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[The Australian Panther]

A couple of Private Eye comics for this fortnight.

Sam Hill Private Eye 1
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=30403


Mike Shayne 2
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=37626

Enjoy!

[Robb_K]

A couple of Private Eye comics for this fortnight.

Sam Hill Private Eye 1
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=30403


Mike Shayne 2
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=37626

Enjoy!

Was THAT detective the source of the American phrase "What The Sam Hill?"  .
Or maybe he was named after the saying?

[The Australian Panther]

pretty sure the saying comes first.

the OED:

North American slang.

A euphemism for hell; used especially in expressions of impatience or irritation preceded by in or the with an interrogative word.

1839 Havana (New York) Republican 21 Aug. 1/4 What in sam hill is that feller ballin' about?

1868 J. T. Trowbridge Three Scouts vi. 26 When you might a'married!?why in Sam Hill didn't ye, then?   

What is the origin of the saying "What the Sam Hill"?
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-origin-of-the-saying-What-the-Sam-Hill
This sets a record for the time it takes for the Reading Group to go off on a tangent!
I love it!

[paw broon]

Can't beat a good tangent!
I got fed up with Sam Hill.  What a thicko he is.  The dialogue irritated me and he's too much of a sucker for a femme fatale, imo.  The 2nd story with the sisters, well, surely, we all saw that coming? The "spot the clue(s)" piece could have been a good idea, although there are other versions in other strips, but I didn't spot them as I couldn't be bothered to actually do more than glance at the pages.
It's an attempt at a hard boiled private dick but I'm surprised he lasted these 4 stories as he comes over as an easily led, clueless (see what I did there?) dunce.
I'll try the other one now..
Thanks Panther for putting the books up.

[Morgus]

So, were detective comics ever a big thing? I mean, It seemed like a perfect solution if the censors were busting your chops over 'true crime' comics...just do a couple of changes, and you're in the clear. That mini bio, for instance on the inside cover of MIKE SHAYNE could easily have come from a true crime comic.

Thanks for posting, A/P it's a genre I never even thought of before. Shayne looks like Robert Stack to me.

By the way, just because I remember it, there's an old failed pilot called SAM HILL: WHO KILLED THE MYSTERIOUS MR FOSTER? That never took off. Ernest Borgnine. It's a pretty good TV movie that came out in 1971. Worth tracking down...

[Robb_K]

pretty sure the saying comes first.

the OED:
North American slang: A euphemism for HELL;  used especially in expressions of impatience or irritation preceded by in or the with an interrogative word.

1839 Havana (New York) Republican 21 Aug. 1/4 What in sam hill is that feller ballin' about?

This sets a record for the time it takes for the Reading Group to go off on a tangent!  I love it! 

The author must have used that name to use its connotation to imply his soft-boiled, ineffective, private dick was a HELLER, - hellbent for leather to solve tough cases and get into the action fighting criminals!



I was only kidding when I asked which came first.  That was an old saying from no later than the early mid 1800s.  I'm sure I heard it before 1950, when the book came out (at least said by a few old character actors in 1930s and 1940s US B films).

[Robb_K]

1) So, were detective comics ever a big thing? I mean, It seemed like a perfect solution if the censors were busting your chops over 'true crime' comics...just do a couple of changes, and you're in the clear. That mini bio, for instance on the inside cover of MIKE SHAYNE could easily have come from a true crime comic.

2) By the way, just because I remember it, there's an old failed pilot called SAM HILL: WHO KILLED THE MYSTERIOUS MR FOSTER? That never took off. Ernest Borgnine. It's a pretty good TV movie that came out in 1971. Worth tracking down... 

I was in Canada 1946-1963.  Detective comic books weren't all that prevalent, and didn't sell all that much.  During the '40s and '50s, normal Film Noir film fans probably read the best of the Detective Pulps, which were pretty popular.  The less intelligent and less discriminating read the full-sized regular detective magazines.  The detective magazines (called "Men's Magazines") were somewhat sleazier than the detective Pulp books (with only the cover illustration and lots of text pages), as they had more illustrations and photos of scantily clad, pretty young women. 

