Nickel Comics

Like many publishers have over the years Fawcett Publications, the company responsible for the original Captain Marvel, experimented with a new format. One comic that was half as thick as their usual books for half as much on the news stands, but releasing twice as often. This gimmick book was titled Nickel Comics and like other gimmicks it ultimately failed. However its primary character did not. Each five cent issue presented the adventures of Bullet Man. The stories concerned the life and times of a police scientist named Jim Barr who invented a helmet in the shape of a bullet that gave him the ability to fly and made him bulletproof. Bulletman and later Bullgirl became staple heroes of the Golden Age of comics that lived beyond their big monthly nickel rag. They even became properties owned by Fawcett's most direct competition, the company that would later be called DC Comics.