Sunday, February 28, 2016

What They Didn't Tell You On Law & Order (Or, Jack McCoy Vs. Batroc?!?)!

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?

3 comments:

Green Luthor said...

Hearing the title of this series always makes me think of The Kids in the Hall...

"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

Wayne Allen Sallee said...

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.

snell said...

Wayne--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...