The Atomic Detective!

The Atomic Detective!

Who He IS , and How He Came To BE!

This was the first adventure of The Atomic Detective; originally posted in daily installments in its own blog, and reprinted here.   I hope you enjoyed the little story.

I love comics; especially old comic books and comic strips; mostly stuff pre 1970.  I love, especially, the old adventure strips.  There are not too many around today, and they are dropping out of sight rather quickly (who ever thought we would live in a world where Little Orphan Annie was gone from the comics?). At one time, however, the imagination of the country was captured by the daily adventures of Dick Tracy, Buck Rogers, Terry and the Pirates et al. Being a fan, I decided to create my own little version.

There are those that are unfamiliar with the format.  Basically, the adventures strips were analogous to today's comic books; however, instead of one adventure in a single continuous volume, they were spread out over each daily newspaper, Monday through Saturday (and on Sunday, too- sometimes a Sunday strip would be a continuation of the weekly adventure, as in the case of Dick Tracy or today's Spider-Man strip; sometimes the Sunday strip would have a different plot line than the weekly, as in the case of Buck Rogers or today's The Phantom, and sometimes there would only be a Sunday strip, as was the case of the first few years of the 1930's Flash Gordon)  And, sometimes, there was only the daily strip.  This was the case with the main inspiration for The Atomic Detective, Alex Raymond's Rip Kirby.

Rip Kirby was a daily strip that debuted in 1946 and was about an urbane, sophisticated private detective. The stories, while at times quite pedestrian, were over-shadowed by Raymond's fantastic artwork.  I had been reading a copy of the strips, when one night I had a dream I was driving in my car, and a song was on the radio with the lyrics: "I'm your Atomic Detective, I am your...Atomic Detective".

I thought that was a pretty catchy titles, and, based on that dream, I decided I wanted to do a detective strip with the title and inspired by Rip Kirby.  Many of the trappings of The Atomic Detective-his clothes, hat, and pipe-were directly inspired by Rip Kirby.  The sweater vest AD wears in the first few strips was inspired by one of the first few strips in which Kirby wears a similar out fit. I had also decided that what I didn't  want to do was emulate Raymond's art.  The Atomic Detective, I decided, would be very cartoon-y, with heavy blacks. The mystery story itself- an homage to many of the mystery t.v. shows of the 70's (particularly McMillian and Wife and Ellery Queen) would be very far fetched and contrived.  My wife Andrea- a huge influence on The Atomic Detective- and I love how those shows would take the littlest amount of nonchalant "evidence", and the detective would solve the mystery lickitty quick.  I also didn't want the story to drag on over several weeks.  I sat down, and basically improvised the story as I went, and the final product is what we have.

I also wanted The Atomic Detective to have a sidekick.  Newton, his miniature Dachshund, is based on our own Dachshund, Junebug:

As I've said, I hope you enjoyed the adventure!  Look for a NEW story soon!  It's sure to be a corker!