Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the seven hundred and sixty-sixth installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false.
As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends. Click here for Part 1 of this week's installment. Click here for Part 2 of this week's installment.
NOTE: If my Twitter page hits 5,000 followers, I'll do a bonus edition of Comic Book Legends Revealed that week. Great deal, right? So go follow my Twitter page, Brian_Cronin!
COMIC LEGEND:
Black Hood got his own pulp magazine.
STATUS:
True
As you may or may not know, the world of pulp fiction and comic books are extremely intertwined. You see, before comic books started up, pulp magazines were the only place outside of comic strips that people could read the adventures of superhero-like figures like Doc Savage and The Shadow. Many of the early comic book writers were huge fans of the pulps, to the point where a lot of them would often "borrow" stories from them (the very first Batman story was lifted by Bill Finger from a Shadow pulp).
A more direct connection between the pulps and comics is the fact that a number of comic book companies during the Golden Age of comics were originally pulp magazine publishers who got into comics when comic books started selling well post-Superman's debut. Timely Comics (now Marvel) came from a pulp publisher, as did Captain Marvel's Fawcett Comics. MLJ Comics (now Archie) also came from the world of the pulps.
So the pulps and comics were very connected. In fact, a number of pulp character later showed up as comics. Ka-Zar, for instance, was a pulp character....
before he was a comic book hero....
However, that avenue was almost ALWAYS a one-way avenue. Pulp characters would occasionally become comic book heroes, but it very rarely happened the other way around. Superman was about as famous as a fictional character could be and yet no one ever put him in a pulp magazine.
MLJ, though, made a strange exception with the Black Hood.
The Black Hood debuted in 1940's Top Notch Comics #9...
In a story by Abner Sundell and Al Camy, we see the Black Hood's origin. He was an awesome police officer who was framed for a crime that he didn't commit...
(Gotta love the police telling him that they believe him but they still have to hang him out to dry)
He takes on the villain on his own and is badly injured. He is nursed back to health and trained to get his revenge as a costumed vigilante...
He was a hit and soon gained his own series...
MLJ had their pulp magazine company, though, too (well, at least some of the people in MLJ) and they decided to bring the Black Hood to the pulps in a series of pulp novels in 1941 by George Thomas Roberts...
Black Hood even received his own radio series in 1943!
There were only three Black Hood pulp novels, but that's still a remarkable feat for a character who today is best known for being a serial killer on Riverdale!
In the latest TV Legends Revealed - Was Frasier made a recurring character on Cheers in an attempt to irritate Shelley Long?
OK, that's it for this week!
Thanks to the Grand Comics Database for this week's covers! And thanks to Brandon Hanvey for the Comic Book Legends Revealed logo, which I don't even actually use on the CBR editions of this column, but I do use them when I collect them all on legendsrevealed.com!
Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments! My e-mail address is cronb01@aol.com. And my Twitter feed is http://twitter.com/brian_cronin, so you can ask me legends there, as well!
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