Seems I’ve always had a thing for the comic gals.  I collected Spider Woman and Red Sonja back in the day with my paper route money, and many of File652my golden age acquisitions lean towards (even shorter lived) titles starring lady heroes.  Jane Arden is yet another example.

Like during the bronze age when I was tossing papers onto neighbor’s porches, it seems that so many golden age comic stars (female and male – most famously Clark Kent) were written as also working for the newspaper industry.  As a reporter, assignments for columns and news, it seems, was a perfect segway to putting crime bosses behind bars.

Jane Arden (comics)

Jane Arden (comics) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In a further newspaper tie in, Jane Arden ran in daily newspaper strips starting clear back in 1928.  She was created by writer Monte Barrett and artist Frank Ellis.  Of course, there were media spin-offs.  A weekly radio show in 1937 and a movie “The Adventures of Jane Arden” in 1939.

After several years of writing these posts its a familiar story.  All the characters success would finally led to the obvious conclusion of appearing in a comic book – particularly when content was as readily accessible as the already written and drawn newspaper strips.  St. John Publishing Co. licensed  the character and “re-ran” the strip content for three issues.  The one shown here happens to be one that St. John ran under the name Pageant of Comics #2*, from October 1947.  The other two ran under the title Jane Arden.  Cover art is by Russell Ross.

*sold copy