My Scrapbook
A Kent Murdock Murder Mystery TOLD IN PICTURES!
Is this cool, or what?
Above is the actual cover of Four Frightened Women (1950, Dell), and right below is an ad for it. Occasionally touted as “the very first graphic novel” (it wasn’t), it was number two in Dell’s “Told in Pictures” line, Dell’s ambitious plan to launch a series of digest-sized comic book adaptations of some of their more popular titles. That would certainly have applied to George Harmon Coxe and his Kent Murdock mysteries, featuring an intrepid Boston newspaper photographer who spent most of his time investigating crimes and driving his editors crazy. I think Dell published every single one of the Murdocks in paperback — many as Mapbacks — as well as a slew of other titles by Coxe.
The ad promised “Over 500 vivid-color pictures tell the story!” and the cover was by renowned Dell illustrator Robert Stanley. As for who was responsible for the interior art (serviceable at best) or adapted the story… who knows? Still, the layouts aren’t bad — a little more ambitious perhaps than most American comix art of the time, and the story flows.
But paperbacks aren’t comic books, especially back then, and Dell’s idea of fully illustrated adaptations never really caught on. The back cover listed three other titles: “Twice Loved” (a romance story, which was published as #1 in series); as well as “I Met A Handsome Cowboy” and “Rich Girl, Poor Girl,” neither of which was ever published.
And the two that made it to print are almost impossible to find, and usually pricey if you’re lucky enough to track one down. Good news for mystery fiends is that Four Frightened Women was reprinted in 2009 by Pure Imagination, although the interior art was reduced to black and white, and it now features an intro by Pure Imagination’s Greg Theakston. Bad news is that copies of even the reprint are also hard to find.
And if that’s not enough to irritate collectors, the 1943 Dell reprint of the original 1939 novel Four Frightened Women is pretty collectable in its own right — it was the very first Dell “Mapback,” with a front cover by Gerald Gregg and of course featuring a map on the back. So you can imagine how much collectors will cough up for it.
UNDER OATH
- “I’ve never read the book, by the way, and I doubt if I ever will, since I know who the killer is now… (but) this is pure hard-boiled pulp. Everybody smokes and drinks constantly, and the wisecracks and tough guy patter are always flying. I loved it. This is the kind of stuff I grew up on, and I never get tired of it.”
— James Reasoner on the comic
COMICS
- FOUR FRIGHTENED WOMEN | Buy this book
(1950, Dell)
Based on the novel by George Harmon Coxe
Cover art by Robert Stanley
Interior art and adaptation: Unknown
FURTHER INVESTIGATION
- My Scrapbook
A Cornucopia of Tear Sheets, Illustrations, Photos, Scribbles & Other Crap That I Think is Cool.
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
