Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Vintage Paper | Tagged: Harry Shorten, MLJ
The Shield Takes the Field for the NY Giants, Pep Comics #7 at Auction
MLJ’s Pep Comics #7 has The Shield playing baseball for the New York Giants after a protection racket threatens Yankees legend Joe DiMaggio.
Article Summary
- Pep Comics #7 sends The Shield into a deadly baseball protection racket built around thinly veiled New York stars.
- The Shield story by Harry Shorten and Irv Novick nods to Joe DiMaggio, Carl Hubbell, and Bill Terry.
- Pep Comics #7 has Joe Higgins join the Giants as the Masked Marvel to expose gangster Al Moroni at Coogan’s Bluff.
- The issue also includes Bob Wood’s Kayo Ward tale featuring Joe Louis, deepening Pep Comics #7’s sports focus.
Characters named Joe Madaggio and Cal Bubble are among the baseball players whose lives are threatened in Pep Comics #7, an August 1940 issue that puts the Shield in the middle of a murderous protection racket. In the story by Harry Shorten and Irving Novick, fictional player names and team references strongly suggest familiar New York baseball teams and players, including New York Yankees legend Joe DiMaggio and New York Giants pitcher Carl Hubbell and manager Bill Terry. Novick provided the artwork for another MLJ baseball story, this one written by Robert Kanigher, for Zip Comics #25. That story featured the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Yankees, so one can only imagine the baseball rivalriesat MLJ. Bob Wood‘s Kayo Ward story in Pep Comics #7 also features heavyweight icon Joe Louis.
The Shield vs New York Baseball Racket
Shorten had been writing about sports before he began writing comics. He had coauthored a football book with Mal Stevens in 1937 and contributed football material to Radio Guide in 1938. Here, FBI agent Joe Higgins starts out as a baseball fan in the stands, then finds himself investigating the murder of a star player. Gangster Al Moroni has decided to make baseball players pay for protection, and refusing his demands can be fatal. Slugger Madaggio is killed by an explosive baseball, while another player is murdered with an incendiary bullet at a different park. Madaggio’s widow, who calls her husband Joe, completes the picture for the Joe DiMaggio reference.
The next player threatened is Cal Bubble, a pitcher for the New Yorkers, whose manager is named Terrier. Taken together, this suggests New York Giants pitcher Carl Hubbell and manager Bill Terry. The Shield joins the Giants as the Masked Marvel, pitching and batting with superhuman ability. He ultimately gets Moroni’s confession at Coogan’s Bluff. As baseball historian Stew Thornley explains in his history of the Polo Grounds, later baseball stadiums that used the name were located below the bluff in upper Manhattan.
Bob Wood‘s Kayo Ward takes a more straightforward approach with its sports star, including Joe Louis under his real name. Seeing that his opponent is already injured, Louis refuses to keep hitting Kayo, and the referee stops the fight. Novick also supplies an intense bondage cover here. An issue thoroughly anchored in the sports of its time, there’s a Pep Comics #7 (MLJ, 1940) CGC FN 6.0 with off-white pages up for auction at the <a href="https://comicvibe.com/5-new-netflix-shows-streaming-in-november/” title=”5 new Netflix shows streaming in November”>November 5, 2026 Golden Age Century Comics Showcase Auction VI #40378.
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