Created by Chris Gumprich and Jason Rainey
ACE FEDORA is the alter ego of a daydreaming numbers cruncher caught up in a tangled web of lies, office intrigue and his own warped imagination, in Ace Fedora, Private Eye, a witty little 2004 mini-comic. He’s hired by a man to see if he’s cheating on his wife — though you’d think the man would already know.
Surprise, surprise — things aren’t quite what they seem.
It’s no big thang, only eight pages, black and white, and the art work by Jason Rainey is a little rough in spots, but it’s clever and entertaining, and the little Canadian touches are enough to make this ex-pat feel homesick (granted, it doesn’t take much). This one-shot was, of course, indie-published, and never drew too much attention, but it was another good thing to come from The House of Gumprich.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A long-time friend of this site (and our roving TV and Film correspondent), Chris Gumprich was also the scribe behind such hard-boiled adjacent and noir-tinged comic works as Evening Shift, with art by Dwight Williams and a cover by Brian Wood, about another working stiff who gets in over his head, and Recriminations, with artist Emma Klingbell.
NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH
- Ace Fedora, the hero of Ace Fedora, Hat Detective, a fictional movie mentioned in an issue of The Muppet Show Comic Book, which spoofed Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.
UNDER OATH
- “This is a short one at 8 pages, and I think it mostly done so Chris could say “dame” a few times. It’s a parody of hard boiled stories. You know, James Cain, Raymond Chandler, Jim Thompson, those types of people, which everybody on the planet should read in between comics… it’s was an OK book, over before I knew it.”
— Optical Sloth (December 2004)
COMICS
- ACE FEDORA: PRIVATE EYE
(June 2004, Arctic Star Studios)
8-page mini-comi
Written by Chris Gumprich
Art by Jason Rainey
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
