Joe Palooka Comics #16

History

Harvey Publications had held the Joe Palooka comic book license since 1945 — making it the first newspaper comic strip licensed by Harvey — with Ham Fisher retaining creative oversight and receiving a cover credit throughout the run. By the time #16 went to press in early 1948, the production workflow involved Fisher alongside a stable of studio hands: the interior credits for adjacent issues name Kirk Stiles, Al Zere, Vic Herman, and Bob Powell as contributing artists, reflecting the collaborative ghost-shop model Fisher had operated since the mid-1930s when he first brought on assistants including a young Al Capp. The Grand Comics Database notes that future Marvel artist Don Heck worked in Harvey's production department during 1949–1952 cutting and pasting strip art for comic-book reformatting, illustrating how deeply the series was embedded in the broader Golden Age production ecosystem.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Published January 1948 by Harvey Publications (Joe Palooka Comics, 1945 series, #16); cover price 10 cents, 48 pages, full color.
• First comic book appearance of Humphrey Pennyworth, introduced in the story 'Introducing Humphrey' — Knobby Walsh discovers the pear-shaped, super-strong country bumpkin when his car breaks down in West Wokkington Falls.
• Humphrey is depicted as a comedic foil with near-invulnerability and exceptional physical strength, one of the few characters who can regularly match Joe Palooka in a fight.
• The issue also features Little Max backup stories ('Little Max Goes Into Business') and two prose adventures of the early female superhero Black Cat — a regular format feature of the Harvey Palooka books.
• A science-fiction backup story, 'Atoma,' appears in this issue, in which a 20th-century boy named Dusty travels 500 years into the future and encounters a leisure-based society ruled by fascist tyrants.
• Ham Fisher is credited on the cover; interior stories and art are attributed to Fisher alongside Kirk Stiles, Al Zere, Vic Herman, and Bob Powell.
• Content from this issue was reprinted in at least three later publications: Joe Palooka #116 (Harvey, April 1957), Joe Palooka #117 (Harvey), and a Magazine Management Australian edition (#33, 1952 series).
• Humphrey Pennyworth went on to receive his own Harvey spin-off series, Humphrey Comics, launched in 1948 — a direct consequence of the character's introduction in this issue and the surrounding period.

Full credits