There are no new ideas...
It's a quiet day at the detective agency of
Young King Cole, when:
Oh, man...it's the old
Brewster's Millions story!!
It was originally a novel in 1902, then a Broadway play, then adapted into film form at least 10 times, and gosh knows how many sitcoms and other TV shows have borrowed the premise!! And also probably used in 10,000 comics, including this one!
By the time this comic was published, the story had already been filmed
5 times, most recently just 4 years earlier. So you'd be hard pressed to claim our comic creators were unfamiliar with the fact that they were kinda stealing the idea.
Still, it is a fun idea, so let's forgive them, and read along:
Yup, there's always some
doddering old curmudgeonly fool of a father/uncle/grandfather in these stories...
Now, let's remember that this was
1949, so
a) a million bucks was an awful lot of money back then;
b) luxury back then wasn't the ridiculous and unfathomable luxury of the top 1% today; and
c) the deceased always put some goofy restrictions on how the money could be spent:
So why go to Cole and company?
Whoa!!
Well, true to the fashion of these stories, it turns out that spending a million in a single day--or even just your share, 200 grand--is a lot more
difficult than you'd expect:
And...
And...
OK, this is all well and good. But this is supposed to be a
crime comic--where's the
crime?
Don't worry--our creators have put a
twist into the old Brewster story:
WHAT?!?!?
Of course it's the lawyer!
Cole gets captured,
Brent gets away, Cole uses a printing press to escape...and it turns out the scheme is a pretty good one!
Well done!!
Of course, Cole and the cops put the kibosh on the counterfeiters...but there's one
more twist left!
Fisticuffs ensue...
Nice work if you can get it.
Oh, wait, there's still one
more final twist!!
Ha ha ha!!!
And that's how you poach a classic idea and twist it into something (
slightly) new!!
From Criminals On The Run V#4 #6 (1949)
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