Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Vintage Paper | Tagged: golden age, Harvey Comics
Before the Guardian and the Newsboy Legion there was Captain Freedom and the newsboy gang called the Young Defenders in Speed Comics.
Undeniably, the lure of an intriguing cover plays a significant role in sparking a collector’s interest in Golden Age comic books, and the unusual cover of Speed Comics #28 is another great example. Published by Harvey Comics at the height of World War II in 1943, the cover here by an unknown artist serves as vivid symbolism of the life-and-death fight against global menaces during World War II. This extremely tough-to-get issue features Captain Freedom in a face-off with a gargantuan Nazi monster, and an interior story to match. This one rarely comes up for sale at public auction, but there’s a Speed Comics #28 (Harvey, 1943) CGC GD- 1.8 Light tan to off-white pages up for auction in the 2023 July 13 – 14 Pre-Code Horror & Crime Comics Showcase Auction #40227 at Heritage Auctions.
A closer look at this cover reveals that the German monster is wielding a gas gun of some sort against helpless citizens, and the “story behind the cover” text story in this issue explains this situation in detail. Captain Freedom’s associates, the Young Defenders, had discovered an unknown scheme by three German saboteurs in New York City. The Young Defenders followed the Germans to the Denbix Aircraft Company testing grounds and discovered that they planned to use the wind tunnel there to blow poison gas fired from strange gas guns over much of New York City, killing seven million citizens in the process. Captain Freedom appeared on the scene just as this plan was being put into action, preventing this catastrophe. Whoever drew this cover took a symbolic approach to his assignment, effectively encapsulating the story into a piece of art that would attract attention on the newsstands at a glance.
Captain Freedom debuted in Speed Comics #13 in 1941, conceived as the patriotic alter-ego of a newspaper publisher Don Wright. He was assisted by the Young Defenders, a group of four newsboys who sold papers for Wright’s Daily Bulletin. Notably, this dynamic precedes the debut of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby‘s Guardian and the Newsboy Legion by almost a year. The feature ran in Speed Comics #13-44.
Interestingly, Speed Comics #28 has not been auctioned frequently. In the past 20 years, only four CGC-graded copies have been known to change hands at public auction. A great war-era cover with a great Captain Freedom story behind it, there’s a Speed Comics #28 (Harvey, 1943) CGC GD- 1.8 Light tan to off-white pages up for auction in the 2023 July 13 – 14 Pre-Code Horror & Crime Comics Showcase Auction #40227 at Heritage Auctions.
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