Flash Comics #86(cover August 1947, 10 cents, 52 pages), put on sale on June 9, 1947. The story that introduces her bears her name, even though she is not the star of the section in which she appears. Creation attributed to Robert Kanigher and Carmine Infantino. Two singularities: it is born in a genre collapsing, and a 1983 rewrite retroactively attributed his original stories to another character.
It is rare for a first appearance to change the protagonist thirty-six years after its publication. Yet this is what happened here, without a single box being modified.
This booklet also combines several anomalies: an untimely arrival, a heroine invited to someone else's house, and an object which testifies to a forgotten concern of the profession.
Invited to someone else's house, and yet in title
The summary of the booklet, which the catalog reproduces in full, reveals a curious situation.
The issue contains around ten sections. The third is simply titled after the heroine - an unusual case for a creation which does not yet exist.
But she is not the star. These pages belong to a comic character already installed in the magazine, and she intervenes there as an opposing figure, in her own register, before leaving. The story is named after her because she is the subject, not because she is the heroine.
This configuration is clearly more favorable than it seems for a buyer today, and it must be emphasized.A story that bears the character's name can be found. In the anthologies of this period, most of the creations begin in episodes with purely narrative titles, indecipherable for those who do not already know the reference.
Concretely: on this booklet, a seller who opens the issue and reads the table of contents has a chance of understanding what he has. This is far from always being the case for publications from the same decade.
An untimely arrival
The 1947 vintage is worth paying attention to, because it determines almost everything that follows.
Costumed vigilantes had dominated the newsstands since 1938. In 1947, this cycle was coming to an end: the public turned away, sales crumbled, and publishers switched to detective, romantic, humorous and horror. Most of the characters created before the war will disappear within five years.
So our heroine arrives at the exact moment its gender stops functioning. Three very concrete consequences arise from this.
The publishing window is narrow. The magazine that hosted it stopped a few years later. She will therefore only have a handful of period appearances, unlike the 1940 creations which accumulate hundreds.
The print runs are already in decline. A stock at the end of its cycle is not printed like a stock on the rise. It is an authentic rarity, produced by circumstances and not by a manufacturing accident.
Nobody kept it. A booklet purchased in 1947 for ten cents, in a genre that the readership is abandoning, inspires no desire for preservation. The surviving examples almost all come from chance.
Added together, these three facts explain why good condition is exceptionally difficult to find here – much more than the rating suggests.
The committee printed in the booklet
A detail in the summary deserves elaboration, because it tells something that buyers often ignore.
Among the sections is a page devoted to a editorial advisory board. It is neither a story nor an advertisement: it is the nominative list of academics, psychologists and educators that the publisher displayed to endorse its publications.
This page testifies to a concern that was already acute at the end of the 1940s. Comics were accused of damaging young people, well before the establishment of the self-censorship code in the mid-1950s. The publisher had chosen a preventive solution: recruiting moral authorities and printing their names in the middle of the magazine.
For the collector, this page has an unexpected practical use.It constitutes a mark of period and completeness. Its presence confirms that we are dealing with an original print from this period, and its absence indicates an amputated block - because it is typically the kind of sheet that a former owner would remove without qualms.
Kanigher and Infantino
We owe this creation to Robert Kanigher for the text and Carmine Infantino for the boards. Their two names appear among the speakers noted in this booklet.
A reservation of method is necessary, as with any anthology of the time: the credits recorded are valid for the entire issue and not for each section. Half a dozen screenwriters and designers appear there. Precise attribution is based on editorial history, not this statement.
Kanigher was one of his house's most productive screenwriters, capable of writing in all registers for forty years. Infantino, then very young, would become one of the graphic architects of the following decade, then head the publisher.
Their creation is striking for its modernity of design. She does not derive from any existing male figure, bears no borrowed name, and her costume – black, sober, without a cape – contrasts radically with the colorful codes of 1947. This simplicity explains why it has changed so little since.
The 1983 reattribution
We arrive at the most puzzling feature of the file, and it is without equivalent in our corpus.
In the early 1980s, the publisher revamped its fictional story. To resolve a problem of age - a heroine active in 1947 and still in practice forty years later - the solution chosen was to affirm that it was a question of two different women, a mother and her daughter, successively bearing the same identity.
The consequence on old fascicles is dizzying:the stories published between 1947 and the beginning of the 1950s changed the protagonist without a single panel being retouched. What these pages tell has not changed; what they are supposed to say, yes.
For the collector, things must therefore be formulated precisely. The June 1947 issue contains the first appearance of identity. According to the continuity in force since 1983, it does not contain the first appearance of the woman that modern readers know by this name - she was born elsewhere, much later.
