Detectives Inc.

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Detectives Inc. is a series of two original graphic novels written by Don McGregor and published by Eclipse Enterprises in 1980 and 1985.

Detectives Inc.: A Terror of Dying Dreams (1985). Art by Gene Colan.

The first, Detectives Inc.: A Remembrance of Threatening Green, featured black-and-white art by penciler-inker Marshall Rogers. The second, Detectives Inc.: A Terror Of Dying Dreams, was drawn by Gene Colan, and printed directly from his detailed pencils; a later comic-book reprinting added a sepia-tone wash in place of inking. The two books were lettered by, respectively, Tom Orzechowski and Mindy Eisman. Notably, these early graphic novels were not superhero or science fiction/fantasy stories, and A Remembrance of Threatening Green (1980) was the first naturalistic graphic novel to follow Will Eisner's influential A Contract with God.

Set in and around New York City, the two humanistic mystery-dramas each stars interracial-buddy private detectives Ted Denning and Bob Rainier. A Remembrance of Threatening Green involves a midwife hiring the investigators to find who killed her lesbian lover. The Gay League's "LBGT Comics Timeline" cites the book as "featuring the first lesbian characters in mass-market comics".^[1] In A Terror of Dying Dreams, a social worker has the duo investigate a wife-beating millionaire.

The books' genesis, McGregor recalled, had gone back several years. "I had created Detectives Inc. as early as 1969, as roles for Alex Simmons and myself to play in Super8 millimeter movies I was making".^[2] In the early 1970s, the two produced a crude Detectives Inc. comic book, self-published via photocopier.

Panel from the first Detectives Inc. graphic novel (1980), by Don McGregor and Marshall Rogers.

Eclipse Comics later reprinted the two graphic novels as color comic-book miniseries, dividing the former into two issues (1985) and the latter into three (June, Sept., Dec. 1987), with new Colan covers inked by Steve Leialoha. The graphic novels themselves were reissued by Image Comics in 2001 (ISBN 1-58240-084-9 and ISBN 1-58240-097-0, respectively).

In 1985, McGregor wrote and directed a low-budget, shot-on-video movie version of Detectives Inc., which has been shown at comic book conventions but remains unreleased commercially.

The graphic novels are unrelated to the book Detectives Inc.: A Mystery Story for Boys by William Heyliger (Goldsmith Publishing Company, Chicago, 1935) or to the children's book Goblinz! Detectives Inc. (ISBN 0-14-131501-6) by Kaye Umansky (Puffin/Penguin Books, 2004).

[edit] Critical assessment

Ain't It Cool News, Oct. 9, 2001: "McGregor sought to create a realistic private detective comic book, and he succeeded in spades, producing a violent, touching and emotional story. ...[W]hat’s going on with the characters, how they relate to one another and the others in their lives, is equally as important as the plots they find themselves in. McGregor is as interested in why people do what they do and how they deal (or are unable to deal) with the demons they carry around. For the detectives, sometimes it seems the case is just a way of distracting them from their own problems, such as Denning’s attempts to deal with killing a teenage boy to save his partner in the prologue to the story, or Rainer’s ever-present strained relationship with his ex-wife" ^[3]