Pulp Heroes: Justice, Inc. (DC Comics)

I've held a long-time fascination with the pulp and radio heroes of the 1930s and '40s, for which I have my paternal grandmother and aunt to blame for. Now, hindsight is probably heavily embellished, so forgive any discrepancies that might follow, but as a small child with both parents working...I spent several afternoons with the two above-mentioned women pre-kindergarten in a household that still held to the values that the television was a device that shouldn't be turned on until 6 p.m. at the least. Hell, the first color set my grandmother ever owned was purchased by my father after my grandfather's death....in 1991.

So, to keep me occupied as a wee lad, my grandmother, who was a HUGE fan of radio drama during it's hey-dey, would literally (and remember what I said earlier about hindsight) verbally relate episodes of her favorite shows to me, verbatim. It wasn't until I was probably around the age of 6 or 7 that I came to the realization that The Shadow, The Green Hornet, Fibber McGee (and Molly), Amos n' Andy, and a whole slew of fictional characters were just that: fictional. I just thought they were folks that grandma knew....

So, when I came to discover that there were comic books produced about these heroes, it's a no-brainer I would take an interest. One of the first I came to discover during those early years of collecting in the early 1980s was what would become quite possibly one of my favorite DC Comics series of all time, Denny O'Neil and Mike Kaluta's excellent interpretation of The Shadow.

At some point later, while in high school, I would disocver Walter Gibson's other work, The Avenger, via ancient Bantam paperback reprints from the early 1970s and the short-lived DC Comics series Justice, Inc.....

I lucked into an entire run of the 1970s DC title around that time. I actually like the latter half of the book in which Jack Kirby was handed the reigns on the character...


Around this time, in the early 1990s, DC revisited the character (for much the same reasons they did took any interest the first time: they were experiencing some success with a new book based upon the more popular Lamont Cranston, The Shadow) in a two issue prestige format mini-series illustrated by one of my favorite artists, Kyle Baker. This take learns more towards the Avenger being involved in shadowy covert operations during the Cold War, but is still an interesting read...


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Justice Inc #1-#4 (first series) RAR file

Justice Inc #1-#2 (second series) RAR file