Man of Steel: "The Super-Key to Fort Superman" (1958) by Jerry Coleman

So, as you've probably noticed, I've been on a locked room mystery bender since February and you can blame that on the publication of Brian Skupin's Locked Room Murders: Supplement (2019) coinciding with the holidays, which significantly increased the size of my wishlist and to-be-read pile – glutted with more impossible crime stories than usual. I'm now almost done with trimming down my stack of newly acquired locked room and impossible crime novels. You can expect a little more variety to return by the end of the month.

One of the more peculiar titles listed in Skupin's Locked Room Murders: Supplement is entry 2215, "The Super-Key of Fort Superman," written by Jerry Coleman and published in Action Comics, #241, 1958. A 12-page comic book story in which Superman has to find out who, and how, someone gained access to the "locked and impenetrable" Fortress of Solitude.

The Fortress of Solitude is hidden "deep in the core of a mountainside" in "the desolate arctic waste" with the only entrance being a massive door, "sheltered from view by jutting rocks," which can only be opened with "a super-key that weighs tons" – a ponderous key only Superman can lift. There's no one on Earth who can get through "the solid rock out of which it is hewn." A quiet, solitary place where he "conducts incredible experiments, keeps strange trophies and pursues astounding hobbies." Sound like the next best thing to a Batcave, but the Fortress of Solitude is more like the lair of very dedicated stalker or serial killer.

Superman has rooms, or shrines, dedicated to his friends, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen and Batman, complete with wax dummy replicas, mementos and specially made gifts.

A personally strung-together rope of pearls for Lois, a handmade sports car for Jimmy and a robot-detective for Batman, but they'll only receive these gifts if, not when, Superman dies. What a dick! Lois and Jimmy will probably have been slumbering in their graves for decades by the time he gets a wrinkle or gray hair! Why not give Batman that super advanced, robot-detective to fight crime now? Apparently, Superman is also an abusive animal hoarder with a private, inter-planetary zoo, hoarded from across the galaxies, crammed inside tiny cages – one panel showing several, large-sized alien animals in crate-sized cages. Well, at the very least he keeps the cages in a "locked chamber" and the floors aren't littered with rotting, half-cannibalized carcasses of former pets. So there's that, I suppose.

Anyway, one day, when Superman returns to the Fortress of Solitude, he discovers someone has entered the fortress and left a taunting message on the wall, "I can enter and leave at will! Who am I? How can I do it? I dare you to find out!" This happens another two times with a third message saying, "Kent is Superman." No one else, except Superman, could have lifted the giant key, moved the door or plunge through fifty feet of solid rock. These are the only ways in, or out, of the fortress.

Superman briefly considers some possible solutions. Such as one of his inter-planetary pets "concealing superhuman powers and intelligence" or "that strange apparatus made by Luthor," which can summon beings from the fourth dimension, but the solution unveils a legitimate locked room-trick cleverly modeled around an idea nearly as old as recorded history. And it worked surprisingly well! I expected someone had simply crawled through the large, gaping keyhole, but the solution turned out to be so much better and the identity of Superman's "most cunning opponent" was a nice touch to the who-and why of the plot. A victory for brains over brawn!

I read "The Super-Key to Fort Superman" on the assumption it would be nothing more than an amusing curiosity of the impossible crime story, but didn't expect I would end up liking it. But here we are. More than worth the five minutes it takes to read the story.

The Dark Pages

"So to summarize, we're basically dealing with three concentric locked-room mysteries."

- Special Agent Bay of the Library Police 

The last review that appeared on here, a rundown of Jack Iams' Death Draws the Line (1949), is still smoldering, and while it's already a contender for worst mystery read this year, the final portion of the book that included the Little Polly Pitcher comic-strip served as reminder that I still had to check out the work of an actual comic book artist – who drew and penned an attractive contribution to the locked room sub-genre.

Jason Shiga's Bookhunter (2007) is a modern-historical, set in Oakland, California, 1973, but the fact that the story's protagonist is a special agent, named Bay, attached to the Library Police clues you in that you're still in comic-book land. However, the plot is delightfully classically in tone with a cartoon-y hardboiled edge to it. The story is split up in four chapters, three of them detailing Bay's investigation, and the first introducing him when he's organizing a raid on a "freelance censor," who swiped several political books from the shelves, and has been locating by printing the same book he was targeting with radioactive dye! A confrontation with the self-appointed censor ends in the same way that got a lot of old Looney Tunes episodes canned or censored, "my bladder," before Bay moves on to a more cerebral problem.

The rare book room of the Oakland Public Library had an English bible on loan from The Library of Congress, which "was given to John Quincy Adams by a group of Mendi tribesmen in commemoration of his representation of them in the Amistad slave ship case," and by all accounts, appears to have been spirited away from the library.

There were no signs of forced entry on the outside doors and windows. The fire-escapes were alarmed, but they were last heard the year before. The safe were the book was kept overnight is unscratched. And finally, if the thief got past these obstacles, there is still the stop-point gate that will be triggered by a magnetic strip embedded in the book. Unfortunately, these security measures were to no avail and someone skipped out of there, unnoticed, with a valuable book.

