I just ordered Detective Comics #265. Low grade. It’s a recap of Batman’s origin and it features a flashback to Batman’s first case!

I’ve read it before because it’s reprinted in Batman #187.

Wish I had it; I'd send it to you. It's "Wertham" breaking the bank for, though:

Congrats! I'm five issues shy of having Batman #100-713 (final issue of the original numbering). Unfortunately, once comic prices began rising, those final five issues became darn-near impossible to afford. But someday #101, 102, 104, 106, and 108 will be mine...

Batman #304 came in the mail last night and I’m going to read it now.

It’s the only Bronze Age appearance of the Spook I’ve never read! I’m excited! I bet it’s awesomely stupid!

I just got Detective Comics #251 in the mail and it’s so nice! It’s probably a solid 5.0 or 6.0. It’s so firm, nice spine, a date stamp (DEC 9), brights colors, still a bit glossy.

It’s called “The Alien Batman”! And Vicki Vale is in it!

I’ll read it later.

I got Detective Comics #1059 today.

When the next issue comes out, I’ll have 800 consecutive issues of Detective Comics!

I bought a copy of Detective Comics #25. Cover-dated March 1939. This is two issues before the first appearance of Batman.

It was rated 3.0 by CGC, so yes it was expensive, and it came in a CGC slab. It's a museum piece. I have been calling it "the artifact."

I had to look at it. I wanted to see it for myself and I wanted to read the stories. So I watched a couple of YouTube videos and cracked it open with a Swiss Army knife.

And I'm so glad I did! These stories are so much fun! They certainly look crude or primitive by the standards of later comics, but I enjoyed most of them. I've read a lot of really bad Golden Age stories that hold almost no interest for me, but the stories in Detective Comics #25 are very charming, and I think this writing - above average for Golden Age comics - might offer part of an explanation for DC's early success.

I will get Detective Comics #25 re-slabbed eventually. It's very old and every little mark on it reduces its value. It needs to be protected. But I'm going to read each story again, more slowly this time, take some notes, and try to have a record of what's in this book so I don't feel like I'm missing out by not being able to read it whenever I want.

Last night, I again read the first story, starring Speed Saunders, Ace Investigator, and made some notes.

There are almost no ads in this comic. It's 64 pages and it's almost all story pages. The inside front cover is a puzzle page. There are only one or two ad pages in the book, and the back cover and inside back cover are ad pages. Other than that, it's all action. (Or maybe "action," as a lot of the stories involve standing around and looking around the crime scene to find some clues.)

There are no splash pages. The first panel has the name of the feature, sometimes as a title card, sometimes the title is imposed over the action.

Speed Saunders starts with a title card. "SPEED SAUNDERS, Ace Investigator, and the DEATH SLED." By Fred Guardineer.

I love the work of Fred Guardineer! If Chic Stone inks panels that look like a stained glass window, then Guardineer draws panels that look like early-Renaissance woodcuts. And the story-telling ... well, it fits this art style. There's very little story flow. Speed just seems to be exactly where he needs to be in the next panel so he can find the next clue! Or report it to the police! Or apprehend the killer!

It's only six pages long! I'm not sure there's any other way to tell the story!

There's almost nothing in the way of captions. Speed Saunders doesn't have time to explain anything that you can't figure out from the pictures! Sorry, pal!

It starts with Speed driving into the country for a vacation. It's winter. The nearby fields and hills are covered with snow. A girl runs in front of the car. There's been an accident! Tommy Dell has run his sled into a tree!

OR HAS HE!?

Anyway, he's dead and there's blood all over the snow.

Speed looks at the crime screen and his amazing powers of Deductive Contrariness kick in! Speed figures out that young Tommy was dead before he ever got on the sled ... and he was apparently lashed to the sled with a wire!

So Speed walks around with the girl (we eventually find out her name is Miss Everts) and sees a garage that seems like a very good place for some clues. And, yes, there's some cut wire! 

There's a frozen pond nearby ... and there's a hole in the ice! With the help of the local police, they find a hammer in the pond!

Next, the autopsy turns up digitalis in Tommy's stomach! (Speed had a hunch.) Speed then goes to the druggist ... somebody at the Dell house ordered some digitalis just a few days ago, to kill rats ... THEY SAID!

Speed goes to the Dell house. He knows who did it ... he knows how it was done ... but he now has less than a page to figure out the motive. 

Fortunately, Jameson the butler is busy and Speed has to wait in the library for a few minutes until Jameson the butler is not busy. Speed uses this idle time VERY EFFICIENTLY and looks for the motive in the books in the library. And ... THERE IT IS ... in the Dell family history, the type of book that every wealthy family keeps in the library in the Speed Saunders Universe.

The Dell family is famous for a very valuable necklace of blood rubies. So Speed deduces that Tommy must have caught Jameson the butler stealing the rubies! And so Jameson had to kill Tommy!

Jameson was devious. He knew that no one would believe that Tommy was killed in that sled accident. So he made it look like Tommy was killed with a hammer. But Tommy was actually killed by digitalis poison! So ... I guess ... Jameson thought that he might be convicted for killing Tommy with a hammer but then it would turn out that Tommy wasn't killed by a hammer ... HE WAS POISONED! They would have to let Jameson go and he couldn't be put on trial again because that would be double jeopardy!

BECAUSE THAT'S HOW DOUBLE JEOPARDY WORKS IN THE SPEED SAUNDERS UNIVERSE!

Anyway, I think that's what happened. There's always a little mystery in trying to figure out exactly what happened in a Speed Saunders story