Criminals, Experiments, and Matt Baker, Active Comics #29 at Auction

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Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Vintage Paper | Tagged: canadian comics, Matt Baker

Bell’s Active Comics #29 is an unusual combination of a mysterious Adrian Dingle cover with Matt Baker’s South Sea Girl inside.

Article Summary

Active Comics #29 features a unique pairing of an Adrian Dingle cover with Matt Baker’s vivid South Sea Girl interiors.

Published in 1946, the issue marks Bell Features’ transition to full-color comics amid intensifying market rivalry.

Manning Lee Stokes’ storytelling enriched South Sea Girl’s debut with sophisticated narratives and dynamic depth.

The rarity and significance of Active Comics #29 underline its status as a prized collectible.

Active Comics #29 came out at a time when Bell Features was attempting to gear up to take on the increasing competition of U.S. comic book publishers. By the time this issue hit newsstands around July 1946, WECA Schedule One, which had effectively prohibited the import and reprinting of U.S. comic books in Canada, had been repealed for nearly two years. Competition had steadily increased in the Canadian market as a result, and Bell converted Active Comics to full color with this issue for the first time.

The interior of Active Comics #29 comes from Samuel “Jerry” Iger‘s Universal Phoenix Feature title South Sea Comics #1. Of course, this story features the debut of Matt Baker‘s South Sea Girl. But the cover of this issue by Adrian Dingle appears to be connected with the Guy Powers: Secret Agent story from Slam-Bang Comics #7 featuring a mad scientist’s experiments and a woman in peril. Guy Powers stories by Harry Thomson, Adrian Dinkle, and Fred Kelly had run in several issues of Bell’s Wow Comics, Active Comics #28, and Slam-Bang #7. The character is an agent of Canadian Intelligence who makes the transition to private investigator after WWII ends.

South Sea Girl was Baker’s first work on a female feature character since his collaborative artwork involvement in Sheena a year and a half prior to South Seas Comics #1. His co-creator, versatile author Manning Lee Stokes (June 21, 1911 – January 5, 1976) wrote the South Sea Girl stories in a way that allowed Baker to showcase the artistic strengths for which he would become famous. Stokes has a handful of credits in comics besides his South Sea Girl work, including Classics Illustrated, and perhaps worked again with Baker on Rulah in Zoot Comics. Most Famously, Stokes wrote the digest-size graphic novel The Case of the Winking Buddha, with artwork by Charles Raab and published by St. John in 1950. Stokes had become a prolific paperback novelist by that time, producing an incredible range of work from the late 1940s through the 1970s.

The 1946-1957 era proved to be challenging for Bell, and several of its series were paused by 1947, to return with new directions in the FECA era. Active Comics #29 is a unique combination of Adrian Dingle cover with Matt Baker interiors. There’s an Active Comics #29 (Bell Features, 1946) Condition: FN- copy up for auction at the 2025 March 13 Canadian Golden Age Comics Showcase Auction #40290.