Crime Detector #2
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeCrime Detector #2 (March 1954) is a document of pre-Code American crime comics at their most unguarded — arriving just months before the Comics Code Authority shut down the genre's freewheeling run. Published by Timor, an imprint of Stanley Morse's Key Publications, the series as a whole is notable enough that it was explicitly named in period accounts of titles targeted by the 1954 Code crackdown. Issue #2 is also part of the only comic-book series that would go on, in its very next issue (#3), to finally publish Mickey Spillane's long-shelved Mike Danger stories — making this particular issue the direct narrative prelude to one of the most historically significant character debuts in Golden Age crime comics.
The issue contains at least two stories. The first involves a "daring jewel robbery" where a newspaper headline alerts authorities to initials "MM" found at a crime scene, prompting detectives to investigate; the story progresses through a series of stakeouts and confrontations with armed criminals at Riordon's door. A second story features a criminal named Barnhouse who reflects on his ninety-nine-year sentence at Alcatraz, recounting his past crimes including bootlegging from Canada and aviation schemes, before federal agents apprehend him during an escape attempt.
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Timor Publications was one of several imprints operated by New York publisher Stanley P. Morse, whose Key Publications company ran from 1951 to 1956 and cycled through addresses and imprint names in part to navigate creditors and the increasingly hostile regulatory climate. Crime Detector ran five bi-monthly issues in 1954, right into the teeth of the Senate subcommittee hearings and the subsequent creation of the Comics Code Authority — a body whose rules explicitly listed Timor's Crime Detector among the crime titles it was designed to suppress. Issue #2 carried a cover by Vince Fodera and interior art and stories credited to Paul Parker and others, operating in the anthology format standard to the genre.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published March 1954 by Timor Publications Inc., an imprint of Stanley P. Morse's Key Publications, which operated out of New York City from 1951 to 1956.
- Cover by Vince Fodera; interior stories and art credited to Paul Parker and others.
- 32 pages, full color, with a cover price of 10 cents — standard for Golden Age anthologies of this type.
- Story contents include 'Marie Laveau – Queen of Voodoo' (a dramatized account of the New Orleans voodoo figure), 'Pat Charlton of the Homicide Squad' (an interactive mystery inviting readers to solve the case), 'Stooge for No. 1,' 'The Bad Penny!', and 'The Final Pay-Off.'
- Crime Detector was explicitly cited in period accounts of the 1954 Comics Code Authority crackdown as one of the crime titles the new Code was designed to eliminate.
- The series ran five issues total; issue #2 is the second installment and precedes the series' most historically discussed issues (#3 and #4), which introduced Mickey Spillane's proto-Mike Hammer character Mike Danger to comics for the first time.
- The entire Crime Detector run was later collected and reprinted by Gwandanaland Comics (2016 series, #1459 — 'The Complete Crime Detector'), making the stories accessible to modern readers.
- Stanley Morse's chaotic production practices — changing imprints, reusing art, and scrambling to meet deadlines — are well-documented, meaning specific editorial credits for Crime Detector #2 beyond the cover artist and main story credits remain unverified.
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