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[Robb_K]

Let's test our attention to detail, memory for detail, logic, knowledge of human nature, and knowledge of the criminal mind! 

I had a tremendous struggle to decide whether to pick a zany funny animal farce by a very unique artist in a very obscure series, or this relatively more ordinary book, and this won out (only because I don't want to be known as the guy who ALWAYS picks funny animal comics drawn by moonlighting animators)!

Here's the link:   https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=41245

Enjoy this bit of mental exercise.  I'll comment at the end of 3 weeks, after everyone else.

This has a lot of nostalgia for me, as I was a little kid in the late 1940s, and much of what was on early TV was 1940s B films (many of them Film Noir).  And I loved detective, crime drama, and mysteries.

[SuperScrounge]

The Case Of The Commonplace Clue - Eh, okay.

The Weeping Widow The Corpse Who Trapped His Killer - Eh, okay.

Who Done It? - Some cute gags.

Death On The Range - This story could have used a rewrite or two to make it clearer.

The Guilty Greenbacks - More of a straight crime story more than a who done it.

A Question Of Revenge - Did the writer give up toward the end figuring kids don't read the text stories anyway?

Formula For Foul Play - Eh.

The Mystery Of The Suicide Game - It was unintentionally hilarious when the man shot his wife in the back and tried to make it look like suicide. And then the police needed another test to prove it was murder. A real brain trust there. 

Found $26000 - As amateur detectives go Bill is kinda clumsy.

Overall I think these were not well done who done its. Clues were not laid out clearly, characters weren't all clearly identified (The Case Of The Commonplace Clue identified the murder victim as Hilary in the opening caption, but Dude for the actual story. Death On The Range would refer to characters by a first name in one panel and a last name in another panel, sometimes pages apart.) and the whole who done it aspect seemed to be less important in the last half of the book.

[Morgus]

 Liked the art a lot and I can't say why...just one of those things. The stories I didn't even try to solve, just followed along..the most interesting thing was the ad for the pipes...is there a state law that says B movies and comic books had to have a Willows Lake??

[paw broon]

Well, I picked out the killer right away in the first story.  The giveaway being the radio listings and then the paper tissue.  The 2nd story was pretty badly drawn and I found it difficult to follow at times.  It should have been the wife right enough but the panel with the shooting suggests a man did it. So it seemed like a red herring.  Can I bear to read the rest? No all in one go.
There was a long running strip in Lion in the '60's with same idea, Spot the Clue with Zip Nolan.  I seem to remember that Michael Moorcock was suggested as the creator.
I'll save the rest of the "delights" of this book for later.

Amending this to add that I'd forgotten about another Lion strip, "Bruce Kent invites you to Spot The Clue", which started around 1957.  Mostly if not all 1 pagers.

[crashryan]

Since I have time on my hands I decided to give this a serious reading and see if I could figure out whodunnit. In my opinion the first story is the fairest to the reader.  We hear everyone's alibi and all the necessary clues are presented. Unfortunately the moment Homer sneezes, before you hear about paper tissues in the wastebasket, you know he's the guy. He's the only one with an unusual characteristic that's introduced out of nowhere. If one or two others also had gimmicks it would've been less obvious. Oh, by the way, Homer carries a cloth hankie in his breast pocket. Just saying.

The downside of the story, a problem that gets worse in later stories, is lazy writing. The opening caption calls the victim "Hilary" Masterson but throughout the story he's called "Dude." It confuses the opening scene because Dude's last name isn't mentioned til the last panel. Also, while we deduce fom the dialogue that Dude is a lawyer, it'd help if the writer had told us Homer is his secretary.

"The Weeping Widow" has the germ of an idea killed by sloppy writing and sloppy art. The complicated plot would have been easier to follow if the lettering had been smaller. For the story to work we needed to see the clues Detective Murdock lists in the finale. The reverse-buttoned robe could have been shown in the art. Other clues which would have been difficult to draw could have been described in dialogue without giving the solution away: "This guy spent a lot of time in the sun...he's burnt brown!" Or "Interesting, the skin under his college ring is smooth." The biggest blunder is that the supposed victim, husband Arthur, "Couldn't see very well. He wore glasses all the time." Never once in the story do we see Arthur wearing glasses. Sloppy.

