10. Miss Masque (Exciting Comics)
A Nook Puzzle featuring a vintage comic book super-heroine, and an illustrated background essay about her rise, fall, and rise again (about 4600 words; 31 photos)
laser-cut Nook Puzzles
265 pieces 17¼” x 12¾” ¼” (6mm) birch 5ply average piece size: 0.83 sq in
artist – Alex Schomburg cutting designer - Michelle
I appreciate that for many people my puzzle review is the part of my essay that they are are most interested in reading, and that they may or may not want to see the process by which I stumbled my way through assembling it or my undisciplined ramblings about related topics. So I am trying an experiment with this posting and will lead with the the review and reflections.
However I do recommend reading the rest of this essay anyway. As an unexpected bonus this puzzle led me down a research rabbit-hole into a realm of crime-fighting comic books that I never paid attention to as an adolescent boy. It was an obscure topic about which I knew nothing.
Review and reflections
I chose to do this puzzle after having completed a soothing summertime puzzle in pastels colours, and I felt in the mood for something bright, lighthearted and more at the fun end of the spectrum than at the challenging end. So I picked this one from my growing stockpile: It is about as opposite from a pastel beach scene as you can get.
It turns out that it did perfectly fit what I was in the mood for. As for the “bright, lighthearted” part of what I wanted, well, the image tells the whole story there (although you will have to stay around until the end of this posting if you want to see all of it!) And assembling the puzzle certainly was at the fun end of the fun-challenge spectrum. Of course, that is also a polite way of saying it wasn’t very challenging.
Its ease of assembly was partly because the image is rich in clues (which I knew when I bought it.) But it is also because that is how Nook Puzzle’s proprietor/designer Michelle intends her puzzles to be. On the Nook website she explains her approach to pattern design as following two principles. First, the outside edge pieces are fully interlocking (and based upon this one example there is no attempt to disguise edge pieces) and the non-whimsy interior pieces also interlock as much as possible. Second, she describes her non-whimsy fill pieces as being “similar to what is found in a standard cut pattern.”
Her idea of a “standard cut pattern” matrix for the figural pieces is not anything like the rigid crossing-paths cutting that, for example, the pastel vintage puzzle in my previous review had. Four-corner intersections of cut-lines were rare in this puzzle and the cutting has a flowing, fluid quality that produces interesting shapes even in the fill pieces. Most do have four sides, but their shapes are quite random. Further, the cutting in mine doesn’t include any tricks like colour-line cutting, thus giving the image free rein to give you its clues.
The following photo of only a small part of the puzzle’s back side illustrates Michelle’s cutting principles in action. Note the straightforward fully interlocking edge and the variety in the fill pieces. That is not what I would call a standard cut pattern.
Please don’t take the ease of assembly as being a criticism of this puzzle. Far from it. Sometimes, like I did this time, a laid-back stress-free assembly is what you want, and it is good to know which brands will deliver that to you rather than a challenge to your puzzle-assembly abilities.
The best part of this puzzle here is the amazing quality of the whimsies. They are spectacular - the most intricate ones I have encountered so far! I got a lot of pleasure from them both as beautiful silhouettes in their own right and also appreciating how they are so perfectly suited to the puzzle image. They appear to be specifically designed for this particular puzzle, not taken from a stockpile of silhouette designs. For me this was an unexpected bonus. Nook Puzzles does not usually show the back-side of its puzzles or images of its whimsies on its website.
I don’t usually feature whimsies except at the end below a spoiler alert, but you need to see these to understand why I am so excited by these figural pieces. (I’m showing great restraint by only showing three of them here, and not necessarily the best ones; all of them are shown at the end of this posting after the spoiler warning.
I love how finely-detailed they are, but that does make some of them very fragile. All of mine are intact, but I did need to stabilize three of them with glue to help ensure they would stay that way, and I gave the particularly fragile ones specially protective packaging when I put the disassembled puzzle back in its box. I want them to be safe for next time I assemble this puzzle. There certainly will be a next time.
