Dr. Phillip Solar, created by Paul S. Newman and Matt Murphy – transformed by a nuclear accident from a physicist into a being with godlike powers, Solar hid his secret within a bright red superhero outfit and billed himself as “The Man of the Atom” in an early ‘60s series whose stiff scripting and art [...]

Jon, The Viking Prince, created by Robert Kanigher and Joe Kubert – a strapping young amnesiac fished out of the sea, Jon spent much of his four-year career searching for his true identity while battling pirates, other Vikings and the odd dragon; near the end of his late-‘50s run he regained his memory and his [...]

Dan Dare, created by Frank Hampson – making his debut in the British Eagle weekly in 1950, the “Pilot of the Future” (that particular future being the late 1990s) thought his way out of dire interplanetary predicaments and battled archenemy the Mekon in a popular long-running series of space opera adventures that have continued intermittently [...]

Big George, created by Virgil Partch – the titular blowhard of this syndicated daily panel and Sunday strip, George’s suburban antics were considerably less in-your-face than the sarcastic magazine panels with which Partch had made his reputation, but Partch’s trend-setting art and fearless approach to domestic comedy made the strip popular enough to enjoy a [...]

Apple Mary, created by Martha Orr – the iconic Depression-era fruit vendor first appeared in newspapers in 1934, a marriage of soap opera and the “Apple Annie” character from the Frank Capra movie Lady for a Day (herself considerably polished up and renamed from the original Damon Runyon story “Madame La Gimp”); a peppery old [...]

Lance St. Lorne, created by Warren Tufts – an American cavalry officer in the 1840s, Lance was the hero of one of the last full-page Sunday strips, an immaculately drawn and colored adventure which Tufts self-syndicated for five years; for a time so popular that a daily version was added, the strain of maintaining quality [...]

Fearless Fosdick, created by Al Capp – a long-running feature of Capp’s Li’l Abner, the comic-strip-within-a-comic-strip adventures of Fosdick first appeared in 1941 and resurfaced periodically for decades; a merciless parody of Dick Tracy, pure-hearted and knuckle-headed detective Fosdick typically pursued grotesque villains amid a hail of gunfire as the corpses of innocent taxpayers piled [...]

George Bungle, created by Harry J. Tuthill – first published under the title Home Sweet Home in 1918, this domestic comedy strip was retitled The Bungle Family in 1924 and ran until 1945; following the petty travails of nettlesome George and equally quarrelsome wife Josephine, the strip was a well-written and clever continuity revolving around [...]

The Black Hood, created by Harry Shorten and Al Camy – remarkably well-traveled to end up so obscure, beat cop Kip Burland first pulled on the hood in 1940 while battling trumped-up charges in the pages of Top-Notch Comics, became the star of a pulp magazine the following year, got his own comics title and [...]

Mr. Justice, created by Joe Blair and Sam Cooper – like “The Spectre,” who debuted the year before, 1941’s Mr. Justice was a crime-busting spook, in this case an assassinated 9th century British prince returned from the dead to waste his supernatural powers on gangsters and common thugs (plus the occasional tussle with Satan himself).

Scary [...]