After too long, Altus Press (now Steeger Books) had put out the fourth volume in their complete reprinting of Jim Anthony, Super Detective, and I get to reviewing it. And unlike the prior volumes, Super-Detective Jim Anthony: The Complete Series, Vol 4, has five stories, covering the 10th through 14th that first appeared in October 1941 to June 1942!
For those not familiar, Jim Anthony was a sort-of Doc Savage clone published by Trojan/Culture Publications in the early 1940s, a publisher of the “spicy” pulps, sort-of soft porn magazines.
Jim Anthony was “half Irish, half Indian, and all-American.” More emotional than Doc, Anthony was a physical and mental marvel. He has a penthouse in the Waldorf-Anthony Hotel he owns, has a secret mansion in the Catskills called the Tepee, another resort in an oasis in the American Southwest called the Pueblo.
Anthony was assisted by a small group of people, include Tom Gentry, pilot and right-hand man; Mephito, his shaman grandfather; Dawkins, his butler; and Dolores Colquitte, the daughter of a U.S. senator and his fiance. And Senator Colquitte sometimes appears.
His series ran for 24 issues of Super-Detective magazine in 1940-43. For the first 10 or so issues, he was “Super Jim Anthony” (as most refer to him), where he fought against science-fictional menaces. After that, he was sort of “de-powered” and lost most of his aides except for Tom and Dolores. He turned into more of a hard-boiled detective, less a scientific detective and more a playboy detective. Victor Rousseau had originally written him, but others took over.
This volume is important as we can see both this switch from “super” to hard-boiled Anthony, as well as the first author switch. Frankly, I would have loved to have an intro or the like to explain this to folks. But sadly, no. I also saw other changes in these stories.
“Spies of Destiny” is referred to as the last of the “super” stories, but even here we start to see differences. And overall in these stories, we see these changes in several ways. One is the length, and another is in the covers. “Spies” was about 100 pages in length, while the other four were about half that length, which also explains why characters were dropped. But interestingly, the following issues still claim that Jim Anthony is still novel-length, which I now doubt. The cover of “Spies” had Anthony in just his swim trunks, like on prior ones, after that he’s in a suit. The similar happens with the interior artwork.
Another item I saw different, which I noticed in the later stories in the last volume, was the addition of a scene of torture. I was a little surprised to see one in the first story, then noticed all the others did as well. I guess this was another concession to the “norms” of the spicy pulps.
As noted, “Spies of Destiny” is considered the last of the “super” stories. But as I noted other changes are happening here, the crime is unusual, but there’s no super science. There’s no sight of Mephito or Dawkins, but Tom, Dolores, and Sen. Colquette are here, and a new character is introduced in Lt. Trotter of Homicide, who will appear in all the other stories here to some degree.
Anthony is now also a producer of plays, at his new “Anthony Theater.” But bizarre things are happening, affecting his new production. There is politcal intrigue and murder, plus people having their hair cut with warnings and a red dragon. What’s it all about? Who or what is the red dragon? Anthony is on the case and heads to the Tepee, and then to Lisbon in his Thunderbird plane to solve it all. It’s the last time we will hear of these things. And we will no longer hear of Jim’s ethnic background as well.
“I.O.U. Murder” is the first of the “depowered” stories, and we see the last of the “super Jim” elements here. We still have Tom and Dolores, who is noted as his fiancé and now his secretary, but no mention of being a senator’s daughter. Things start at the Daily Star, the newspaper that Jim owns. A millionaire calls, wanting to know the identity of the writer of the “Tattler” gossip column, as he thinks this will lead to his missing son, who has disappeared after losing at the gambling table and is being blackmailed. These lead to a bizarre case of deception and murder that isn’t figured out until the end.
“Cold Turkey” is the last story by Victor Rousseau. Tom takes the lead this time, as he is barhopping with Jim for his birthday. But there are some strange goings on when they to their next stop, a new place called the “Keyhole Club.” And Tom appears to be there to meet someone who is a fence and underworld banker. Then a trio of men show up who actually shoot the man Tom is waiting for, as well as Tom! What is going on? Jim starts to work it out, and it seems to involved a fortune in diamonds that were smuggled in to help fund the Dutch resistance, but they went missing. The fence was involved, but why was Tom involving himself? Several people will wind up dead before Anthony figures it all out. And what about the turkey of the title? Read and find out.
“Mrs. Big” is the first story by Edwin Truett Long, who also wrote Doc Harker for Munsey/Red Star. He will write the next three Anthony stories. Again, more of a murder/mystery, this story all hinges on a female gangster released from prison who is out for revenge. And revenge in a very violent and bloody means.
Finally, “Needle’s Eye” gives us a bizarre and confusing murder case. An artist who has had multiple wives is killed. In fact, one of his ex-wives is dating Tom Gentry, and they are with Jim and Dolores when things start. There are a slew of possible suspects, and it’s not till the end when Jim unravels it all and reviews what happened and why.
There were a few other disappointments in this volume. In the prior volumes, we got “The Tepee,” the letter page from the pulps, but it wasn’t in this one. I kind of missed that. And I wish the cover artist had been credited (it looks like H.J. Ward. Was it him?), as well as the specific authors of the stories. People might not know who wrote what.
At this point, there are 11 more stories to go. Long wrote one more story, and then the rest were by Robert Leslie Bellem and W.T. Ballard. Bellem wrote Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective for Trojan/Culture.
I’m not sure when we’ll see the next volume, nor how many stories will be reprinted. If they are of the same length, I could see doing just two more volumes of five and six stories each. But, I have to be honest that my interest in these stories wained as I went along, as the style moved away from the science-adventure stories to just detective stories with a bit too much sadism.
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