Sierra Smith

Created by Joe Millard (1908-89)
and Alex Toth (1928-2006)

Down these mean trails a man must mosey?

SIERRA SMITH was actually one of the first private eyes to appear in DC Comicss’s flagship magazine, Detective Comics.

He made his debut, instead, in Dale Evans #1 (September-October 1948), as an appropriately western back-up feature, and went on to appear over twenty times in that magazine — and occasionally in other DC comics.

The hook here was that Denver-based Sierra was a hard-boiled “Western Detective.” He roamed the American West with Nan, his “lovely female assistant/secretary,” mostly in that area and the surrounding small mining communities, many of which still had ties to the “Old West.”

Which means there were a lot of cowboy hats, six guns and even an occasional horse, as he slugged it out with an assortment of desperadoes, renegades, rustlers, train robbers and the like. He may have been a bit heavy-handed in dispensing his own peculiar brand of western justice — he seemed to get in almost as many brawls as Slam Bradley — but he was far more sophisticated, and considered Marshall Bat Logan one of his best friends.

Sierra was created by Joe Millard (probably best known for penning  the Man with No Name series of novelizations and original novels), and was illustrated at least in the first eleven issues of Dale Evans by the legendary cartoonist Alex Toth. This early work by Toth is much sought after by collectors — Toth wasn’t even old enough to legally vote at the time. As even more incentive, some of this work was inked by an equally young (and equally legendary) Joe Kubert.

COMIC

• DALE EVANS
  (1948-52, DC Comics)
  Writers: Joe Millard
  Artists: Alex Toth, Joe Kubert, Frank Giacoia
  Sierra appearred as a back-up feature in issues # 1–19 and 21-23
  • “The Case of the Terrified Tenderfoot” (September-October 1948, #1; reprinted in Detective Comics #418, 1971)
  • “The Case of the Battered Balloonist”” (November-December 1948, #2)
  • “The Case of the Perfumed Plunder” (January-February 1949, #3)
  • “The Case of the Outdated Outlaw” (March-April 1949, #4)
  • “The Case of the Forgotten Stagecoach” (May-June 1949, #5)
  • “The Case of the Colossal Fossil” (July-August 1949, #6)
  • “The Case of the Teetering Tower” (September-October 1949, #7; reprinted in 1972, Detective Comics #424)
  • “The Case of the Five-Cent Fortune” (November-December 1949, #8)
  • “The Case of the Haunted Horse” (January-February 1950, #9; reprinted in 1974, Detective Comics #444)
  • “The Case of the Oily Worm” (March-April 1950, #10)
  • “The Case of the Furious Fiddler” (May-June 1950, #11)
  • “The Case of the Ailing Elephant” (July-August 1950, #12)
  • “The Case of the Missing Totem Heads” (September-October 1950, #13)
  • “The Midnight Marauders” (September-October 1950, #13 ; reprinted in 1958, My Greatest Adventure #22)
  • “The Ghost of Castle Ranch” (November-December 1950, #14)
  • “The Case of the Lost Locomotive” (January-February 1951, #15)
  • “The Case of the Moonlight Masterpiece” (March-April 1951, #16)
  • “The Rustled Wrestler” (May-June 1951, #17)
  • “The City That Was Stolen” (July-August 1951, #18)
  • “The Case of the Baffled Bloodhound” (September-October 1951, #19)
  • “The Case of the Baffling Baseball Diamonds” (January-February 1952, #20)
  • “The Double Who Almost Died” (March-April 1952, #21)
  • “The Case of the Jovial Jackdaw” (May-June 1952, #22)
• DETECTIVE COMICS
  (1937–, DC Comics)
  • “”The Case of the Slumbering Sleuth” (April 1954, # 206)
    Sierra reprints appeared occasionally as  back-up features in Detective Comics, but this one was an original Sierra Smith story.  The story, with art by Frank Giacoia, was most likely left over from when Dale Evans ended its run.

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

• The Thrilling Detective Web Site: Detective Comics
  A listing of all the private eyes who have shown up in DC Comics.

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.