Howard Purcell

[5] The titular adventurer's exploits with subterranean races and other science fiction conceits ran through issue #62.

[7] A minor character in what would become the DC Universe, Sargon was John Sargent, whose exposure to the "Ruby of Life" during infancy granted him magical powers that he used in adulthood to fight crime, keeping his supernatural abilities camouflaged in his guise as a stage magician.

[5] With writer Gardner Fox, Purcell created the Gay Ghost in All-American's Sensation Comics #1 (Jan.

[8] The character, renamed the Grim Ghost in the 1970s,[8] was similar to National Comics' the Spectre in that he was a ghost (of Keith Everet, the fictional 18th-century Earl of Strethmere) who inhabited the body of a modern man, Charles Collins, to fight injustice – although unlike the genuinely grim Spectre, he did so with cheery (i.e., gay) swashbuckling.

[5] His 1960s work included drawing the DC series Sea Devils and co-creating the supernatural character the Enchantress with writer Bob Haney in Strange Adventures #187 (April 1966).

Green Lantern #1 (Fall 1941). Cover art by Purcell