Joe Palooka Comics #61

Ham Fisher's Joe Palooka is front and center on this October 1951 Harvey Comics cover, delivering a haymaker to a stripe-shirted thug atop a speeding locomotive while a second kidnapper hoists a struggling young girl — the cover's urgent question, "How Will Joe Stop the Kidnappers?", says it all. The action spills right to the edge of the moving train car, with smoke billowing from the engine and tension crackling across every panel of Fisher's energetic linework. Billed as "Heroic Rescue," this issue promises exactly the kind of straightforward, hard-punching adventure that made the "Champ of Comics" a staple of early 1950s newsstands.