We did visit USA fairly often.  From 1963-1972, I resided in USA.  There were a LOT more detective comic series on the shelves there (as there were also for many of the other genres).  I think that The American boys and male adolescents were a little more combat-loving back then, and less into reading than Canadians, but that gap was smaller back in the '40s and '50s than now.  The markets seemed to be fairly similar in both countries, except that The US had a lot more smaller indie publishers with the more obscure comic book series.  While Canada, dependent mostly on imported US Lines, received mostly the most popular from the largest US publishers.

Basically, the following could be said about the markets in both countries:
I guess that the bulk of the detective comic book readers were mainly action genre comic book fans who were a lot more fans of comic illustration artwork than the detective pulp and magazine buyers.  The same people who bought military action comics, Westerns, and period action comics like Robin Hood, were buying "True Crime" and Detective comic books.  Naturally, the action Fantasy and Sci-Fi comics genres and History genres overlapped with the Combat Action-based (for combat action's sake) genre, when individual series of them regularly had a high % of their pages filled with combat action.

[Robb_K]

Sam Hill Private Eye 1 MLJ - 1950 Writer (apparently unknown) Pencils and inks Harry Lucey and Harry Sahle

This book has a lousy front cover, littered with lots of text, and even big speech balloons with lots of dialogue, ruining the action scene that's supposed to catch the potential buyer's eye.  Good thing MLJ fell into a gold mine by accident with Archie.  They surely didn't know what they were doing with THIS series.  I guess they thought they would get some of The Pulp hard-boiled private dick fans, and some of the detective story magazine readers, as well as some Film Noir detective/mystery fans.  But, they poured the tough, hard boildness, woman-chasing character on wayyyyyy too thickly, and added an even more offensive trait, of trying to make a comedian out of the tough, supposedly clever star.  Actually, he came off as an irritating egotistical comedian wannabe, who gets into a lot of adventures out of stupidity.  Just a truly unlikable character, with not a sliver of a redeeming quality.  This seemed like an over-the-top Mad Magazine parody of a pulp detective novelette, or classic 1940s US noir detective film.  After reading this, I feel insulted. 

(1) The Cutie Killer Caper
A detective that takes a job from a woman who he knows is a lying phoney, and after telling that to her face, falls into her obvious trap to set him up to take the rap for her murder of her husband.  And we're supposed to believe he knowingly risked his life (he only avoided getting either killed by the police, or caught by them, and then charged with the murder) - all for his measly daily "shadowing fee"!  And the author clearly wanted to place a scene in the story in which this tough detective belts his client with a hard blow from his fist (which is acceptable because he knows she is a murderess).

(2) The Double Trouble Caper

In a similar story, Hill suspects his client's sister, who he must "shadow" as being a lier and a no-goodnick, but allows himself to go into a private gambling room run by armed gangsters, and lets her set him up for her murder of the gambling house's owner, and he doesn't realise that she was also the murderer of her sister, and posing as her dead sister.  A good idea for an innovative crime.  But, the way Hill got himself into danger being careless (for seemingly small amounts of pay, makes him seem awfully gullible.

(3) Time To Kill - Text Story
This story is pretty similar to the first two.  The hard-boiled, gullible beautiful, woman-chasing, private detective, who seems only to take on jobs from beautiful women who want to murder someone and frame HIM for their murder, hangs out with yet another murderess, who he can slug with all his might (after he finds out she is a killer, and he can also get modest pay for doing so.  He's a woman-hater, who gets his kicks beating them up, and sending them to the electric chair.  And he gets paid to do that!  Life is sweet!   

(4) Tangle Wits With A Killer
Another murdering female who wanted to frame Hill for the murder she committed.  THIS time, his client was the father.  But maybe he wouldn't have taken the job if she had been ugly, or just plain and homely? In any case, it seems he should try to find a different sort of clientele. 

