InsaneJournal

Detective skills for super-heroes


See, this sequence is the sort of thing I would like to see Batman stories emphasise more. Observation and deduction are skills essential to solving mysteries and catching criminals. You don't see much of this lately, partly because it's harder for the writer to come up with than fight scenes and gore, but also because CSI-type gadgetry and doubletalk has taken over. One great aspect of the Doc Savage pulps was that (having been trained since infancy by experts),he was a multi-skilled genius with Olympic-level physical prowess ("Sherlock Holmes in the body of Hercules"). In one story, he ran up stairs with a full-grown man under each arm, then glanced into a ransacked room and could tell it had been searched twice-- because spilled liquids which dry at different rates were equally gelled. (This is one reason his fans say, "Doc Savage: adventure hero or THE adventure hero?").

This sequence is from Marvel's black & white DOC SAVAGE magazine, second issue from October 1975. Story by Doug Moench, art by Tony DeZuniga. Most of the story is a wild yarn about a huge cavern civilization of Reptilian people, a Mad Viking, lost treasure, that sort of thing. But to learn about this, the Man of Bronze casually shows some impressive detective ability. It's exactly the sort of engimatic clue that Lester Dent used to toss around in the pulps. What is that strange coin?