Whiz Comics

Whiz Comics was a monthly ongoing comic book anthology series, published by Fawcett Comics from 1940–1953, best known for introducing Captain Marvel.[1]

Whiz Comics
Whiz Comics #2 (February 1940), the first appearance of Captain Marvel. Cover art by C. C. Beck.
Publication information
PublisherFawcett Comics
ScheduleMonthly
FormatAnthology
GenreSuperhero
Publication dateFeb. 1940 – June 1953
No. of issues155
Main character(s)Captain Marvel

Publication history

The first issue published of Whiz Comics was issue #2, published with a cover-date of Feb. 1940. Fawcett created two black-and-white ashcan #1 issues to solicit advertisers and to secure the copyrights to the material. The two copies were identical but carried different titles: Flash Comics and Thrill Comics; the Captain Marvel character was called "Captain Thunder" in a near-identical story. When Fawcett went to press with the magazine, the first issue was retitled as Whiz Comics, a name inspired by the company's bawdy humor magazine, Captain Billy's Whiz Bang.[2] Further complicating matters, when they got to issue #3, Fawcett, through either mistake or intent, used the number twice. Thus, if viewed from the perspective of the second #3 (and, therefore, all the issues that followed it), Whiz #2 unofficially became Whiz #1.

The cover art for the first issue showed Captain Marvel throwing a vehicle at a wall, and was inspired by the cover of Action Comics #1, which shows Superman lifting a car. The first issue was written by Bill Parker, who also wrote several other issues before Whiz became popular and other writers were hired.

Recurring features

Whiz contained the following features depicting adventures of various superhero characters:

gollark: There is apparently work on accursed optics things for the displays, and batteries... are harder, but maybe minimising power use with more efficient hardware can be done.
gollark: Enough minor conveniences stacked together gives a useful product. And you can fit smartphone SoCs into slightly bulky glasses - there are already AR devkits doing this. The main limitation is that the displays aren't very good and it is hard to fit sufficient batteries.
gollark: Also, you could sort of gain extra senses of some possible value by mapping things like LIDAR output (AR glasses will probably have something like that for object recognition) and the local wireless environment onto the display.
gollark: Oh, and there's the obvious probably-leading-to-terrible-consequences thing of being able to conveniently see the social media profiles of anyone you meet.
gollark: Some uses: if you are going shopping in a real-world shop you could get reviews displayed on the items you look at; it could be a more convenient interface for navigation apps; you could have an instructional video open while learning to do something (which is already doable on a phone, yes, but then you have to either hold or or stand it up somewhere, which is somewhat less convenient), and with some extra design work it could interactively highlight the things you're using; you could implement a real-world adblocker if there's some way to dim/opacify/draw attention away from certain bits of the display.

References

Notes
  1. Benton, Mike (1992). Superhero Comics of the Golden Age: The Illustrated History. Dallas: Taylor Publishing Company. p. 191. ISBN 0-87833-808-X. Retrieved 1 April 2020.
  2. Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide (Gemstone Publishing, 2007), pp 592–593.

Sources consulted
← The characters Johnny Thunder and the Thunderbolt were debuted by John Whentworth and Stan Aschmeier. See Johnny Thunder and Thunderbolt (DC Comics) for more info and the previous timeline. Timeline of DC Comics (1940s)
February 1940		 The characters Captain Marvel / Shazam!, the Wizard Shazam, the Seven Deadly Enemies of Man and Doctor Sivana were debuted by Bill Parker and C.C. Beck. See Captain Marvel (DC Comics), Shazam (wizard), Seven Deadly Enemies of Man and Doctor Sivana for more info and next timeline. →
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