Crack Comics #1 (Quality Comics, May 1940) is a landmark Golden Age anthology and one of the most first-appearance-packed debut issues of the era. Its cover feature is the masked detective The Clock, but the issue's lasting fame rests on a cluster of character debuts: the flying Black Condor — raised by condors in Mongolia and famously introduced by Will Eisner and Lou Fine — plus the submarine hero Red Torpedo, the pulp-styled Alias the Spider, and the historically notable Madam Fatal, a retired actor who fights crime disguised as an old woman, widely cited as comics' first cross-dressing superhero. Rounding out the 68-page package are space-opera (Space Legion), inventor Wizard Wells, and newspaper-strip reprints like Jane Arden and Ned Brant.

Published by Quality Comics under its Comic Magazines, Inc. indicia, the title emerged at the white-hot peak of the superhero boom that followed Superman and Batman. Much of the content came through the celebrated Eisner & Iger studio, and the roster of contributors — Lou Fine, Paul Gustavson, George Brenner, Art Pinajian — reads like a who's-who of Golden Age talent. The name "crack" evoked being at the top of one's form, and the book ran an impressive 62 issues (1940–1949) before converting to Crack Western.

For collectors and historians today, Crack Comics #1 is a major key issue. Its characters were absorbed into the DC Universe when DC acquired Quality's catalog in 1956, and heroes like Black Condor were later revived as part of the Freedom Fighters. That living legacy — combined with the Eisner/Fine pedigree and the pioneering Madam Fatal — makes this debut both a coveted collectible and a frequently studied artifact of early superhero history.