Number 2034: Sal was quite a gal

Sally the Sleuth was created for the sexy pulp, Spicy Detective magazine, in 1934 by Adolphe Barreaux. Barreaux was in business with Harry Donenfield, who later became the publisher of DC Comics. Barreaux and Donenfield were partners in an art service, and later partners in Trojan Magazines, which published much cleaned up versions of what the Spicy pulps had published in the thirties. When Sally was a pulp magazine comic feature she usually lost her clothes. In Crime Smashers, where she later appeared, she kept her clothes on, but still got in fights. Her boss, the Chief, sent Sally where she was usually in deadly peril, but with some good moves (like the skirt-pulling in this episode), she came out on top. They weren’t having the conversation in 1951 about equal pay for equal work when Crime Smashers #3 appeared with the story, “Dirty Politics,” a subject still on the public mind all these decades later. Considering what Sally went through for her paycheck, she probably did not get what she was worth.

The Grand Comics Database gives Adolphe Barreaux credit for writing and drawing the story using the name Charles Barr.

Number 453


The Scourge of London!


I get a kick out of old crime comics, especially the ones that throw around the word "true," as in "Based on a true story!" You drop your eyes down the splash page and come upon some boilerplate disclaimer that says the names and places are ficticious in this "true-to-life" story. "Any similarity between actual persons or places, blahblahblah..." There's a lot of difference between "true" and "true to life." So was there a Jonathan Wild, the Scourge of London? Did he invent organized crime? Who knows? Who cares? This is a crime comic book. The kids who were reading it weren't fact-checking.

It's from Justice #16, June 1950, a Marvel Comic. The artist isn't identified.

I'm also including an ad by Dan DeCarlo for My Friend Irma #3, and a full-page ad for a push-up bra, sexy stuff that segues into our next topic below.

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The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps is three anthologies combined into one, over 1100 pages of classic crime from the golden age of pulp magazines.

It includes authors like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Frederick Nebel, Horace McCoy, et al. Because this is a comic book blog, I'm showing the only comics material in the book, two Sally the Sleuth strips from Spicy Mystery, drawn by Adolphe Barreaux. There's a fascinating story told about the Spicy line at the DC's Other Comics website because Spicy was connected to DC Comics. Anyway, when you read a Sally the Sleuth strip (pun intended) you know it has one intention, to get Sally out of her clothes. I also enjoy the economy of storytelling. They just threw out all the unnecessary plot elements, then got Sally nekkid. My kinda comics!