Set in the early 1940s, the Newsboy Legion is the first of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby's very successful "kid gang" comics, featuring a group of scrappy pre-teen boys who work together to stop crime in their home of Suicide Slum. Watched over by adult hero The Guardian - a.k.a. policeman Jim Harper - The Newsboy Legion battle crime through their own newspaper reporting, taking on crooked politicians, slum lords, fifth column agents and much more. One of the most popular 1940s comic-book types focused on the kid gang—a half-dozen or so ragamuffins banded together for adventures and high jinks. Clearly inspired by the Dead End Kids and other movie gangs, the comic-book versions were generally mentored by an adult authority figure, frequently a superhero. The team of Simon and Kirby created the most popular comic-book kid gangs, including the Newsboy Legion—Tommy, Big Words, Gabby, and Scrapper—who peddled papers in Suicide Slum under the watchful eye of policeman Jim Harper, who also fought crime as the costumed Guardian. Their exploits, from tangling with gangsters to publishing their own newspaper, were hugely appealing to comic-book readers of an age with the quartet, and they exude nostalgic charm today, in no small measure because of Kirby’s energetic artwork, which sets the template for dynamic superhero illustration that’s still in place today. By the time the later stories here were created, much of the work had been turned over to assistants; the overall quality suffers, but the Kirby touch remains evident. --Gordon Flagg Authored by Joe Simon Illustrated by Jack Kirby Colored by Colorist