City Surgeon #1

by Matt Peters

For Gold Key Comics, licensed content was a mainstay. An imprint of Western Publishing, Gold Key operated from 1962 to 1984, churning out an extensive catalog of comic adaptations of popular TV and movie properties from Hanna-Barbera, Looney Tunes, Walt Disney Productions, and other entertainment companies.

Aside from those comics, Gold Key had a smaller slate of original content, a less iconic lineup of science fiction, fantasy, adventure, suspense, and other genre fiction. A nearly forgotten comic from that slate was a medical drama titled City Surgeon (sometimes referred to as Blake Harper, City Surgeon, based on the title logo). Released in August 1963, the first issue was meant to launch a quarterly series, according to the comic’s indicia, but no subsequent issues were ever published. The title was likely canceled due to low sales.

While City Surgeon may have been a commercial flop, its art and writing were on par with other comics of the time. The pacing, dialogue, and sequential art all worked in harmony to create engaging narratives. City Surgeon used an anthology format, featuring three main stories, “Crash Victim,” “Donora’s Deadly Fog,” and “Plague,” plus a one-page non-fiction prose piece called “Early Surgery.” Inside the front and back covers were illustrated informational pieces about prehistoric healing practices titled “Primitive Beginnings” and “Primitive Medicine.”

“Crash Victim” introduces the comic’s central character, Blake Harper, a mid-career medical practitioner whose obstinate, single-minded focus on his professional duties can be a strength or a flaw, depending on the situation. The story involves a plane crash near Harper’s private practice in New York. On impulse, Harper runs to the crash site to care for the surviving crew and passengers. He gives most of his attention to a survivor with a severe leg injury, a scientist named Professor Harder.

Harper’s resolve under pressure is put to the test as leaking jet fuel threatens to engulf the area in flames—and as a panicked official from the National Security Agency (NSA) tries to commandeer the situation in the interest of governmental, rather than medical, priorities. Professor Harder, it turns out, is a high-value asset to the NSA—and the NSA needs critical information from Harder before he gets put under anesthesia. Characteristically obstinate, Harper initially butts heads with the NSA official, making it clear that the official’s concerns are an unwanted distraction.

The twist comes later, after Professor Harder has been transported to a nearby hospital and Harper is preparing to operate on him. The NSA official shows up once again and gets a cold reception from Harper—until Harper learns the official can donate A-negative blood (one of the rarest types) for Professor Harder’s operation. Harper decides to make peace, at least for the moment, with his newfound blood donor.

The other two main stories, “Donora’s Deadly Fog” and “Plague,” have little to do with surgery and more to do with public health. The former doesn’t include Harper as a character. Instead, it’s a dramatic retelling of the late 1940s smog incident in Donora, Pennsylvania, that caused severe respiratory distress among hundreds of townspeople. Twenty of those townspeople died, most within a 12-hour period on October 30, 1948. The United States Public Health Service investigated the incident and concluded that a potent combination of industrial pollutants—largely from the town’s steel, zinc, and sulphuric acid plants—had been the culprit. “Donora’s Deadly Fog” doesn’t delve into the influence the incident had on American politics, but the deadly event is often cited as a turning point in public consciousness and legislative priorities. The incident prompted several years of congressional hearings and other actions, laying some of the groundwork that led to the Clean Air Act of 1963.

The final story, “Plague,” is about Harper’s discovery of a pneumonic plague breakout in New York City—a discovery he makes while seeing a patient who is complaining of dizziness, fever, and shortness of breath. After treating the patient, the assiduous doctor quickly switches from clinician to contact tracer and determines that the source of the outbreak was a recently docked cruise ship. Harper scrambles to contain the disease by contacting the ship’s crew and passengers, but he hits a roadblock trying to reach one particularly elusive crewman named John Dartes. Dartes, he soon learns, boarded the ship at a foreign port and was using the cruise to enter the U.S. without documentation. Harper’s next step is to make a televised plea to Dartes to come to Harper’s clinic. Harper includes in his plea an assurance that he won’t contact immigration authorities.

The shorter, non-fiction pieces of content, “Early Surgery,” “Primitive Beginnings,” and “Primitive Medicine,” add some educational value to the comic. The latter two, however, suffer from an outdated choice of words in their titles. Today’s readers are more aware of the problematic connotations the term primitive has. The word has long been a tool of ethnocentrism, colonialism, and racism, one that brands non-Western cultures as backwards and inferior. Beyond the problematic titles, “Primitive Beginnings” and “Primitive Medicine” include exoticizing depictions of shamans and “witch doctors” (inside back cover, panels 3, 4) from various indigenous cultures of the Americas.

While those two pieces of content are an ill fit for today’s standards, that tends to be par for the course when reading comics of that vintage. Within its own historical moment, City Surgeon was likely much less conspicuous in the social mores and sensibilities it reflected. It apparently suffered from modest enough sales to be a one-and-done comic, but that was probably due to the competition it faced. Within Gold Key’s own catalog, City Surgeon was up against titles like The Jetsons and Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories, which benefited from ready-made fan bases because of their TV or movie source material. Moreover, keyword searches in the Grand Comics Database show that City Surgeon was just one among many medically themed comics that came out in 1963. The various other series and one-shot comics included Cynthia Doyle, Nurse in Love (Charlton, 1962-1964); Doctor Tom Brent, Young Intern (Charlton, 1963); Dr. Kildare (Dell, 1962-1965); Emergency Doctor (Charlton, 1963); Linda Carter, Student Nurse (Marvel, 1961-1963); Nurse Betsy Crane (Charlton, 1961-1964); Nurse Linda Lark (Dell, 1963); Sue and Sally Smith, Flying Nurses (Charlton, 1962-1963); The Young Doctors (Charlton, 1963); and Three Nurses (Charlton, 1963-1964). It’s easy to see why City Surgeon got lost in the shuffle.

Overall, City Surgeon had a serviceable premise and potential to draw a loyal readership, had it been given more issues to expand the breadth and depth of its narratives. As is, it falls short of being a treasure from the past, but it may be of interest to readers who want to look back at some of graphic medicine’s past. Enough copies are still around that some comic book retailers and eBay sellers have them at reasonable prices—at least for buyers who aren’t choosy about condition.

Matt Peters is a program manager at Health Sciences Design, an interdisciplinary health innovation program at the University of Arizona Mel & Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health. He is also a longtime comic book reader and collector who can be found from time to time at his local comic book shops. Views expressed are his own.