As a feature, “Roy Raymond, TV Detective,” lasted a long time in Detective Comics, 1949 to 1961. For the first few years the feature was called “Impossible -- But True!” with art chores handled originally by Ruben Moreira. The strip's name change came in 1953. Roy Raymond had a busy career, spanning radio and then television. He was a professional debunker, whose investigative powers would be used to expose fakers. In his very first tale, shown here, Raymond is challenged by stories of a valley where people instantly age fifty years (gee, the story of my life!) and the second puts Roy underwater with a group of mermen.
Moreira, who also used the name Rubimor to draw the Sunday comic strip Tarzan in the mid-'40s, both penciled and inked. Moreira was born in Puerto Rico. He moved back in 1958 and mailed in his work. In 1962 Moreira quit comics. He died in 1984.
From Detective Comics #153 (1949) and #252 (1958):
Look a good bit like Kubert!
ReplyDeleteThis was always my problem with the Scooby-Doo type mysteries. It depended on the bad guy not wanting to kill anybody and going to great lengths to avoid it.
I mean, the area the bad guys are poaching is surrounded by deadly animals and natives. Just kill anybody that shows up, and let the animals eat them!
Instead they are basically staging a high school level play.
Brian, I don't disagree with you at all. My feeling on these stories, especially the underwater hoax, is that they are unbelievable, even in a comic book, and that's saying something.
ReplyDeleteIn the first place, the amount of time and effort, not to mention expense, that goes into such hoaxes would have to be extreme. There are other people involved (don't want to get caught committing a crime? Don't involve henchmen who will rat you out if they are caught), and most important:
Anyone staging a hoax like the one with mermen will not scare anyone away, it will just attract more attention to the place best kept secret.
DC kind of revived Roy in the early '70s as a bit player in the Superman titles (he was a colleague of Clark Kent at WGBS).
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, the founder of Victoria's Secret was named Roy Raymond. Coincidental - but true!
Hey, thanks, rnigma; guess Roy Raymond did good in business after all!
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