I have to compliment Shiga for planting a false explanation in my mind with his art work that would've made the triple locked room far less complicated, and I think every seasoned mystery fan would latch on to that like it was an actual clue, but the eventual solution was more involved – relaying on the inner workings of a library and the building itself. In a way, the plotting reminded me of Herbert Resnicow and perhaps I should also mention Bill Pronzini's novella "Booktaker," collected in Casefile (1983), because the resemblance between the titles alone speaks for itself. They have completely different solutions though.

Anyway, I couldn't tell more without divulging too much of what is essentially a short story, even if the page count lies somewhere around the 140, and I recommend you read it for yourself – especially if you're a fan of locked rooms, comics and/or bibliophilic mysteries.

All in all, Bookhunter is an off-beat gem that deserves more attention from the mystery readers, combining art that fits the mood of the story with tongue-in-cheek action sequences and meticulous plotting, but let the reader be warned, there's a lot of technical talk on locks and bookbinders lore. Heck, there's enough of that stuff in this story that Julian "Bloody" Symons’ would probably have broken a thumb and forefinger, because he couldn’t slap "humdrum" label on this book fast enough. ;)

Cartoonist in a Tailspin

"Something didn't seem right. There was something about the whole set-up that smelled like someone else's hydrant."

- Ace Hart (Dog City, 1992-94) 

When the founder of Whitcomb Feature Syndicate, Big Bill Whitcomb, passed away the general-manager, Mark Wallis, inherited the responsibility to keep the business afloat that, in turn, keeps the vultures that were circling his sickbed in luxury and comfort. The only honor they give to their late benefactor is an annual diner to commemorate his birthday, which went well for nearly ten years, until their star cartoonist, Zeke Brock, made a drunken scene and the family has summoned Wallis before the next diner – and thus begins Jack Iams' Death Draws the Line (1949).

Zeke Brock is the creator of the Little Polly Pitcher comic strip and alcohol was his poison of choice, which seems to have done him, after Wallis planned to let him sleep for a couple of hours before towing him to the party. However, Wallis' becomes suspicious when Brock's will, leaving the copyright to his assistant, Mary Bradley, appears to be missing and ask a befriended D.A. for an autopsy – much to the chagrin of the acid-tongued and scandalized Widow Whitcomb. Of course, the fact that the autopsy showed that Brock was drowned (!) was not enough for Wallis to hold on to his job, because he neglected to put the interest of the company and the family on the first place.

Unfortunately, the snobbish, childish and decadent manners of the Whitcomb family pretty much sets the tone for the book and Iams appears to have been determined to drive home the fact that they're wicked people. Instead of following up on an interesting premise, Wallis has to endure the wrath of the Widow Whitcomb, tangle with her nymphomaniac of a daughter, Pamela, who's seen by Wallis approaching men in a dim-lit street, wrestle a gun from her brother Fenwick and knocks out with his former simpering assistant, Henry Parfield, who perhaps hopes to marry into the family. There are also sappy love feelings boiling between Wallis and Mary Bradley and a second murder, in which Wallis briefly becomes a suspect, to distract from the story. 

Crime Map on the backcover

It’s not like the murder of Zeke Brock is completely delegated to the background, but a lot of details were lost that could've made for a better story and not only in regards to the plot. Through out the story there are mentions of Avenge Polly Pitcher Clubs and movements popping up all over the country and you could have peppered the story with newspaper snippets (perhaps from one or two Rocky Rockwell's The Record?) of their activities. Yes. It would have still been padding, but it would've been more fun than what we actually got. There was also no background on the comic book industry of the 1940s. The murder of Brock also had some confusing points. None of the police involved seemed to give much thought on how the murderer entered the premise. Was I reading a locked room mystery or not? It was mentioned that Brock gave keys to practically every woman he ever slept with, but that was never looked into. Even after a suicide attempt takes that may be a botched attempt at murder takes place there. Somehow, someone got in... yes... that's a remarkable feat of deductive reasoning, detective. Why don't you go to a Coffee-and-Donut store and sit this one out.

The only point of genuine interest was the batch of missing Little Polly Pitcher comic strips and they were actually included in this book, drawn by Roy Crane, and they tell you what you probably suspected all along, but it’s a nifty gimmick nonetheless. I can only see this book of being of interest to scholars looking into the visual elements in detective stories. In short, Death Draws the Line was not just a step down from previous books I have read by Jack Iams, like The Body Missed the Boat (1947) and What Rhymes With Murder? (1950), but a suicide dive off a cliff and I think that is a wish we should respect and leave it at that.

Oh, and I know it's folly to post two reviews on the same day, so if this is the first time today that you decide to take a peek at this blog, you might also want to take a look at my rundown of the new Jonathan Creek special, The Clue of theSavant's Thumb (2013), which aired last night. The tone of that review is also a bit more on the positive and upbeat side. I hate