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Extra Surprise Inside Every Issue

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Great and Choice Comics were equally diverse and bizarre in their selections of characters, heroes, funnies, and offers. One of their features was a questionnaire for comic readers asking they liked in their own publications and what titles outside Great Comics Publishing their readers also liked, meaning that the company was serious about anticipating their company’s future. As history shows, their three-month stint didn’t last any further than that, even with their contest for $100 in cash prizes that never panned out for anyone who signed up for it. The Magic Tab they offered in Choice Comics probably didn’t work either, although a free 4x5 small book just for helping to pimp their failing products wasn’t worth going to court over if you didn’t get one as part of a mail order bust. The Great Zarro Victory Club probably didn’t even get off the ground despite their efforts to win WWII which the U.S. got involved in simultaneously as Great Comics first launched right around the bombing...
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Higher Dimensions Ignore Halloran

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The Silver Age sci-fi stories from Adventures Into The Unknown reached a peak with their 100th issue, but their strange tale of Nothing Ever Happens To Halloran really stretched the limits of poking the paranormal. This 5-page story features Joey Halloran is just another disgruntled teenage ginger from the 1950s that thinks that great things only happen to other people, even though he's never asked his peer gingers like Archie or Jimmy Olsen whose lives are a constant whirlwind of insane circumstances. At school, Joey is given the assignment to report the wonders he encounters on an average walk to school the next day. Conveniently, two explorers from the 12th Dimension happen to come across Joey on his way even though they were invisible to him. The duo tries bringing Joey back to their dimension, but they only succeed in bringing a projection of him almost like a ghost, which would've been nice if he were more corporeal because then he'd notice the hot space chicks trying...
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K The Lesser Known Black Owl

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Despite the fact that there was a silent film in 1924 with the same name, K The Unknown was also the handle given to a superhero that premiered in 1940 by Feature Publications Inc. in the first issue of their anthology of Prize Comics. K by the next issue would be renamed Black Owl which most people would know him better for, but his initial adventure had K oddly enough on vacation instead of defending his home turf. K in his secret identity of your average rich playboy of Doug Danville who while on a skiing holiday comes across his old college bud Terry, a cute blonde girl that recently became a private eye. While going down the mountain, they run into a snowman which contains a buried corpse. Terry decides to do some investigating, but Doug is a big enough male chauvinist that he can't let a lady be a detective, so he puts on his superhero suit which he remembered to pack along with his toothbrush. Now as K The Unknown, he follows Terry as she gets attacked by some mugs, one of w...
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The O.G. Captain Atom

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Before the Nation-Wide or Charlton superheroes of the same name, Australia founded the first Captain Atom in 1948 by Atlas Publications, no relation to Atlas Comics which was eventually rebranded Marvel Comics. Written by Jack Bellew and drawn by Arthur Mather, this nuclear-powered superhero was literally born from the atomic bomb when it was first tested in the Bikini Atoll. Ripping off two already established comic book characters, Captain Marvel and Captain Triumph, Captain Atom is a fusion of two people sharing one body, similar to how Firestorm the Nuclear Man would be created years later by DC Comics. At an atoll nearby Bikini, an infant washes up on the shore and found by the caucasian Princess Lais who herself is wearing a pre-bikini ensemble before a real-life designer would turn it into a two-piece swimsuit. The child comes with a note saying that he survived the explosions from Bikini, and that there are supposed to be twins, even though it's only the one baby. The kid s...
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The Numerous Loves Of Miss Masque

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Normally, socialite Diana Adams is seen around town with her occasional boy toy Ross Bowman, himself a swanky society reporter who considers himself a ladies' man. When she's not pretending to be a regular highbrow hottie, Diana is secretly the masked vigilante with the original name of Miss Masque in her look which obviously went on influence Carmen Sandiego. She was among a myriad of other debutante superheroines like The Woman In Red and Phantom Lady, but something about the character has endured over the decades into making her one of the most recognizable Golden Age figures. She only had a little over a dozen appearances in Nedor comic book titles, but she was frequently used on the covers of various issues drawn by Alex Schomburg who was an artist that Stan Lee appraised regularly. The covers Miss Masque would appear on would always feature her with either Nedor regular heroes Black Terror and Fighting Yank, or sometimes with both. That's right! Miss Masque would not ...
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Scare Away The Girls With Bike Noises!

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Around 1949, the Nelson-Charles Co. in Chicago advertised something that would automatically make you the most hated kid in the culdesac. Airheaded yokels would see this ad for a bicycle noisemaker and immediately imagine themselves as the center of attention as their little kiddie bike scares all the girls away with its special "four-engine" sound device. This accessory wasn't done with boys who actually cared about using bicycles as a mode of transportation, and more for the local tubby lad who uses his bike only to ride to the next-door neighbor's house who are just a couple of feet away. The ad boasts that your dinky velocipede can imitate a roaring motorcycle with its sensational new Aero-Motor making the rider feel like a bad-ass road warrior decades before there even was such a thing. God only knows you want to impress the other bratty boys like the dork in the sailor cap thinking he's Donald Duck complaining about the racket, or the overenthusiastic plaid-...
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The Drug Induced Origins Of The Black Terror

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Better Publications broke the mold when they came out with their iconic figure of The Black Terror, specifically their second one as the first was a villain from a Woman In Red story from a year before. Exciting Comics #9 in 1941 premiered the superhero version of the Nemesis Of Evil whose outfit has made him one of the most recognizable characters of the Golden Age. What most modern-day geeks would probably label as Super-Punisher, Black Terror has a look that anime hero Captain Harlock would borrow a few decades later. His bizarre origin is of course one of medicinal use, but not the substance abuse kind that heroes like Hourman or Underdog would be roped to as similar to Captain America he only needed the drug the one time. Bob Benton ran a pharmacy that was constantly getting hit up by mobsters for protection money. One day, the mayor's secretary Jean Starr and her hunky boyfriend Rodney fight off two hoods pestering Bob for dough along with a local kid named Timmy. Bob hires T...
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