"Inspector Hawk" is the worst whodunnit. We barely see the perp, Howard, and aren't told who he's supposed to be. We eventually gather that he's a servant though Percy does more serving than Howard. The solution is completely unfair. None of the clues--nothing in the story, for that matter--hint of the victim's criminal past or that he had a brother. A question for you target shooters: what is the disc on a stick Howard waves in the last panel of our page 19?

The next story is a routine crime tale. Calling the scheme in "Guilty Greenbacks" bizarre is a gross understatement. We're to believe the imprisoned hoods print counterfeit ten-spots in their cell, using stolen printing plates and ink and paper supplied by a crooked guard? Where's the press? Where's the paper cutter? Where's the sense? I resisted identifying the artist as Matt Baker because it's so weak in spots. But I see JVJ says it's the real article.

I liked "Formula for Foul Play" best of the whodunnits. The script mostly plays fair and the art is okay. Especially when the artist pulls out his Raymond swipes, his photo reference, and even a Pat Ryan head from George Wunder's first year on "Terry and the Pirates." But what's the point of the Professor's odd thought balloon in the last panel of the opening page?

"Found $26000" isn't bad. The writer uses its space efficiently and the art is okay. It did throw me when the late Johnny's sister tells Bill, "Now that Bill is gone..." Oops.

This issue's irrelevant research result: I learned that "Thimm's New System" dates back to the 1800s, and several series of language books--phrase books rather than actual courses--bearing his name were published and re-published well into the 20th century. Who knows? Maybe someone's still reprinting them.

Reading these stories made me consider how difficult it would be to write a good comics whodunnit. Both writer and artist would have to be precise and detail-oriented. The reader must be able to tell the characters apart and understand their relationships. The artist has to present clues clearly (though not too obviously) and he has to make sure the art matches descriptions in the dialogue and captions. It's rather more effort than a typical 8-pager and I doubt many would enjoy working on one.

[lyons]

This book is dual genre - a Whodunit and a What-the-hell? - It had Holmes blinking in confusion and confounded Watson. The one mortal capable of solving the crime in 'Death on the Range' was Doctor Strange and his magic amulet.  Miss Marple was not pleased.  My guess?  It was Colonel Mustard...in the Kitchen...with a Wrench.  An entertaining read.  Thanks Robb_K. 

[Robb_K]

Reading these stories made me consider how difficult it would be to write a good comics whodunnit. Both writer and artist would have to be precise and detail-oriented. The reader must be able to tell the characters apart and understand their relationships. The artist has to present clues clearly (though not too obviously) and he has to make sure the art matches descriptions in the dialogue and captions. It's rather more effort than a typical 8-pager and I doubt many would enjoy working on one.

One big problem that makes only the very best writers squeeze all the necessary information into the story as efficiently as possible, and as carefully as possible, so as to not ruin the story flow and its proper pacing, is the lack of room for story development due to the extremely limited number of pages (especially in the shortest size allotments, but even in the largest "lead" story.

Good mystery writing requires the author to weave the introduction of the setting, development of the characters, and to pace the plot properly, with the action moving slowly, at first, speeding up until the climax (showdown with the revealing of the answer), and the epilogue, which explains what really happened, and how it happened.  ALL THAT is easily fit into a standard-sized text novel of 200-300 book pages, or even possible (but a bit less easily fit into a standard longer short story of 70 to 120 text pages.  But it is extremely difficult to be squeezed into a standard whole-book 44-48 page Golden Age 52-page comic book, and even harder to fit into a whole book story in 26-30 pages of a 36-page later '40s-early '50s later GA book, and almost impossible to fit into a 36-page book purporting to contain several "whodunnit" stories. EVEN if such a book has the best mystery writers doing their best work of their careers on such stories, the best that can result are mere outlines of a mystery story, which can't possibly develop the proper atmosphere and can't be paced properly, and is extremely difficult to provide all the information the reader needs to be exposed to all he needs to know to have had a fair chance to have solved the crime before the answer is revealed, and to also have fit in the necessary red herrings to make that "solving" challenging enough for some sense of accomplishment.

Had I been assigned to write (and draw) a "whodunnit" in a comic book style format, I'd have wanted at the very least, all 36 pages of the standard Silver Age book with no advert pages, or the standard 48-page European Graphic Novel size, or 48-50 inner pages of a standard 52 page GA book.  Even with those sizes it would NOT be an easy task to fit in all that is needed to create an interesting, fully entertaining mystery story reading experience.

