The Clock

The Clock was a fictional superhero published during the Golden Age of Comic Books; according to the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, the Clock was the first masked hero to appear in comic books. The Clock was created by cartoonist George Brenner and first appeared in either Funny Pages #6 or Funny Picture Stories #1, both published by Comics Magazine Publications with November, 1936 cover dates.

Related Topics:
Fictional - Superhero - Golden Age of Comic Books - Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide - George Brenner

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The character's initial appearances were merely two-page features that left no space for backstory, but the Clock's secret identity was eventually revealed to be society man and former district attorney, Brian O'Brien, whose background in college sports helped prepare him for heroism. As the Clock, he wore a three-piece suit, fedora, and a black full-face mask (which was replaced by a domino mask years later). He usually left a calling card with an image of a clock and the words "The Clock Has Struck."

Related Topics:
Secret identity - District attorney - Fedora - Calling card

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The Clock appeared in Funny Pages #6-11, as well as other titles by Comics Magazine Publications such as Detective Picture Stories and Keen Detective Funnies. In 1937, Comics Magazine Publications was bought by a company called Ultem, which then encountered financial difficulty and sold the Clock and other characters to Quality Comics. Ultem was itself subsequently purchased and renamed Centaur Publications, and despite the sale to Quality nevertheless continued to reprint old Clock stories.

Related Topics:
Quality Comics - Centaur Publications

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Under Quality, the Clock continued to be written and drawn in new stories by Brenner in Feature Funnies (later retitled Feature Comics) beginning with #3 (December, 1937) and running through #31 (April, 1940). It is believed that Quality editor Will Eisner was in part inspired by this run of the Clock to create the Spirit. The Clock's feature was moved to the new Crack Comics #1 (May, 1940). That issue introduced his sidekick, a man named Pug Brady who was O'Brien's exact physical double; Crack Comics #21 (February, 1942) replaced Pug with an orphaned teenage girl named Butch. The Clock alternated appearances on the cover of Crack Comics with the Black Condor until issue 19, continuing as only a backfeature of that title until his final appearance in Crack Comics #35 (Autumn, 1944).

Related Topics:
Feature Comics - Will Eisner - The Spirit - Sidekick - Black Condor

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After Quality Comics went out of business in 1956, DC Comics acquired the rights to its characters, but it has never made use of the Clock beyond mere mention; in the DC Universe, the Clock was said to have been killed in 1944, the last year his character was actually published. In 1992, Malibu Comics published twenty issues of The Protectors, a superhero team that included several other characters from the Centaur line of publishers. In this universe, Brian O'Brien was now president of the United States.

Related Topics:
DC Comics - DC Universe - Malibu Comics

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