Rex the Wonder Dog is a super-smart dog we love to imagine. Dogs may astonish us sometimes, but they are not as smart as fiction makes out. Rex the Wonder Dog, for instance, can smell out evil. I understand that a dog’s smeller is one of nature’s marvels, but I’ll be dog-boned if evil is smellable. According to the Grand Comics Database (using editor Julius Schwartz’s records), the story was written by Robert Kanigher, and he endowed Rex with that ability. I haven't read beyond that story, which I read mostly because Alex Toth and Sy Barry did the artwork for this evil-sniffing anthropomorphic canine.
Oh, wait! I look again and see the story is titled “Trail of the Flower of Evil.” So there you go. The
flower smells like evil. Puzzle solved!
The Adventures of Rex the Wonder Dog #1, which is our source for the story, came out in 1952, and lasted 46 issues until 1959.
