Hit Comics #10
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeHit Comics #10 holds a firm place in Golden Age history primarily as the earliest confirmed comic-book work by Reed Crandall, an artist who would go on to define the look of Quality's Blackhawk and later become one of EC Comics' most celebrated contributors. The issue also continues the run of the Old Witch — a horror-anthology hostess whose phantom-coach tale in this issue is now recognized as a direct structural forerunner of the EC horror-host format that would dominate the early 1950s; comic-book historian Alex Grand has pointed out the uncanny parallel between these Quality Old Witch stories and Graham Ingels' later work in Haunt of Fear. Together, those two elements — a major artist's debut and a proto-EC horror framework — make #10 a quietly consequential artifact of the medium's development.
An anthology issue featuring multiple stories, prominently including a Red Bee adventure in which the hero pursues a villain through underground passages and later engages in aquatic combat with enemies near a ship called the Norwick. Another story involves a man named Carlos and a boat filled with cargo kegs; after G-5 thanks a peasant and disappears, the ship is quickly loaded at a wharf, pushed into the sea with red lantern robes, and Carlos returns to his boat where he discovers hidden kegs and confronts a spy about their contents.
Lanny Cole accuses Morgan and his gang of stealing his songs, leading to a dramatic courtroom showdown where evidence proves their plagiarism. With the verdict delivered and the song robbers taken into custody, Lanny finds himself facing new trouble as the story ends on a cliffhanger involving Betty.
In a whimsical twist, Dan Tootin finds himself shrunk into the microscopic world, where he confronts a colony of cold germs who claim to be victims of overzealous hygiene. As he tries to reason with them, the germs retort that they're the ones suffering—persecuted by Listerine, iodine, and Flit—while Dan realizes too late that he's the one now trapped.
In a remote Tibetan sanctuary, the Strange Twins infiltrate the lair of Sir Vivian Ashton, the self-proclaimed "His Lordship," a jewel thief with a penchant for occult secrets. While one twin feigns hospitality, the other escapes capture and devises a clever ruse to turn Ashton’s superstitious guards against him.
In a shadowy dockside confrontation, the Red Bee tracks a mysterious figure known as Shanghai Joe, a brawny seaman with ties to a smuggling operation. As the Red Bee uncovers a network of pirates using a freighter bound for China to funnel supplies to Japan, he races to stop them before the cargo is lost—leading to a high-stakes showdown at sea.
A young traveler named Ralph Thorne, haunted by a mysterious melody from a storm-wracked island, ventures there alone and stumbles upon a ghostly figure who claims to be a spirit from the future. The ghost reveals a dire warning about a murder about to happen on the mainland and guides Ralph back to prevent it, leading to a tense confrontation with a violent assailant. As the mystery unfolds, Ralph finds himself caught in a strange, time-bending chain of events that defies understanding.
In a wartime America rife with political intrigue, Don Glory uncovers a conspiracy when he learns that the wealthy munitions manufacturer Malcolm Lyor is secretly manipulating public opinion to push the nation into war for profit. As Don investigates Lyor’s schemes, he intervenes to stop a series of threats and assaults on peace-minded senators, culminating in a dramatic confrontation that exposes Lyor’s true motives.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
Hit Comics was Quality Comics' sprawling anthology title, packaged largely through the Eisner & Iger studio under editor S.M. Iger and running from July 1940 to July 1950 across 65 issues. Issue #10, cover-dated April 1941 and released in early February of that year, was one of the densest in the series, drawing on an unusually large roster of contributors that included Lou Fine (cover), Jack Cole, Nick Cardy, Klaus Nordling, John Celardo, Henry Kiefer, Alex Blum, Bob Powell, and Reed Crandall. Crandall had joined the Eisner-Iger shop after graduating from the Cleveland School of Art and moving to New York, where Quality publisher Everett 'Busy' Arnold was beginning to notice his fine-lined draftsmanship; this issue marks his first credited interior comics work.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published April 1941 (on-sale date approximately February 5, 1941) by Quality Comics; 68 pages at a cover price of ten cents.
- First Reed Crandall interior comic-book art — Crandall would later become one of Quality's signature artists on Blackhawk and a celebrated contributor to EC Comics in the 1950s.
- Cover art by Lou Fine, one of the most admired Golden Age cover artists, whose work on Hit Comics is widely cited as among his finest; Will Eisner called Fine 'the epitome of the honest draftsman' and Joe Simon credited Fine as Jack Kirby's favorite artist.
- Contains an Old Witch horror-anthology installment in which she narrates the myth of the Lorelei song — part of a running horror-host series (beginning in Hit Comics #1) that researchers identify as a structural precursor to EC Comics' horror-host format.
- The Old Witch feature in this series is attributed to the pen name 'Pierre Winter,' believed by comics historians to be Lou Fine.
- Stories include 'Hercules Goes Hollywood' (art by John Celardo), 'The Song Robbers' starring Betty Bates (art by Nick Cardy under the pseudonym Lincoln Ross), a Dan Tootin humor page by Jack Cole (credited as Ralph Johns), and 'Fiesta of Spies' starring Bob and Swab by Klaus Nordling.
- Jack Cole also contributes the one-page 'Cold Germs' story starring Dan Tootin, working here under a pseudonym — an example of the widespread practice of pen-name credits throughout Golden Age Quality books.
- Hit Comics as a series was later acquired by DC Comics along with all Quality Comics properties, though no issue was ever published under the Hit Comics name after 1950.
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