Humor Publishing Co. (1933)

Nitcentral's Bulletin Brash Reflections: Comic books: Misc. Publishers: Humor Publishing Co. (1933)
By Keith Alan Morgan (Kmorgan) on Tuesday, May 13, 2014 - 6:41 am:

Detective Dan Secret Operative No. 48.

NANJAO. A historically important comic, in 1933 it was the first newsstand comic book of original content. Detective Dan later moved into newspaper comics as the strip Dan Dunn. The comic is also significant in that two young creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, tried doing up this character they were working on and submitted an early version of Superman to the publisher.
A scan of Detective Dan can be found at the Digital Comic Museum.

The page explaining how you could win money by solving the White Cat Murder has a terrible drawing of a cat.

Detective Dan

Page 1, Panel 1. Opening caption. "the apprehending of a ruthless gang of countereieters".
Counterfeiters.

Page 1, Panels 2 & 3. For some reason Dell switches from Dan's left side to his right side.

Page 2, Panel 1. Big Boy has just shot Dan, and Slippery holds Dell and says, "What'll we do with th' dame? We can't leave her here she's evidence."
Well you could shoot her, just like you did Dan.

Page 2, Panel 11. Oh, man, despite firing three times apparently Big Boy only grazed Dan's skull once. Dan has a small bandage on his forehead and the doctor says it was just a scratch.

Whoever the letterer is he has a bad habit of making his P's look too similar to his D's.

Page 8, Panel 4. Betty's bound and gagged but she's given a word balloon.
Should have made it a thought balloon.

Page 8, Panel 5. Caption reads, "The gangster's car turns into the side street by the Star Hotel where Dan is stopping - Two Finger Murphy's liar."
Well, Murphy may be a liar, but that should have read 'lair'. ;-)

Page 10, Panel 6. NANJAO. Dan gives his full name here and it's Dan Dunne.
Somewhere between here and the newspaper strip he must have dropped the E. ;-)

Page 16, Panel 11. The final panel of this page has a drawing of a naked gal being grabbed by a octopus with Wu Fang's head and the word Dope! with a caption to see the next issue.
Now if this were the last page of the story that would make sense, but it's not.

Page 19, Panel 9. Again the last panel has an advertisement for next issue.

Page 20. NANJAO. Fritz looks like an early version of Irwin who would become Dan's partner.

Page 24, Panel 10. At least this advertisement feels like it could fit in with the story as it's in the form of a telegram.

Page 25. Big newspaper page & one story has a sub-heading "Famous secret operative, Detective Dan"
The words famous & secret seem to be an oxymoron, don't they?

NANJAO. This story was reused in the Dan Dunn comic strip, although I'm not certain if was redrawn or not.


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