Bold Fashion Choices--Something In The Air In 1941!!

Sometimes, fashion ideas are just burbling in the getstalt, waiting to be plucked by anyone enterprising enough to use them.

For example, late November 1940 saw this debut of Black Lion and Cub in Fox's Wonderworld Comics #21, drawn by Charles A. Winter:

Well, February 1941 rolled around, and brought us Fox's Fantastic Comics #17, with Black Fury and Chuck, drawn by Dennis Neville under the pseudonym Mark Howell. These two panels are from #18 & #19, because the first story didn't have a single panel of them both facing the "camera" while in costume! The second panel, from #19, is drawn by "Chuck Winter" under a pen name...same guy as "Charles A. Winter"..??

One week later, Nedor/Standard brought us Exciting Comics #9 with the debut of the Black Terror and Tim, drawn by David Gabrielsen:

Man, that's a whole lot of similar costuming going on. And don't get me started on Black Fury and Chuck debuting in the same month as Black Terror and Tim!!

Of course, street dates can be approximate for much of the Golden Age, so it can be hard to judge who came first or who influenced whom. Also, many of these comics were being produced by studios, so the name we know as the artist might not be the guy who actually drew it, or came up with the initial sketch. Throw in that artists were often free agents, who drew for whomever would pay them that month, and it's certainly possible that there was some "recycling" of design ideas going on.

Or, at a time when comic companies were throwing out a dozen new super-heroes every month, it's certainly possible that three separate artists had similar ideas in a relatively close time period.

Or maybe something was floating there, in the cultural subconscious, burbling, inspiring three different artists (and maybe more)?

Whatever. Someone should revive all three duos and plop them in the same story...maybe investigating the costumer who sold them all similar outfits...?