I can't imagine why this company's chief editor decided to chop his meagre 36-page book (of which less than 30 pages is available for story content) into more than one story, let alone the several story count he chose.  Most of the writers were given an impossible task.  The couple lead story writers were given a crippling task, at best.

[crashryan]

You make some good points, Robb. More space would help a lot with a whodunnit comic. GA editors (or more likely publishers) seemed to believe that any comic had to feature many short stories. They probably reasoned that they'd keep more readers that way. If someone disliked a book-length story they mightn't buy another issue of that comic, but if they liked one or two of six stories they might do so.

To prove your point that plenty of space doesn't guarantee a good mystery story, out on the Internet there's a scan of the 1946 adaptation of The Maltese Falcon (David McKay Feature Book #48). Not eligible for CB+, unfortunately. The story runs 50 pages and is still too diagrammatic. Rodlow Willard's wretched artwork doesn't help.

[Robb_K]

You make some good points, Robb. More space would help a lot with a whodunnit comic. GA editors (or more likely publishers) seemed to believe that any comic had to feature many short stories. They probably reasoned that they'd keep more readers that way. If someone disliked a book-length story they mightn't buy another issue of that comic, but if they liked one or two of six stories they might do so.

To prove your point that plenty of space doesn't guarantee a good mystery story, out on the Internet there's a scan of the 1946 adaptation of The Maltese Falcon (David McKay Feature Book #48). Not eligible for CB+, unfortunately. The story runs 50 pages and is still too diagrammatic. Rodlow Willard's wretched artwork doesn't help.

Yes, whatever the amount of space available to tell a story with words and pictures, there is an optimum configuration of what to include and what to leave out.  And that determines the mix of the various story elements.  Some elements are more important than others.  There is a finite minimum size that a mystery story can be to be minimally viable.  And, at its minimum, it won't be an enjoyable read.  What separates the great comic book writers and scenarist/storyboarders from the good ones, the competent(but uninspired) ones, and the hacks, is the finely-tuned experience in paring down stories to their basic essence, to determine what can make the story cut, in a page limit that is really "too short" to tell the story comfortably. 

My first editor at Dutch Disney showed me a handful of well-crafted Carl Barks 10-page stories from the late 1940s and beginning of The 1950s.  Then he showed me a couple of the 1950 Walt Disney's Comics & Stories 10-pagers drawn by Paul Murry, Riley Thompson, and Frank McSavage, ALL of whom didn't write stories.  The writers were unknown, but were terrible, run-of-the-mill, uninspired, inexperienced kids, who were payed by the page, and so, had a lot of extra fluff in their 10 gag run pages, and no real story.  NO WONDER thousands of readers sent complaining letters to Western Publishing to get their "Good Duck Story Writer and Artist" back working on "Comics & Stories", or they'd stop buying them and ask for refunds on their subscriptions.  My editor gave me a written story synopsis.  And told me to draw up a 20-page, 10-page and 5-page version in thumbnail sketched storyboards (about 1/2 size of my normal full-page storyboards.  These are too small for complete dialogues, but we put down the gist of the idea of what the character is saying - or his attitude.

It was a very good learning experience, which taught me how to pare the story down to its essence (e.g. what story am I trying to tell?  How can the pacing be kept to a natural flow, and yet all the most important scenes can be included?  The less important scenes are cut out in favour of more important scenes until what is left fits exactly inside the limited page space (which can be added to slightly by adding in a few extra panels in key spots, and still keeping the key suspense points on page endings.  It was eye-opening to me when Danish Disney allowed us lead story creators to use 12 pages regularly, and even 13 once in a while, when Carl Barks had always been limited to 10.  But, most of the hundreds of current writers could NOT fit Barkslike Donald Duck lead stories into 10 pages like Barks did.  He was extremely adept at fitting a fully fledged domestic mini-adventure into 10 pages, using every bit of panel space and word balloon space efficiently.  Nothing  existed on his pages that did not provide essential information to the reader in either the form of words or through something in the drawings.  And yet, he didn't seem overly wordy, and his artwork was not too heavily detailed or cluttered (as is Don Rosa's).

