Peter Scratch
Created by Elliot Caplin and Lou Fine
PETER SCRATCH was an attempt to cash in on the popularity of succesful semi-tough TV private eyes such as PETER GUNN, RICHARD DIAMOND and 77 SUNSET STRIP and the like by adapting it to a daily comic strip.
Pete was supposedly a big, hot-tempered, broken-nosed private eye of the hardboiled school, who never-the-less lived with his mother. He was supposed to be tough, but sometimes he didn't quite pull it off. "Characters who'll do anything for a laugh call me 'Pete the Itch'. They do it once-never again!" is pretty typical Scratch. Ooohhhh! I'm scared....
The strip only lasted a few years, despite a last-ditch effort at the very end to save the strip by jumping on another bandwagon, the James Bond-led spy craze. Still, from all accounts, it was, for the most part, an honorable attempt to bring the hardboiled eye to the comics medium.
The strips, both dailies and Sundays, were rendered in the slick, illustrative style of Golden Age great, Lou Fine, and typically scripted by Elliot Caplin, who "typically allowed the artist to take credit." Fine was a natural choice, having previously done a series of hair tonic newspaper ads and comic book tie-ins featuring Dashiell Hammett's SAM SPADE for Wildroot Hair Oil, the sponsor of the popular radio show, The Adventures of Sam Spade.
Rookie artist Neal Adams, later of Batman fame, even ghosted the strip for a few weeks in 1966.
| Table of Contents | Detectives | Comics | Television | Film | Hall of Fame | Trivia |
| What's New | Mystery Links | Bibliography | Glossary | Staff | The P.I. Poll |
Got a comment on this site? Drop
me a line, and we'll talk.
"And I'll tell you right out that I'm a man who likes talking to
a man that likes to talk."