Hit Comics #5
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeHit Comics #5 is one of the most artistically distinguished covers of the entire Golden Age, featuring Lou Fine's dynamic illustration of the Red Bee wrestling a swordfish — a composition drawn directly from that issue's interior story, a relatively rare choice for Quality Comics covers at the time. Fine's cover work here is considered among his finest contributions to the medium; both Will Eisner and Jack Kirby publicly admired Fine's draftsmanship, and this issue stands as a prime exhibit of that talent. The issue also preserves the only period in which the Red Bee — an eccentric hero created by one of the very few women working in comics at the time — was prominently featured across consecutive cover appearances (issues #1, #5, and #7), cementing the character's oddly lasting cultural footprint despite modest in-story reception. As a densely packed Golden Age anthology, it offers a snapshot of Quality Comics at full creative stride, with the Iger studio's assembly-line production model deploying over a dozen contributors across genres spanning superhero, crime, sci-fi, humor, and adventure.
Hit Comics #5 is an anthology featuring multiple characters and stories. The Red Bee pursues criminals to the twentieth floor of a building, using his specially designed auto-gyro to reach high altitudes and apprehend his targets. The Strange Twins, operating as the Neon, engage in action across Arabian settings and navigate complex criminal schemes involving pursuit and combat. Jack and Jill encounter torture chambers and theatrical settings while escaping from Chinese antagonists, with Jack fleeing through a dressing room as he attempts to evade his captors.
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Hit Comics #5 was assembled through the S. M. Iger Studio's assembly-line production system, which divided scripting, penciling, inking, and lettering among separate specialists — a workflow Eisner and Iger pioneered and that became an industry standard. The issue was edited by S. M. Iger and published under the Comic Magazines Inc. indicia, the legal publishing entity behind the Quality Comics brand. The cover was painted by Lou Fine, who had recently become one of the most sought-after artists in the medium after Will Eisner departed the Eisner-Iger partnership to launch The Spirit in mid-1940, leaving Fine and others to carry Quality's visual identity. Toni Blum — who wrote the Red Bee under the pun pseudonym 'B. H. Apiary' (an apiary being a beehive) — was a rare female voice in an almost exclusively male industry and the only woman then on staff at Quality.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Cover date: November 1940; on-sale date: September 4, 1940 (confirmed via the Catalog of Copyright Entries).
- Cover art is by Lou Fine, depicting the Red Bee wrestling a swordfish — a scene taken directly from the issue's interior Red Bee story, titled 'Flatboat No. 96.'
- The Red Bee (Rick Raleigh), whose strip runs through Hit Comics #24 (October 1942), was created by writer Toni Blum and artist Charles Nicholas Wojtkoski, debuting in Hit Comics #1; this is his fifth appearance.
- The Red Bee's secret identity is Rick Raleigh, an assistant district attorney in Superior City, Oregon, who fights crime using trained bees (including a favorite named Michael, kept in his belt buckle) and a 'stinger gun' — no superpowers.
- Interior story credits across the issue include work by Nick Cardy, S. M. Iger, Alex Blum, Toni Blum, Maurice Gutwirth, John Celardo, Charles Nicholas, Charles Sultan, Klaus Nordling, Dan Zolnerowich, Bob Powell, and Lou Fine.
- The issue's Red Bee interior story is credited by the Grand Comics Database to Charles Nicholas Wojtkoski (under the pseudonym 'B. H. Apiary' for the script, attributed to Toni Blum).
- Hit Comics #5 is one of three early issues (along with #1 and #7) to feature the Red Bee on a Lou Fine cover, making it part of the most artistically admired run of covers in the series.
- Quality Comics (and thus Hit Comics) was acquired by DC Comics in 1956; the Red Bee character subsequently fell into public domain, and a legacy version — Jenna Raleigh, grandniece of Rick — debuted in Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters #5 (2007). The original Rick Raleigh Red Bee was retroactively incorporated into DC continuity via All-Star Squadron.
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Reprinted in Ace Comics Presents #4 (1987)
Key issues in Hit Comics
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