Weird Comics #20
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeWeird Comics #20 holds the distinction of being the final issue of Fox Feature Syndicate's long-running Golden Age anthology, closing out a twenty-issue run that spanned the full arc of early superhero comics from April 1940 to January 1942. Its cover — depicting Winston Churchill in direct physical peril alongside Hitler and Mussolini, with the Eagle swooping in to rescue him — represents a vivid snapshot of wartime comics propaganda at its most visceral. While Churchill had appeared on American comic covers before (True Comics #1 holds that distinction), this issue may mark his first depiction in a genuine action scene on a U.S. comic cover, making it a singular document of how the medium weaponized real-world geopolitics for wartime readers. The book also contains the origin story of the Rapier, a rare narrative milestone for a title that generally ran light on character backstory.
ComicBooks.com Value
Show all 19 grades ▾
Find on ebay
Read it digitally
Sell my copy
Have this issue — or a whole collection? Get a fair offer from us, skip the marketplace fees and the hassle.
We Buy Collections ▸History
Weird Comics was published by Fox Feature Syndicate — the volatile operation founded by Victor S. Fox, a former accountant who parlayed inside knowledge of DC's sales figures into his own publishing empire. After losing Eisner & Iger as a creative supplier following the 1939 Wonder Man copyright lawsuit, Fox built an in-house stable of creators working largely under pen names; historians have attributed work across the Weird Comics run to figures including Don Rico, Louis Cazeneuve, and Joe Simon, who served as Fox's editor. Fox Publications was forced into Chapter XI bankruptcy by creditors on March 6, 1942 — a financial collapse that was the direct cause of Weird Comics ending at issue #20, even though the final story in that very issue promised readers that the Eagle and Buddy would return in a next issue that never came.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Final issue of Weird Comics, which ran for 20 issues from April 1940 to January 1942 (Fox Feature Syndicate).
- Cover depicts Winston Churchill being rescued from Hitler and Mussolini by the Eagle and his sidekick Buddy — likely Churchill's first appearance in an action scene on an American comic book cover (True Comics #1 predates it as his first cover appearance overall).
- The cover artist is currently unidentified in comics scholarship.
- Contains the origin story of the Rapier, told in the book's final story — an unusual backstory installment for the anthology's later issues.
- The Eagle (Bill Powers), the series' late-run cover feature, had been rebooted as a patriotic, Nazi-fighting hero during Fox's push into war-themed titles; his anti-gravity serum and sidekick Buddy defined his stories throughout the run.
- The issue's ending blurb promised the Eagle and Buddy would appear in a subsequent issue — a continuation that never happened because Fox Publications filed for bankruptcy on March 6, 1942.
- Fox Feature Syndicate's circulation had declined roughly 66% between early 1940 and late 1941, making all late-run Weird Comics issues (particularly #11–20) products of a publisher in sharp commercial freefall.
- All Fox Weird Comics characters — including the Eagle, Dynamo, the Dart, Marga the Panther Woman, and the Black Rider — are now in the public domain, and several have been revisited by modern publishers.
Full credits
Reprints
Reprinted in Take That, Adolf!: The Fighting Comic Books of the Second World War #[nn] (2017)
Reviews
Reader reviews
No reader reviews yet.