(5) The Mad Money Caper
Three different blonde-haired women, in three different stories, and they all look exactly the same! Not a good job by the artist. Yet another murder that the client wanted to commit and not go to jail or face the death penalty.  At least THiS one wasn't set up to blame Hill.  And, the grateful niece, who kissed Hill, couldn't have paid Hill the $1,000 out of her inheritance from her rich uncle's estate?  I do like that hill ordered milk instead of the expensive alcoholic drink at the exclusive high-class restaurant, because he had little money.  I assume they didn't have dinner there, and he only bought her one drink.

Personally, I'd rather read a pulp novel or a full-fledged classic hard-bound mystery novel, than this hardly though out, quickly thrown together attempt to piggy-back on the recent success of noir films, detective pulps, and detective magazines.  I'm hoping The Mike Shayne book will be significantly better.

[SuperScrounge]

Sam Hill Private Eye 1

Cover - Wow. I think the only time I've seen a wordier cover was a self-help book, or something like that. Detective novels usually have shorter blurbs hyping the shory on an interesting visual. Comic books usually have an exciting action and maybe some dialogue with a blurb. This feels more like a table of contents page that someone mistakingly used for a cover.

The Cutie Killer Caper - Did this start off as a text detective story that the writer rewrote to be a comic? Is it bad that as I'm reading this I'm thinking how much better it would be with Archie as the P.I. and being more obviously parodic (although it's pretty close to being a parody, as is)?

The Double Trouble Caper - So was Gilda planning to live as Prudence from now on? A better plan might have been to disguise herself as Prudence, kill Tony and then just wait for either Prudence to get killed by Tony's goons or the police to arrest Prudence.

Time To Kill - Wouldn't police have examined what the husband drank before death and discovered the cyanide in the bottle? Even if the wife was in Europe, that alibi only works for death where somebody had to be at the scene. Booze bottles can be poisoned ahead of time so her alibi would be useless.

Tangle Wits With A Killer! - Okay.

The Mad Money Caper - Surely the other halves of those thousand dollar bills must be around somewhere, why burn them?

Sam really has an easy time as a detective. every client who hired him was either the killer or working with the killer, so that makes solving the cases really easy.

[K1ngcat]

Well, Robb_K and SuperScrounge are right about that cover - what a mess! As the saying goes, "too much information!" And why is it that all those big headshots of Hill don't look anything like he does in the rest of the strips?

I found the "save your hair" ad inside the front page scarier than the average horror comic, and more gripping than any of Hill's adventures. I don't know about "hard-boiled" but he's certainly a dick. He's both a womaniser and a woman-beater who steals money from murder victims' wallets and still has the nerve to collect his fee from someone he's sending to the electric chair. And that milk he always drinks - is that meant to give him an aura of wholesomeness? All it's doing for him is giving him good teeth, and the smoking will soon undo that.

He's unremittingly rotten in every way, and the first two stories are basically same. He meets a female client, romances her, discovers she's up to no good, and sends her down the river. Lucey turns in some cute "good girl" art on the Double Trouble Caper ( and why are they always capers? ) but it's all to no avail. I feel sorry for his secretary - she saves his life and all she gets for it a smooch, and a cheap dinner at the Pink Turkey. And BTW if their turkey really is pink, they'll all be puking in the morning.

I think I might have the same reaction to Sam Hill, Private Eye. I hope Mike Shayne's better! 

[crashryan]

We start the evening with:

SAM HILL, PRIVATE EYE!

Others have said it before, but I'll say it again. This book, especially the first story, reads like a pitiful attempt at a parody of hardboiled private eyes. In "The Cutie Killer Caper" the author trots out every single private eye cliche you can think of: smart ass dialogue, low rent office with secretary who pines for the boss, beautiful (evil) women throwing themselves at our hero for devious purposes, getting banged on the head and suffering a montage, being mistaken for the murderer...on and on, for 9-1/2 pages. Then the next story starts and we get the same tropes all over again! At least in the final story it's a man rather than a woman who uses Sam as a fall guy. What is it makes murderers choose a private detective for a patsy?

