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The Newsboy Legion, Vol. 1
Set in the early 1940s, the Newsboy Legion is the first of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby's very successful "kid gang" comics, featuring a group of scrappy pre-teen boys who work together to stop crime in their home of Suicide Slum. Watched over by adult hero The Guardian - a.k.a. policeman Jim Harper - The Newsboy Legion battle crime through their own newspaper reporting, taking on crooked politicians, slum lords, fifth column agents and much more.
360 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2010
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55 people want to read
About the author
Joe Simon
359 books25 followersJoseph Henry "Joe" Simon (born Hymie Simon) was an American comic book writer, artist, editor, and publisher. Simon created or co-created many important characters in the 1930s-1940s Golden Age of Comic Books and served as the first editor of Timely Comics, the company that would evolve into Marvel Comics.
With his partner, artist Jack Kirby, he co-created Captain America, one of comics' most enduring superheroes, and the team worked extensively on such features at DC Comics as the 1940s Sandman and Sandy the Golden Boy, and co-created the Newsboy Legion, the Boy Commandos, and Manhunter. Simon & Kirby creations for other comics publishers include Boys' Ranch, Fighting American and the Fly. In the late 1940s, the duo created the field of romance comics, and were among the earliest pioneers of horror comics. Simon, who went on to work in advertising and commercial art, also founded the satirical magazine Sick in 1960, remaining with it for a decade. He briefly returned to DC Comics in the 1970s.
Simon was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1999.
With his partner, artist Jack Kirby, he co-created Captain America, one of comics' most enduring superheroes, and the team worked extensively on such features at DC Comics as the 1940s Sandman and Sandy the Golden Boy, and co-created the Newsboy Legion, the Boy Commandos, and Manhunter. Simon & Kirby creations for other comics publishers include Boys' Ranch, Fighting American and the Fly. In the late 1940s, the duo created the field of romance comics, and were among the earliest pioneers of horror comics. Simon, who went on to work in advertising and commercial art, also founded the satirical magazine Sick in 1960, remaining with it for a decade. He briefly returned to DC Comics in the 1970s.
Simon was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1999.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
December 27, 2017
Ya can't beat Golden Age Jack Kirby for a fun comic. No one did the sidekick groups better that him. Nice fun read form the early days of comics. Recommended
December 23, 2016
This was surprisingly entertaining. I wasn't sure if this would be for me or not but I decided to give it a try, and I'm glad I did. Kirby's artwork was very different here then it was in the 60s with Marvel, but both eras produced good artwork. His art in this one almost had a horror style to it with some caricatures and exaggerations. but at the same time it comes across as some of his best work.
The stories still had some of the camp Golden Age comics always have, but it was done in a fun way and never muddled the stories. The Newsboy Legion was a group of homeless orphan boys who worked as newsboys, and Police Officer Jim Harper is appointed their guardian. Harper is also a costumed super hero under the name, ironically, The Guardian. The boys can never prove Harper is actually The Guardian, and that's a running theme throughout the series. I remember reading about the Guardian in 90s Superman comics, but this was the first time I read his early stories.
I would also like to note this volume is very well done. It's a nice, high quality hardcover with really vibrant and clear colors and art.
Overall a great piece of comics history, and if you're a Golden Age comic fan this is worth checking out for sure.
The stories still had some of the camp Golden Age comics always have, but it was done in a fun way and never muddled the stories. The Newsboy Legion was a group of homeless orphan boys who worked as newsboys, and Police Officer Jim Harper is appointed their guardian. Harper is also a costumed super hero under the name, ironically, The Guardian. The boys can never prove Harper is actually The Guardian, and that's a running theme throughout the series. I remember reading about the Guardian in 90s Superman comics, but this was the first time I read his early stories.
I would also like to note this volume is very well done. It's a nice, high quality hardcover with really vibrant and clear colors and art.
Overall a great piece of comics history, and if you're a Golden Age comic fan this is worth checking out for sure.
June 1, 2018
From early days of Simon and Kirby work The Newsboy Legion starts four orphan boys name Big Words, Tommy, Scrapper and Gabby growing up in Suicide Slum who, after trouble with the law was given custody to Jim Harper a police officer by day/dress up super hero crime fighter by night helps try to keep the kids on right side of the law.
While maybe slow read by todays standers and not fancy with fancy paper and computer work still enjoyable read their avengers, showing their good heart and hard working while getting into and out of trouble with help of Jim.
While maybe slow read by todays standers and not fancy with fancy paper and computer work still enjoyable read their avengers, showing their good heart and hard working while getting into and out of trouble with help of Jim.
November 23, 2022
I’ve encountered a couple of permutations of this team over the years. First there was Jack Kirby’s Jimmy Olsen comics, which I read not realizing they were a very different kind of weird than the goofy Jimmy Olsen I was looking for. That includes a grown up version of the kids here and their own kids, and I honestly don’t remember anything about them. Then there was the Guardian in Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers, who I find a little more memorable for the fact that he dealt with subway pirates. But only now am I encountering the original team.
