Today in Comics History, April 30, 1939: Roosevelt pledges a gigantic ball and triangle to Britain for the war effort

from "The Secret Origin of the Golden Age Sandman" in Secret Origins (1986 series) #7 (DC, October 1986), co-plot and script by Roy Thomas, co-plot by Dann Thomas, pencils by Michael Bair, inks by Steve Montano, colors by Carl Gafford, letters by David Cody Weiss

Today in Comics History, May 31: Happy birthday, Bert Christman!

Born on this day in 1915: Bert Christman, comic book writer and illustrator as well as WWII naval aviator. Christman was writer and artist on the popular newspaper strip Scorchy Smith, of which many adventures were reprinted in Easter Color's Famous Funnies comic book, plus work on the Three Aces feature in Action Comics, Funny Picture Stories, and Adventure Comics. That last one's pretty important, because t'was in the pages of Adventure that Bert created, along with Gardner Fox, Wesley Dodds — the Golden Sandman. Yes, the Sandman Mystery Theatre version. Here's his first appearance!


from "[The Tarantula Strikes]" in Adventure Comics #40 (DC, July 1939), script by Gardner Fox as Larry Dean, pencils and inks by Bert Christman; shown here in a recolored reprint from Justice League of America #94 (DC/National, November 1971)

Today in Comics History, June 22, 1941: Sandman plagiarizes terrible costume

from All-Star Squadron #18 (DC, February 1983), script by Roy Thomas, pencils by Adrian Gonzales, inks by Rick Hoberg, colors by Gene D'Angelo, letters by John Costanza

Today in Comics History, June 9, 1939: I'm pretty sure that font didn't come along until 1965, but I'm willing to overlook it if you are

Averting my usual tag of "newspapers don't look like that!," here's a comic book newspaper that actually does look like that — I mean, kinda realistic!


from "The Secret Origin of the Golden Age Sandman" in Secret Origins (1986 series) #7 (DC, October 1986), co-plot and script by Roy Thomas, co-plot by Dann Thomas, pencils by Michael Bair, inks by Steve Montano, colors by Carl Gafford, letters by David Cody Weiss
There's such a lot of fine detail to this one-shot that I've taken these pictures from a digital edition rather than the original muddied newsprint copy. It's well worth picking this up as an e-book.

Oh, they are so not a fun couple:


It's true: I learned much of my World War II history from Roy Thomas expository dialogue.

365 Days of Defiance, Day 69*: The Justice Society is formed to fight the fifth column by using big-ass word balloons

Panels from All Star Comics #4 (March-April 1941), script by Gardner F. Fox, pencils and inks by Everett E. Hibbard
Tune in tomorrow to see how Flash, the Master of Going Faster, deals with the enemies of America! (Hint: he goes quicker than them.)

* Nice.**
** This footnote satisfies the requirement by international internet law that all mentions of the number sixty-nine be accompanied by the word "nice."