I suppose that this wouldn’t be a proper review if I don’t express a few more quibbles. Hand-cutting of jigsaw puzzles leaves a thin gap between the pieces by turning material into sawdust and laser cutting turns a narrow swath of the puzzle material into smoke. Just like scroll saws can use thicker or thinner sawblades, lasers can differ in the thickness of the swath they cut.
The thickness of the gap is what determines whether the resultant puzzle is considered to be “tight fit” or “loose fit.” People who like tight fit puzzles would consider this one to be a fairly loose fit. Personally, the tightness of the fit doesn’t make much difference for me, and if anything, a loose fit makes it easier for my fumble-fingers to slip the pieces into place.
As you can see from the above photo of part of the puzzle’s back side, this one has a fair amount of scorching. I don’t know how they do it, but a few companies’ puzzles don’t have this, and other ones, even though they make high quality puzzles have more than this one does. (I suppose they know that most people aren’t aware of the extra enjoyment to be had by turning the puzzle over after it is assembled.)
In this case, and as you can see below the spoiler alert the consistency of the scorching actually enhances the view of the back side. There is no scorching or singeing on the image-side of the puzzle.
I highly recommend checking out the puzzles that Nook Puzzles has to offer if you want to have a pure-fun jigsaw option available on your shelf for when the mood strikes you for one. There are a great variety of styles of artwork available besides comic book covers and I think that you will be pleasantly surprised at how the prices compare with other ¼” plywood puzzles. (And check out their “Misfits” section. Nook is the only company that I know of who sell their “seconds” in which a few pieces “don't cut apart perfectly, or a piece may break.” They are 50% off of the regular price.)
The real test of how much I liked this is whether I would buy another Nook Puzzle. In fact, I have already ordered another Nook comic-book cover puzzle that is even further away from the illustrated literature of my childhood, mainly because I am curious to see what kinds of silhouettes Michelle has come up with for it:
The artist
This 1947 comic book cover was drawn and inked by the Puerto Rican born Alex Schomburg (1905-1998), one of the top cover illustrators of that era.
The legendary comic-book writer, editor, publisher, and producer Stan Lee worked with Schomberg during their early years together at a small family-owned comic book company called Timely Publications. That company would later grow to become Marvel Comics. According to him:
I've always felt that Alex Schomburg was to comic books what Norman Rockwell was to The Saturday Evening Post. He was totally unique, with an amazing distinctive style. You could never mistake a Schomburg cover for any other artist's. When it came to illustrating covers, there was simply no one else in Alex's league.
Now then, lest it sound as though I'm a long-time fan of Alex Schomburg, this is the time to set the record straight. You can bet your entire comic book collection I am! . . . He was the only artist I knew able to combine strong, dramatic layouts, and exciting superhero action with a simplistic, almost cartoony style of execution. One could never be sure if Alex was an illustrator who approached his work like a cartoonist, or a cartoonist who chose to render his artwork like an illustrator. But whatever the answer, the end results were nothing short of superb.
You can read more of what Stan Lee had to say about Alex Schomburg here, and for more information about Schomburg I suggest this brief biography.
Miss Masque in the Golden Age
The puzzle image is the cover of Exciting Comics’ issue no. 53, released in January 1947. Exciting Comics was one of many comic book series put out by small publishers during the American Golden Age of comic books. That era was spurred on by WWII and its adolescent-oriented offerings were initially dominated by Nazi-, crime- and evil-fighting superheroes (and the occasional superheroine.)
The comic book Golden Age is generally considered to have been from 1938 to 1956, putting this 1947 cover smack-dab in the middle of it. According to this website, the most recent sale of an original printing of this particular issue sold in 2021 for $5760 USD.
Exciting Comics was a monthly series published from 1940 to 1949 by Nador Publishing, a small company that was part of a ratsnest of related comic and pulp fiction companies owned by Pines Publications. Different companies and series came and went, corporate entities merged and were disbanded, and with them their comic book characters either survived or fell by the wayside.
Nador Publishing deserves some credit for having introduced the very first female masked and costumed comic-book crime-fighter. It wasn’t Miss Masque, but the Woman in Red. She first appeared in the March 1940 issue of Thrilling Comics. That is only one year after Superman and Batman were introduced, but almost two years before Wonder Woman.