And I have to say, having read the first half of the Newsboy Legion’s original adventures, it doesn’t surprise me too much that they’re pretty obscure. Jack Kirby and Joe Simon created these characters after moving to DC Comics and finding themselves with an excess of story ideas about a gang of kids. They decided to mix things up and add a masked crime fighter, and the rest is…well, saying history feels like it would be ascribing too much importance to these characters. The Guardian has a shield, just like Captain America, but he lacks that character’s patriotic gimmick and super solider serum abilities. And the four boys of the Newsboy Legion are basically stock characters. There’s the fighter, aptly named Scrapper, the loudmouth, named Gabby, the smart guy, Big Words, and the nominal leader and only one with a real name, Tommy. Though honestly he doesn’t really do much - despite allegedly being the leader that doesn’t quite rise to the level of proper schtick and thus he’s not too interesting.
In general, the stories feel relatively formulaic. There’s no super powered heroes or villains here, just a group of kids and their cop guardian going up against an array of occasionally gimmicky mobsters. As with many comics of this era, there’s not much in the way of continuity or building on what’s come before, which is too bad because there are occasionally side characters that would be nice to see again, such as the teenage girl in charge of a mob of other local teens. There were some stories with fun gimmicks, like the one where the Legion writes a comic book or the one where they try to film a documentary about the slums they live in, only for Big Words to have left the lens cap on.
In fact, it’s funny seeing what tropes and bits were in use back in the 40s. Though for me it’s probably most notable that the war doesn’t break into the story that often. A handful of adventures are kicked off by the boys taking action to help the war on the homefront, such as when they go to work on a farm or accidentally grab counterfeiter’s supplies while collecting books for the USO. There’s a couple of occasions of Nazi spies, and one notable dream sequence where Gabby imagines what he and his friends would do if NYC fell to the Nazis. But in contrast to Captain America and a lot of other 40s comics, the Newsboy Legion never heads overseas to sock Hitler on the jaw.
In the end, I imagine if I were a kid in the 40s, I probably would’ve liked these stories okay. I do like that the characters are from a pretty rough background and the stories try to explore that. And maybe if I was reading a new story each month rather than jamming them in one after another in a big collection, I might like things better. It’s not the most cliche series ever, but it is a bit too formulaic and the Guardian doesn’t do much to make himself stand out from generic masked crime fighters. There is a second volume collecting the rest of the original run, but I feel like I’ve seen enough to know what the Newsboy Legion is like and I doubt I need a second serving.
And I have to say, having read the first half of the Newsboy Legion’s original adventures, it doesn’t surprise me too much that they’re pretty obscure. Jack Kirby and Joe Simon created these characters after moving to DC Comics and finding themselves with an excess of story ideas about a gang of kids. They decided to mix things up and add a masked crime fighter, and the rest is…well, saying history feels like it would be ascribing too much importance to these characters. The Guardian has a shield, just like Captain America, but he lacks that character’s patriotic gimmick and super solider serum abilities. And the four boys of the Newsboy Legion are basically stock characters. There’s the fighter, aptly named Scrapper, the loudmouth, named Gabby, the smart guy, Big Words, and the nominal leader and only one with a real name, Tommy. Though honestly he doesn’t really do much - despite allegedly being the leader that doesn’t quite rise to the level of proper schtick and thus he’s not too interesting.
In general, the stories feel relatively formulaic. There’s no super powered heroes or villains here, just a group of kids and their cop guardian going up against an array of occasionally gimmicky mobsters. As with many comics of this era, there’s not much in the way of continuity or building on what’s come before, which is too bad because there are occasionally side characters that would be nice to see again, such as the teenage girl in charge of a mob of other local teens. There were some stories with fun gimmicks, like the one where the Legion writes a comic book or the one where they try to film a documentary about the slums they live in, only for Big Words to have left the lens cap on.
In fact, it’s funny seeing what tropes and bits were in use back in the 40s. Though for me it’s probably most notable that the war doesn’t break into the story that often. A handful of adventures are kicked off by the boys taking action to help the war on the homefront, such as when they go to work on a farm or accidentally grab counterfeiter’s supplies while collecting books for the USO. There’s a couple of occasions of Nazi spies, and one notable dream sequence where Gabby imagines what he and his friends would do if NYC fell to the Nazis. But in contrast to Captain America and a lot of other 40s comics, the Newsboy Legion never heads overseas to sock Hitler on the jaw.
In the end, I imagine if I were a kid in the 40s, I probably would’ve liked these stories okay. I do like that the characters are from a pretty rough background and the stories try to explore that. And maybe if I was reading a new story each month rather than jamming them in one after another in a big collection, I might like things better. It’s not the most cliche series ever, but it is a bit too formulaic and the Guardian doesn’t do much to make himself stand out from generic masked crime fighters. There is a second volume collecting the rest of the original run, but I feel like I’ve seen enough to know what the Newsboy Legion is like and I doubt I need a second serving.
