Whiz Comics

Whiz Comics was a monthly ongoing comic book anthology series, published by Fawcett Comics from 1940–1953, best known for introducing Captain Marvel.

Publication history

The first issue published of Whiz Comics was issue #2, published with a cover-date of Feb. 1940. Fawcett created two black-and-white ashcan #1 issues to solicit advertisers and to secure the copyrights to the material. The two copies were identical but carried different titles: Flash Comics and Thrill Comics; the Captain Marvel character was called "Captain Thunder" in a near-identical story. When Fawcett went to press with the magazine, the first issue was retitled as Whiz Comics, a name inspired by the company's bawdy humor magazine, Captain Billy's Whiz Bang.^[1] Further complicating matters, when they got to issue #3, Fawcett, through either mistake or intent, used the number twice. Thus, if viewed from the perspective of the second #3 (and, therefore, all the issues that followed it), Whiz #2 unofficially became Whiz #1.

The cover art for the first issue showed Captain Marvel throwing a vehicle at a wall, and was inspired by the cover of Action Comics #1, which shows Superman lifting a car. The whole first issue was written by Bill Parker who also wrote several other issues before Whiz became popular and others were hired to do the writing.

Recurring features

Whiz contained the following features depicting adventures of various superhero characters:

• Captain Marvel
• Ibis the Invincible
• Spy Smasher
• Golden Arrow
• Dan Dare
• Lance O'Casey
• Scoop Smith

References

Notes

Sources consulted

• 'Whiz Comics' at the Grand Comics Database
• 'Whiz Comics' at the Comic Book DB
• Will Eisner's "Shop Talk" book.