Lightning Comics Primer
Series Overview
Lightning Comics was a superhero anthology series published by Ace Comics in the 1940s. Why are this comic included here? It all has to do with a character named Doctor Nemesis. Ace Comics was a subsidiary of A.A. Wyn’s Magazine Publishers. The company printed comic books until 1956 and was one of the many companies under heavy scrutiny during inquiries done by US Congress who where looking into the connection between juvenile delinquency and comic books. Spoiler alert: It wasn’t, the champion behind this — psychologist Frederick Wertham — was a fraud and an asshole. Anyway, Ace Comics was one of the many victims of this comic book witch hunt. Eventually, Ace Comics line of characters entered the public domain. If you want to read these stories you can download them free and legal at the Digital Comic Museum.
So what does this have to do with anything? Well Lightning Comics sometimes featured a character by the name of Doctor Nemesis. In 1993, Doctor Nemesis joined a number of other public domain characters in forming Battle Axis, the primary villains in Invaders (Vol. 2). Unlike the other characters who appeared in that run, Doctor Nemesis continued to have new life breathed into him when he began appearing in various X-Men comic books starting with Uncanny X-Men #504.
Are the Doctor Nemesis Appearances Canon?
It looks like this is the case as Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A-Z Update #4 profile for Doctor Nemesis lists the character’s first appearance as Lightning Comics #6. Although the profile does not specifically reference any of the Ace Comics stories, there’s nothing in them that contradicts or conflicts with what Marvel has done with the character since, so there’s no reason why it couldn’t.
Index Scope
This index will only be covering the issues if Lightning Comics that have Doctor Nemesis stories and then only the Doctor Nemesis stories. You’ll also notice there are a number of different volume numbers. I can’t really explain it except for the fact that Ace Comics rebooted the title every six issues or so. The title ended with Volume 3 #1.