February 4, 2022
The Newsboy Legion, created in 1942 for DC, may not be one of Jack Kirby's greatest comic book series (though don't count that out), but it's surely one of his most personal. The Legion are a kid gang trying to survive in a rotting tenement neighborhood called Suicide Slum, selling newspapers
and trying to avoid mob activity as Kirby himself did growing up in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Like the Legion, Kirby found camaraderie and support in a local boy's club (which still exists today) and the exploits of Tommy, Scrapper, Gabby and "Big Woids", juvenile delinquents
under threat of being sent to reform school, were pure Kirby; he knew this world. The idealized figure of "copper" and advocate Jim Harper/The Guardian, an adult and part-time vigilante who not only cares about the kids but actively argues in court to protect them, has a poignancy that still resonates eighty years later. Kirby loved these characters so much, he brought descendants of the group back in the first issue he created of Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen, when Kirby returned to DC
in 1970.
Unlike his other WWII kid gang series for DC, the Boy Commandos, which could whimsically swerve into science fiction, the Newsboy Legion is grounded in the streets and a world of poverty (one scene of a sick lady in bed takes place in a run-down room quite like the one Kirby and his family lived in), though one story imagines what New York would be like if the Nazis took control of it (a real threat when these stories were being written and drawn).
The Newsboy Legion Vol. 1 covers half of the Legion stories created in the '40s. They're printed on wonderfully non-glare paper and, if slightly too dark in places, are perfectly readable. Kirby was drafted into the U.S. Army about halfway through the volume, and so the last stories in the volume reflect the inventory Kirby and partner Joe Simon were tasked by DC with creating, knowing that WWII drafting was imminent. Kirby has only partial involvement with the last story he draws in the book and a still awkward and green Gil Kane takes over for the last two stories. Vol. II continues
with stories drawn by Kane, Joe Kubert and others until Kirby returned from the warfront.
and trying to avoid mob activity as Kirby himself did growing up in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Like the Legion, Kirby found camaraderie and support in a local boy's club (which still exists today) and the exploits of Tommy, Scrapper, Gabby and "Big Woids", juvenile delinquents
under threat of being sent to reform school, were pure Kirby; he knew this world. The idealized figure of "copper" and advocate Jim Harper/The Guardian, an adult and part-time vigilante who not only cares about the kids but actively argues in court to protect them, has a poignancy that still resonates eighty years later. Kirby loved these characters so much, he brought descendants of the group back in the first issue he created of Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen, when Kirby returned to DC
in 1970.
Unlike his other WWII kid gang series for DC, the Boy Commandos, which could whimsically swerve into science fiction, the Newsboy Legion is grounded in the streets and a world of poverty (one scene of a sick lady in bed takes place in a run-down room quite like the one Kirby and his family lived in), though one story imagines what New York would be like if the Nazis took control of it (a real threat when these stories were being written and drawn).
The Newsboy Legion Vol. 1 covers half of the Legion stories created in the '40s. They're printed on wonderfully non-glare paper and, if slightly too dark in places, are perfectly readable. Kirby was drafted into the U.S. Army about halfway through the volume, and so the last stories in the volume reflect the inventory Kirby and partner Joe Simon were tasked by DC with creating, knowing that WWII drafting was imminent. Kirby has only partial involvement with the last story he draws in the book and a still awkward and green Gil Kane takes over for the last two stories. Vol. II continues
with stories drawn by Kane, Joe Kubert and others until Kirby returned from the warfront.
January 22, 2020
While the Boy Commandos were Joe Simon and Jack Kirby's biggest hit at DC in the Golden Age, I like this strip much better. Four orphan newsboys in the hellhole of Suicide Slum demonstrate a penchant for stumbling across crimes and Nazi spies more often than Scooby and his friends stumble over fake ghosts. Fortunately they have their guardian, Officer Jim Harper, AKA Suicide Slum's masked hero, the Guardian (yes, the one Jimmy Olsen's role in CW's Supergirl was based on), watching over them.
This has a lot of fun and energy, though as I usually say with Golden Age material, YMMV.
This has a lot of fun and energy, though as I usually say with Golden Age material, YMMV.
April 4, 2018
Like many 1940s comics, the stories here are repetitive and fairly hokey, but there is an energy to them that most of Simon and Kirby's peers never managed. The creators' enthusiasm is evident on each page. There are a few solid twists, though not many. DC did a good job repackaging the material. If you're a Kirby or Simon/Kirby fan, or just a historian, it's a nice book. If you're just in it for good comics and have modern tastes, I'd give it a pass.
June 15, 2022
Your enjoyment of this is really going to depend upon your tolerance level for Golden Age comics. Plots are simplistic and contrived and drawn anatomy can be sketchy at times. With that said, these are a lot of fun with their mix of gangland crime and superheroes.
August 11, 2024
Absolutely the best. Joe Simon and Jack Kirby were outstanding. Very interesting stories and very good artwork. The four kids, the cop and the Guardian were brilliant. I have always loved stories about criminals. I also love comedy. This collection had both. I also have the second collection and I can’t wait to read that one.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews