Number 1509: Moon Girl and the day the world trembled

Moon Girl was EC Comics’ answer to DC’s Wonder Woman, without the kinky stuff. My opinion is that Moon Girl was too tame. Maybe she needed something a bit kinky to bump up sales, but Moon Girl went into oblivion in the late forties, so it’s moot. You Golden Age fans remember that EC publisher Maxwell Charles Gaines had started All American Comics in a joint publishing venture with DC Comics, then ultimately sold it to DC. Gaines founded Educational Comics, EC, and ran it until his death in a boating accident in 1947. The rest of EC history is well known, and some of these early EC Comics are collectible because of being ancestors to the notorious later New Trend titles.

Sheldon Moldoff did the artwork for “The Day the World Trembled!” As you may also recall, he was with Gaines from the start, drawing Hawkman in Flash Comics. The story is the lead from Moon Girl, #6 (1949) the last issue under that title. Next two issues would be Moon Girl Fights Crime, then A Moon...a Girl...Romance, which eventually became Weird Fantasy, one of the more odd evolutions of titles in comics history.

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More Moon Girl here. Just click on the thumbnails.

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Number 1185: Mooning the cyclops

Moon Girl, the Pre-Trend EC Comics' version of Wonder Woman, fights off the cyclops, who has escaped from the prison, "miles inland on the island of Sicily," where he has been since Ulysses put him there. Having been out of action for a couple of thousand years at least, ol' One-Eye needs to eat. He grabs a shipload of grub before rising up sometime later on an American beach.

The story is from Moon Girl and contains at least one major howler: When meeting Moon Girl's enemy, the Professor, the caption reads, "In archaic Latin, the one-eyed giant speaks . . ." Maybe to 1948 comic book readers archaic Latin and archaic Greek were the same. But I'm surprised it slipped by even the most lax editor. That editor would have been William M. Gaines, as the indicia credit reads. Gaines took over Moon Girl from his father, Maxwell Charles Gaines, who had started Educational Comics after DC bought out his share of their publishing empire, All American Comics. The elder Gaines* had died in the summer of 1947, leaving the publishing company to his wife and son.

From Moon Girl #4 (1948), drawn by Sheldon Moldoff:

*The elder Gaines had also been the original publisher of Wonder Woman. Moon Girl was never close to being as bizarre as Wonder Woman, a comic in a class all its own. On Sunday, July 8, I'll be featuring a wild story featuring our favorite Amazon.

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Number 874


EC's only superhero(ine)


This is the last day of our EC theme week.

Maxwell C. "Charlie" Gaines started EC Comics after selling his All American Comics line to DC in 1945. They'd had a co-publishing arrangement for years, anyway, and Charlie Gaines' heroes, Flash, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, et al., were assimilated by DC. We go forward to 1947, the last issue of Animal Fables, #7, and the story of the "new" Wonder Woman, Moon Girl.

There were a lot of similarities between the characters, but Moon Girl was missing a couple of key elements that made Wonder Woman so memorable: Harry Peter's outrageous artwork, and Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston's bondage themes. Moon Girl was drawn by Sheldon Moldoff, who had worked for Gaines at All American. Moldoff later went on to do a variety of genres, including horror comics for Fawcett, but settled in for a steady gig as Bob Kane's ghost artist on Batman in 1953.

Moon Girl was short-lived. Her comic book morphed from #1, Moon Girl and the Prince, to #2-6, Moon Girl, to #7 and 8, Moon Girl Fights Crime, and finally A Moon...a Girl...Romance. She was the only super-powered character to appear in EC Comics (unless you count Freddy Firefly or "Comics" McCormick).From the looks of the history of EC after its founder died, it's clear that his son, Bill, who inherited EC, had other ideas about what would sell, and superheroes weren't in the mix.

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Number 708


Moon Girl


More from EC Comic's Pre-Trend:

Moon Girl, similar to Wonder Woman, made her debut in Happy Houlihans, had her own book under a couple of different titles, and ended up as a casualty of the trend toward love comics. Moon Girl and the Prince begat Moon Girl, which begat Moon Girl Fights Crime, which then begat A Moon, A Girl, Romance.

Sheldon Moldoff, who drew Moon Girl, was an important part of early EC history. He worked for EC publisher Max Gaines' earlier All-American Comics line doing Hawkman in Flash Comics, and he drew up plans for an EC horror comic, even producing some stories for a proposed book that went into the Pre-Trend crime comics instead--and without Moldoff--launched the EC New Trend horror comics. See the story of Moldoff's Tales of the Supernatural in the book Tales of Terror! by Grant Geissman.

Moon Girl, for all her charms and the moonstone that gave her super powers, just couldn't carry a comic book title on her own, and during a period of transition was dropped. The Moon Girl stories were written by Gardner Fox, who was also with the Max Gaines Gang on Hawkman and several other features.

From Moon Girl #3, Spring 1948:












Tomorrow: What Lee Ames did was a crime!

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