Project Superpowers — giving Golden Age scholarship a living laboratory that is still being mined today. The title thus represents both a snapshot of the earliest superhero boom and a lasting creative commons whose characters have never fully left the page.
Exciting Comics #1 is an anthology featuring multiple stories. One story follows the Ranger as he battles the Fake Padre and alien invaders called Joyians on another planet, working to rescue Joan and prevent an invasion of Earth. Another story involves a detective investigating the theft of a camera, identifying notorious crooks transporting stolen goods aboard a ship called the Elhonic, which is escorted by destroyers as it approaches the English coast during wartime.
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Exciting Comics was produced by Nedor Publications, one of two comic-book imprints controlled by pulp-magazine publisher Ned Pines through his parent organization variously called Standard Comics or Pines Publications — collectors and historians typically group the whole enterprise as 'Standard/Better/Nedor.' The debut issue shipped in April 1940, edited by Pines himself (credited as N. L. Pines in the indicia), and was assembled largely from house-staff talent including Raymond Thayer, Klaus Nordling, Max Plaisted, and Leonard Sansone. The creative infrastructure drew heavily on Pines's existing pulp-fiction operation, and the anthology format — featuring multiple genre strips under one cover — was a direct transplant of the pulp magazine model into comics form.
Trivia · 10 facts
- Exciting Comics #1 was published with a cover date of April 10, 1940, by Nedor Publications (a Ned Pines imprint), not in 1945 — see 'flagged' below for full explanation of the date discrepancy.
- The debut issue introduced The Mask, Jim Hatfield (Texas Ranger), Sgt. Bill King, and Dan Williams, making it the origin point for multiple new characters in a single package.
- Contributing artists on the first issue included Raymond Thayer, Klaus Nordling, L. North, Max Plaisted, Leonard Sansone, Ken Browne, Ray Lowry, and Sam Brant, with Ned Pines serving as editor.
- The series ran for 69 total issues, from 1940 through 1949, under publisher Ned Pines, with the indicia alternating between 'Nedor Publications' and 'Better Publications, Inc.' across the run — both were imprints of the same Standard Comics parent company.
- The Black Terror — created by writer Richard E. Hughes and artist Don Gabrielson — debuted in Exciting Comics #9 (January 1941) and became Nedor's most popular superhero, eventually headlining the title, a quarterly solo book, and the anthology title America's Best Comics simultaneously.
- The Black Terror's popularity was so commercially significant that Nedor upgraded Exciting Comics from irregular to monthly publication beginning with issue #11 (July 1941).
- Some Black Terror stories within the run were written by Patricia Highsmith, years before she became celebrated as the author of crime novels such as The Talented Mr. Ripley.
- Because Nedor/Better/Standard ceased publishing in the late 1940s–1950s and did not renew copyrights, all characters from Exciting Comics — including the Black Terror, The Mask, and later heroine Miss Masque (who debuted in issue #51, September 1946) — entered the public domain and have been revived by AC Comics, Eclipse Comics, Alan Moore (Terra Obscura), and Dynamite Entertainment (Project Superpowers), among others.
- PS Publishing released hardcover reprint collections of Exciting Comics in 2025 under their Golden Age Classics series, collecting the Black Terror stories from issues #9 through #44 across three volumes.
- Antarctic Press launched a new Exciting Comics revival series in 2019, using the title and public-domain characters as the basis for an ongoing anthology.
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