Detective 26 – Slam Bradley vs artists, Steve Malone heads out, the Crimson Avenger on the run, and Sally says good-bye
Once again, the art on the Slam Bradley story in Detective 26 (April 1939) looks different. Siegel and Shuster are still credited, but something is not the same.
The story is a dark one. Artists kidnap people and subject them to horrible tortures, so as to copy their expressions. Slam and Shorty come across them peddling their art.
Steve Malone, now with no friends or supporting cast, returns for a one issue story.
He solves a murder pretty quickly. No need to call the police when the D.A. is on the scene. Then he is off…to the pages of Adventure Comics. His series gets a bit of a reboot there, and then returns to Detective just before the end of 39.
A group of criminals use a phony Crimson Avenger to help cover their tracks in this story, and the phony winds up killing a cop!
The Crimson Avenger has to find his impersonator while the cops hunt him. It’s told fairly well.
Sally Norris makes his final appearance in Siegel and Shuster’s Spy in this story, though no hint of this is in the story itself.
Bart and Sally are sent out to stop a mad bomber who wants to destroy Congress. I have doubts about the art, it really doesn’t seem up to par, but Shuster is credited.
Sally tied to the rocket just looks silly, though. At least it was an event that was far more extreme than anything else that has happened to her. Makes it easier to accept that she must have retired from the service.
I suspect that Sally got pregnant. You can’t embrace that way in every story without a kid coming along eventually.