The Lady in Red was used by Nador in various series intermittently for five years. According to Don Markstein's Toonopedia:
Red, whose long, flowing robes were atypical of the superhero women, didn't excite much interest. The company dropped her in 1945 and … launched another the following year, designed more to adolescent male taste (i.e., with cleavage and a mini-skirt) — Miss Masque.
Miss Masque was the crime-fighting alter-ego of wealthy Diana Adams. She had grown bored with her life as a socialite and managed that ennui by secretly fighting crime. She donned superhero attire comprised of a sporty red dress, a stylish broad-brimmed hat, and a black mask (oops, sorry - a black masque) and fought enough robbers and murders to become “the Scourge of the Underworld.” Although Miss Masque did not have any superpowers, she was smart, strong, an excellent shot with her pistol(s), a very skilled at hand-to-hand fighting, and she apparently liked what is now called cosplay. And she really, REALLY didn’t like bad guys.
This puzzle’s image is the cover of her third of five issues with Exciting Comics, and then in 1949 Nador moved her series its quarterly (not monthly) America’s Best Comics series (not to be confused with a DC Comics series with that same name.) Don Markstein's Toonopedia explains the move to ABC rather prosaically: “…it functioned as a place to stash a character who no longer fit elsewhere” as Exciting Comics changed to become the vehicle for a new female lead character whose genre was surpassing urban crime-fighting in popularity.
At America’s Best Comics Miss Masque sometimes partnered with the Black Terror - Nador’s former star superhero who now did guest appearances in various crime-fighting comic book series – but she was clearly now the main character. She had various costume makeovers..
She also made some cross-promotional guest appearances in a other comics. But in 1949, Nador Publishing decided to discontinue the series entirely. Miss Masque had been featured in 15 comic book issues. She was a prominent star in her short-lived tenure at Nador but basically she had arrived too late for the action-hero phase of the Golden Age. Her demise of ABC was a casualty of many young comic book readers’ tastes moving away from crime-fighting superheroes (and superheroines) to other types of stories.
That is where I come into the story. Although my childhood overlapped with the American Golden Age of Comic Books, I was one of those baby boom children who never got into superhero comics. If I spent my 15¢ allowance on a comic book (rather than three candy bars) it was likely to be either be a Classics Illustrated one or Dell Comics (because they had Scrooge McDuck.) In fact, I’m still not into the superhero genre. I had never heard of Miss Masque or Exciting Comics until buying this puzzle and doing this research, and I have still never seen any of the countless Marvel Universe movies that dominate Hollywood cinema releases these days.
Miss Masque’s resurrection for our current age of superheroes
After laying largely dormant for 30 years the superhero format of comic book began making a comeback in the 1980s. It was sparked by the highly-successful Superman movies in which the eponymous hero was played by Christopher Reeves. As a new era of cinema superheroes emerged publishers of comic books took note of a new opportunity. The large DC and Marvel comic book brands had continued with the genre all along. But the Golden Age characters that had been developed by now-defunct corporate entities were thought of as orphan characters and they were considered to be up for grabs.
[Digression: Technically, Warner Bros might have owned copyright and trademark rights to Miss Masque and the other Nador Publishing characters when this new age began. They had bought the rights from the company that bought the company that bought the company that bought the rights from Nador. But WB have never tried to claim ownership of those rights, and they possibly couldn’t have been successful if they had tried to do so. There is a certain use-it-or-lose-it element to the law as it applies to ownership of intangible property.]
With nobody making legal objection, in 1985 AC Comics resurrected vintage female crime-fighters from many small defunct comic book publishers. AC placed them in the modern world and updated their backstories, created some new characters, and made them its Femforce (Federal Emergency Missions Force.) That series, with its cheesecake artwork and protagonists who are brave, smart, capable, and everything else a proper superheroine should be, is still in production today over 35 years later.
Miss Masque’s first appearance in that series was very unusual for their brand. It was a secondary story (not the cover story) that employed retro artwork rather than their usual pin-up style. In later issues, as she grew to become more prominent Femforce character, she was portrayed with a contemporary appearance that fit in with their other super-femmes.
