Blue Bolt

Blue Bolt
Blue Bolt Comics #2 (July 1940). Cover art by W. E. Rowland
Publication information
Publisher	Novelty Press
First appearance	Blue Bolt Comics #1 (June 1940)
Created by	Joe Simon
In-story information
Alter ego	Fred Parrish
Abilities	Lightning bolt projection Use of a "lightning gun"

Blue Bolt is a fictional American comic book superhero created by writer-artist Joe Simon in 1940, during the period fans and historians refer to as the Golden Age of Comic Books.

Initially published by Novelty Press, Blue Bolt Comics, one of the earliest comic books titled after a single character, ran 101 issues, cover-dated June 1940 to August 1951. Its namesake hero was created by writer-artist Joe Simon for Funnies Inc., one of the earliest comic-book "packagers" that produced outsourced comics on demand for publishers entering the fledgling medium. By the second issue, Simon had enlisted Jack Kirby as the series co-writer/artist, starting the first pairing of the future comic book legends who shortly thereafter created Captain America and other characters. As Simon recalled in a 1998 Comic-Con International panel in San Diego, California,:

I was doing freelance work and I had a little office in New York about ten blocks from DC [Comics]' and Fox [Feature Syndicate]'s offices, and I was working on Blue Bolt  for Funnies, Inc. So, of course, I loved Jack's work and the first time I saw it I couldn't believe what I was seeing. He asked if we could do some freelance work together. I was delighted and I took him over to my little office. We worked from the second issue of Blue Bolt...

The two teamed for fewer than 12 issues, turning over the book to successors including Dan Barry, Tom Gill and Mickey Spillane, before his creation of the detective character Mike Hammer in novels.