NICK AND NORA CHARLES:They’re in love with each other—they’re rich—they’re witty—and (perhaps most importantly) they’re prone to practically trip over corpses pretty much everywhere they go. What else can two people ask for out of a relationship?
Nick Charles was a successful private investigator until he married the beautiful heiress Nora. He left the detective business after that, devoting his time to (as he once tells Nora) “taking care of all that money I married you for.”
But Nick can’t get away from the sleuth racket. We first meet him in Dashiell Hammett’s 1933 novel The Thin Man, in which he reluctantly becomes involved in a murder investigation.
Hammett never wrote anything else involving Nick and Nora, but the couple took on a life of their own when William Powell and Myrna Loy played them in a series of wonderful movies made during the 1930s and 1940s. Again and again, the pair would trade casual barbs and witticisms as Nora insisted that Nick look into the latest murder case they’ve once again stumbled across. Good storytelling meshes perfectly with sharp humor tbroughout all these films.
The couple took their wonderful relationship to radio as well during the 1940s, with actress Claudia Morgan pretty much channeling Myrna Loy in her portrayal of Nora. I’ve no idea what Claudia Morgan looked like, but she sure as heck sounded beautiful.
But Nick and Nora aren’t the only husband-and-wife detective team on the block. In fact, in 1960, in The Flash #112, DC comics gave us a really nifty variation on the same theme.
RALPH & SUE DIBNY
By drinking an elixir made from an exotic fruit, Ralph Dibny discovered he had gained the ability to stretch his body and assumed fantastic shapes. He makes a fortune as a circus performer, marries a wealthy and beautiful heiress, then retires to travel the world with his new wife.
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Naturally, they stumble across a crime at nearly ever town or city they visit. Ralph (also known as the Elongated Man) loves a good mystery more than anything other than his wife Sue. And Sue understands this—though she might get a little annoyed with him when he stands her up in order to stake out some jewel thieves, it is always clear that the two love each other dearly.
Elongated Man stories ran regularly through much of 1960s as a back up in Detective Comics. Ralph used sharp deductive skills, but also made good use of his stretching powers to gather clues. With art usually supplied by Carmine Infantino, images of Ralph stretching an ear down a chimney to eavesdrop on the bad guys—or stretching his neck up several hundred feet to search a wide area with a single glance—or suddenly stretching out his elbows or earlobes to knock a gun out of a villain’s hands—were delightful silly without ever spoiling the mystery aspect of the stories.
It was all these elements taken together—Ralph and Sue’s happy marriage, good mystery plots and the images of Ralph using his powers—that made the original Elongated Man stories so much fun. Sadly, in modern comics, the idea of a happy marriage seems to have become a bizarre anathema to writers and editors. Ralph and Sue have both been killed off.
But, like Nick and Nora Charles, a good husband-and-wife detective team can never truly die. Not as long as we can return to their novels, comics and movies whenever we wish to do so. Nick and Nora and Ralph and Sue—they’re not real, but by golly they oughta be.
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