This nuance has real commercial significance. In principle, it divides the request between two audiences, and it explains certain contradictory announcements. In fact, the market continues to treat the 1947 booklet as the key to the character, all generations combined - but the subject resurfaces in every serious discussion. Ourprice observationsreturn to this point.
What we really read in these pages
The section is contained in a few pages, standard length for a magazine with shared contents.
The heroine operates in a deliberate ambiguity: she first appears on the wrong side of the law, in a role that one would not expect of a future vigilante. The process was common at the time for launching a character — creating doubt, then removing it.
No origin is provided, no explanation of his motivations. It arrives constituted, effective, and its most famous sonic capacity does not yet exist: it will be an addition of the silver age, two decades later.
The tone is that of 1947, with the characteristic density of text. A reader coming from recent versions will find here something much lighter, almost playful – the darkness will come later.
A period corpus that can be counted
A practical consequence of this calendar deserves to be isolated, because it radically distinguishes this file from those of the pre-war creations.
The magazine that hosted it ceased publication at the end of the decade, after a little over a hundred issues. The heroine survives briefly in another publication, then disappears from newsstands for years.
In other words:his ancient corpus is finished, and it is small. We're talking about a few dozen appearances in total, all concentrated over a handful of years, in just two titles.
It's a comfortable situation for those who like to know where they're going. Where other figures of the same generation require hundreds of booklets spread over three decades, this one offers a set of period that can be listed on a sheet and seriously aimed at.
The downside is obviously supply. A short corpus, printed at the end of the cycle and never preserved, rarely appears for sale. Patience is more important than budget here — and you have to be willing to let months go by without finding anything.
Check a copy
The section itself. Have the first sheet of the episode that bears its name sent to you: this is the most direct verification, and it requires no effort from the seller since the title is explicit.
The complete block. On 52 pages, the advisory committee page and the advertising leaflets are frequently missing. Have their presence explicitly confirmed.
The fragility of paper. In 1947, browning is the rule and breakage of the margins is common. A photo of a corner of a page, held up to the light, says it all.
The printed vintage, in the legal notices on the first interior pages.
Where to start
The original booklet, reserved for advanced collections, and to be sought patiently: good condition is rarer than the price suggests.
The handful of booklets that follow, published in July and August 1947, while the formula was being tested. Much more accessible, and regularly ignored by buyers.
His entry into the modern era, in September 1969, when she joined the publisher's star lineup - a much more affordable booklet which remains, for many, the real gateway.
For the stories that established it lastingly, see ourbest runs.
What we get asked most often
Flash Comics #86, cover dated August 1947, sold for 10 cents for 52 pages, on sale June 9, 1947. The story which introduces it bears her name, although she is not the star: these pages belong to an already installed comic character, where she intervenes as an opposing figure.
Because of a rewrite in the early 1980s. To resolve an age problem - a heroine active in 1947 and still active forty years later - the editor decreed that it was a mother and her daughter successively bearing the same identity. The 1947 stories therefore changed the protagonist without a single panel being retouched.
Yes in fact, even if the rigorous formulation is more nuanced: it contains the first appearance of the identity, and not that of the woman that modern readers know by this name. The market continues to treat it as the key for all generations, but the subject comes up in every serious discussion.
Because she is born at the moment when her gender is collapsing. The welcome title is at the end of the cycle, therefore printed as a follow-up; the public turns away from the costumed vigilantes; and no one had any reason to keep a ten-cent booklet in an abandoned genre. The surviving examples almost all come from chance.
The nominative list of academics, psychologists and educators that the publisher displayed to endorse its publications, at a time when comics were accused of damaging young people - well before the self-censorship code of the 1950s. It serves today as a benchmark: its presence attests to a period print, its absence indicates an amputated block.
No, and it's a frequent surprise. Its most famous ability is a Silver Age addition, appearing two decades after its debut. In the 1947 story, she has no power: she fights, she investigates, and the story provides neither origin nor explanation of her motivations.
Robert Kanigher for the text, Carmine Infantino for the plates. Be careful, however: in a magazine with a shared summary, the speakers are listed overall and not section by section, so that half a dozen names get mixed up. The attribution here is based on the widely documented editorial history, not on this statement.
Her entry into the modern era, in September 1969, when she joined the publisher's star lineup. This booklet is infinitely more accessible and for many constitutes the real gateway to the character. Issues of Flash Comics after its debut, which went on sale in July and August 1947, were also more affordable.
Follow the price of Flash Comics #86 and your entire collection with My Comics Collection.
Discover the application