Feature Comics #23
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeFeature Comics #23 (August 1939, Quality Comics) marks the comic book debut of Charlie Chan and his eldest son, Number One Son (Lee Chan), bringing one of the most recognizable detective figures in American popular culture into the nascent Golden Age comic book format for the first time. The issue arrived at the height of Chan's cross-media celebrity — already a fixture of bestselling novels, blockbuster films, and a nationally syndicated newspaper strip — making his translation to comics a culturally significant moment in the medium's early history. Chan stood apart from the hard-boiled, gun-toting detectives dominating pulp culture of the era; the McNaught Syndicate's own promotional copy explicitly marketed him as a detective who solved cases through intellect and observation rather than violence, positioning the strip as a conscious alternative to the Dick Tracy school of action-first storytelling. As one of the earliest examples of an Asian protagonist headlining a mainstream American comic book feature — however complicated the character's cultural legacy is — the issue holds a distinct place in discussions of representation in Golden Age comics.
"Introducing Charlie Chan" in Feature Comics #23 (1939) presents a clever, early mystery where a determined detective, Brian, tries to crack a case with the help of a mysterious ally known only as the Clock—though his partner-in-crime-fighting, Inspector Kane, remains skeptical of Brian’s methods. Written and illustrated by George Brenner, with a sharp, period-accurate cover by Ed Cronin, this issue captures the gritty charm of 1930s crime pulp with a touch of wry humor and a nod to the era’s fascination with undercover operatives.
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The Charlie Chan newspaper strip launched on October 31, 1938, in the Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), distributed by the McNaught Syndicate; the ten-page story in Feature Comics #23 reprinted daily strips from October 31 through December 17, 1938, cut apart and reformatted to fit the comic book page. The strip was the first solo cartooning assignment for Alfred Andriola, who had previously served as an assistant to Milton Caniff, working on Terry and the Pirates and Scorchy Smith — an apprenticeship that stamped the Charlie Chan strip with Caniff's influence in cinematic panel composition and a cast of compelling supporting characters. Andriola was selected by the McNaught Syndicate from among roughly two dozen artist submissions to adapt the character created by novelist Earl Derr Biggers, with rights controlled by Biggers' widow. Feature Comics itself had only recently been retitled from Feature Funnies — a change Quality made in early 1939 — continuing the numbering from issue #21 onward, so issue #23 fell very early in the reconstituted title's run, at a moment when the anthology still relied heavily on newspaper strip reprints alongside original material.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First comic book appearance of Charlie Chan, debuting in the ten-page lead story titled 'Introducing Charlie Chan,' script and art by Alfred Andriola.
- First comic book appearance of Number One Son (Lee Chan), who appears alongside his father as a secondary character providing comic relief — a role pre-announced in McNaught Syndicate promotional copy for the newspaper strip.
- The story is a reprint of Andriola's daily newspaper strip, rearranged from strips originally published October 31–December 17, 1938; the DC Database notes the layout implies five daily strips per page, meaning the original newspaper run of this ten-page story took approximately nine to ten weeks.
- Cover date is August 1939; published by Quality Comics as part of their flagship anthology title Feature Comics, which had been retitled from Feature Funnies beginning with issue #21 earlier that year.
- Cover art is by Ed Cronin; the story itself is entirely scripted and drawn by Alfred Andriola, a former assistant to Milton Caniff (Terry and the Pirates, Scorchy Smith) — this was his first major syndicated cartooning assignment.
- The opening story's plot involves British intelligence recruiting Chan to locate a missing chemist, Peter Charing, who had developed a technology called 'Dark Light' capable of photographing objects through opaque screens.
- Charlie Chan went on to appear in eight additional issues of Feature Comics (through at least issue #31), before the newspaper strip itself was cancelled in May 1942 following the attack on Pearl Harbor.
- Charlie Chan's comic book history extended well beyond this issue: Joe Simon and Jack Kirby later created a standalone Prize Comics Charlie Chan series beginning in 1948; DC Comics published a TV tie-in series in 1958; and the Library of American Comics reprinted the first year of Andriola's newspaper strip in their LoAC Essentials line in 2019.
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Brian attempts to work his way into Inspector Kane's latest case, but Kane, who really doesn't mind help, merely considers O'Brien nothing more than his golfing buddy, leaving Brian to his undercover devices as the Clock in rounding up Butch and Squint.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).
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