Secret Origins

Flip Falcon in the Fourth Dimension!
Part 1

Flip Falcon, traveler across time and space, is back after seven decades in suspended animation. Created by writer and artist Don Rico (1912-1985), Flip Falcon appeared in twenty-one issues of Fantastic Comics, from the first issue in December 1939 until the twenty-first issue in August 1941. Using his Fourth Dimension Machine, Flip traveled at will across the space-time continuum, frequently doing battle with a creature known as Chongo and his devilish Demi-Things, inhabitants of another, nightmarish dimension. Now Flip Falcon lives again in the pages of Five Star Comics #1. In an adventure scripted by Jordan Lowe and drawn by Gary Gibeaut, Flip once again goes up against the Demi-Things, aided by his girlfriend, the always able Adele, and defeats them with the help of one of the most powerful forces ever known: American popular music!

Like all the other protagonists in Five Star Comics #1, Flip Falcon is a superhero in the public domain. So what does that mean? Well, after Superman made his debut in 1938, comic book companies popped up everywhere attempting to cash in on the superhero craze. Soon newsstands were loaded with ten-cent epics full of superhero adventures. Unfortunately, after World War II, superheroes went into decline and so did a lot of comic book companies. Fortunately for us, those companies and their successors never renewed their copyrights or trademarks and so hundreds of characters and titles fell into the public domain. Today, anyone, anywhere can use public domain characters without permission and without paying a dime in royalties. That's where Five Star Comics began.

To be continued . . . 

Text copyright 2012 Five Star Comics