Lightning Comics #6
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeLightning Comics v1 #6 (cover-dated April 1941) earns its place in Golden Age history primarily as the debut of Doctor Nemesis — Dr. Jim Bradley, a hospital intern who arms himself with a truth-serum hypodermic and a surgical mask to fight crime. That character, lapsed into the public domain after Ace Magazines folded, was revived by Marvel's Roy Thomas in the 1990s and again reimagined as a mutant super-scientist fully integrated into X-Men continuity by Matt Fraction and Kieron Gillen in 2009, giving this obscure Ace anthology an unexpectedly long downstream legacy. The issue also showcases the full bench of Ace's Golden Age stable — Flash Lightning, The Raven, Hap Hazard, Marvo the Magician, and Whiz Wilson — in a single 68-page package that illustrates how second-tier wartime publishers tried to hold readers with variety anthologies rather than single-hero dominance. Doctor Nemesis's pulp-inflected concept of a medically trained vigilante who weaponizes science rather than super-powers stands as a small but genuine formal experiment within the superhero genre.
In "Lash Lightning Battles the Eel!!," the masked hero Lash Lightning faces off against the sinister Professor Aqua, a man transformed by bitterness into the criminal guise of the Eel. Written by Abner Sundell and brought to life with dynamic art by Jim Mooney—both in pencils and inks—this 1942 issue delivers a classic pulp clash of hero and villain, all rendered in the bold, energetic style of the era. The cover, also by Mooney, captures the electric tension of their confrontation.
In "Lash Lightning Battles the Eel!!" from Lightning Comics #6 (1942), the circus-born Professor Aqua—reviled for his appearance and reduced to a sideshow spectacle—transforms his bitterness into a criminal crusade as the Eel. Now wielding his aquatic mastery and cunning, he sets his sights on Lash Lightning, plunging the city into chaos as the hero must confront a foe born from the very prejudice that shaped him.
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Ace Magazines, founded and run by Aaron A. Wyn and his wife Rose Wyn, had been publishing pulp fiction since 1928 before entering comics in 1940; Lightning Comics itself was a retitling of their earlier Sure-Fire Comics, rebranded to capitalize on the popularity of the Flash Lightning character. The issue's Flash Lightning story was drawn by Jim Mooney — then in the first year of his professional comics career after arriving in New York City in 1940 and working briefly through the Eisner-Iger shop — while the Doctor Nemesis debut story was handled by Harry Anderson, a prolific but lower-profile Golden Age journeyman; a credit to writer Harry Sahle (uncredited in the original) has been noted in at least one secondary source but is not corroborated by the Grand Comics Database, which leaves the scripter unconfirmed. The issue's Doctor Nemesis story ended with a direct reader-poll panel asking whether audiences wanted more Rx Doctor Nemesis installments in the title, a period editorial practice that underscores just how tentative Ace was about committing to the character.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Cover date: April 1941; on-sale date recorded in the U.S. Copyright Office Catalog of Copyright Entries, Part 2, Periodicals, 1941 (copyright registration B 492271). Note: the user query cites '1942,' which likely reflects the series' overall 1940–1942 run or a cataloguing shorthand — the GCD indexes this issue as v1#6, April 1941.
- First appearance of Doctor Nemesis (Dr. Jim Bradley), a hospital intern who fights crime using a truth serum and a hypodermic gun while disguised with a surgical mask — the character's feature logo in this issue reads 'Rx Doctor Nemesis.'
- Doctor Nemesis lapsed into the public domain after Ace ceased publishing; Roy Thomas later incorporated him into the Marvel Universe (first as 'Doctor Death' in a 1993 Invaders miniseries), and he was fully reimagined as an X-Men-affiliated mutant scientist in Uncanny X-Men #512 (2009) by Matt Fraction and Kieron Gillen.
- Jim Mooney — later celebrated for his long run on Supergirl at DC — drew the Flash Lightning story; Mooney signed his artwork in three separate locations within that single story, a documented quirk noted by GCD indexers.
- The issue's roster runs six strips: Flash Lightning (here still called 'Flash' rather than 'Lash,' a name change that would come in v2#2 to avoid confusion with DC's The Flash), The Raven (Detective Sergeant Danny Dartin), Doctor Nemesis, Hap Hazard, Marvo the Magician, and Whiz Wilson.
- Flash Lightning's origin, as recapped in this issue's opening caption, traces to a mystic Egyptian encounter in which explorer Robert Morgan is granted electrical powers by 'the Old Man of the Pyramids'; the character's strip ran through all 14 issues of Sure-Fire/Lightning Comics and continued into Four Favorites.
- The Raven (Danny Dartin) is identified in this issue as a character derived from the Ace pulp property Moon Man — an early example of a publisher cross-pollinating its pulp and comics lines.
- The series ran bi-monthly and each issue comprised 68 pages; Lightning Comics concluded with v3#1 (June 1942), after which Lash Lightning and several other characters migrated to the Ace anthology title Four Favorites.
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