Carey McCandless & Jessica Williams

Created by J.C. Vaughan You have to give veteran comic writer J.C. Vaughan a thumbs up for persistence -- he's been trying to get his creator-owned private eye series, McCandless & Company, out for over fifteen years, toughing it out through broken promises, bad luck, false starts, revolving artists, a tangled reprinting history, and Lord …

Tiffany Sinn

Created by Gary Friedrich, Charles Wojtkowski and Vince Alascia "This spy business grows on one after awhile." You can roll your eyes all you want right now, but one of the more interesting female private eyes of the sixties was TIFFANY SINN who made her debut -- wait for it -- in the pages Career …

Betty Blake

Created by H.L. Parkhurst "The Girl Super-Detective Who Always Gets Her Man!" -- the tagline announcing a story coming up in the next issue A sort of classier, more upscale version of Sally the Sleuth, BETTY BLAKE appeared in a handful of two-page comic book stories in Super-Detective, a sister publication of Spicy Detective Stories, …

Sally the Sleuth

Created by Adolphe Barreaux Pseudonyms include Charles Barr (1899-1985) One of the oldest comic strip heroes ever, predating even the Man of Steel, SALLY THE SLEUTH first popped up in the November 1934 issue of Culture Publication's Spicy Detective pulp mag, in a steamy little two-page comic back-up feature nestled in there amongst all the other …

My Bookshelf: Noir: The Illustrated Crime Fiction Quarterly

My Bookshelf Noir:  The Illustrated Crime Fiction Quarertly Edited by Christopher Mills A year after his ambitious one-shot anthology The Detectives,  editor Christopher Mills let fly with the even more ambitious Noir: The Illustrated Crime Fiction Quarterly, an attempt to re-create The Detectives on a regular basis. It never quite caught on, lasting a mere three …

Johnny Dynamite

Created by Pete Morisi and Ken Fitch (pseud. of William Waugh) "The Wild Man from Chicago! He's rough! He's Tough! He's JOHNNY DYNAMITE!" JOHNNY DYNAMITE was definitely the best of the pre-Comics Code comic book eyes of the fiftiies -- and, it turned out, the one with the longest legs. With his best gal and faithful …

Tony Bravado

Created by Dave Darrigo TONY BRAVADO was the star of his own short-lived comic book in the late eighties for a very brief time -- if you blinked, you probably missed him. Yet, from the one glimpse I've had of Tony, in the 1993 The Detectives anthology, it looks like we all missed something pretty good. …

Jennifer Mays & Gabriel Webb (The Maze Agency)

Created by Mike W. Barr One of the longer-running P.I. comic books was The Maze Agency, which ran for twenty-three issues in the early nineties, plus several specials, one-shots, and the like, making it arguably the second-longest running English-language P.I. series, after Ms. Tree. The stories tended to the more traditional Golden Age mystery, particularly …

My Bookshelf: The Detectives

My Bookshelf The Detectives (April 1993, Alpha Productions) A  classic one-shot comic book anthology "of comic book private eyes from 1993, edited and designed by Christopher Mills, "celebrating sventy years of the American private eye." A great idea, handsomely produced, and simply an amazing collection, with both original and reprinted stories by Nicola Cuti, Mike W. …

Mike Mauser

Created by Nicola Cuti and Joe Staton "My name is MAUSER...which is also the name of my pistol. In my profession, it's the only reliable friend that I have. I'm a private eye and this is my story..." MIKE MAUSER, he of small stature, coke bottle glasses and repulsive eating habits, has had one of …