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Blue Ribbon Comics
- 4 (June 1940) Origin of the Fox
- 5 (July 1940) The Great Trailer Mystery
- 8 (January 1941) The Fox Goes to a Nightclub
These best stories of the comic books are preceded by their issue number.
The Fox
The Fox was a costumed crime fighter in the tradition of Batman: a man without super-powers, but with a mask, costume, secret identity, and technological gimmicks used to fight crime. Like Batman, the Black Canary, Tarantula and Wildcat, the Fox's persona involves animal imagery. Unlike the bizarre, high-tech villains in the Batman tales, the Fox mainly fights regular gangsters and crooks.
The Fox appeared in Blue Ribbon Comics from #4 (June 1940) through #22 (March 1942).
Origin of the Fox (1940). Writer: Joe Blair. Art: Irwin Hasen. (Title for this titleless story supplied by the Grand Comics Database.) Newspaper reporter Paul Patton creates the secret identity of The Fox, to battle the Night Riders, a group of masked men who use terror to control a West Virginia community. The Night Riders are a thinly disguised version of the Ku Klux Klan, the infamous white supremacist group. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster had previously attacked such groups in their Spy tale, "The Hooded Hordes" (Detective Comics #17, July 1938). This is another example of how influential Siegel and Shuster were on Golden Age comic books.
This is a true origin story: it tells the full story of how Paul Patton turns himself into the Fox. We learn a little about Patton. He was formerly an athlete at Penn State, an unusually specific background for a comic book hero. Now he works for the Daily Globe newspaper. The story is also the origin of the Globe's star reporter Ruth Ransom, who frequently works with Patton in the tales. Joe Blair's super-hero, Hercules, also has an athletic background. The Fox seems to be a normal young man, and his world, while full of crooks, is not as grotesque as Batman's. It does contain serious social problems, something one rarely sees in Batman tales.
Like Spiderman to come, the Fox works as a newspaper photographer in his secret identity. Both use their abilities to take unique snapshots of their crime fighting activities, which then appear in their papers. There is a bit of a difference in the position of such reporters as Clark Kent, and these photographer heroes. Reporters do not have to be physically present at the events about which they write. They are allowed to get facts from reputable sources and witnesses, and write up these facts as newspaper articles. By contrast, due to the technology of film, a photographer typically must be present at the taking of pictures. This presents extra challenges to these heroes, first in the taking of the snapshots, then in the delivery of them to the outside world.
The Great Trailer Mystery (1940). Writer: Joe Blair. Art: Irwin Hasen. Paul and Ruth get in trouble with crooks when they are assigned to cover an accident to a trailer. This is a pleasant thriller plot, with lots of detail.
The Fox Goes to a Nightclub (1941). Writer: Joe Blair. Art: Irwin Hasen. The Fox solves a mystery involving the shooting of a night club singer, and the theft of jewels. This is a complexly plotted story. It has a pulp magazine feel, recalling the hard-boiled detective stories that appeared in pulp magazines in the 1920's and 1930's.
Paul Patton looks great here in a double-breasted black tuxedo. Such formal wear was de rigeur for anyone attending a night club in that era.