Quality 〉Smash Comics
Smash Comics is the title of an American Golden Age comic book anthology series, published by Quality Comics for 85 issues between 1939 and 1949. It became the series Lady Luck for #86-90 (Dec 1949 – Aug 1950).
Smash Comics starred a variety of superheroes and other crimefighters, including the Ray (cover feature on #15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27), Midnight (cover feature from #28-85), the Invisible Hood, Magno, The Jester, Black X (cover feature on several issues), and the robot Bozo the Iron Man (cover feature on #8, 10, 12, 14, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26). Reprints of the four-page crimefighter feature “Lady Luck”, originally published in the Sunday-newspaper insert colloquially called “The Spirit Section”, also appeared.
The title was used again in 1999 as a part of the DC Comics crossover story arc “Justice Society Returns”.
At the behest of Quality publisher Everett “Busy” Arnold, Jack Cole later created his own satiric, Spirit-style hero, Midnight, for Smash Comics No. 18 (Jan. 1941). Midnight, the alter ego of radio announcer Dave Clark, wore a similar fedora hat and domino mask. During Eisner’s World War II military service, Cole and Lou Fine were the primary Spirit ghost artists; their stories were reprinted in DC Comics’ hardcover collections The Spirit Archives Vols. 5 to 9 (2001–2003), spanning July 1942 – Dec. 1944. In addition, Cole continued to draw one and two-page filler pieces, sometimes under the pseudonym Ralph Johns, and a memorable autobiographical appearance in “Inki,” which appeared in Crack Comics #34.