Fox Overview

[Adminenkainen]

Victor Fox was one of the first rival comic book publishers to realize what a cash cow DC Comics was sitting on with Superman and decided to ride those coattails as close as possible. DC set an early precedent by suing Fox for Wonder Man (the first Wonder Man in comics, well before Wonder Woman) and Fox had to scrap his plans for Wonder Comics.

Wonderworld Comics, its successor, proved better anyway. Fox had two of the best artists in the business working for him, Will Eisner and Lou Fine. Lou worked on the Flame, one of the first post-Superman superheroes, who was also the first (of many) superheroes to adopt the "learned the mysteries of the Orient" origin story from the Shadow and Green Lama. Eisner produced the first great magic-user of the comic books, the under-appreciated Yarko the Great.

In Fantastic Comics, Eisner created his best character for Fox, Samson. With Samson, Eisner showed that you could redo Superman by going back to earlier traditions of super-strong heroes from mythology. Samson was no direct copy of Superman, though. He was mythic, larger than life, Eisner's perfect protagonist for addressing the evils of war -- but was also a little boring and unrelatable. Attempts to make him more likeable by giving him a kid sidekick and a different backstory just made him weird.

And then there was Blue Beetle in Mystery Men Comics. It defies my understanding, but Blue Beetle became the most famous and popular of them all.

Still, Flame, Samson, and Blue Beetle formed Fox's triumverate. Like Timely had its "big three" of Captain America, Sub-Mariner, and Human Torch, and DC would later have its "trinity" of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, Fox was the first to identify its own "big three". So why did Fox's empire crumble by 1942 and never recover?

[archersix]

I really dig Blue Beetle, maybe it's the chainmail or the addition of the super strength? Not sure, but I think he's one of the coolest of the Golden Age characters.

Funny thing about the Fox books. My dad, who never understood my love of comics, was born in 1934. When I was a kid I got this big coffee table book about Golden Age comics. I showed it to him and asked him if he had any of the comics in it when he was a kid. Hoping he'd say that he had a Action or Marvel Mystery #1 or something. The only ones he remembered having, and he even remarked that he really liked was the "Big Three" books from Fox.

Couldn't tell you why they failed, but at least through DC's voracious buying up of former competitors properties, at least BB lives on.

[Adminenkainen]

Had I but known you were such a Blue Beetle enthusiast at the time, Archer, I would have gladly handed over the chore of writing his entry to you for Supplement IV!

One thing Fox did that hurt them was, because he was a penny pincher, he hired the best (Fine and Eisner) to start new characters for him, but then handed the characters over to much lesser, and cheaper, talents after awhile. Timely Comics basically did the same thing, though, losing Simon and Kirby by not paying them enough, and Timely didn't suffer for it.