Watching The Detectives: A Trio of Criminally Underappreciated Gems

Here is a series of brief, spoiler-free summaries of three excellent comic series with very little in common, except that all three involve variations on the theme of Detectives, all three had a lot of unrealized potential, and all three were collected in trade paperback form after their respective series came to a premature end due to low sales.

MYSTERY GIRL (Dark Horse Comics) is the story of Trine Hampstead who has a singular ability. If you ask her a question, she can answer it, whether it's "Where are my keys?", "Is my boyfriend cheating on me?" or "What was that song I used to hum while I was sitting in the back of Mister Pettigrew's science class?"

The only question she CAN'T answer is, "What happened to make me this way?"

She's making a tidy living helping all sorts of folks with all sorts of problems when she encounters a question where it's not enough just to KNOW the answer... she wants to SEE for herself...

Unfortunately, there are a bunch of people with a vested interest in making sure that doesn't happen... people who may hold the secret to Trine's strange condition.

FAIRLADY (Image Comics) set in a wildly inventive fantasy world, Fairlady tells the story of Jenner Faulds. Once, she disguised herself as a man in order to join the army, but now the war is over and she's setting out her shingle as a 'Fairman' - a kind of hired gun/private investigator. However, as the only Fairlady, the cases she gets tend to be towards the bottom of the barrel.

Each issue of this series contained a self-contained story in which Faulds and her partner Oanu investigate a case, but as you read, you get more information on the world, its background and characters, and an overarching bigger picture.

THE NEW DEADWARDIANS (DC/Vertigo) describes a fantastic version of a post-Victorian world where a zombie plague has ravaged the working classes, and the uninfected hide behind walled-off enclaves. In order to grant them the strength, speed and resilience to stem the zombie tide, many members of the soldiery and upper-class embraced vampirism.

Our story centres on Chief Inspector George Suttle, a vampire detective called in to investigate the baffling case of a murdered upper-class citizen, a case which will lead him to an array of other discoveries.

All three series will, alas, leave you with a sense of dissatisfaction.I can pretty much guarantee that, once you've had a taste of each, you will want more, but there is no more to be had.

With that said, in my personal experience, that dissatisfaction is mild compared to the pleasure I have derived from dipping into these three worlds and their wonderful characters, if only for a short while.