Originally, I thought the idea of our reviewing a book of "whodunnits" would be a very entertaining exercise.  But, I had thought I would find some early 1940s books with 68 pages, and maybe just 2 long stories.  But, unfortunately, all I found was a futile attempt to provide 7 or 8 "whodunnits" in a small, 36 - page book, with only about 30 pages devoted to stories (some of which are only vignettes).
I will, however, leave my assessment of the individual stories for a bit later, after the remaining Reading Group regulars chime in.

[The Australian Panther]

This is not my evaluation of the reading choice, which is coming but a response to the last post.

most of the hundreds of current writers could NOT fit Barkslike Donald Duck lead stories into 10 pages like Barks did

I've been meditating on this for a few days now, having been looking at Disney Work for a while.
I believe that doing a Barksian story is not just about telling an effective story in 10 or however many pages but also about making that story believable in the Barksian Universe. This is not just about the characters but the visual look of the universe they exist in. It's a real and as individualistic as a Tex Avery cartoon and actually quite complex. This universe existed in Barks head, and the details of the stories are somewhat dictated by the rules of the universe the stories exist in. For new writers and artists, they are not just telling stories, they are needing to get inside Barks' head, and if they were young and inexperienced, they would have had great difficulty.

NO WONDER thousands of readers sent complaining letters to Western Publishing to get their "Good Duck Story Writer and Artist" back working on "Comics & Stories", or they'd stop buying them and ask for refunds on their subscriptions.   

This is interesting to know. Still didn't cause the publishers to treat Barks with much respect, did  it?           

[Robb_K]

most of the hundreds of current writers could NOT fit Barkslike Donald Duck lead stories into 10 pages like Barks did

I've been meditating on this for a few days now, having been looking at Disney Work for a while.
I believe that doing a Barksian story is not just about telling an effective story in 10 or however many pages but also about making that story believable in the Barksian Universe. This is not just about the characters but the visual look of the universe they exist in. It's a real and as individualistic as a Tex Avery cartoon and actually quite complex. This universe existed in Barks head, and the details of the stories are somewhat dictated by the rules of the universe the stories exist in. For new writers and artists, they are not just telling stories, they are needing to get inside Barks' head, and if they were young and inexperienced, they would have had great difficulty.

NO WONDER thousands of readers sent complaining letters to Western Publishing to get their "Good Duck Story Writer and Artist" back working on "Comics & Stories", or they'd stop buying them and ask for refunds on their subscriptions.   

This is interesting to know. Still didn't cause the publishers to treat Barks with much respect, did  it?

No.  Western Publishing never payed him much money and never put his name on anything he drew for them.  Their parent company DID put his name as illustrator on the two Little Golden Books he drew for them, along with Norman McGary, who finished Barks' pencilwork.  He was never paid much money at all.  But he preferred working in his own home to doing hard labour out in the hot sun, which is what he did as a young adult.

Regarding getting into Barks' head:  I was an extreme fan of Barks' work as a child, and that was my main entertainment other than playing hockey and watching hockey games, and watching old 1930s and 1940s films when we finally got a TV in the mid 1950s.  I read all Barks' stories over and over.  I was very keen on geography and drawing maps.  I drew street maps of Duckburg and Duck County, and Goosetown and the suburbs as they might have looked, based on what information Barks provided in narratives, word balloons, and what was pictured in his story panels, as well as the street signs and direction signs.  Later, I drew professional quality street and city maps of those places, all based on Barks stories, with some added geographic landforms, buildings and street names from other writers and artists when they did not conflict with Barks' stories' depictions, to be able to have a ful compliment of street names for cities of the size he depicted.  I assumed that Duckburg was a "middle-sized" city, which grew from about 300,000 to 500,000 during the time we were reading Barks' stories (1949-1966).  I later used those maps to make sure MY Duckburg would be recognisable as Barks' Duckburg, with the seacoast and harbour on the west, the very large Mudhen Lake to the east of the city (making up half its eastern boundary), and wit The Black Forest making up most of the rest, with that forest climbing up the foothills to The Eagleclaw Wilderness, and the short chain of mountains that includes Demontooth Mountain.  And to the north lies flat ground that turns to farmland after a few suburbs, and to the south the same.  I had both The Duckburg River (stupid name for a river-they are NEVER named after castles or towns), and the Tulebug River (not far off from Tilburg, where one of my work partners lives). 

