Whiz Comics

Whiz Comics was a monthly ongoing comic book anthology series, published by Fawcett Comics from 1940–1953, best known for introducing Captain Marvel.

Publication history
The first issue published of Whiz Comics was issue #2, published with a cover-date of Feb. 1940. Fawcett created two black-and-white ashcan #1 issues to solicit advertisers and to secure the copyrights to the material. The two copies were identical but carried different titles: Flash Comics and Thrill Comics; the Captain Marvel character was called Captain Thunder in a near-identical story. When Fawcett went to press with the magazine, the first issue was retitled as Whiz Comics, a name inspired by the company's bawdy humor magazine, Captain Billy's Whiz Bang. Further complicating matters, when they got to issue #3, Fawcett, through either mistake or intent, used the number twice. Thus, if viewed from the perspective of the second #3 (and, therefore, all the issues that followed it), Whiz #2 unofficially became Whiz #1.

The cover art for the first issue showed Captain Marvel throwing a vehicle at a wall, and was inspired by the cover of Action Comics #1, which shows Superman lifting a car.

Recurring features
Whiz contained the following features depicting adventures of various superhero characters:


 * Captain Marvel
 * Ibis the Invincible
 * Spy Smasher
 * Golden Arrow
 * Dan Dare
 * Lance O'Casey
 * Scoop Smith