Ace Comics (publishers)

Ace Comics (publishers)

Ace Comics was the banner under which pulp magazine publisher Aaron A. Wyn and his wife Rose Wyn produced comic books between 1940 and the end of 1956. The Wyns had been publishing pulp fiction under the Periodical House and Magazine Publishers names since 1928. Like many comic book publishers of the day, Ace Comics earlier series included costumed superheroes, although as trends in the comic book market changed by the 1950s the focus shifted more to other genres, such as crime, horror, romance, and later, Westerns.

Their most successful, and longest-running, superhero title was Super-Mystery Comics featuring Magno the Magnetic Man and his boy partner Davey, who appeared in 28 issues of the title's 48-issue run. Horror titles included Baffling Mysteries, Hand of Fate and Web of Mystery, while their contribution to the crime comics genre was Crime Must Pay the Penalty (the title later shortened to Penalty for the final two issues). Their longest running series were the company's Romance titles Glamorous Romances, Love At First Sight, Love Experiences and Real Love, which began in the late 1940s as the superhero books faded away, and continued until the company ceased publishing comic books in 1956 as a result of the introduction of the Comics Code Authority. Other long running Romance titles such as Complete Love Magazine and Ten Story Love began as pulp romance titles before switching to comics format in the early 1950s.

A number of Ace stories were used as examples of violent and gruesome imagery in the 1950s U.S Congressional inquiries into the influence of comic books on juvenile delinquency that led to the Comics Code Authority, namely Challenge of the Unknown #6, Crime Must Pay the Penalty #3 and Web of Mystery #19. Western Adventures Comics #3 was used as an example in Fredric Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent, and in the United Kingdom Atomic War #4, Beyond #18 and World War III #2 were cited as examples by Geoffrey Wagner's 1954 book on the same subject, Parade of Pleasure — A Study of Popular Iconography in the U.S.A.

Although characters with the same names as Ace Comics characters have appeared elsewhere (most notably Jack Kirby's Captain Victory in an early 1980s series, and several DC Comics villains called the Black Spider), after the early 1950s all their characters remained unused until 2008, when Lash Lightning and Lightning Girl appeared in flashback in Dynamite Entertainment’s Project Superpowers. In the one-shot Project Superpowers: Chapter Two Prelude, it was stated that the two of them will appear in this line as part of a team called The Super-Mysterymen (presumably named after the Ace title Super-Mystery Comics).