Episode 8: Sandy Keane, More Fun and Adventure Before the Golden Age

Simon Carver

You’re tuned to KDCR, New York—Distinguished Comics Radio. Good evening, friends, and welcome to our eighth broadcast, this Tuesday night, June twenty-fifth, nineteen-forty. I’m Simon Carver, main host, back in our little booth with too many comics, not enough desk, and a co-host who keeps eyeing my notes like they’re Cubs scouting reports.

Robert Reed

Robert Reed here, Chicago born and still loyal, Simon. Don’t worry, folks, I’m not filching his notes. I’m just checking whether this pile is comics or kindling. With paper like this, could be either one.

Simon Carver

And tonight’s show, I should say right up front, was not on our original roadmap for the year. We had a nice tidy plan—Superman, Batman, Sandman, the usual march route. Then a listener wrote in asking us to go backward a little, into the older National books, into More Fun and early Adventure, and well... the request stuck with me.

Robert Reed

Yeah, and it’s a good one. Like finding an old trail bike in a shed and realizing the engine on the shiny new model started right there under the rust. These books are earlier, rougher, cheaper, and in some ways more fun than a barrel of firecrackers.

Simon Carver

They also feel right for the moment, strange as that sounds. You look at the papers this week and the nerves are plain as day. France has fallen quiet under German occupation. Britain’s bracing, Churchill’s talking hard and steady, Italy’s in the war, and the whole Atlantic world feels like it’s listening for the next bad bulletin.

Robert Reed

And around home, folks are reading about defense, ships, planes, factories, ration talk overseas, all that. Makes a man notice the machines in these stories too—the cars, the radios, the trains, the whole modern contraption. Early comic strips loved a fast automobile the way I love a good wrench set.

Simon Carver

That’s a fair angle for tonight, actually. A lot of what we’re discussing lives in that in-between place: not yet the full superhero age, but not merely gag cartoons either. Policemen in radio cars, federal men, ghost detectives, adventurers, all crowded together under one ten-cent cover.

Robert Reed

And some of those covers are older than what we usually lug in here. Older paper, older printing, older storytelling habits. You can smell the difference. Or maybe that’s just Simon’s coffee.

Simon Carver

We’ll cover More Fun Comics eleven through fifty in broad strokes, with a closer look around issue thirty-six, and we’ll step into Adventure Comics twenty-six and thirty-four as part of the larger picture. We’ll also talk Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, Jack Liebowitz, Joe Shuster, Mart Bailey, and one of my favorite little signs of a line becoming a line—the Sandy Kean Radio Squad brushing up against Steve Carson, Federal Men.

Robert Reed

Shared-world stuff before anybody had a fancy name for it. Just one strip peeking into the next and saying, “Hey pal, we work on the same block.” That’s black-and-white enough for me.

Simon Carver

Before we talk stories, let’s talk objects. These issues are a little older than the books we’ve been covering lately, and you feel that immediately in your hands. The paper stock is that cheap pulp stuff—soft, fibrous, browning at the edges, eager to tear if you so much as look at it cross-eyed.

Robert Reed

Yeah, they’re built like lunch sacks with ambition. Some pages hold color better than others. Some don’t hold it at all. You get muddy reds, thin blues, yellows that look like they came through a dust storm. And not every page is this neat four-color parade people imagine when they hear “comic book.”

Simon Carver

Exactly. Some sections feel cleaner, some feel rushed, some pages seem to drift just a touch out of register. The black line does a lot of the heavy lifting. Which, in a way, makes you notice the drawing more. When the color’s unreliable, the shape has to sing.

Robert Reed

Good point. A strong artist can survive crummy printing the way a good ball club can survive a muddy infield. Maybe not pretty, but you still know who can play.

Simon Carver

And this takes us to Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, because the whole reason these books exist in this form is that he was one of the first men willing to gamble on original material. He founded National Allied Publications, and back in the middle thirties that mattered a great deal. Comic books weren’t just a place to dump reprints; Wheeler-Nicholson wanted something new, something built for the medium itself. That took nerve, and I’ve got to say it plainly: without that nerve, this whole line might never have existed in the first place.

Robert Reed

But he wanted fresh stuff. New Fun, then More Fun, then the line widening out. Big risk, especially when money’s already walking on eggshells in the Depression. You can call him impractical if you want, but I’d rather call him brave. He was betting on the future while everybody else was counting pennies and playing it safe.

Simon Carver

Right—and that risk helped create the workshop where Siegel and Shuster, and a number of others, could try ideas in public. But Wheeler-Nicholson had financial trouble, and this is where the ugly part starts. Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz enter the story through printing, distribution, debt, and corporate maneuvering, and by nineteen-thirty-eight Wheeler-Nicholson is pushed out. That’s not just business drama. That’s a founder getting peeled off his own creation.

Robert Reed

That’s the hard, sharp version of it. And I’m going to say it without blinking: Donenfeld and Liebowitz were the operators, the takeover men, the fellows who understood the balance sheet better than the burden of invention. Donenfeld was the brawny dealmaker, Liebowitz the accounting brain, and together they turned Wheeler-Nicholson’s dream into a machine that no longer needed him. Maybe that’s business. Maybe that’s how publishing works. But it still leaves a sour taste.

