Zip Comics #1
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeZip Comics #1 (February 1940) is the flagship debut issue of MLJ Magazines' third major anthology title, arriving just one month after Pep Comics #1 and cementing MLJ as one of the most prolific superhero publishers of the early Golden Age. It introduced Steel Sterling — billed as 'the Man of Steel' — making it a historically pointed artifact: Sterling carried that sobriquet years before DC's Superman formally adopted it, and the term would not be trademarked by DC until 1986. The issue also launched a densely packed roster of characters spanning superhero, jungle, adventure, mystery, and magic genres that collectively illustrated how elastic the nascent superhero anthology format already was in early 1940. As the cornerstone issue of a series that ran 47 issues and nurtured characters later revived under the Red Circle and Impact Comics imprints, it stands as a foundational document of the publisher that would eventually become Archie Comics.
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Zip Comics was MLJ Magazines' fourth anthology title, launched in February 1940 — just one month after Pep Comics debuted The Shield — as part of the company's aggressive expansion of its superhero line alongside Blue Ribbon Comics and Top-Notch Comics. The series was edited by Harry Shorten, with the lead feature written by Abner Sundell and drawn by Charles Biro, who also provided the cover; Biro handled both interior art and covers for the first fifteen issues before Irv Novick took over the Steel Sterling strip from issue #18 onward. The supporting strips drew on a pool of talented Golden Age freelancers including Mort Meskin (Captain Valor), Lin Streeter (Kalthar), and Ed Wexler (Zambini), reflecting the collaborative, shop-style production common to MLJ's output of the period.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance of Steel Sterling (real name John Sterling), created by writer Abner Sundell and artist Charles Biro; Sterling becomes superpowered by coating himself with a secret formula and immersing himself in a vat of molten metal, gaining strength, magnetism, invulnerability, and flight.
- Steel Sterling was subtitled 'the Man of Steel' from his first appearance — a sobriquet not formally associated with DC's Superman until years after Zip Comics ended publication in 1944, and not trademarked by DC until 1986.
- First appearance of the Scarlet Avenger (secret identity: Jim Kendall), a pulp-influenced masked crime-fighter created by editor Harry Shorten and artist Irv Novick; the character ran through issue #17 before being replaced by the teen-humor strip Wilbur.
- First appearance of Zambini the Miracle Man (called 'The Miracle Man, Zambini the Magician' in this issue only), a costumed magician drawn by Ed Wexler who ran in the series through issue #35.
- First appearance of Captain Valor, drawn by Mort Meskin, depicted as a hard-bitten adventurer who resigns his U.S. Marine Corps commission to seek danger in the Far East; the strip ran through issue #26.
- First appearance of Kalthar the Giant Man ('King of the Jungle'), a Tarzan-archetype strip by Lin Streeter that ran through issue #9, and Mr. Satan (secret identity: Dudley Bradshaw), an international detective and soldier of fortune, also running through issue #9.
- The issue was a 68-page, full-color anthology priced at ten cents, featuring seven to eight story strips — the standard format for the first 37 issues of the series — with the cover by Charles Biro.
- A public-domain reprint of Zip Comics #1 has been published in print (ISBN 9781517357702) and the issue is freely available via Internet Archive, giving modern readers direct access to the original stories.
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John Sterling completes the chemical formula which will completely protect him from the underworld's bullets, unlike his murdered father who was killed by a group of ruthless gangsters. John bathes himself in the formula, which has been poured into a cauldron of molten steel, dives in the cauldron, and emerges as a man with the resistance, magnetism and strength of steel.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).
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