Black Hood #17, An Archie Comic With Bondage From 1946

Some folk look at the Riverdale TV series from Netflix and are appalled at its mature themes, sex death and rock’n’roll. And then you look at a cover from Black Hood #17 from Archie Comics complete with a woman in a tight red dress, bound and gagged with metal chains. And Heritage Auction has a copy up for auction with bids totalling $252 right now.

Black Hood #17 (MLJ, 1946) Condition: FR. Everett Raymond Kinstler bondage cover. Irv Novick art. Gerber rates this issue a “7” (“scarce”) on the Photo-Journal Guide to Comic Books‘ Scarcity Index. Overstreet 2022 GD 2.0 value = $69.

The Black Hood was created by Harry Shorten for MLJ Comics, later known as Archie Comics, and first appeared in Top-Notch Comics #9 in 1940. Black Hood is Kip Burland, a policeman who had been framed for theft and left for dead, and who wears a costume, hiding his identity to clear his name, one he maintains even after he succeeds. In 1943, the comic book he appeared in, Hangman Comics, was renamed The Black Hood with its own #9, lasting another eleven issues before itself being retitled Laugh Comics. The character remained in Top-Notch Comics until 1944, switched to the comic that featured the Riverdale characters, Pep Comics.

In the sixties, the Black Hood was part of the Mighty Crusaders team from Archie Comics, then revived by Neal Adams in the seventies as the character’s nephew. The original was revived again in the eighties from Archie’s Red Circle imprint, then in the nineties under DC Comics’ Impact Comics imprint, before returning to Archie Comics in 2015 for a grim ‘n’ gritty revival. He also gained a greater prominence as a serial killing identity used in the Riverdale TV series. But way back in 1943, this is from the year in which he first got his own title,

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