My photographic memory kept all those details and knowledge of how panoramas in each direction should look, and I used geographic locations that Barks used, and characters that he used seldomly in many of my stories.  I've used the neighbour kid, Herbert Hog, who Barks used only 3 times in the early 1940s in one of my first stories.  I used Neighbour Jones BEFORE it became fashionable to use him again in the 1990s.

But, getting back on topic, crafting a well-made story is a LOT more difficult and complicated than laypeople can imagine.  There are so very many factors that need to be considered.  And doing that by blending narrative and dialogue together with pictures in panels makes it that much more difficult.  And then, needing to meet the requirements of providing information to the reader in a fair way that makes it possible for him or her to solve the mystery ahead of or right with the detective, WITHOUT revealing too much too soon (ruining the suspense), AND still delivering the proper atmosphere of realism for believability puts a lot of pressure on the writer/artist.  For a comic book artist/writer, this is NOT a way to earn money.  Too much thinking is required to earn more than pennies an hour for such work.  And when the editors make ridiculous restrictions such as story page limits that are impossible to allow viable stories, it makes the situation all the more difficult.  Taking on such work would be a challenge and a labour of love, that would only be possible if the artist or writer had other, high-paying jobs in illustration, animation, or TV and/or film writing.

The "working for peanuts" reminds me of a discussion we had on another thread about the terrible quality of art in a lot of Fox Features' books, and remembering that they were known to be one of the very stingiest when it came to paying their artists.  It was no coincidence that their artist cranked out page after page without spending much time thinking about the staging of scenes, and they did little erasing of figures that were drawn poorly.  If they had put decent time into drawing their best, they'd have starved to death, or had to move back in with their parents.

[The Australian Panther]

Before I start, I am not an abstract puzzle solver. I don't do crosswords or maths puzzles. MY introduction to these types of story [in comics] was through the 2 pagers that Bob Powell used to do in the Harvey Dick Tracy comics. They annoyed me, in the first place, because they broke up the main story. I don't think Powell would have liked doing them because he didn't get much of a chance to stretch out and draw.
I am a buff of Noir Fiction and Suspense but not particularly of 'Cosys' of which these stories are an example.
Good article on 'Cosys' here
JK Rowling and the rise of 'cosy' crime
https://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/books/416419/JK-Rowling-and-the-rise-of-cosy-crime
Okay, there are exceptions, I am a Holmes Buff!
So, now to the book itself.
The cover. Dull idea and wouldn't make me pick up the comic to see what it referred to.
'The case of the commonplace clue' The art takes second place to the verbiage, there are things here the artist could dramatise by illustrating, like all the information contained in the bottom left and middle panel on page 2, but he is obliged just to provide place-setters for the word balloons.
On [CB+ page 5] The continuity is dreadful. You have to read the first four panels and then go back to realize that she is coming out of a building she has just been in and must have seen the body on the floor. Also, Panel one > 'Ok, then, darling, 1:30 tonight' Next panel, 'I:30 that morning'!  And its broad daylight, so would it not be mid afternoon? 
Same page, 'He was murdered' - No autopsy, no evidence given or reason for saying so' ?
'Looks like a tough one Barney,' Ah, Why exactly?
So, lousy and careless storytelling.
'A man with hayfever, needing lots of handkerhiefs,would use paper!' Yeah, that would stand up in court. 
The Corpse Who Trapped His Killer        
The Words and the lettering drown out the art.
Inspector Hawk, has all the problems that the other stories have, but the art is more dynamic and drives the story better. I quite liked it.
The Guilty Greenbacks.
Even better balance of Words and pictures. Straightforward basic story tho. No surprises or shocks.
Formula for Foul Play. Clever idea, but not hard to figure out the villain.
Found $26,000 Hmm. Two stories in this book that start with someone stepping off a footpath into the path of a car. But here we don;t see the collision.
A real cosy, since the detective is just a morgue attendant. Here we see the character apply reasoning and eliminate the suspects one by one, till only the obvious guilty one is left.And we know the hero is going to get the girl. Liked it.
Thank you Robb, for drawing my attention to something I would not have read otherwise.
And that I think, is one of the positives about the Reading Group choices.         

   
     

[crashryan]

It's funny to think that while whodunnit comics would benefit from more space (or so Robb and I argue), the genre usually appeared as one- or two-page fillers. There was just time for one obvious clue and an upside-down explanation in the last panel.