Even in her initial retro appearance the artists made a change to her original costume, replacing the awkward sideways large MM on her chest with a golden belt buckle. It is rare for a Golden Age comic book character’s look to be definitively altered by any later makeover but this has carried over to her later appearances in comics issued by other publishers.
AC’s use of vintage figures in this and other new superhero comic books proved so successful that various other comic book publishers followed its lead. They too viewed the characters from defunct Golden Age publishers as being available for use, including the ones that AC was already using. AC Comics couldn’t complain: That company had no claim to copyright or trademark since it had appropriated them itself by saying they were in the public domain.
In 2003 the acclaimed comic book writer Alan Moore used Miss Masque along with other costumed crime-fighters from the long-gone Nador Publishing in his Tom Strong series, published by DC Comics. They were later spun-off into his Terra Obscura mini-series where she entered into a romantic relationship with fellow crime-fighter Carol Carter (whose alter-ego name is the Fighting Spirit.)
Since 2008, Dynamite Entertainment has also brought Miss Masque and several other WWII era superheroes forward in time for its Project Superpowers comic book series. They explained their appearance in the here-and-now by saying they had been sleeping in a magic urn thingy. In the process, Miss Masque got a name change to Masquerade and she gained some modest superpowers herself. In 2009 she even got her own spin-off solo DE series called Masquerade, but it was short-lived with only four issues.
With Dynamic Entertainment she has moved from scourging the underworld to bigger stuff. In a 2020 crossover five-issue mini-series called Die!namite she had to help fend off a zombie apocalypse.
In 2019, San Antonio based Antarctic Press Comics took appropriation from the Golden Age a step further by launching their own updated version of Exciting Comics itself. The series is still in publication.
During the Golden Age of Comic Books in the 1940s Miss Masque appeared in 15 issues of comic books. In this new era of revivals, during our current reign of superheroes on cinema screens, she has already been in 10 times that many comic book issues.
This year at a Comicon in April, Dynamic Entertainment announced that she and two other crimson-clad vintage heroines – The Lady in Red and Lady Satan – will be getting their own comic book series called Scarlett Sisters. It begins later this month.
For more information about Miss Masque I suggest her Wikipedia entry. And for some full pages from her earliest Golden Age appearances in comic books go to this blog entry about her or this one.
Puzzle – first impressions
My first impressions of this puzzle were formed by visiting the Nook Puzzles website after someone in the wooden puzzles Facebook group had said good things about them. I can’t remember what those good things were but I was struck by the large number of puzzles of various styles that they have available, including 37 comic book covers representing various genres. They looked like they would be fun to do.
The Nook Puzzles website also has a “good vibe.” The company operates out of a storefront in the historic downtown of a small farming community on the outskirts of Indianapolis. The site describes the company as basically being a one-woman operation but with the proprietor (identified only as Michelle) occasionally being assisted by family friends, local high-school students, and housecats Pumpkin and Felix. Its “top of the line lasers” are named Gerty, Edith, and Mabel. All in all, unlike some websites that strive to appear very businesslike and try to disguise the company’s humble size, this one primarily gave me the impression that Michelle really loves making and selling high-quality jigsaw puzzles.
[Digression: Nook Puzzles, of Sheridan Indiana, should not be confused with the Joyful Nook Puzzles company of Durango Colorado, although they apparently share some past history and both companies have similar styles of downtown storefront operation, diversity in their puzzles, and even have similar their packaging. I will review one of Joyful Nook’s puzzles sometime soon.]
My selection of this particular puzzle however had been shaped by the fact that Nook Puzzle’s former Canadian distributer Tri-M Specialty Products had a very good sale going because they are discontinuing this line, and they also have very low shipping prices for me. I choose from among the ones that they still had available, which were mainly photographic images and comic book covers.
Not shown in the above image is a crumpled wad of brown paper that served as a spacer to keep the pieces from jostling about in their box. As will be discussed below, some of the pieces in this puzzle are quite fragile. None of the pieces in my puzzle were damaged, but I appreciate that the crumpled paper probably deserves some of the credit for that. So I’ll give it the photographic recognition it deserves:
Many wooden jigsaw puzzles are given rather extravagant packaging, far beyond what is needed for safe storage. This reflects their “heirloom quality” but also that recognition that the companies want them to be seen as potential gifts that would make a good impression. Nook Puzzles takes the other path. Its packaging is attractive and functional but frugal, and therefore helps keeps the cost of their puzzles down. Their list price for this 265 piece puzzle made from ¼” plywood is currently $65 USD.
