{"id":1292,"date":"2007-10-24T06:40:38","date_gmt":"2007-10-24T06:40:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=1292"},"modified":"2013-03-14T10:20:11","modified_gmt":"2013-03-14T10:20:11","slug":"the-shield","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2007\/10\/24\/the-shield\/","title":{"rendered":"The Shield"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>AMERICA&#8217;S 1ST PATRIOTIC HERO<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/10\/americas-1st-patriotic-hero-the-shield.jpg\" alt=\"The Shield\" \/><\/p>\n<p>By Irving Norvick, Harry Shorten &amp; various (Archie Comics)<br \/>\nISBN 1-879794-08-X<\/p>\n<p>In the dawning days of the comic book business, just after Superman and Batman had ushered in a new genre of storytelling, many publishers jumped onto the bandwagon and made their own bids for cash and glory. Many thrived and many more didn&#8217;t, remembered only as trivia by sad blokes like me. Some few made it to an amorphous middle-ground: Not forgotten, but certainly not household names either\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n<p>The Shield was an FBI scientist named Joe Higgins who wore a suit which gave him enhanced strength, speed and durability, which he used to battle America&#8217;s enemies in the days before the USA entered World War II. Latterly he also devised a Shield Formula that increased his powers. Beginning with the first issue of <strong>Pep Comics<\/strong> (January 1940) he battled spies, saboteurs, subversive organisations and every threat to American security and well-being, and was a minor sensation. He is credited with being the industry&#8217;s very first Patriotic Hero, predating Marvel&#8217;s iconic Captain America in the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153wearing the Flag\u00e2\u20ac\u009d field.<\/p>\n<p>Collected here in this Golden-Age fan-boy&#8217;s dream are the lead stories from <strong>Pep Comics<\/strong> #1-5 and the three adventures from the spin-off <strong>Shield-Wizard Comics<\/strong> #1 (Summer 1940). Raw, primitive and a little juvenile perhaps, but these are still unadorned, glorious romps from the industry&#8217;s exuberant, uncomplicated dawning days: Plain-and-simple fun-packed thrills from the gravely under-appreciated Irving Novick, Harry Shorten and others whose names are now lost to history.<\/p>\n<p>Despite not being to everyone&#8217;s taste these guilty pleasures are worth a look for any dyed-in-the-woollen-tights super-hero freak and a rapturous tribute to a less complicated time.<\/p>\n<p>\u00c2\u00a9 1940, 2002 Archie Publications In. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AMERICA&#8217;S 1ST PATRIOTIC HERO By Irving Norvick, Harry Shorten &amp; various (Archie Comics) ISBN 1-879794-08-X In the dawning days of the comic book business, just after Superman and Batman had ushered in a new genre of storytelling, many publishers jumped onto the bandwagon and made their own bids for cash and glory. Many thrived and &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2007\/10\/24\/the-shield\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Shield&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[141,108],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archie-comics","category-miscellaneous-superhero"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-kQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1292\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}