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One in all writer MLJ’s pre-Archie superheroes, the Black Hood was arguably some of the attention-grabbing superheroes of the Golden Age. He actually had an uncommon publishing historical past throughout that point. The character first appeared in High-Notch Comics #9, took that title over, began getting elbowed apart within the High-Notch sequence 18 points later in favor of humor characters, received kicked out of the sequence solely lower than 20 points after that, took over one other superhero’s title, ended his title run by getting his secret identification uncovered, and at last determined to hold up his superhero tights and simply proceed on as an strange personal detective character. All of this happened within the Golden Age, and the Black Hood Comics #9-19 run is an enormous a part of the character’s saga throughout that interval. Each subject of this short-lived Golden Age Black Hood Comics title is up for public sale within the 2022 Could 15-16 Sunday & Monday Comedian Books Choose Public sale #122220 at Heritage Auctions.
The shift of the High-Notch Comics title to develop into High-Notch Chuckle Comics with subject #27 in 1942 was one of many early indicators of Archie’s influence on MLJ. Whereas Black Hood was nonetheless an everyday characteristic in each subject, they started to experiment with all kinds of humor within the sequence as properly. By the point the sequence ended with High-Notch Chuckle Comics #45 in 1944, Archie had taken over the duvet of Pep Comics and gotten his personal sequence as properly.
Black Hood took over the continuing Hangman Comics title, which was re-titled Black Hood Comics with subject #9. The Hangman himself was relegated to a back-up characteristic. By the point of subject #17, cover-dated Winter 1946, MLJ had rebranded itself as Archie, placing “An Archie Journal” image on their covers. However the finish of the sequence with subject #19 accommodates an attention-grabbing and clear-cut early instance of a comic book guide reboot. As a result of machinations of a prison, a police sergeant was in a position to unmask Black Hood and reveal his identification. As soon as his alter ego turns into identified, the Black Hood (aka Kip Burland) makes an attention-grabbing transfer — he decides to reboot himself in his actual identification as Burland and launch the Black Hood Detective Company — changing into a personal investigator. The change caught, and though the sequence ends with this subject, he continues as Kip Burland of the Black Hood Detective Company in a handful of Pep Comics tales afterward.
In the meantime, the Black Hood sequence was retitled as Chuckle Comics with subject #20 and featured the exploits of Archie, Jughead, Betty, Veronica and the remainder of the Riverdale crew. It is a traditionally attention-grabbing transfer that appears to be foreshadowed by the tenor of the problems main as much as the sequence and would appear to point that MLJ anticipated the rise of different genres within the comedian guide trade. A captivating and underappreciated a part of Golden Age comedian guide historical past, the Black Hood Comics #9-19 run is up for public sale within the 2022 Could 15-16 Sunday & Monday Comedian Books Choose Public sale #122220 at Heritage Auctions.
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