A while back someone wondered whether there had been many comic book private eyes, so I browsed around. Many GA publishers took a stab at the genre. Quality had Ken Shannon, Lev Gleason had Chip Gardner, ACG had Sam Hill, Comic Media had Johnny Dynamite. I think Atlas had one but I don't remember for sure. I was surprised to see that all these comics launched circa 1951-1953, after Sam Hill. Sam came in 1950...is he the pioneer 1950s comic book detective?

I speculated that the trend may have been inspired by the many early-50s TV detectives, but I was wrong. There were a couple of very early TV gumshoes like Martin Kane (the first) but most of them also premiered later, around 1951-1954. Radio had several successful private eyes at the time, though even Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe tended to be softer-boiled on radio than in their novels. The standout exception was Jack Webb's Pat Novak for Hire (1948). If you haven't heard Pat Novak, you're missing an almost insanely over-the-top hardboiled gumshoe with rat-tat-tat dialogue and voiceover metaphors that will make your jaw drop (while laughing, mostly).

1948 seems to be the crucial year. It was the year Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer hit the paperback racks and became an instant hit. Spillane published three Hammers between 1948 and 1950, all runaway bestsellers. I speculate that Mike Hammer was the source of the short-lived comic book private eye fad, and Sam Hill led the way. Of course the comics toned down Hammer's nastier aspects (except for Johnny Dynamite), but they did what they could to deliver a mishmash of tough guys, immoral women, violence, and sexual innuendo. None of the characters lasted more than a couple of years. I think they all cashed in their chips before the Comics Code massacre. Comic book PI's died not from censorship but from reader boredom.

Before bidding Sam farewell I want to give a nod to Harrys Lucey and Sahle. They provide better-than-average artwork. They draw pretty girls and don't cheat on the action panels. There are some odd color choices on the first story, especially the nighttime scenes, but in general the art holds up well.

[Robb_K]

We start the evening with:

SAM HILL, PRIVATE EYE!

Others have said it before, but I'll say it again. This book, especially the first story, reads like a pitiful attempt at a parody of hardboiled private eyes. In "The Cutie Killer Caper" the author trots out every single private eye cliche you can think of: smart ass dialogue, low rent office with secretary who pines for the boss, beautiful (evil) women throwing themselves at our hero for devious purposes, getting banged on the head and suffering a montage, being mistaken for the murderer...on and on, for 9-1/2 pages. Then the next story starts and we get the same tropes all over again! At least in the final story it's a man rather than a woman who uses Sam as a fall guy. What is it makes murderers choose a private detective for a patsy?

A while back someone wondered whether there had been many comic book private eyes, so I browsed around. Many GA publishers took a stab at the genre. Quality had Ken Shannon, Lev Gleason had Chip Gardner, ACG had Sam Hill, Comic Media had Johnny Dynamite. I think Atlas had one but I don't remember for sure. I was surprised to see that all these comics launched circa 1951-1953, after Sam Hill. Sam came in 1950...is he the pioneer 1950s comic book detective?

I speculated that the trend may have been inspired by the many early-50s TV detectives, but I was wrong. There were a couple of very early TV gumshoes like Martin Kane (the first) but most of them also premiered later, around 1951-1954. Radio had several successful private eyes at the time, though even Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe tended to be softer-boiled on radio than in their novels. The standout exception was Jack Webb's Pat Novak for Hire (1948). If you haven't heard Pat Novak, you're missing an almost insanely over-the-top hardboiled gumshoe with rat-tat-tat dialogue and voiceover metaphors that will make your jaw drop (while laughing, mostly).

1948 seems to be the crucial year. It was the year Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer hit the paperback racks and became an instant hit. Spillane published three Hammers between 1948 and 1950, all runaway bestsellers. I speculate that Mike Hammer was the source of the short-lived comic book private eye fad, and Sam Hill led the way. Of course the comics toned down Hammer's nastier aspects (except for Johnny Dynamite), but they did what they could to deliver a mishmash of tough guys, immoral women, violence, and sexual innuendo. None of the characters lasted more than a couple of years. I think they all cashed in their chips before the Comics Code massacre. Comic book PI's died not from censorship but from reader boredom.

