Another Detective Called Falcon?

Cover Art by Frank Miller

The B-movie detective (and his radio counterpart) called the Falcon had quite an active career solving crimes, so I have a meta reason for appreciating Marvel Premiere #49 (August 1979). The story, written by Mark Evanier and drawn by Sal Buscema, has Marvel Comics' hero the Falcon investigating a murder and using a clever bit of deductive reasoning to solve the crime. B-movie Falcon would have been proud.

Sam Wilson doesn't normally play detective. After all, he can usually solve his cases by punching out whomever is wearing a garish costume and screaming "You'll never escape my death trap, fool!" It takes skill, but doesn't normally require Holmsian reasoning.

He ends up playing detective because he was filling in for Captain America at an Embassy dinner. (I love that he brings Redwing along to the dinner: "Would your bird like anything, sir?" "Not unless you have some dead rat hor d'ouevers.")

He meets a guy Sigjid Roskoff, who has been giving fiery speeches about what he sees as hypocracy in American democracy and also trashing Captain America for solving problems by punching them. Falcon wants to jump to Cap's defense. And I'm kinda disappointed there was no room in the story for debate here. We are told that Roskoff is smart and well-reasoned, despite his fiery rhetoric. It would have been fun to hear a well-written point-counterpoint here.

But a villain who calls himself the Silencer blasts his way into the room and carries off Roskoff, then murders him off-screen. The story's one weakpoint is here. Falcon allows himself to be distracted so that the Silencer can sucker-punch him, but he's far too experienced by this point in his career to make that believable.

The Silencer made Roskoff sign a note before being killed, allowing Roskoff to leave a dying clue: small dots under the letters O-T-T-F-F-S-S-E-N. But Falcon is at first stumped as to what this means. There's a hilarious sub-plot in which J. Jonah Jameson runs a contest to get his readers to solve this clue, which nets him answers such as "Oliver Twist Took Fannie Flag Snow Skiing Each Noon."

The Silencer, by the way, is apparently a fanatic who is out to stop anyone making "UnAmerican" speeches. This is emphasized when the Falcon confronts him again attacking speech makers in Central Park. After a brief confrontation, the Silencer makes a getaway by forcing Falcon to deal with a live hand grenade.

The case if abruptly solved when a guy named Count Barzon fills in for Roskoff to give a speech and simply guns the Silencer down when the villain attacks. The Silencer turns out to be some two-bit thug.

It's at this point that Falcon has his Sherlock Holmes moment--O.T.T.F.F.S.S.E.N. = One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine. The killer is the Count!

No, not that Count. The Count in the story, who created the Silencer to make it look like Roskoff's killer was a fanatic, then hired a two-bit thug to attack him later on. The thug, of course, didn't know he was going to get shot.

Case solved. It's a fun story and works just fine as a murder mystery as well as a superhero story. Good action, a few dollops of humor and a fair play clue that points to the killer. Yes, the B-movie Falcon would indeed have been proud.

That's it for this week. Next week will be a look at the first of four stories divided among two issues of Dell's Four Color, in which a former Yankee soldier and a former Reb have to work together in the post-war Wild West.