Flashback: Lee Travis
Although his family felt the pinch of the depression, Lee Travis’s godfather, Winston W. Smythe, had weathered the stock market better than most and he paid for Lee’s tuition. However, when Lee joined the Abraham Lincoln brigade in 1936…
Winston Smythe had a change of heart, and when he died in the Spring of 1938, Lee inherited the New York City newspaper, the Globe-Leader.
The Crimson Avenger
By October, imperial Japanese forces had conquered much of China and Nazi German troops had marched into the Czech Sudetenland. 25-year-old Lee Travis was striving to print in the Globe-Leader the truth about such horrors so that other Americans would care, too.
On Halloween evening, Lee attended a benefit ball for Chinese war relief at the Vangilder estate in New Jersey. His secretary ordered a costume for him called, “Highway Robber.”
At the party, a gang of ruthless thieves took advantage of the airing of Orson Welles’s War or the Worlds radio broadcast, dressed in alien costumes, and robbed the estate, killing Mr. Vanglider and Lee’s flame, Claudia Barker.
Still in costume, Lee and his driver, Wing, chased the thieves, exchanged gunfire, and drove them into a ditch. Among the recovered belongings was Claudia’s gold lighter with the inscription “Qui Vindicet Ibit,” or “The avenger will come.”
Zatara, Pt. 2
Giovanni Zatara realized that to be a success, he had to believe in himself and project that confidence… he must be larger than life. On November 7, while in New York for a “fourth-bill, one-week run at the Paramount,” he found a reproduction of Leonardo Davinci’s notebooks… written entirely in reverse. Translating the Italian text and reading it aloud backwards, he discovered he could perform true magic!
Action Comics #1
June 1938 (May 3, 1938)
$0.10
Zatara
“The Mystery of the Freight Train Robberies”
12 pages
Writer: Fred B. Guardineer
Artist: Fred B. Guardineer
Editor: Vincent A. Sullivan
DC Special Blue Ribbon Digest #5
Nov./Dec. 1980 (Aug. 14, 1980)
$0.95
Zatanna/Zatarra
“The Secret Spell”
10 pages
Writer: Gerry Conway
Penciller: Romeo Tanghal
Inker: Vince Colletta
Editor: E. Nelson Bridwell
Secret Origins (vol. 2) #5
Aug. 1986 (May 8, 1986)
$0.75
“The Crimson Avenger”
21 pages
Writers: Roy Thomas & Danette Thomas
Penciller: Gene Colan
Inker: Michael Gustovich
Editor: Robert Greenberger
In 1938, the comics business was struggling to survive. But little did it know what it would soon unleash… The inside cover of More Fun Comics #31 (May 1938) featured an ad for an upcoming title called Action Comics.
Released on May 3, 1938, it featured a new character that Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster had been trying to sell for years. Finally, they did it… for $130. The success of “Superman” was not immediately known; therefore, Action Comics #2 didn’t even feature him on the cover!
CODEX OMNIVERSA 