Double Wow Comics!

 

Get ready to say Wow! And get ready to say it TWICE!

Wow Comics #1 was published by Fawcett Comics in Winter 1940-1941. It featured a Mr. Scarlet cover by C.C. Beck (shown up above) and it also featured a Mr. Scarlet 7-page story that was drawn by Jack Kirby. 

When I think of Wow Comics my first thought goes to the Mary Marvel strip that anchored the title through most of the 1940s, but Mary did not show up until issue 9 in 1943.

But wait, there was a whole different kind of Wow comics!

I just learned of its existence this week from John Stangeland of Chicago's Atlas Comics. This other kind of Wow comics predates Wow Comics #1 by four years but, just like the later Wow, it also features artists of a superb pedigree.

Wow - What a Magazine #1 was published by Henle Publications in 1936 and the series lasted just four issues. This Wow was in the slightly larger magazine format and 52 pages. A couple of its stories ran two pages but the rest were one-pagers, plus a number of pages were non-comics features. Among the artists in the first issue? Well two pages were by Will Eisner, who would go on to create his iconic Spirit feature four years later for newspapers. And two pages were by Bernard Baily, who would go on to co-create (with Superman writer Jerry Siegel) The Spectre for DC Comics a handful of years later. Plus the cover of this magazine (shown down below) was by Dick Briefer, who would create the belovedly light-hearted Frankenstein series of the 1940s.

Double Wow!