Before bidding Sam farewell I want to give a nod to Harrys Lucey and Sahle. They provide better-than-average artwork. They draw pretty girls and don't cheat on the action panels. There are some odd color choices on the first story, especially the nighttime scenes, but in general the art holds up well. 

I see the same hand having drawn ALL of the Sahle and Lucey Stories.I can't see differences in the art between the two credited artists.  Their finished work looks so much the same that I first thought the Harrys were the same bloke.  After looking them up in Wikipedia and other information sources, I see that there, indeed different people.  So, I wonder if there was an error made on the inking credits, and one of the Harry's (perhaps Sahle?) inked ALL of this book's stories credited to one or the other?  Upon a closer look, they look different enough (but still quite similar).  Interesting that Sahle died very young, at the tender age of 38, in 1950, not long after this book was published.

[K1ngcat]

On the subject of Harry Sahle and hardboiled detectives, I found this on Wikipedia:

Crime novelist Mickey Spillane, who worked for Lloyd Jacquet's Funnies Inc. packager during the 1930s and 1940s, teamed with Sahle on a number of occasions, including on the character "Mike Danger", which Spillane described as "the original concept of Mike Hammer", the archetypal hardboiled detective of mid-20th century paperback novels. After Spillane's novels were successful, some "Mike Danger" stories saw print in issues of Crime Detector in 1954, and new stories featuring the character were published by Big Entertainment four decades later.

Sahle and Spillance had earlier collaborated on the eponymous feature "Mike Lancer", starring a Mike Hammer prototype, published in Harvey Comics' Green Hornet Comics #10 (Dec. 1942)

   

[The Australian Panther]

there are posts re Micky Spillane and comics elsewhere on CB+. 
Back in March, I posted this:-

Some of you might be interested in this collection of the two-page text stories that Spillane did in his early days writing for comics.
Primal Spillane: Early Stories 1941-1942
https://www.boldventurepress.com/primal-spillane-early-stories-1941-1942/

 
And I just found this, from back in 2018!
https://comicbookplus.com/forum/?topic=14892.0
If I remember correctly, Spillane wrote some early Submariner!
If you type Micky Spillane  into the searchbox up above to the right, you will get, among other things, referred to many of the Spillane Text pieces in the original comics!
Also to Johnny Dynamite, which I had considered for this reading group choice, but the character has been discussed on CB+ before.
I'm fascinated watching the shredding of SAM Hill. I just wanted two different private eyes, and haven't looked closely at that one myself.
I have read the Mike Shayne, and that is an adaptation of a book character  who had quite the cinema career,
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=michael+shayne+detective
Movies starring Lloyd Nolan and a short-lived TV show starring Richard Denning.
As usual, my comments on both, at the end of the fortnight.
Cheers!       

[SuperScrounge]

Mike Shayne Private Eye 2

Now that's a cover!

Bodies Are Where You Find Them... - Not bad, but trying to cram a novel into a 27 page comic certainly shows. I'm reminded of an Ian Flemming's (I think) reaction to one of his books being turned into a comic strip and when it turned out better than he thought it would he sent a message, something like, "My compliments to the sausage makers". The adapter did a good job making sausage here. Could have used a longer page count, but he still managed to make it work.

Time Limit - Eh. Might have been better if it had been longer. Perhaps as a two-pager with an illustration rather than cramming it all into one page.

The Quick Buck - Wow, the story opens and ends like a bunch of Twilight Zone/Boris Karloff type stories. All the names used make me wonder if this is a true crime tale or if it was just done to feel like one.

Casebook: What Is Wrong Here? - No color.  Factoids in a comic-like form.

[SuperScrounge]

Interesting that Sahle died very young, at the tender age of 38, in 1950, not long after this book was published.

