Knowledge Waits is a feature where I just share some bit of comic book history that interests me.

Recently, I wrote about when Captain America, Iron Man and Thor were referred to as "The Big Three." I actually had to update that one as a couple of readers successfully found an earlier reference (as I said at the time I put it up, I was a BIT unsure of my original answer).

Well, my pal Keith Alan Morgan wrote in about the idea of the "Big Three" and specifically the FIRST group of superheroes who were referred to as "The Big Three" and it's quite unexpected!

In 1938, Action Comics #1 came out and the comic book world would never be the same. As soon as other publishers realized how much money that there was in comic books, they rushed to put out their own versions of Action Comics' star character, Superman.

One of the earliest comic book companies that launched as a competitor to National Comics (now DC) was Fox Feature Syndicate, led by Victor S. Fox. At the time, a rather new business venture had been launched called the comic book packaging studio. A comic book packaging studio would write and draw an entire comic book for you. You would own the characters, but they would write and draw them and you only had to publish the comics and take in the cash. Of course, you had to pay them beforehand.

The top comic book packaging studio at the time was Eisner-Iger (Will Eisner and Jerry Iger). The company really existed on the back of Will Eisner, one of the most creative people in the history of comic books. Not only was he a phenomenal artist, but he was a brilliant creator of comic book ideas. This was good, since he had to try to launch so many at once to meet the demand.

Fox, though, specifically asked Eisner to rip off Superman as close as he could get and so Fox launched his company with Wonder Comics, starring Wonder Man...

National quickly got an injunction and they eventually went to trial.

In the meantime, Eisner also created two other superheroes who did NOT get Fox into trouble, the fire superhero, The Flame (by Eisner and artist Lou Fine)...

and the superhero adaptation of the Samson myth (by Eisner and Alex Blum)...

In addition, Charles Nicholas introduced the Blue Beetle (years later, Fox would sell the character to Charlton and then Charlton sold the character to DC)...

Back in the early 1940s, most of the comic book companies would have individual titles but would also try to do special anthology series collecting their major heroes. National had World's Finest Comics and All-Star Comics (All-Star Comics was by the subsidiary of National known All-American Publications, owned by Max Gaines along with National's Jack Liebowitz).

So Fox decided to launch their own anthology (these would all be quarterly books), but they decided to go bold and call their book "The Big 3," with Samson, Blue Beetle and the Flame being the big three...

The heroes did not interact within the comics. It was just an anthology.

Amusingly, by the time the series ended, World War II had begun and thus Samson was replaced by the patriotic hero, V-Man in the final issue...

Kind of hard to call them "The Big 3" when one can't even make it to the end of the series before getting replaced!

Keith also noted that the name "Big Three" became popular during World War II when that was the term used to describe the heads of the Allies, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin...

While it is true that those three made the term quite popular, the three did not meet until well after the launch of Big 3 Comics.

Thanks for the suggestion, Keith!

If anyone has a suggestion for a future Knowledge Waits (basically, anything comic book related that you think would be interesting to see me write about), drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com