We can’t imagine a better way to celebrate Independence Day than reliving the adventures of comics’ original sentinel of liberty - The Shield!
That’s right. Months before Steve Rogers donned his chain-mail and wing-eared cowl, Joe Higgins defended the red, white and blue as MLJ Comics’ star-spangled G-Man.
(Actually, a quick look at Wikipedia reveals that Higgins himself was beaten to the punch by DC’s Mister America … but the Keeper won’t let facts get in the way of a perfectly good post.)
Created by writer Harry Shorten and artist Irv Novick, The Shield debuted in Pep Comics #1, dated January, 1940. Despite beating Simon and Kirby’s shield-slinger (a little dig at MLJ, perhaps?) to the punch, Higgins’ early adventures weren’t particularly memorable.
Novick’s art lacked the power of Kirby’s early Cap pages and the stories weren’t imaginative enough to compensate. It’s no wonder that Captain America soon outshone his predecessor.
As the months passed, however, Novick apparently took Kirby’s innovations to heart and crammed a lot more action - and most importantly, heart - into his Shield pages. There still weren’t any menaces as memorable as The Red Skull, but the plot and art were so jam-packed that the lack of lurid arch-foes really matter.
The Shield was popular enough to ride the super-hero craze to its end, but was eventually kicked to the curb by a Pep Comics back-up strip that became so popular that MLJ itself eventually adopted the title character’s name.
Just who might that character be, you ask? Why, just an average American teen named Archie Andrews!
And now you know … the rest of the story!
In the meantime, lets watch The “Original” Shield and Dusty, The Boy Detective defend America in an epic adventure from Pep Comics #19. Art is provided by Irv Novick.
