Harry Sahle

Doris and Carl Burgos (back center) with Harry Sahle to their right (gentleman to his right is unidentified). Photo taken at George Kapitan's wedding on 2/19/1950 at the Pelham Health Inn, Bronx, New York City, New York. Harry passed just six months after this photo was taken. Harry Frank Sahle (April 18, 1912 – September 22, 1950) His mother died when he was young and he grew up in Cleveland with his father and his father's parents, who were both born in Switzerland.

Sahle drew gag cartoons for Boys' Life magazine between 1938 and 1939, before entering the fledgling medium of comic books via the Harry "A" Chesler Studio and Funnies Inc., two Manhattan-based "packagers" that provided complete, outsourced comics for early publishers testing the medium. Among his earliest comics work is a cover for the only issue of Pelican Publications' Green Giant Comics (Jan. 1940).

His earliest-known interior credit is inking the seven-page Fiery Mask superhero story "The Jelly of Doom", over George Kapitan's pencil art, in Timely Comics' Daring Mystery Comics #5 (June 1940). With Kapitan writing and himself penciling and inking, Sahle co-created the Black Widow in Mystic Comics #4 (Aug. 1940). Not to be confused with the superhero Black Widow introduced in the 1960s by Timely's descendant Marvel Comics, this character — comics' first costumed, superpowered female protagonist — was a supernatural antihero who gathered deserving souls for Satan.

Other early work includes co-creating the winged superhero the Air Man in Centaur Publications' Keen Detective Funnies #23 (Aug. 1940); Sahle also worked as an assistant to Carl Burgos,

MLJ Comics Artist Gil Kane recalled that after the writers and artists Charles Biro, Bob Wood, Bob Montana and several others left MLJ Comics to move to Lev Gleason Publications, it fell largely to Irv Novick to steer MLJs stable of superhero characters. Sahle drew some of the earliest stories featuring what would become the company's namesake character, beginning by at least Archie Comics #3 (Summer 1943).

Thanks to his work, "Sahle became the center point [of MLJ/Archie], and Novick went into the Army", recalled Kane, who believes Sahle worked for MLJ for a year-and-a-half before joining the Army himself. Her supporting cast included her boyfriend, Ted Dawson; her rival, Cornelia Clyde; and gal-pals Tina and Trish. Candy continued to star in her own title, Candy, which ran 64 issues (Fall 1947 - July 1956). Six months after the title ceased publication, Quality Comics as a whole closed its doors.

Sahle and Spillance had earlier collaborated on the eponymous feature "Mike Lancer", starring a Mike Hammer prototype, published in Harvey Comics' Green Hornet Comics #10 (Dec. 1942).

Reprints Several issues of Sahle's Candy were reprinted, in the late 1950s/early 1960s by Israel Waldman's Super Comics imprint, but her adventures have otherwise remained out of print. In the late 1980s, Eclipse Comics reprinted Sahle's 1940s aviator feature "Bald Eagle" in Air Fighters Classics #1-2 (Nov. 1987 - Dec. 1988). Some Sahle work appears in the anthology Marvel Mystery Comics #1 (Dec. 1999). and the hardcover collections Marvel Masterworks: Golden Age Sub-Mariner, Vol. 1 and Marvel Masterworks: Golden Age Human Torch, Vol. 1 (both 2005).