St John's Original Crime Reporter, Jane Arden #1 at Auction

Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Vintage Paper | Tagged: Matt Baker, St. John Publications

Comic Strip character Jane Arden may have influenced Lois Lane and more, but the St. John title arguably changed the course of that publisher’s history.

Article Summary

Jane Arden’s impact extends from comic strips to inspiring Lois Lane.
St. John publications leveraged Jane Arden for groundbreaking change.
Jane Arden’s transition to Crime Reporter marks a pivot in publishing.
Matt Baker’s cover art heralded a peak era for St. John in the late 1940s.

The Jane Arden comic strip is an underappreciated part of comics history. The character debuted on November 26, 1928, created by writer Monte Barrett and artist Frank Ellis for the Register and Tribune Syndicate, and ran for four decades until January 20, 1968. It’s widely believed that Jane Arden influenced numerous other famous female reporter characters, including Superman’s Lois Lane and fellow comic strip heroine Brenda Starr, Reporter. Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Mary McGrory credited Jane Arden with inspiring her career. The character’s adventures went beyond simply reporting on the aftermath of crimes, and actively sought to infiltrate and expose criminal activity. Russel E. Ross took over the drawing and eventually writing the strip.

The character’s comic strip exploits were reprinted a number of times in comic books during the Golden Age, including in Feature Funnies and Crack Comics. But St. John’s usage of the Jane Arden strip material led to an interesting twist in that publisher’s history. There’s a copy of Jane Arden #1 (St. John, 1948) Condition: VG up for auction in the 2024 May 26-28 Sunday, Monday & Tuesday Comic Books Select Auction #122422 at Heritage Auctions.

Archer St. John entered the magazine publishing business in 1941 with wartime aviation magazine Air News, and later with Flying Cadet. Flying Cadet is notable for ocassionally containing some comic material. St. John got into the comic book business proper with two different newspaper strip reprint titles, Comics Review and Treasury of Comics which both hit the newsstand in April 1947. In September 1947, St. John took over the Terry-Toons Comics license from Marvel, which featured the comic book adventures of Mighty Mouse and other Terry-Toons characters. That same month, St. John added a third newspaper comic strip reprint title, Pageant of Comics.

As the publisher began to steadily add titles, the sporadically-published strip reprint titles began to spin off their own strip-focused reprint series, and these included Jane Arden, which had debuted with Pageant of Comics #2 at St. John with the cover title Jane Arden, Crime Reporter. The series Jane Arden, Crime Reporter (again as it was titled on the covers) then lasted two issues at St. John, and the second issue was followed directly by Crime Reporter #1 the very next month. That debut issue has a cover by Bob Lubbers which looks a lot like a repurposed Jane Arden cover.

Despite the absence of Jane Arden strip reprints on the insides, the new Crime Reporter still didn’t feature original stories. The series is composed entirely of reprints from Chesler comic book material with some of the better-known characters renamed. The infamous Black Dwarf from Red Seal Comics stories became Blue Monk in Crime Reporter, and Lucky Coyne from Red Seal Comics and Dynamic Comics became the titular crime reporter character Jinx Jordan in Crime Reporter. And so it was that Jane Arden, Crime Reporter became Crime Reporter featuring the crime-reporting exploits of Jinx Jordan and company. And while the issue #1 cover looks for all the world like a Jane Arden leftover, the covers of the rest of this short-lived series are another matter entirely. Of course, there’s no Jinx Jordan in sight on these covers, but rather Matt Baker’s beautiful women rendered as he was entering the peak of his artistic abilities.

Matt Baker embarked on what is perhaps the most important part of his career in mid-1948 with St. John Publications. The cover of Crime Reporter #2 was the first St. John work by Baker to hit the newsstand, with a June 26, 1948, on sale date (per Library of Congress copyright records). This was followed by a six-page interior story in Northwest Mounties #1 (on sale August 1, 1948) and then the cover of Crime Reporter #3 (on sale September 22, 1948). The Crime Reporter covers, along with Authentic Police Cases #6, are also the first covers signed by Baker. While the series is superficially a crime comic book designed to take advantage of the rising tide of the genre on the newsstands of the period, it is also, of all things, a Jane Arden title reboot positioned to create a new series without its former star.

St. John seemed to go to a lot of effort to retain what little brand equity they had built up with the Crime Reporter title, and it still didn’t work out, as the series ended with issue #3. The young company had been publishing comic books for around a year as that issue hit the newsstand, and they were still finding their way. An underappreciated part of St. John’s publishing history, there’s a copy of Jane Arden #1 (St. John, 1948) Condition: VG up for auction in the 2024 May 26-28 Sunday, Monday & Tuesday Comic Books Select Auction #122422 at Heritage Auctions.