I know that Nook’s basic cardboard boxes are suitable and secure for long-term use and storage because of the many vintage puzzles from decades ago that have survived in similarly packaging. But I also know that the medium-weight cardboard box is likely to show its age over time much sooner than the puzzle it contains.
Upon pouring the laser-cut pieces onto my puzzle-board, what first caught my attention (besides the campfire aroma) was their large size. The 5ply birch plywood is nearly a full ¼” thick and the average piece size is 5.35 sq cm (0.83 sq in). The pieces in other ¼” puzzles are usually closer to 3.3 sq cm (0.5 square inches.)
At this size they are very easy to handle. But I must admit that I felt somewhat disappointed when I saw the large pieces, and then checked the box and found that it is only a 265 piece puzzle. What I knew is that it was 17½” x 13” and I erroneously inferred that meant that it would be a larger puzzle in terms of piece count. On the Nook website this size is their “medium.”
That disappointment quickly evaporated when I saw the puzzle’s whimsies. Wow! I was blown away by the quality of these figural pieces. They are downright spectacular and they perfectly relate thematically to this particular image, and not just to comic books in general or a vintage superhero theme. As you could see in the photo in my review, two of those depict Miss Masque and therefore must have been specifically designed for this puzzle. I suspect they are based on images within this comic book. There are also others of the 25 whimsies that are also obviously puzzle-specific, perhaps all of them. Six of the others are human figures that are just as well-rendered as these are (you can see them for yourself after the spoiler warning near the end of this posting.) This is very high-quality silhouette cutting design!
One consequence of this intricate detail is that some of these figural pieces are quite delicate. In a few cases small pieces of the plywood chipped off from the backside (see Miss Masques’ toe on the right side of review photo) but there were no chips from the image side of any piece. Two narrowly-tapered tips from the blast pattern around other impact words (like around the backwards “POW” in that photo) had frayed a bit and one very thin-cut part was barely hanging on, but these weak points were easily stabilized and strengthened with white glue.
Even so, after the puzzle was completed and I reluctantly disassembled it, I segregated the particularly fragile pieces into an empty Lindt chocolate bar package (¼” thick) with some tissue paper as filler, and put that in the bottom of the puzzle box. (The Lindt package I used is Cranberry & Nuts but I suspect any other flavour would work just as well.) And, of course, I carefully placed the puzzle’s superhero guardian, cleverly disguised as a crumpled wad of brown paper, back into its place of honour atop everything in the box.
Assembly walk-through
Although I had tried to forget what the artwork looked like I accidently got too good of a view of the cover while taking it from the shelf. (Since then I have taped Christmas cards over the cover art on all of my yet-to-do puzzles so that won’t happen again.) So I had a pretty good image of its overall composition, but not of the text or its details (that was pre-research and I even forgot the name of the comic book series) and was therefore able to avoid developing an assembly strategy in advance. As I have mentioned in previous postings, I consider forgetfulness to be my own personal puzzling superpower.
My initial flipping and sorting included my usual separation of possible edge pieces and figurals from the others and trying to put some organization into the other pieces based on colours and textures.
I began by assembling the dark blue edge pieces that had text on them, light blue edge pieces that I figured must go on the sides, and other targets of opportunity based on colour and text. That gave me some working space.
I decided to focus on the bad guys:
Things were moving along pretty quickly:
And then it was done. I did this puzzle over a couple of days but only because I had other things going on. It was easy but a lot of fun to assemble.
Spoiler warning
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And to conclude.
P.S. The Animal Comics puzzle at the link you posted in reply to me looks very appealing.
Thanks. Bill. My comment about Scrooge McDuck was just wishful thinking. I realize your essay hadn't especially made me think such a wood puzzle was available. I know you used to do excellent marquetry; perhaps you could make us one. from carefully fitted pieces of veneers.