Simon and Kirby's Airborne Battle in Blue Bolt #7, at Auction

Posted in: Comics | Tagged: jack kirby, joe simon, Novelty Press

Simon and Kirby's Airborne Battle in Blue Bolt #7, at Auction

The Green Sorceress uses strategies she learns from the unfolding events of WWII to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in Simon & Kirby's Blue Bolt #7.

Published Fri, 30 Oct 2026 15:27:08 -0500
by Mark Seifert
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Article Summary

• Blue Bolt #7 channels the early WWII crisis into a Simon and Kirby sci-fi clash with striking Golden Age energy.
• The Green Sorceress studies dictatorship tactics on a telescreen and turns blitzkrieg, sabotage, and propaganda against Blue Bolt.
• The Blue Bolt saga in issue #7 captures Joe Simon and Jack Kirby hitting their stride on both story and wartime atmosphere.
• The issue also features wartime tales by Paul Gustavson and Andrew McWhiney, from stolen rail guns to Air Corps bombers.

As with many comics of the early Golden Age, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby's Blue Bolt saga was heavily influenced by the escalating war. In their story in Blue Bolt #7 (December 1940), the Green Sorceress appears to be defeated when she sees Europe's dictators on a telescreen while a captive of Blue Bolt. She takes an interest in their combination of mechanized warfare, airborne troops, and propaganda, and decides to try those methods with her own Green Army. The lessons she learns become a plan to attack Blue Bolt and his allies while they believe their fight is over. This issue might feature the best cover of the entire Novelty-published Blue Bolt series, and it's got the Simon and Kirby team hitting their stride on the interior story as well.

The Green Sorceress Learns Blitzkrieg

Blue Bolt has demobilized his troops, and the Sorceress appears to have thrown in the towel, when Blue Bolt's scientist colleague Bertoff's telescreen brings news of another war through the radio-active barrier to the outer world of Earth. Refugees are machine-gunned, parachutists descend, and mechanized tank columns and dive bombers overwhelm their opponents. The Green Sorceress escapes and puts these methods to use, including Blitzkrieg speed, and it's all rendered with spectacular Simon and Kirby science fiction visuals.

Elsewhere in this issue, war-inspired stories hit closer to home. In Runaway Ronson, attributed to Paul Gustavson, thieves divert railroad guns being shipped from a Midwestern arms plant to an Atlantic coastal-defense site and plan to sell them abroad. Andrew McWhiney's prose serial The Ray Master puts U.S. Army Air Corps B-18 bombers into an adventure involving a mesa stronghold and a paralysis ray.

The CGC census lists 15 Universal entries, including two at 5.0 and four higher, as well as five Restored entries. A peak early Simon and Kirby collaboration rooted in the history of the World War II era, there's a Blue Bolt #7 (Novelty Press, 1940) CGC VG/FN 5.0 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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