I had forgotten the series "Who Dunnit" which ran in later issues of Crime Does Not Pay. 6-pagers heavy on text with clunky but appealing art by Fred Guardineer. Enjoyable in small doses.

[The Australian Panther]

whodunnit comics would benefit from more space

I agree. Apart from books like this one, which are comparatively rare, the genre appears to have only been used for filler. It occurs to me, that if you had roughly the same plot but made a 'funny animal story' out of it,the same plot could fill out a whole book and be bolstered by lots of slapstick and pratfalls.   

[mopee167]

Robb_K said:
I can't imagine why this company's chief editor decided to chop his meagre 36-page book (of which less than 30 pages is available for story content) into more than one story, let alone the several story count he chose.  Most of the writers were given an impossible task.  The couple lead story writers were given a crippling task, at best.

*****
It would seem the editor who made the decision to do this was V.C. (Virginia Cahn) Albus.

http://pulpartists.com/Davis.html

I would guess the reason she did this was the same one Joe Orlando used at DC Comics:

I premise[d] the idea of doing three [or four or five] short stories that would speed up the creative process and give me the opportunity to divide the scripts among three [or four or five] artists, so I would have a [better] chance to make my deadline.

[Robb_K]

Thanks for that link.  And that shows us how D.S. Publishing was started, and how they got into Pulp publishing, on the road to comic book production.  Meeting editing, and, ultimately, printing deadlines is more important. in the short run, than even quality of the book's content.  But, in the long run, quality decides if the series continues.

[mopee167]

Tru-dat!!

[Robb_K]

The three weeks is almost up.  I was waiting for Andrew, and a few of the other regulars, but I'd better make my own comments on the book.  As I stated above, it was a big disappointment because the stories were too short to provide all the necessary information in a reasonably well-paced way, to be fair to the reader, and amateur sleuth.  The stories had some different problems.  Some were better than others.

Case of The Commonplace Clue
As Crash mentioned above, THIS story was probably the fairest to the reader, having laid out the clues and made obvious who the 4 people were who held a grudge against the victim.  As both Crash and Paw pointed out, it was a little too obvious that Homer was probably the killer, because he had a quirk that was unusual, and shouldn't ordinarily be related to a crime, and might have been a red herring, IF the 3 other suspects also had quirks that could also potentially be red herrings, and, thus, divide up the suspicion.  I do like that the smashing of the watch was used to throw the detective off the track.  But, the close-up on the radio programme schedule being so large in the panel, and the reader finding out that Dude was listening to the station that went off the air at 11PM was told so soon, on the opposite page.  At least, if we had to turn the page, we might have had a slight chance of not connecting those 2 points.  That is why having such little room to lay out the clues really hurts the ability to build up and keep suspense, and not give the answer away way too soon.  I, too, had a problem with a detective stating that a man with hay fever, sneezing a lot would move from a silk or cotton handkerchief to using paper tissues.  There shouldn't be any correlation.  There are too many factors to keep it random.  The art was decent - nothing to write home about.  the storytelling left a lot to be desired.  I would have had red herrings for all 4 suspects, a few of which should have made 2 of the non-guilty look more likely to be the murderer than Homer.

The weeping Widow - The Corpse Who Trapped His Killer 
First of all, although the artwork was decent, as Panther pointed out, the story was nothing but people standing and talking.  The only action was one panel of a slight scuffle between 2 of the brothers, and a sliver panel showing a man's suit-decked arm holding a pistol, and shooting another man.  The brother with the gambling problem and the greedy wife looked way too guilty all through the story.  The married couple's plot
to kill the rich brother was a decent idea.  But, the main problem was having no real red herrings to make any other suspects look like viable candidates to be the murderer.  Also, there was a lack of thorough editing, missing a spelling/grammatical error that shouldn't be made by a native speaker, in the first place, but was overlooked, no doubt, due to heavy deadlines.  How can a human being be "sunburn"?  He can be sunburned, or he can get sunburned.  Or he can have a sunburn. Or he can be your worst enemy.  But he can't BE sunburn!  It's unprofessional.  It's only a 36 page book with several advert pages.  No excuse for missing that.

Who Done It? Jokes Page
Worthless waste of space.  Better to have used that extra page to better flesh out one of the stories.


