Black Condor & the Ray Volume 1

Featured here is story after story by the legendary Lou Fine, one of the most impressive and influential artists to ever work in comics. His fluid figures were admired and copied by such greats as Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. In the early 40's, the heyday of the Golden Age, he worked at Quality Comics along with such greats as Reed Crandall, Jack Cole and Will Eisner and in addition to his impressive covers, he worked on such comics as the Black Condor and created The Ray.

Also here: Will Eisner, Otto Binder,  John Cassone, Charles Sultan, John Belfi and Rudy Palais, all superior artists working on two of Quality's strongest feature characters. Quality Comics Group prided themselves on excellent artwork from the likes of the artists above. They didn't produce the same long-running heroes and heroines as Timely/Marvel and DC did -- with the possible exception of Plastic Man and Blackhawk -- and Eisner created The Spirit for the newspapers, so even though Quality reprinted the stories, they don't get credit for the character. Eisner owned it himself and kept total control over it his entire life. But that said, they had many fine feature characters. These are two of their best. They put their best artists on them, they were featured on many covers of Smash and Crack, and after Lou Fine left, Reed Crandall stepped in to do more with The Ray.

Collects the Black Condor stories in Crack Comics #1-11, 1940-41; and The Ray stories from Smash Comics #14-22, 1940-41.