If your town has a crime problem,who you gonna call?
That's right!
Mr. District Attorney was a long-running radio show. And the character
never had a name!! He was just always referred as "Mr. District Attorney," or sometimes
Chief. When the show eventually was adapted as an early TV series, they gave him a name, because television ruins everything. So then he became known as
Paul Garrett on both radio and TV.
But for our purposes, in
Dell Four Color #13 (1942), he was just known as Mr. District Attorney.
Now, you've watched enough
Law & Order that you may think you know all about what a district attorney does. Well, let me tell you, you're
wrong!
District attorneys go out in the field, and engage in violent
fisticuffs with felons!
Mr. District Attorney can even overcome
crazy French-Canadian Kung Fu!
And, well, he's not above
threatening to kill the bad guys...
He's also not above
actually killing the bad guys!!
You'd think that physically beating up your suspects, holding a gun on them, and killing some would perhaps make for some
serious constitutional issues when it came time for Mr. District Attorney to actually prosecute the bad guys in court.
Not in
Midvale City!!
For what it's worth, in the eleven (
11!) stories in this comic, Mr. District Attorney
never once sets foot in a courtroom, or makes a motion, or does anything resembling prosecution.
Killing the bad guys, though? Yup, he does
that!
And not just people...
He shoots leaping snakes out of mid-air!!!!!!!
And he goes undercover to foil criminals...
...with the best comeback line in history!!
Man oh man, we really need
more district attorneys like this on TV!!
Law & Order: Kicking The Crap Outta Bad Guys Squad?
Hearing the title of this series always makes me think of The Kids in the Hall...
ReplyDelete"Just because your name is 'Mr. District Attorney' does not mean this is the only job you can hold."
"My name isn't 'Mr. District Attorney'. People just call me that because I'm the District Attorney."
"Well fine, then, it should be easy to put this little career mistake behind you."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU95F01IJsc
I have a few of the DC comics, I think early 50s. Neat books. I bought them in a bundle with issues of BIG TOWN, which might have been a show, too. I forget. The joys of finding "reading" copies of comics for a dollar at old Comic-Cons.
ReplyDeleteWayne--Hmm, I stopped my research after Dell's 1 issue. I never realized that DC had a (long-running) Mr. District Attorney series of their own--67 issues!! It ran from 1948-1959...
ReplyDelete