Lou Fine's Robot Battle in Mystery Men Comics #2, at Auction

Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Vintage Paper | Tagged: Dick Briefer, Fox Feature Syndicate, lou fine

Lou Fine's Robot Battle in Mystery Men Comics #2, at Auction

Mystery Men Comics #2 has a classic early Lou Fine cover fronting the cosmic mayhem of Dick Briefer's Rex Dexter story in this issue.

Published Wed, 28 Oct 2026 14:26:09 -0500
by Mark Seifert
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Article Summary

• Mystery Men Comics #2 pairs a classic early Lou Fine robot cover with Dick Briefer's wildly inventive Rex Dexter saga.
• Rex Dexter tackles a global radium shortage by journeying to Capris, then attempting the unthinkable: moving a planet.
• The story reflects 1920s and 1930s reports on scarce, costly radium, turning a real medical concern into cosmic adventure.
• A tough early Fox Comics issue, Mystery Men Comics #2 is scarce in higher grades and prized by Lou Fine collectors.

Dick Briefer's Rex Dexter responds to a radium shortage with extreme measures in Mystery Men Comics #2 by moving an entire planet that supplies the material. While blown up to planetary scale, the crux of the issue has its inspiration in the medical reporting of the 1930s, when obtaining even a gram of radium for cancer treatment could be difficult and expensive. Behind Lou Fine's fantastic robot cover, this Fox issue, cover-dated September 1939, turns the difficulty of obtaining and handling the material in real life into a rescue mission that eventually brings a whole world to Earth.

Rex Dexter's Planet-Sized Radium Cure

The saga takes place in the year 2000, with Rex's family history reaching back to a rocket departure from the 1939 World's Fair. A plague has resulted in the entire Earth needing more radium than it can supply, and Rex and Cynde join an expedition of nine rockets to the planet Capris. Its radium-bearing pitchblende, spelled "pitchblend" in the comic, offers a way to save Earth's patients, but an attack interrupts their work, and they return home with too little ore to cure everyone. Rex's answer is to move the entire planet Capris. Difficulties in obtaining radium for medical and other uses were commonly reported throughout the 1920s and 1930s.

Fine had entered the Eisner-Iger studio in 1938, placing his cover work here in the early months of his own comics career. His professional comics debut had come in Wags #72 (Editors Press Service, cover dated July 1938), while his first work for Fox had come on the cover of Wonder Comics #2 (June 1939). Fine would establish himself as one of the premier cover artists in comics at Fox.

This is not an easy issue to find in higher grades. The CGC census lists 37 Universal and on Restored entries, with one Universal copy at 4.5 and 10 higher. Fine's mechanical mayhem and Briefer's planetary spectacle make a fitting pair, with the latter giving a historical medical-supply problem a cosmic solution. A classic early Lou Fine robot cover and a tough early Fox issue, there's a Mystery Men Comics #2 (Fox, 1939) CGC Universal VG+ 4.5 with cream-to-off-white pages up for auction at the November 5, 2026 Golden Age Century Comics Showcase Auction VI #40378.

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