Joker Comics #28
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeJoker Comics #28 (Summer 1947) marks the first appearance of Millie Collins — Millie the Model — within the pages of Joker Comics, the Timely anthology that had been the home of rival 'working girl' star Tessie the Typist since 1942. The arrival of Millie in this title signaled a generational shift in Timely's humor line: the two most important female characters in the publisher's pre-Marvel history now shared cover billing on the same book, a transition that would culminate in Millie eventually displacing Tessie as the dominant cover feature across Joker Comics, Gay Comics, and Comedy Comics by the late 1940s. Taken alongside Millie's own solo series (launched Winter 1945) and the broader Timely 'working girl' line, the issue stands as evidence of just how female-reader-focused Timely's output had become in the post-war years — a largely forgotten chapter in Marvel's publishing history. The three-feature anthology format assembled here, pairing Millie, Tessie, and Nellie the Nurse in one issue, became the template Joker Comics would follow through the rest of its run.
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Joker Comics launched in April 1942 as one of Timely's first dedicated humor anthologies, with Tessie the Typist — whose creators remain unidentified — as its anchor feature from issue #2 onward. Millie the Model had been created by writer-artist Ruth Atkinson (who also co-created Patsy Walker) and debuted in her own self-titled series with a Winter 1945 cover date; by the Summer 1947 cover date of issue #28, Millie had been running in her own book for roughly seven issues before being brought into Joker Comics as a crossover feature. The shift in Joker's lineup beginning with #28 — dropping older backup features such as Ruffy Ropes, Little Vinegar, and Daisy (all of which ended in the preceding issue #27) and replacing them with the trio of Millie, Tessie, and Nellie — reflected a deliberate editorial decision to consolidate Timely's 'career girl' stars into a single anthology, a strategy Timely's humor line would lean on heavily through the end of the Golden Age.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance of Millie the Model (Millie Collins) within Joker Comics — the character crosses over from her own self-titled series (launched Winter 1945) into Timely's flagship humor anthology.
- Issue #28 is the first Joker Comics issue to feature all three of Timely's major 'working girl' stars — Millie the Model, Tessie the Typist, and Nellie the Nurse — in the same anthology.
- The cover of #28 depicts Tessie, Millie, and a third female character, marking the first time Millie shares the Joker Comics cover with Tessie, who had been the title's sole cover star since issue #6 (1942).
- Basil Wolverton's Powerhouse Pepper feature, which had run continuously in Joker Comics from #1 through #27, does not appear in #28 — per Wikipedia's Powerhouse Pepper article, which lists his Joker appearances as #2–27 and then #29–31, skipping #28.
- Millie was created by Ruth Atkinson, one of the few prominent female writer-artists of the 1940s, who also co-created Patsy Walker; Millie's supporting cast — photographer Flicker Holbrook and agency head Larry Hanover — had both been introduced in Millie the Model #1.
- Tessie the Typist's supporting character Skidsy (Skidsy Spencer) appears in the Tessie feature; Nellie the Nurse's comedy-relief suitors Snazzy Wilks and Speed Murphy appear in the Nellie feature — all three casts are confirmed indexed characters in this issue.
- The issue runs 32 pages in full color at a cover price of ten cents, slightly shorter than some earlier issues of the title which ran 48 pages.
- Millie's introduction into Joker Comics was part of a broader post-war consolidation of Timely's humor line: Millie ultimately surpassed Tessie in prominence across Joker Comics, Gay Comics, and Comedy Comics by the end of the 1940s, and her solo title ran for an extraordinary 207 issues through December 1973.
Cast · 12 characters
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Full plot ⚠ may contain spoilers
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After Tessie angles her way into a new secretary job, she causes a lot of confusion when her boss asks her to get him a lawyer.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).
Key issues in Joker Comics
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