Adventure Comics # 78, September, 1942

Here's a vintage WWII propaganda cover akin to the all-star superhero covers Timely always had. Manhunter teams with Sandman and Sandy to fight the Axis. 

This issue Starman teams with a persistent young lad in what appears to be a story setting him up to be Starboy or some such but nothing ever comes of it and he's never seen again. 

Not sure why I didn't notice this before but one of DC's Advisory Board members was a Dr. Robert Thorndike...and Minute Man Martin was replaced as Hourman's young sidekick by...Thorndyke! Coincidence?

The one-off SAM THE INVENTOR strip shows just how accepted visual racial stereotypes still were at this point. Underneath it, the first ad for WONDER WOMAN.

Kirby and Simon seemed at a loss sometimes as to exactly what their MANHUNTER was supposed to look like. Here we see a couple of obvious instances of Paul Kirk in a red mask with, for some reason, a blue face. The rest of the story, however, features his usual full blue face which, since his ears are colored normally, one presumes to be some sort of mask, also.

Note the amazing gift to "COMIC" readers!

Adventure Comics # 77, August, 1942

Apparently DC had received some mail on MANHUNTER as the cover toplines it with "A HIT!" That said, it might confuse some new readers since this is, of course, Sandman on the cover.

 A classic STARMAN splash, reprinted in the seventies by DC  and still looking very impactful today.

 Another innovative but weird looking opening for HOURMAN, now permanently saddled with Thorndyke as his sidekick.

Last issue saw the last of SREVE CONRAD. Rather than giving him a cape and some powers, he was replaced by GENIUS JONES, a fun kids' superhero strip initially drawn by Stan Kaye. It would appear ultimately in a number of DC titles over the next few years. Here's the complete first appearance. According to Wikipedia, this was written by future sci-fi legend Alfred Bester.

The prolific Simon and Kirby team take the last panel of SANDMAN to plug yet another new series from them, BOY COMMANDOS. Starting in DETECTIVE, that series will eventually become their most popular DC feature and run also in WORLD'S FINEST as well as in its own magazine, continuing in the S&K style long after their departure from the strip and the company.

Adventure Comics # 76, July, 1942

Note the little Superman blurb for Defense stamps. It was still early in the war. Soon enough, DC would be basing whole covers around Defense Stamps and War Bond drives!

Not normally known as an artistic innovator, Bernard Baily here presents a very clever splash page.

PRIZE COMICS. Again. 

Adventure Comics # 75, June, 1942

Here's a rare to date instance of the cover actually reflecting an interior story. In this case, that story is one of S &K's most justifiably famous SANDMAN tales in which our hero and sidekick Sandy meet a variation of a character that Jack Kirby will be associated with in later years: Thor.

Already the JSA are being drafted and turning into the Justice Battalion for the duration...supposedly.

Green Arrow wasn't brand new here but this is the first of not one but two ads in this issue touting him as a big deal...something he would, in reality, have to wait another two and a half decades to become.

 WHAT TH...!!?? Now, "Thorndyke, The Minute Man has his own logo!

Here's the whole SANDMAN tale with Thor. Kirby's fascination with the Norse Gods would lead to him using the Thunder God in the fifties at DC in a one-off fantasy story before turning him into a superhero in the early sixties.