Glory Forbes

Created by Bob Hickok

Barely a private eye at all, sexy, energetic southern belle GLORY FORBES was mostly a self-styled vigilante in her forty or so comic book appearances in the Rangers of Freedom Comics (later just Rangers Comics) anthology, alongside assorted other WWII-era star-spangled heroes and adventurers. She only opened her “so-called detective agency” in her last half dozen or so adventures.

Initially Glory was just the daughter of an engineer who was designing America’s newest bomber planes. But after she was kidnapped  by The Scarlet Crab, a Japanese spy ring, and subsequently rescued by studly FBI agent Randy Duncan, she decided to dedicate herself to fighting not just spies, but all enemies of American society with “Western-style” justice, which seemed to entail a lot of whoopin’ n’ hollerin,’ particularly in her earlier adventures.

She wasn’t exactly Batman, though. Her crime-busting usually involved Glory innocently stumbling over something suspicious, becoming curious, going undercover (rarely successfully) and then captured when her ruse was discovered, with a climactic showdown and/or rescue, usually by a handsome young dude, to wrap things up neatly. Oh, and somewhere in there she’d manage a wardrobe malfunction or two, or be otherwise caught scantily clad. You know, as women detectives are prone to do.

In the course of her adventures, Glory was a beauty pageant contestant, a magician’s assistant, a police detective, a novice skier, a reporter, a basketball fan — whatever occupation was necessary for her to stumble into something. I’m not even sure if she ever really had a job until she opened her detective agency in Ranger Comics #44, taking over her Uncle Jeremiah’s firm after solving his murder in the previous issue. But the inconsistencies extended beyond her looks. The “Southern”affectations came and went, and although she usually sported a large mass of curls atop her head, she started out with jet black hair but was, variously, a redhead, a blonde and a brunette.

Glory was a decent fighter, capable of knocking a man out with one punch and knew some martial arts. She didn’t usually carry a gun, but she was a pretty decent shot. But her biggest skill seemed to be stumbling. Man, she was a great stumbler.

TRIVIA

• Also appearing in Ranger Comics alongside Glory for much of her run were the adventures of Bob Benton, not a superhero but a “tiger-themed private eye,” better known as “Tiger Man.”

COMICS

• RANGERS OF FREEDOM COMICS
  (aka “Ranger Comics”)
  (1942-52, Fiction House)
  Glory appeared in issues #5-48
  58 issues
  • (June 1942, #5)
  • (#6)
  • (#7)
  • “Zarro the Great” (April 1948, #40)
  •  “Patty’s Penny Arcade” (August 1948, #42)

COLLECTIONS

• Glory Forbes: Golden Age Vigilante (2017) | Buy this book

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.