Was a blonde involved? Was he working as a detective? 

[Robb_K]

Interesting that Sahle died very young, at the tender age of 38, in 1950, not long after this book was published.

Was a blonde involved? Was he working as a detective? 

[crashryan]

I see the same hand having drawn ALL of the Sahle and Lucey Stories.I can't see differences in the art between the two credited artists.

You could well be right, Robb. I took the GCDB listing at face value without looking any more closely. Not only does the Sam Hill art within this issue look alike, in later issues Harry Lucey signed both covers and stories and that artwork is consistent with what what we see here. I'd give Lucey the whole issue. The Sahle credit may be an error, perhaps because of Sahle's connection with similar characters (Mike Lancer, Mike Danger) as K1ngcat pointed out.

[K1ngcat]

Interesting that Sahle died very young, at the tender age of 38, in 1950, not long after this book was published.

Was a blonde involved? Was he working as a detective? 

Legend has it he died of a broken heart, but it could've been a brunette. 

[K1ngcat]

Mike Shayne

Thanks for the info Panther, I didn't realise Shayne had been gotten around quite so much. Had a look at his  history and seems Dell were his paperback publishers, so they were keeping him "in the family." I don't find it surprising that this was a book adaptation, there seemed to be far too much going on too fast for an average comic book detective story.

In fact I did find it a little  hard to follow on the first reading, Phyllis was in and out of the story in a couple of panels, and by the time he's seen wifey to the train the girl on his doorstep is dead.  Surely on p5, he's already a spouse, so as he was trying to pass himself off as a heavy drinker, shouldn't that be "souse"? "Thrilling Detective" describe Shayne as "a big, hulking redhead with a taste for fisticuffs and brandy," and if that's so, why were his visitors so surprised and shocked by his boozy behaviour? Or was he cleaned up for the comics?

Anyhow, all that aside, I felt the story proceeded far too swiftly. They had room to cut out the second feature, and give more pages to develop Shayne, instead they hurried the end of The Quick Buck too. I found the art variable, some panels seemed to come off okay but there was a tendency to alter the heaviness of line for no apparent reason that I found odd. Credits suggest Ed Ashe handled the entire issue, and for me the b/w pages seem to come off better.

And one observation. In Casebook, a cop shouldn't be hitting anyone on the head with a gun, whatever end he was holding it by. Geez, that thing could go off and kill somebody! 

Mixed reactions. The art in Sam Hill was much more pleasing but the character was very much less so. Mike Shayne was a better gumshoe but Bodies Are Where You Find Them came over as rushed by comparison. All interesting though, thanks Panther for posting, it made me read outside my comfort zone for a while!

All the best
K1ngcat

[paw broon]

Mike Shayne.  The story seemed very fast, too fast and I found it all a bit confusing.  Having Shayne talking to himself as he was opening the door to leave seemed really clunky.  After that it all seemed hardly worth the effort.  The cover is quite good but I did not enjoy the interior art. It probably doesn't help that I'm not a big fan of hard boiled detectives.  For instance I don't enjoy Spillane's books at all - and I have tried a few many years ago. 
Thinking that I was missing something and just being my usual curmudgeonly self, I read the comic again.  No difference.  It just did not appeal.  The d?nouement was too quick and I still found it slightly confusing.  Might be the art or colouring, but I got mixed up with the characters at one point.

