More Fun Comics #13
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeMore Fun Comics #13 (September 1936) sits at a pivotal juncture in the prehistory of the American superhero: it is the penultimate chapter of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's early Doctor Occult run in the series, immediately preceding the landmark issue #14 in which Occult would don a caped costume and origin story widely regarded as the earliest superhero origin published in a modern-format comic book. As part of the foundational anthology that the DC Database describes as having introduced 'several longstanding Golden Age characters,' this issue also carries the symbolic distinction of being designated 'Volume 2, Issue 1' — a fresh internal numbering that signals the publisher's ambition to relaunch and stabilize a series that was still finding its commercial footing in the mid-Depression years. Its anthology of serialized genres — spy fiction, science-fiction adventure, Western, and occult detective — captures the experimental spirit of a medium still inventing its own conventions, before the superhero had crystallized as the dominant form.
More Fun Comics #13 is an anthology featuring multiple stories. "Just Suppose" by H.C. and Adkieffer presents a historical speculative narrative about what would have happened if Hannibal had not delayed his advance on Rome after his victory at Cannae, exploring how Roman civilization might have developed differently under Carthaginian rule. "In the Wake of the Wander" by Macterus follows an adventure involving prisoners being transported, with a party of characters attempting a rescue at a native village, encountering conflict and danger in the process. The issue also includes reader-submitted content and contest results from the More Fun Club, with prize winners announced for a "Write a Letter" contest.
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The issue was published by National Allied Publications — the company Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson had founded in 1935, which would eventually become DC Comics — at a moment of acute financial stress for the young firm. Wheeler-Nicholson himself scripted several of the anthology's serials, including installments of 'Jack Woods,' while the cover was produced by Vincent (Vin) Sullivan, one of the publisher's most dependable early artists and editors. Siegel and Shuster, working under their house pseudonyms 'Leger and Reuths,' contributed the Doctor Occult episode — part of a continuous run they maintained from the title's predecessor, New Fun Comics #6 (October 1935), through issue #32 (June 1938). The internal renumbering that makes #13 simultaneously 'Vol. 2, #1' reflects the ongoing editorial instability of Wheeler-Nicholson's operation in the year before his creditors forced him out of the company.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published September 1936 by National Allied Publications (predecessor to DC Comics), cover-dated and internally designated 'Volume 2, Issue 1' — making #13 the start of a new volume sequence within the overall series run.
- Cover art by Vincent (Vin) Sullivan, one of the company's primary early cover artists and a key editorial figure at National Allied Publications.
- Contains a Doctor Occult episode scripted by Jerry Siegel (under the pseudonym 'Leger') and drawn by Joe Shuster (as 'Reuths') — part of their continuous Doctor Occult run that began in New Fun Comics #6 (October 1935) and ran through More Fun Comics #32 (June 1938).
- This Doctor Occult chapter is the direct setup story leading into More Fun Comics #14, the issue in which the character would first appear in a caped costume and in color — an appearance some collectors and historians regard as the earliest superhero origin story in a modern-format comic book.
- Concludes the 13-part 'Gavonian Affair' arc of 'Sandra of the Secret Service' (script and art by W. C. Brigham), one of comics' earliest recurring female secret-agent protagonists, scripted across the broader series by publisher Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson.
- Also features 'Fang Gow of China, Part 13' (the Barry O'Neill serial by Leo O'Mealia), 'Prince of Patrania, Part 13' (by Vincent Sullivan), 'Damsel in Distress, Part 10' (Jack Woods, script by Wheeler-Nicholson), and the science-fiction strip 'The Flagon and the Dragon' featuring Don Drake on the Planet Saro by Ken Fitch.
- Includes a biography and photograph feature on film star Fred Astaire — an editorial practice of mixing celebrity journalism with fiction serials, characteristic of this transitional era when comic books were still mimicking the variety-magazine format.
- Part of the More Fun Comics series, which Wikipedia identifies as 'the first American comic book series to feature solely original material rather than reprints of newspaper comic strips' — a distinction that begins with its 1935 predecessor New Fun Comics #1.
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