Simon Carver

A little harsh, but not wholly wrong. Liebowitz becomes central to the firm that grows into National’s stronger shape, and Donenfeld right beside him as the force and the appetite behind it. Eventually the branding we now increasingly associate with Superman and Detective—what people shorten toward “DC”—belongs to their world, not Wheeler-Nicholson’s. So when we leaf through these older More Fun and Adventure issues, we’re looking at a company in transition: half experiment, half industry, and at least one founder left out in the cold.

Robert Reed

Anthology age turning into hero age. Not there yet, but you can hear the gears. And sometimes those gears are printed in three lousy colors on paper so thin you can almost see tomorrow’s page through today’s. Kind of charming, if you ask me.

Simon Carver

More Fun Comics is one of those titles that repays patience. It begins as an experiment in original material, and by the time you’re into this early run it has become a kind of anthology mainstay—humor, adventure, mystery, juvenile scraps, little oddities all under one roof.

Robert Reed

A boarding house of comics. One room’s got a joker slipping on a banana peel, next room’s got a detective with a pistol, next room there’s some spooky gent with a curse on him. Everybody paying ten cents rent together.

Simon Carver

That’s wonderfully put. And it’s important to say: not all the art in the run we’re discussing is by Joe Shuster. He’s crucial, certainly, and you can often spot his strengths—the broad, readable faces, the lively body language, the sense that people are forever lunging into the next panel. But there are other hands here too.

Robert Reed

Mart Bailey especially. His pages don’t feel like Shuster pages. Bailey’s got a different snap. Sometimes a little stiffer, sometimes more polished in the surfaces, especially with uniforms, cars, interiors. Shuster’s got that breathless young-energy look, like the drawing itself is hurrying. Bailey can feel more squared-off, more deliberate.

Simon Carver

Yes—Shuster feels as though the panel wants to burst its seams. Mart Bailey, from what we can see in these Sandy Kean pieces, often seems more controlled, a touch more grounded in the objects of the scene. Radios look like radios. Auto bodies have weight. Rooms sit flatter, but also more firmly.

Robert Reed

Like comparing a hot jazz solo to a good marching band chart. One surges, the other holds formation. I like both, though you know where my heart goes. Marches. Straight lines. Brass. American business.

Simon Carver

Of course. The other major thing More Fun shows us is tonal migration. Early on, the book carries plenty of broad comedy and old-fashioned adventure. But as the run develops, you feel a drift toward material with more mystery, more danger, more recurring identity. Doctor Occult is part of that. So are the tougher crime strips. So are the police and federal features.

Robert Reed

It’s the line learning what readers lean toward. A pratfall’s fine. A masked mystery’s better. A radio cop in a fast car—now you’re cooking with gas.

Simon Carver

And because it’s an anthology, the experiments can sit side by side. That’s the beauty. Nothing has to carry the whole book alone. One strip can be silly, another ominous, another educational in its own clunky way. More Fun becomes a workshop not because everything in it is equally great, but because the magazine makes room for trial and error.

Robert Reed

That’s how you get to the headliners later. You build a lot of little engines first, see which one doesn’t cough itself to death.

Simon Carver

If we take More Fun eleven through fifty in broad strokes, what stands out is the gradual settling of recurring strips into recognizable temperaments. Doctor Occult, for instance, has that eerie, half-pulp, half-proto-superhero mood we talked about in our earlier special. Slam Bradley, in another neighborhood of the line, is louder and more physical, with Shorty giving him comic rhythm. Sandy Kean and the Radio Squad sit somewhere else again—modern, mechanical, civic.

Robert Reed

Yeah, Doctor Occult creeps. Slam charges. Sandy patrols. That’s your lineup right there. Occult is all shadow and secret signs. Slam is collar-grabbing and door-kicking. Sandy’s got sirens, radios, stolen cars, warehouse fires, all the modern headaches.

Simon Carver

And around issue thirty-six, I think the middle run really shows its personality. The magazine’s still mixed in tone, but the pacing is quicker, the action cleaner, the sense of serial life stronger. You can see cases beginning to feel like they belong to an ongoing publishing house rather than isolated carnival acts.

Robert Reed

That Sandy Kean material’s a peach there. He’s in the radio car, barking into the set, chasing suspects through traffic, and the stories know automobiles are exciting. They use the car like Superman stories use a locomotive—proof that the world is moving fast and somebody better keep up.

Simon Carver

And here’s the little thing I love: that shared-world flavor. In one of these stories, Sandy Kean has a small brush with Steve Carson, Federal Men. It’s not some giant union of heroes with speeches and flags. It’s smaller than that, almost casual. But it matters. One feature acknowledges another. Two strips in the same publishing orbit seem to occupy the same civic map.

Robert Reed

Which makes the place feel real. Like you could turn a corner and bump into the fella from the next feature. Not a full crossover jamboree—just a wink. I like that better sometimes. Less hooey, more neighborhood.

