CUBING: Fictional Detectives
By Duy Tano
As a young Cube, I loved detective
stories. I liked the whole general aesthetic and the whole process of finding
clues and piecing them together. I like the conceit, and I like scenes where
they're sniffing around for leads, whether or not they have to do with a
magnifying glass. In this little piece I write for Hasslein today, I'm gonna
share six things that contributed to this love.
Garfield Presents... Babes
& Bullets
I've
spoken about this on the Cube before, but I can't do this list
without this, since it actually did blow my little mind as a kid. You're used
to seeing Jim Davis as Jim Davis the brand, meaning clean lines and Garfield
stock poses, but then here he is, doing shadow work and setting mood. Garfield's
rocking the trenchcoat and fedora as Sam Spayed (and yes, I did not get that
joke as a youngster) as well, and I really like that aesthetic.
It was adapted for the cartoons as well.
The Doomsday Book (Batman and
Robin, Slam Bradley, The Elongated Man, Sherlock Holmes)
I didn't actually get the chance to read
this as a kid, but that house ad was probably my favorite comic book house ad
back then. The greatest detectives of all time? Sold (if I could have ever
found it)! Plus, the dude in the trenchcoat and the fedora is named Slam
Bradley. SLAM BRADLEY.
To be honest, though, I remember Ralph
Dibny, the Elongated Man, as a detective so much more than Batman. I can't
remember anything that would have made Batman a detective prior to the animated
series, other than his being the star of Detective Comics.
Still, when
I finally read this, the star of the show was of course the greatest
of all time, who is next on our list.
You can read The Doomsday Book here.
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is truly transcendent.
Despite the fact that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle never seemed to like him and that
his stories were very often for adult audiences, he's really clicked since his
inception with a large, rabid fan base, enough to spawn fan clubs, angry
letters when Doyle killed Holmes off, and discussions about what counts and
what doesn't. (I'm so glad comics fans didn't start this.) My first exposure to
him was a cartoon, which after much research on YouTube, I've concluded is "The
Baskerville Curse." From the visual of Holmes (deerstalker cap,
trenchcoat and, depending on the material, the pipe) to the whole idea of him
just disappearing for a long while during the story and then having things be
perfectly all right and it's going to be okay once he shows
up, there was nothing about the kiddified version of Holmes that was not cool.
I do enjoy what I've read of the
original short stories, and I get interested whenever I see him in a comic
book, and I enjoyed the first Robert Downey Jr. movie, but this particular
cartoon, where Holmes is voiced by Peter O'Toole, has a special place in my
little tiny heart. You can get it here
or actually view the whole series
here.
Detectives Dodd and
Trapper
We had a chain of used bookstores back
in the day called Alemar's, and that's where I was able to get The
Usborne Detective Guides, which I've talked about in length at the
Cube. With Detectives Dodd and Trapper as your narrative anchors,
these series of books shifts between being a story and a manual seamlessly.
Dodd is the everyman detective who said it was okay to be scared, and Trapper
is the detective we all wanted to be. It made a six-year-old believe that you
can be a detective, and I'm sure a bunch of us got in trouble because of it.
You can get this here.
Eagle Eye Mysteries
Jake and Jennifer Eagle of the fictional
town of Richview are video game twin siblings who head the Eagle Eye Detective
Agency. With each mystery, you, as their newest member, go with them to each
site and ask questions and look for clues. You then pick the clues necessary to
solve the case, and then finger whodunnit. It was such a fun way to spend time
and a great way to just kind of learn to analyze language.
I was lucky enough to find emulators of
the original Eagle
Eye Mysteries and its spinoff, Eagle
Eye Mysteries in London, recently, and I've spent a good portion of
the last week playing them. They're of course easy now for an adult, but the
fun is still there.
Encyclopedia Brown
But without a doubt, my favorite
fictional detective when I was a kid was Leroy Brown, known to his town of
Idaville as Encyclopedia, because he just knew a lot of facts. Each
Encyclopedia Brown book came with 10 mysteries, and you had
to solve each one. The answers were in the back of the book.
One thing I loved about Encyclopedia
Brown was that Idaville was so developed and every recurring character had a
specific role. Sally Kimball, Encyclopedia's partner and bodyguard. Bugs Meany,
leader of the gang the Tigers. Charlie Stewart, the tooth collector. Benny
Breslin, who snores so loudly that his friends have to pack earplugs on a
camping trip. Pablo Pizarro, the modern artist that Sally can't get enough of.
And so on.
Thankfully, the Encyclopedia Brown
series is continually in print with new editions every few years. Amazon has a bunch of them, of course!
Unfortunately, this love of fictional detectives didn't really translate into a love for detective stories when I was older with the exceptions of some Holmes stuff, so I never got into guys like Raymond Chandler, but I still really enjoy the conceit and the idea of the genre in general. And how could I not? More than any other genre, it wasthe most interactive. It felt the most like you were there.
Duy Tano is a popular Internet blogger and comic book expert. Check out his blog, The Comics Cube!, at www.comicscube.com, which tackles all sorts of different topics for all sorts of different forms of sequential art. Superhero comics, indie comix, komiks, manga, BD—you name it, it's a valid topic for discussion.
Labels: Batman, Comics Cube, Cubing, detective fiction, Duy Tano, Elongated Man, Encyclopedia Brown, Garfield, Guest Blog, Sherlock Holmes, Slam Bradley
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