Inspector Hawk - Death On The Range
At least there was some action in this story, and a good general plot.  But it was totally unfair to the reader as an amateur detective.  We had no chance to figure out who did it and why they did, until the murderer confessed.  This story could have used the extra page used on silly jokes and puns, as well as a few more, to put in some clues about the real murderer, and to add some red herrings for making other reasonable suspects.  A good general idea for a story, but TERRIBLY executed.  I would have been "fired" (told my clients don't need my services anymore) if I submitted such a poorly worked out plot/scenario.  I might have been allowed to stay with the firm, but only to submit "story ideas", which get less than 1/20th of the pay that a written scenario (with page and panel breakdown, and full dialogues), and only maybe 1/40th of fully-drawn storyboards with dialogues and narratives included. 


The Guilty Greenbacks
This had to be one of the most stupid, unrealistic plots for a should-be-serious story I've ever read or heard.  Was this writer born under a rock, and had stayed there until he wrote this story???  To run a money counterfeiting racquet "clandestinely" inside a prison?  I know that sometimes writers have "writers' block, and panic when deadlines approach, and they have nothing.  But that is ridiculous.  I could see it as a Three Stooges' plot, but not for a "whodunnit" trying to entertain police/crime mystery fans.  I guess we are supposed to believe the crooks somehow jerry-rigged the prison's newspaper's printing press to use the counterfeiting plates to print.  And where would they get the paper that looks like US paper money?  They would have to have one of their own men planted in one of the US Federal mints in Philadelphia, San Francisco, or Denver.  Then, they'd have to have several of their own prison's guards on the payroll as well, to ignore what they are doing using the prison's newspaper printing press, and also have a couple guards sneak in the new paper stock, and sneak out the freshly-pressed counterfeit bills.  Like I've always known, it's a LOT easier to make money legitimately, than to do it by breaking laws.

A Question of Revenge - Text Story
Too obvious that the gardener was the only worker on the estate that could have gotten rid of the body.  there should have been other workers there who could have had a motive.  But that's the problem of having too little room to tell a story, only room enough to tell a simple plot, and describe how a crime was carried out.  Not much entertainment for someone who wants to test his or her deductive skills.

Formula for Foul Play
This one was the most realistic story with a straightforward plot, and it was fair to the reader, providing all needed clues.  Unfortunately, it didn't provide several, or really even two main suspects.  Again that is a function of space.  If the writer had all 32-33 pages to tell the story, he could have made 3-4 suspects to weed out, to narrow down, and hone in on the guilty party.  Still, the art was okay, and the story was entertaining.

Mysteries From The Casebook of Edgar Peck - One Page Attempted Stumper
Ha! Ha!  I wouldn't have needed to check for gunpowder burns on the husband's hands first.  I would have asked the doctor who checked the victim's body to check at what angle the bullet entered the body, and at what speed, so that the distance the bullet traveled could be determined, because people who kill themselves with a pistol usually aim at their heads, NOT their backs!  The doctor would have answered 10 to 15 feet away, proving it was no suicide.  THEN, I would have checked the husband's hands and upper wrist and lower arm area for powder burns (in case he had been wearing gloves).

Found $26,000
Not a bad story.  Kind of an innovative idea that one of the medics was one of only 2 people the jockey gave the tip on the race.  Actually, people involved in horse racing in 1940s USA would know that a LOT of high stakes races were "fixed", letting certain horses/horse owners and jockeys win at different times.  However, it would be a mistake for a jockey to tell a friend that he was pretty sure his horse would win when it had such high odds against.  That;s a set-up to lose one's jockey career in a hurry.  It was entertaining, but very far-fetched.  How could a streetwise person like the hero believe that the bookie was telling the truth that he paid the kid?  Those crooks are generally pathological liars.  As usual in these very short stories, the detective went to quickly and too directly to the answer.  It would have been more entertaining if there had been a few more suspects, at least for a while, instead of just the bookie and the non-murdering thief.  It was very clever to have the death as completely accidental, and not related to losing the money.

Conclusions:
I find that what is a lot more entertaining than reading these comic books, is learning more about the history of The US comic book industry, and how it operated in the 1940s, which is something I hadn't really thought about, while reading the books in the 1940s and 1950s, but have thought about a lot, since I started meeting creators and editors in the late 1960s, and started working in the field in 1984.