[Robb_K]

Mike Shayne 2
Bodies Are Where You Find Them
I agree with both Paw and Scrounge, that this 27-page story moved wayyyyyy too fast, and was choppy, and really hard to follow with all the different characters and the complicated plot.  It seems like a good basic scenario, with possibilities for good suspense.  But, a much slower revelation of clues would be much better (say as in a 60 to 100 text page short story, or a 150-200 page novel.  This pacing left no room to reveal the motivations of the lead characters, introduce the setting, see the setting up of the frame job on Shayne, experience the emotions of the rival politicians, and the relationships between the criminal politician and the police, etc.  As is stated above, a plot worthy of a novel being crammed into 27 comic book pages, leaves the reader's head swimming, with no feel for what is happening.  We follow action, but don't know why things happen as they do, can't remember which person did what before, and so, miss out on digesting the clues tossed out to the reader.  The artwork is okay, but nothing special. The colourisation is weak, too.  And I HATE the weird, totally unnatural colour of Shayne's red hair.  It makes him look like a Neo-Punk!  I don't remember Mike Shayne having bright red hair.  It was light brown on all the pulps I've seen.  I guess it was difficult to gage the colour in the black and white films.

Big Jim Colissimo - Historical Page
I like the inking on this, and enjoyed reading about him.  This was, by far, the most enjoyable part of this book.

Time Limit - Text Story
A very short vignette, with a nice, tight, and not an uninteresting plot.  It was fairly obvious, and, thus, not so rewarding to follow it.  But it was harmless enough.  A quickly cranked out way for the writer to make some rent money from a filler (mostly ignored by kid readers, anyway).  Once in a while there are gems of great plots, wasted in the filler text stories.  But not in this case.

The Quick Buck
A very sad, but realistic story about two-bit criminal, who cared nothing for his wife, or the lives of people connected with his murder victim, all because he did not want to go about his life in the mundane manner of working honestly for a living.  Hr ruined the lives of several others, as well as his own.  It is tragic, and a big downer for the reader, who likely only gets the positive consolation that he (or she) hasn't ruined his own life and that of his loved ones, and has no victims for any of his or her own misdeeds.  Not my idea of entertainment - an all-too-realistic reminder of the seedy side of life, many of us try to escape through light entertainment.  Precisely why I seek out light-hearted comedy, for the most part.  I found it interesting that the police detective who ended up finally capturing Gordon had the same unnatural shade of bright red hair.  I wonder if that is this series' cliche code signal to identify the hero?  It certainly seems that this story was taken from a real police file, just changing the location and character names.

[Robb_K]

Mike Shayne.  The story seemed very fast, too fast and I found it all a bit confusing.  Having Shayne talking to himself as he was opening the door to leave seemed really clunky.  After that it all seemed hardly worth the effort.  The cover is quite good but I did not enjoy the interior art. It probably doesn't help that I'm not a big fan of hard boiled detectives.  For instance I don't enjoy Spillane's books at all - and I have tried a few many years ago. 
Thinking that I was missing something and just being my usual curmudgeonly self, I read the comic again.  No difference.  It just did not appeal.  The d?nouement was too quick and I still found it slightly confusing.  Might be the art or colouring, but I got mixed up with the characters at one point.

Despite my enjoying mystery stories, like you, I also don't enjoy the hard-boiled private detective novelettes and short stories, and pulp novels that are the epitome of the so-called "classic" examples of that genre that are the fodder for making the exaggerated parodies of the genre, especially those of Mickey Spillane.

[Morgus]

Super?, Robb K, and King Cat are right about the SAM HILL cover; it reminds me of an owners manual or corporate propaganda from the period...except, you know, all hell is breaking loose in the picture instead of an up close diagram of an air conditioner or something.

But I have a soft spot for SAM HILL. I mean the idea that one of the best artists for ARCHIE comics did these as well really makes me laugh. Like when I was a kid and found Harvey selling THE SPIRIT reprints.

CrashRyan, I?m looking up that Jack Webb program you mentioned as soon as I have time to. (Right now I have to move EVERYTHING by August 1st, landlord wants us out to reno and jack the rent to the sky...) But, dang, it sounds good...

[crashryan]

I've been busy. I've had some freelance work for the first time in a couple of years (literally) so I've been unable until now to deal with our second private eye:

Michael Shayne #2

Unlike several other commentators I like private eyes. I don't care for the mad dog variety. Mike Hammer turns my stomach. But from time to time I do enjoy a good medium-boiled shamus like Mike Shayne or Philip Marlowe.

