Boy, those were the days! Before THE BAT-MAN came along and ruined everything!
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Speed's fashion sense was timelessly bad.
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Speed Saunders was living large (and extremely LOUD, in mismatched patterns) on the cover of Detective Comics, which COMMANDED you to turn IMMEDIATELY to page 1 and read his Ski Murder adventure...and so we shall!
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| Clearly, this is going to be oomphy. |
Time for another of Speed's vacations, which means cold weather, cold stares, and cold corpses.
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| Pictured: cold stare. |
Gotta appreciate Speed's consistency of wardrobe; even though he's on vacation, he's still wearing his puce Glenurquhart check with crimson barcode tie, so that everyone can recognize him. Cleary, the Universe DOES recognize him, because it sends him... a dame with a clue-monogrammed handerkerchief! |
| I appreciate the caption. I would have assumed it was an extra-large nacho. |
The Face of Disdain versus the Face of Judgement! Which will prevail? Meanwhile, Speed leaps on the Universe's clue.
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| An M! Or a W. Or a E. Or a 3. Or a capital Σ. I'm sure Speed will guess correctly. |
Well, it's not a red crescent, but it's something, and I'm sure Speed will make the most of it, by... ACCUSING THE WOMAN OF DROPPING IT.
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| "I DIDN'T DO IT, OFFICER!" |
This being a Speed Saunders story, I must interpret the strange positioning of her fingers as a CLUE. I say it symbolizes a FORKED TONGUE, which means she's LYING. Which is a good bet, since we saw her drop the handkerchief.
That counterfactual is all Speed needs! Only Speed can contradict the Universe and get away with it, so now he's going to hover about this woman like a bad hat (a feeling she's already used to). |
| Don't worry, Speed; there'll be a corpse along soon enough, I'm sure. |
Later, while stalking her...
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| Little does he know he's actually staring at an unusually large Hopper painting. |
Speed gets bored with spying and tesseracts immediately into skiing, hoping to find a body in the snow. And guess what?
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| "My Speed-sense is tingling!" |
Finally, Speed's (comparative) patience pays off: a corpse!
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Speed's an aficionado of unusual murder weapons. Like sleighs and mannequin hands.
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Now, it looks like Speed just pulls out Ms. Sigma's handkerchief to look at it again, but in fact he's finding ANOTHER one of her handkerchief's on the corpse's leg. Look again, it's in the previous panel.
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The reason Speed dresses like that is to make it impossible for your eyes to focus on the clues.
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Like a boy who finds an interesting frog, Speed hauls his trophy back to show the gang!
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| Get some help, Speed. |
4 comments:
Y'know, Speed and Speedy should hang out. Roy could use a mentor who's more competent than he is. Together, they could have already solved the Mystery of the Legged Angular Crescent What Shows up on Random Hankies.
But...I think the woman might be telling the truth. Based on the art, it looks like the handkerchief was actually dropped by that awkward mannequin-arm that looks like it was hurled in her path like a spear, then evaporates in the split-second it takes for Speed to turn around. OK, maybe that's her hand awkwardly positioned against a seat-back. But if Roy was available, it definitely would've been a launched arm-shaped projectile with a monogrammed payload.
Oh, Speed HAD a Boy Detective; we just haven't discussed him yet.
Wait. The Ace Detective is going back to the hotel to drop a BODY on the bellhop and discuss the case with ... I dunno, the other guests? And why is he moving the damn body? Even in the 30s they knew you don't disturb a crime scene ... unless, I guess, you want to freak out the maitre d' at the hotel restaurant? Not to mention the other guests, which I'm sure isn't going to cause a rash of people calling taxis to get out of the Overlook Hotel.
Even for a Speed story this seems completely unhinged.
I guess in the 30s they cared as much about crime scene integrity as they did for lung health.
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