Speed Comics #13
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeSpeed Comics #13 (May 1941) is one of the most character-dense single issues of the early Golden Age, simultaneously debuting Captain Freedom, Pat Parker (War Nurse), and the seed of what would become the Girl Commandos — three characters who would anchor Harvey's wartime superhero line for the rest of the decade. Captain Freedom in particular became a fixture of the title through its final issue, making #13 the cornerstone of Harvey's entire patriotic-hero output. The issue also stands as a vivid cultural artifact: published roughly eight months before Pearl Harbor and days before FDR's declaration of a national emergency, its themes of espionage, Axis sabotage, and Pan-American solidarity reflect exactly what American readers were anxious about in the spring of 1941. For comics history, Pat Parker is additionally notable as a rare female lead of the era whose adventures were largely drawn by women artists.
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Speed Comics had originally been published by a small outfit before landing briefly in the hands of Leo Greenwald, a figure described by Joe Simon as a dilettante with ties to PDC distribution. Greenwald shepherded the title for only two issues — #12 and #13 — before Alfred Harvey, who had previously worked at Victor Fox's Fox Feature Syndicate, acquired it and made it the flagship of his newly formed publishing house. It was therefore under Greenwald's brief stewardship, not Harvey's, that Captain Freedom was actually created and introduced in #13 — likely as a quick-turnaround response to the wave of patriotic heroes following Captain America's debut two months earlier in March 1941. Harvey then inherited the character and ran with him.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance of Captain Freedom (Don Wright), Harvey's lead patriotic superhero, who went on to appear in every issue of Speed Comics through its cancellation with #44 (January 1947).
- First appearance of Pat Parker, War Nurse — a British nurse who debuted as a non-powered action heroine before evolving into the costumed War Nurse and, later, the founding leader of the Girl Commandos.
- Earliest origin point of the Girl Commandos team concept: Pat Parker's trajectory from #13 forward culminates in the all-female Allied fighting unit that carried its own feature through Speed Comics #13–42 and All-New Comics #11.
- Captain Freedom was credited to the pseudonym 'Franklin Flagg'; the collaborating artist is identified in some sources as Arthur Cazeneuve, though the true writer behind 'Flagg' remains unidentified.
- Pat Parker's stories from their debut are believed to have been primarily drawn by women creators, including Jill Elgin — an unusual distinction for Golden Age comics production.
- The issue was published in May 1941, approximately eight months before the Pearl Harbor attack and just days before FDR's May 27, 1941 declaration of a national emergency, making its espionage-and-sabotage stories unusually timely.
- The issue also features The Hand — a bizarre crime-fighting giant disembodied hand — and a Wasp story set in Havana involving the theft of a Pan-American Defense Treaty, both reflecting pre-war anxieties about Axis infiltration of the Western Hemisphere.
- Retro Comic Reprints (publisher) has collected all Pat Parker and Girl Commandos material beginning with Speed Comics #13 in a dedicated trade paperback, making this issue the anchor of that reprint series.
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Reprints
Reprinted in Super Weird Heroes #[nn] (2016), The Golden Age #1 (2025)
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