"Bodies Are Where You Find Them" is an earnest attempt to do justice to a full-length novel in the space of 26 comic book pages. As has already been noted, this means the story runs at a breakneck pace. The scriptwriter tries to cram everything he can into each page. To do that he abuses captions like mad. Significant scenes are reduced to a caption bridging two more scenes. For example on our page 12 when Shayne leaves Bugler's office. The caption tells us

From a drugstore Shayne phones Tim Rourke and asks him to check the hotels to learn where Marlow is staying. Then...

while in the panel Shayne is visiting his next stop, the Stallings residence. Worse yet, the plot is moved along by putting dialogue in captions, like on our page 12. Chief Gentry and Tim Rourke discover a seemingly-drunk Shayne with a woman passed out on the bed. In panel 1 Gentry angrily leaves the room. The caption on panel 2 says

After Gentry leaves, Tim Rourke says, "I don't see how you can treat Phyllis like that."

freeing the panel for Mike to reveal he's faking and that the woman has been murdered. To be fair to the scripter, there was no good way to handle all the characters and plot complications without doubling the page count. This would have made a decent 64-page graphic novel.

It would have helped a tiny bit if the lettering weren't so large. More expository dialogue would have helped us keep the characters straight and perhaps flesh them out a bit. The large lettering makes many panels crowded even though the word count isn't that high.

Edd Ashe's artwork isn't too bad. I like Ashe though he was always a second-tier artist. His output was inconsistent. When he was on his game (check out the second issue of Dell's Follow the Sun for a sample) he was very good indeed. He was great at guys in suits and gangland goons. He ended his career pencilling lackluster racing stories for Charlton. I wonder what his story was. About the coloring (not Ashe's domain, probably): Deciding to go with fire-engine red for Shayne's hair rather than a red-orange wasn't the greatest idea. At least in this issue they got the color right. In the first issue the "big redhead" was a blonde.

"The Quick Buck" is like a condensed Crime Does Not Pay story minus Mr Crime. They had to put it in, along with the text story, because Dell offered subscriptions to the title! Why on earth they did that I don't know. Surely they didn't expect a long run with lots of subscribers.

Which raises the question of why Dell decided to adapt Michael Shayne novels in the first place. I believe Len Cole was editor at the time. Dell had been cut loose by Western Publishing, who took the juicy licensed titles with them. I have the feeling Dell was madly throwing everything at the wall hoping something would stick. They published quirky titles like Kona, Naza, Ghost Stories, Linda Lark, and Space Man. But why Michael Shayne? Though Edd Ashe's art was quite respectable, the violence, drinking, and mild innuendo certainly wouldn't have met Western's old "Dell Pledge to Parents." Michael Shayne novels were written for adults.

Not only that but adults of a "certain age." The first Shayne novel appeared in 1939. The Private Practice of Michael Shayne, adapted in the first Dell issue, was published in 1940 and Bodies Are Where You Find Them dates from 1941. In comics both novels updated smoothly to 1962. But for some reason for the third issue they chose Blood on the Black Market (1943), built around World War II rationing. How many kids in 1962 had any concept of ration books and a black market in tires and gasoline? Like the novel, the Dell adaptation, "Heads...You Lose" is set in the 1940s. An opening caption tells us the story takes place during the War, but that's the only acknowledgement that between the last issue and this Michael Shayne entered a time machine and went back twenty years. By the way, in Blood on the Black Market Shayne's wife Phyllis dies in childbirth, a decision by Davis "Brett Halliday" Dresser to open Shayne's options regarding loose women, an essential element in private eye stories. This scene also opens the Dell adaptation. By the fourth panel Phyllis is forgotten and Mike is back in action.

It was when I was browsing some Michael Shayne paperback art that the obvious answer hit me over the head. Dell published the Shayne paperbacks! In the early sixties the series was going strong, helped more than a little by Robert McGinnis' cover paintings. Someone at Dell must have figured the redhead could pick up a few more sales in comic form. You might say they licensed the character to themselves.