Don Heck's Debut in the Notorious War Fury, Up for Auction

Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Vintage Paper | Tagged: don heck, war comics

Marvel legend Don Heck got his start at Comics Media, producing notable covers and interior stories for the publisher founded by Allen Hardy.

Article Summary

Don Heck’s first published comic art appeared with Comic Media in 1952.
Heck’s early work for Comics Media is known for its intense covers.
Comics Media sought originality in the publisher trade journals of the era.
War Fury’s art by Heck may have foreshadowed Marvel’s later war comics.

Legendary comic book artist Don Heck had been working in the Harvey Comics production department when former Harvey Comics circulation manager Allen Hardy brought Heck and fellow Harvey production staffer Pete Morisi in for the launch of the Comic Media brand. Heck’s first published artwork in comics hit newsstands in July 1952 with the launches of Horrific #1, Weird Terror #1, and War Fury #1. The artist made his mark in this era with some brutal and unflinching covers across the board at Comics Media.

War Fury #2 (Comic Media, 1952) artwork by Don Heck.

Allen Hardy had eased into comics publishing in early 1950 with a string of romance titles beginning with the short-lived Confessions of Love and Honeymoon Romance, digest-sized paperbacks with comic book-style covers. Actual comic book romances followed the next year with All True Romance and Dear Lonely Heart. Hardy had used a number of publishing corporations thought his comic book endeavors including Artful Publications, Harwell Publications and Allen Hardy Associates. But the arrival of Heck and Morisi coincided with better cover/logo design, an expansion into other genres and the launch of the Comics Media brand.

Throughout its brief lifespan, Allen Hardy Associates repeatedly asked for “the unusual” in the comic book market columns of magazines like Writer’s Digest and Author & Journalist. The blurb sometimes further elaborated that the publisher wanted, “Artists and writers who don’t have a hackneyed approach to comics.” The company published over one hundred comic book issues 1950 to 1954 across 14 titles and is best remembered for its stand-out and notorious horror output, the brief but extreme war title War Fury, as well as the character Johnny Dynamite.

As noted in the book The Horror! the Horror! : Comic Books the Government Didn’t Want You to Read, Heck’s cover for War Fury #1 had an element that was so effective that he reused it for the infamous Pre-Code horror cover on Horrific #3. “Heck’s cover for War Fury no. 1 (September 1952) portrays a bitter victory with a flamethrower; but for all its infernal violence, revenge has never seemed more futile. Certainly, it’s too late; not only is the dead Gl’s head prominently displayed, but it’s also depicted upside down, insinuating chaos. The “bullet-in-the-head” entry wound is a kind of mocking third eye above the permanently open eyes of a man who not only saw death coming, but who also still seems to see it. As far as the reader can tell, the soldier will never be done seeing it, and the reader won’t either. Heck’s portrait opens a mirror into not exactly an inner life but an inner dying, one that never reaches death.”

One of Heck’s stories in War Fury #2 (cover dated November 1952), Harrigan’s Hat, is about a derby-wearing soldier who seems highly similar Marvel’s Dum-Dum Dugan, a character who debuted in another war comic with “Fury” in the title, 1963’s Sgt. Fury #1. Heck’s first Marvel work appeared in Marines in Battle #1 (cover dated August 1954), and of course the artist would go onto become a Marvel Mainstay in the Silver Age and beyond. But his Comics Media work is still among his best-remembered covers, and there are three issues of War Fury up for auction in the 2024 July 14-16 Sunday, Monday & Tuesday Comic Books Select Auction #122429 at Heritage Auctions.

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