Simon Carver

It also lets us compare rhythms. Steve Carson’s federal material tends to carry a stiffer authority—bad men, national law, the broad arm of order. Sandy Kean is more local and immediate, almost municipal adventure. He’s the radio-age policeman. Fast response, car chases, practical trouble.

Robert Reed

And compared with Slam Bradley, no Shorty. That matters. Sandy’s world has less clowning hanging off it. It’s straighter. More procedural, if I can borrow a ten-dollar word.

Simon Carver

Borrow away. The point is that More Fun, in these middle issues, isn’t merely a bag of unrelated strips. It’s beginning to feel like a house with rooms, hallways, and recurring tenants. Not yet the grand superhero mansion—but the floorplan is there.

Simon Carver

Now let’s step over to Adventure Comics twenty-six and thirty-four. Adventure matters because it’s another proving ground in the same family—another place where anthology habits harden into line identity. Some of the stories are still broad, even goofy. Some are adventure in the old serial mode. But you can feel the editorial house style edging forward.

Robert Reed

Adventure’s like another workshop across town. Same smell of ink, same ten-cent promise, different crew at the benches. Issue twenty-six especially gives you that “anything can happen in here” feeling. You’ve got action, a little crime, a little weirdness, and everybody hustling.

Simon Carver

And by thirty-four, the line feels more confident about modern settings and urgent movement. The cars again. The radio angle again. Men with guns, uniforms, laboratories, business offices, civic spaces. The stories aren’t superheroes yet, but they’re learning to speak in big, clean beats—danger, response, pursuit, reveal.

Robert Reed

That’s the road to the later books. Once you’ve taught readers how to enjoy pace like that, it’s not a long jump to a cape or a mask taking over the same grammar. Truth is, a lot of the superhero era is just anthology adventure with the volume turned up.

Simon Carver

Beautifully said. And this ties directly to our earlier broadcasts. We’ve already covered Doctor Occult as a shadow before Superman. We’ve covered Slam Bradley as a rough detective ancestor to later costumed action. We’ve talked Batman as the figure who changes the temperature of Detective Comics. Adventure and More Fun show the broader ecosystem that made those changes possible.

Robert Reed

You don’t get Superman bursting through the wall unless a bunch of earlier fellows first taught the wall how to crack. These books are the practice field. Cheap paper, mixed talent, some duds, some gems—but that’s where the muscles got built.

Simon Carver

And the art evolution matters too. You can watch the line move from cramped, text-heavy pages toward clearer storytelling. Figures separate better from backgrounds. Cars look more dynamic. Punches land with more conviction. Even the weaker strips contribute to the general sharpening.

Robert Reed

House style, that’s what you called it. I think that’s right. Not identical art—Lord no—but a shared sense of what motion, peril, and modern life oughta look like in a National comic. By the time the headliners arrive, the audience has already been trained by these earlier squads, federal men, ghost detectives, and trouble chasers.

Simon Carver

Which is why I’m glad the listener asked us to detour. Sometimes continuity—there’s my favorite word—matters most when you look backward. These books don’t merely precede the stars. They teach you how the stars learned to shine.

Simon Carver

And that, friends, brings us to the edge of our next program. We’re going to do something a little broader on the following broadcast: our nineteen-thirties review and awards show. Not some black-tie banquet, mind you. More like Simon and Robert clearing the desk, making a lot of arguments, and hoping the mailbags help settle them.

Robert Reed

That’s right. We want your nominations. Issue of the year. Hero of the year. Favorite villain, favorite feature, maybe best cover if you’re the kind of person who judges a comic by the way it hollers from the newsstand. Which, between us, is not always a bad method.

Simon Carver

Send us your pitches, your ballots, your pleas, your wild defenses of odd little strips nobody else remembers. If you think More Fun deserves some love, say so. If you think Superman runs away with the whole decade, make the case. If you’re prepared to tell Robert that no, the Cubs of comic features did not win the pennant—please do that as gently as possible.

Robert Reed

Aw, go soak your head. But yes, write us. The address—thanks again to our mysterious Mr. Moore and his impossible future post office—is distinguishedcomicsradio@gmail.com.

Simon Carver

That’s distinguishedcomicsradio@gmail.com. We do mean it. One of the pleasures of this program has been hearing what catches in your minds—the stories you save, the artists you notice, the odd little bits of continuity you refuse to let slip by.

Robert Reed

And next time we’ll try to sort the whole decade out without starting a civil war in the studio. No promises. Simon gets sentimental, I get stubborn, and then suddenly we’re both pounding the desk over some ten-cent pamphlet from three years ago.

Simon Carver

Which, frankly, is exactly how it should be. Until then, thank you for joining us on this listener-request detour into More Fun and Adventure, into cheap paper and early ambition, into the workshop before the headliners quite took over.

Robert Reed

For Distinguished Comics Radio, this is Robert Reed in New York by way of Chicago, saying keep your chin up, keep your dimes handy, and keep an eye on those old back issues. Sometimes the first draft’s got more pep than the polished model.

Simon Carver

And this is Simon Carver, thanking you for spending your evening with us here on KDCR. Good night, friends. Keep turning the pages, keep faith with the strange little wonders, and we’ll meet you next time for our review of the nineteen-thirties. This is KDCR, New York—signing off.