Digital Comic Museum > News and Announcements

(2025.03.28) - Circus, The Comic Riot 01 Introduction

(1/1)

Yoc:
Hi Gang,
We're THRILLED to be able to share this book on DCM!  It's been #1 in our most wanted list for years!
Here's an introduction to this first issue by DCM Staffer - OtherEric!

+++

Circus, The Comic Riot 01 Intro by OtherEric
--
Circus the Comic Riot is one of those books you sometimes get in this hobby:  A book that has a reputation as an artistic and commercial failure that everybody nonetheless wants to see.  The only comic series from the Globe Syndicate, the first issue came out in June 1938, the same month as Superman's debut in Action #1, and it lasted a measly three issues before disappearing again.  Most of the features were editorially required to use a very tight 3 by 4 panel grid, with the panels bumping up right against one another, creating a claustrophobic feel.  It doesn't work that well on the comedy features, and is absolutely crippling to the action strips in the book.  So why are we so excited to finally get this book here at DCM?

It's because of the creators; this book features early work by many comic greats before they started their most famous features.  The issue starts with Jack Cole on "Peewee Throttle in Fuzzyland", several years before Police Comics introduced Plastic Man.  You've got Bob Kane on "Van Bragger" and "Side Streets of New York" a year before Batman debuts.  You have Will Eisner, years before the Spirit, compressing Charles Lever's Novel "Jack Hinton, the Guardsman" from 1857 down to a six page, heavily illustrated text story.  And perhaps most interestingly, we have what may be the comic book debut of Basil Wolverton.  The Grand Comics Database tentatively assigns one page in an issue of Star Comics to him earlier, but this is his first definite credit.  He turns up here with "Disk-Eyes the Detective" and, even more interestingly, "Spacehawks".  This series doesn't directly connect to his later, classic feature for Target Comics, but you can definitely see the start of the design aesthetic he uses in the later series.

So we at DCM are incredibly grateful that Darwination managed to locate a copy of this insanely rare book for us to share on our anniversary, and we hope you enjoy the chance to see this early work by classic creators as much as we did!

A complete collection of Wolverton's later Spacehawk series is available at DCM HERE:

https://digitalcomicmuseum.com/index.php?dlid=33946 (Part 1)
https://digitalcomicmuseum.com/index.php?dlid=33948 (Part 2)

If anybody is curious after seeing Eisner's adaptation, Project Gutenberg has "Jack Hinton, The Guardsman" by Charles Lever available in a variety of formats HERE:

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33082

Navigation

[0] Message Index