Posted in: Comics, Vintage Paper | Tagged: bob powell, Fox Feature Syndicate, Nathaniel Nitkin, victor fox, will eisner
Aerial Bombing and Monster Horror in The Flame #3, at Auction
The Flame #3 combines modern warfare with contemporary crime concerns and puts its pulp influences inside a superhero wrapper.
Article Summary
- The Flame #3 turns an insurance fraud plot into aerial bombing horror, reflecting war news that shaped late 1940 comics.
- The issue blends superhero action with pulp crime, a cursed diamond tale, and a monster-making mad scientist thriller.
- The Flame #3 includes uncertain but notable creator links, with Bob Powell, Nathaniel Nitkin, and Will Eisner in the mix.
- The Flame #3 stands as a scarce early Fox superhero comic, with few higher-grade copies recorded on the CGC Census.
The villain of the lead feature of The Flame #3, Doctor Ivan, did not burn buildings for insurance money. He bombed them. The story takes war-era inspirations in a bizarre direction, as Ivan’s gang uses aircraft, explosives, and attacks on building infrastructure to turn a familiar fraud racket into something that looks like modern warfare. According to copyright records, the issue went on sale December 2, 1940, when bombing had become a daily part of the news from Europe, and the story combined its war and crime elements in an unusual way. Insurance arson was already recognized by law enforcement as a racket. New York City chief fire marshal Thomas P. Brophy published “The Arson Racket” in The Police Journal in the spring of 1940.
The next two Flame stories in this issue move towards more familiar ground for a Golden Age comic book. The Diamond of Death is not just a mob fight over a valuable jewel, because the diamond is cursed. In The Mad Scientist of Hell’s Kitchen, a scientist uses a serum to turn himself into a brute monster. Together, the three stories make a pretty good snapshot of the state of comic books in 1940, mixing pulp genre influences with more recent concerns about the war.
Credits are sparse and uncertain here, and the creators of the new material in The Flame #3 are unknown. As for the material reprinted from earlier Fox issues, Bob Powell‘s six-page Dr. Fung murder mystery comes from the prolific opening of a career that moved quickly through the Eisner-Iger shop and into Fox material across several genres. The two-page Raider of the Spaceways text story is credited to N. N. Nathaniel, the name used here by Nathaniel Nitkin, then a recent City College (of New York City) graduate whose long career ranged from comic books to syndicated fiction, journalism, photography, and later, wildlife and nature issues in New England. Will Eisner is associated with several stories here, though some credits remain uncertain.
The Flame #3 is a surprisingly tough get, especially in high grade. There are only 11 Universal copies on the CGC Census with only two copies higher graded than this CGC 6.0. This is a scarce early Fox superhero issue that combines a range of pulp influences with recent crime and war era fears. Prospective bidders will rarely have a shot at getting a higher grade copy of this issue than this. There’s a The Flame #3 (Fox, 1940) CGC FN 6.0 Off-white pages copy up for auction at the 2026 August 13 Golden Age Century Comics Showcase Auction V #40377.
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