More Fun Comics #10
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeMore Fun Comics #10 (May 1936) marks the final chapter of 'Henri Duval of France, Famed Soldier of Fortune,' closing the swashbuckling serial that — alongside Doctor Occult — represented Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's very first published comic-book work, making this issue the bookend to a historically pivotal debut. Both features had launched together in New Fun Comics #6 (Oct. 1935), meaning this issue captures the full arc of one of the two strips that introduced the future Superman creators to the medium. It also continues the ongoing Doctor Occult strip during the earliest, black-and-white phase of that feature — the serial adventures of what many historians consider the first recurring superhero figure in DC's lineage. As only the second issue published at the new standard comic-book trim size (established with #9), #10 sits at a moment of rapid physical and editorial transformation for what would become DC Comics.
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Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, founder of National Allied Publications, conceived 'Henri Duval of France, Famed Soldier of Fortune' as a Douglas Fairbanks-inspired swashbuckler and commissioned Siegel and Shuster to execute it after accepting their submissions in a letter dated June 6, 1935. Both Henri Duval and Doctor Occult debuted in New Fun Comics #6 (Oct. 1935) — the last issue under the tabloid-format New Fun banner — with Siegel and Shuster credited under the pseudonym 'Leger and Reuths' on the Occult strip to disguise the fact that the same two creators were producing multiple features for the same issue. Siegel and Shuster handled the first installments of Henri Duval before the strip was handed off, though they remained with Doctor Occult; the series wound down by the time More Fun #10 reached newsstands, with the format having already transitioned to standard comic-book size with the prior issue.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Cover date: May 1936; published by National Allied Publications (the company that would become DC Comics).
- Henri Duval's final published appearance: the swashbuckling musketeer serial 'Henri Duval of France, Famed Soldier of Fortune,' created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, ends with this issue after debuting in New Fun Comics #6 (Oct. 1935).
- Doctor Occult continues his ongoing strip in this issue; the installments in More Fun #10 through #12 were printed in black-and-white rather than color.
- Both Henri Duval and Doctor Occult were created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster — the future creators of Superman — making these strips part of that team's earliest professional comic-book output.
- When they appeared together in New Fun #6, Henri Duval and Doctor Occult constituted the comic-book debut of Siegel and Shuster; Doctor Occult was bylined 'Leger and Reuths,' partial anagrams of their surnames, to mask the fact that one duo was producing two features in the same magazine.
- Henri Duval was conceived as a Douglas Fairbanks-style royalist swordsman set in historical France, inspired by the Three Musketeers tradition; the character has not had a significant revival in DC continuity.
- Doctor Occult is recognized as the earliest recurring, originally created character still used in the DC Universe; his strip ran in the title through More Fun Comics #32 (June 1938), the same cover month that Superman debuted in Action Comics #1.
- More Fun Comics #10 is only the second issue published at the new standard (approximately 8″ × 10″) comic-book trim size, which the series adopted with #9 (March 1936), marking the anthology's physical maturation into the format that would define the American comic book.
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Reprinted in Cavalier Comics #2 (1945), DC Comics Before Superman: Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson's Pulp Comics #[nn] (2018)
Key issues in More Fun Comics
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