Enjoy the 4th of July!

The patriotic cover from his final issue (Fighting Yank #29)

FREE 4th of July Bonus: 

The Lead Story from that issue:

"Fireworks on the Fourth"

AND Two MORE Fighting Yank Tales!

Flag-Draped Heroes Art Gallery

On the day before July 4th, here's some Patriotic Heroes...

Captain V

The Conqueror

Captain Courageous

Super-American

American Crusader

American Eagle

V-Man

U.S. Jones

The Flag

and, of course...

Uncle Sam, himself!

Design of the Week--Air Races!

Each week, we post a limited-edition design, to be sold for exactly 7 days, then replaced with another!
This week..a retro-kool design for a poster for Air Races!
From the early 1900s to the 1950s, organized airplane racing was as popular as NASCAR is today!
There was even a NASCAR-like organization, National Air Races (NAR), who arranged and promoted the events!
Each year, the major race of the season took place around Labor Day, each time in a different city.
This particular poster is from the 1930 (exactly 80 years ago) Chicago event at Curtis Reynolds Airport!
Available on a variety of goodies from mugs to t-shirts to totes, it'd make a great gift for someone into retro graphics, vintage aircraft, racing, or Illinois or Chicago residents to remember a long-forgotten part of their history!

Trivia: the airport became part of Naval Air Station: Glenview, Illinois during World War II, was decommissioned in the 1990s and sold for commercial and residential redevelopment in 1995.

The Wonder Woman NEW Costume Controversy!

Remember when Wonder Woman looked like THIS?

(Wonder Woman #178-204, 1968-72)

Well, most people picture her like THIS!

As of now, she looks like THIS!

Will this "new look" last as long as the previous major makeover?

(About 24 issues/4 years)

Or will we see this costume...

(worn by the one, true, Wonder Woman, Lynda Carter)

back within two years?

Tune in and see!

BONUS:
An AMAZING look at Wonder Woman's costumes including video games, live-action and animation!

FunnyMan; the OTHER Hero from the Creators of Superman!

 

What do you do after you've created the ULTIMATE comics character...and lost the rights to him?
Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster faced that problem in 1947!
When they sued DC Comics (then National Periodicals Publications), they lost all the assignments (both individually and as a team) they were working on.
To pay the bills, they solicited work from other comics companies both on existing characters and, in one case, creating a NEW character...FunnyMan for Magazine Enterprises!

FunnyMan was Larry Davis, a comedian looking for a shtick.
His girlfriend / agent June suggested a publicity stunt with Larry dressing in his trademark clown outfit, "accidentally" coming upon a (staged with actors) "crime scene" and disarming and capturing the "criminals" using his props, all the while being photographed by conveniently-placed cameramen.
As you might have guessed, Larry stumbled on a real crime in progress, and thinking it was the stunt, captured a real criminal!
When he discovered he had captured an actual criminal, Larry decided to continue battling crime, using mocking humor and embarrassing tricks to punish evildoers!

Trivia:
The editor at Magazine Enterprises who bought FunnyMan was Vin Sullivan, who also bought Superman from Siegel & Shuster when he was an editor at National Periodical Publications!
Larry Davis was based on movie / radio comedian Danny Kaye!

It was a clever idea, and pretty well executed.
Unfortunately, it didn't catch on.
The book only lasted six issues.
There was also a short-lived newspaper strip.
After FunnyMan failed and Siegel & Shuster lost their lawsuit, they went their separate ways.

But...FunnyMan has NOT been forgotten!
There's a NEW book about the character--Siegel & Shuster's Funnyman: the First Jewish Superhero from the Creators of Superman by Thomas Andrae and Mel Gordon!

Besides the actual comic stories, there's a wealth of background info about Siegel & Shuster, the Danny Kaye connection, as well as the cultural influences that inspired the character!

Plus: we've brought FunnyMan back with a line of kool kollectibles (including mugs, t-shirts, iPad bags, etc.) in our Lost Heroes of the Golden Age of Comics™ collection!

So why not get a gift set of the new book and one of our collectibles for the pop culture aficionado in your life?
What could it hurt? ;-)

Bonus: a cool review of the new book at Publishers Weekly.
Extra FREE Bonus: the 6-issue FunnyMan run in PDF form!