Created by Lee Goldberg Just what the world needs now: an over-educated and under-employed slacker twenty-something security guard with private eye wet dreams. HARVEY MAPES works for Bel Vista Estates, one of those ubitquious SoCal gated communities, working the night shift and not exactly setting the world on fire. Though having a stapler that works … Continue reading Harvey Mapes
Tag: Beautiful Dreamers
Tracer Bullet (Calvin & Hobbes)
Created by Bill Watterson "The dame said she had a case. She sounded like a case herself, but I can't choose my clients." -- Tracer Bullet (Calvin) confronts his mom; something about a broken lamp. . TRACER BULLET is simply one of the best spoofs of the hard-boiled eye to hit the comics page since Snoopy dragged … Continue reading Tracer Bullet (Calvin & Hobbes)
Eddie Ginley (Gumshoe)
Created by Neville Smith "He looked like the kind of guy your mother would like to marry your sister. If you had a mother. If you had a sister." -- the opening lines from Gumshoe The sleuth, the whole sleuth and nothing but the sleuth... Stephen Frears' served notice with his directorial debut, a slice … Continue reading Eddie Ginley (Gumshoe)
Red Diamond
Created by Mark Schorr Imagine if Robert Leslie Bellem had written Don Quixote... Once upon a time, there was a forty-something cab driver from Hicksville, Long Island by the name of SIMON JAFFEE. Now, Simon, well, his life wasn't going so well. He had a nagging wife that didn't understand him, a genius son that … Continue reading Red Diamond
The Projectionist (Sherlock Jr.)
Created by Jean C. Havez, Joe Mitchell & Clyde Bruckman Okay, the silent film classic isn't really a private detective film, not really. But it's private eye adjacent, and it's something of a classic, regardless--you won't regret checking out this little bit of surrealistic slapstick. The great Buster Keaton plays a lowly film projectionist (and janitor) who only … Continue reading The Projectionist (Sherlock Jr.)
Harry Dickinson
Created by David Black There have been plenty of attempts over the years to recast Don Quixote as a private eye. Possibly because the private eye is such an easy target, a big ass cliche just waiting to be lampooned (or harpooned), there has been no shortage of gentle parodies of the genre featuring mentally … Continue reading Harry Dickinson
Beautiful Dreamers
Looney Tunes & Other Reality-Challenged Eyes There are plenty of reasons someone one might become a private investigator, but I didn't know a tenuous grasp on reality was one of them... Personally, I think Humphrey Bogart's to blame. Except… how do you blame Buster Keaton’s 1924 silent classic Sherlock Jr. on Bogie? Although driving a … Continue reading Beautiful Dreamers
The Bogie Man (aka “Francis F. Clunie”)
Created by John Wagner and Alan Grant "Down these mean streets, a man must go, who is not himself..." -- artist Robin Smith's dedication to The Bogie Man Collection (1998) A limited series, and British cult favorite, featuring the comic (and comic book) misadventures of one FRANCIS F. CLUNIE, aka "BOGIE," an escaped mental patient … Continue reading The Bogie Man (aka “Francis F. Clunie”)
Sam Marlow (The Man With Bogart’s Face)
Created by Andrew J. Fenady Way back in the nineteen seventies, during the mini-nostalgia boom for all things from the thirties and forties, actor Robert Sacchi parlayed his spooky resemblance to Humphrey Bogart into a nice little career in TV commercials and movie cameos. The big payoff, though, came with the 1980 release of The Man … Continue reading Sam Marlow (The Man With Bogart’s Face)