Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored | Tagged: Ed Smalle, Edd Ashe, Harry Shorten, Joe Blair, Kin Platt, MLJ Comics
The Real Hoover Dam Threat Behind Top-Notch Comics #6, at Auction
Harry Shorten and Edd Ashe channel a real war-era threat against the Hoover Dam into their Wizard saga in Top-Notch Comics #6
Article Summary
- Top-Notch Comics #6 turns real 1939-1940 Hoover Dam sabotage fears into a timely Wizard wartime adventure.
- Harry Shorten and Edd Ashe depict the Wizard battling Soviet-coded Mosconians in early MLJ propaganda fiction.
- Top-Notch Comics #6 continues the Mosconians saga and showcases Joe Blair and Ed Smalle on Wings Johnson.
- With just 18 Universal CGC copies recorded, Top-Notch Comics #6 is a scarce and historically rich Golden Age MLJ issue.
A few months before Top-Notch Comics #6 reached newsstands, federal officials were quietly preparing for the possibility that saboteurs might attack Hoover Dam. On November 30, 1939, the State Department received word of an alleged German plot to bomb the dam’s intake towers and, as a result, cut power to the aviation facilities in Los Angeles. In February 1940, the War Department obtained information that “Life and death orders have been given by Berlin to put L.A. in the black”, with claims that saboteurs had been ordered to strike power facilities near Boulder Dam and Los Angeles. The National Archives history of the dam’s wartime security chronicles this entire sequence of events.
Top-Notch Comics #6 hit newsstands around April 15, 1940, with the Wizard fighting an attack on Hoover Dam. Clearly inspired by then-unfolding events, the story changes the alleged attackers from German agents to the Soviet-coded Mosconians and converts newspaper headlines into a chapter in an ongoing superhero saga.
The Mosconians Move West
This attack on Hoover Dam also continues a story already in progress. In Top-Notch Comics #5, the Mosconians had struck American military institutions, including West Point and Annapolis. The Wizard was still less a conventional costumed hero than a pulp super-scientist who used his unmatched brainpower against threats to the United States, and his early stories repeatedly disguised real countries just enough to keep their targets obvious. Hoover Dam supplied power to Southern California, making it an obvious sabotage target during wartime. Edd Ashe‘s machinery and action and Harry Shorten‘s story make this one of the most underappreciated features of the early Golden Age. Shorten wrote six of the issue’s nine features, moving from Galahad’s Arthurian adventure to Streak Chandler’s science fiction, Dick Storm’s fictional Honduran dictatorship, Bob Phantom’s narcotics war, West Pointer’s military-school baseball, and Kardak’s supernatural Louisiana bayous.
Joe Blair‘s Wings Johnson story is also inspired by recent headlines of the era. Johnson is an American serving in the Royal Air Force, assigned in this story to the British aircraft carrier Royal Arch after defeating Nazi U-boat commander Von Schiller. The Royal Arch was obviously inspired by HMS Ark Royal, which was already one of Britain’s most famous carriers. It had participated in the Royal Navy’s opening U-boat operations, survived a German attack that propaganda falsely claimed had sunk it, and joined the force pursuing the Graf Spee in late 1939. Ed Smalle‘s career would eventually include a number of aviation features, and his expertise in this area shows in the artwork here.
There are 18 Universal copies of this issue on the CGC Census, with two of those at 6.0 and six higher. Top-Notch Comics #6 turns the real-life Hoover Dam threat into one of the Wizard’s most historically fascinating adventures, and this issue is packed with an impressive range of early MLJ talent. An example of what makes the MLJ superhero era so special, there’s a Top-Notch Comics #6 (MLJ, 1940) CGC FN 6.0 Off-white to white pages up for auction at the 2026 August 13 Golden Age Century Comics Showcase Auction V #40377.
Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!
Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!
