Number 1595: Aces up my sleeve

Today we begin a theme week, “Aces Up My Sleeve” week, featuring some very early (1940-41) stories from Ace Publications. Ace, a pulp publisher, entered the comics fray early on with the usual titles devoted to the usual superheroes. In the story today, Magno, the magnetic man.

What jumps out at me with this very early entry for Magno, from Super-Mystery #2 (1940), is not the Harry Lucey artwork, which is very good, but the eye-popping primary colors. Other publishers of the time also used bright colors (Quality and Fox come to mind), but I think this job rises above them, with its imaginative use of colors for an earth-boring machine (page 12). The colorist must have been having fun.