Everyone knows Detective Comics as the home of The Batman, but he wasn’t the first detective to grace its pages. He wasn’t even Detective’s first masked mystery man. That honor goes to The Crimson Avenger! Your Major Spoilers Retro Review of Detective Comics #20 awaits!

DETECTIVE COMICS #20

Writer:  Jim Chambers
Penciler: Jim Chambers
Inker: Jim Chambers
Colorist: Uncredited
Letterer: Uncredited
Editor: Vincent A. Sullivan
Publisher: DC Comics
Cover Price: 10 Cents
Current Near-Mint Pricing: $10,000.00
Release Date: September 7, 1938

Previously in Detective Comics: In the earliest days of the comics, most of the creative cues were taken from comic strips. That’s why there were so many anthology books (all the better to emulate the Sunday Funnies), and why the content featured bigfoot cartoon silliness back-to-back with hard-boiled detectives shooting down the baddest of bad guys. Detective Comics featured the likes of Slam Bradly, Cosmo The Phantom of Disguise, and Speed Saunders, but it wasn’t until issue #20 that we got a real, honest-to-goodness masked adventurer. Our story begins with a back-room shooting, after which the killer, Joe Marko, gets acquitted, thanks to a dirty lawyer.

Of course, this catches the attention of Lee Travis, publisher of Globe-Leader, who steps in… as The Crimson Avenger! Something else that the Golden Age wasn’t big on was the modern origin story (The Crimson wouldn’t actually get one until 1986, thanks to Golden Age aficionado Roy Thomas), so we not only see a Crimson Avenger fully-formed, but already known and feared by the Underworld.

Of course, he’s known not as a vigilante, but as one of the big names in crime, which is another example of how blatantly his character swipes from The Green Hornet, whose radio program debuted in 1936. In addition to that “hiding in plain sight as a crime lord” motif, we also see The Crimson Avenger battling with a gas gun, a Green Hornet staple. And Lee Travis’s day job as a publisher is the same as Britt Reid’s. He even has a chauffeur ala Kato, though Wing is… a lot more dated.

This story doesn’t do a lot with Wing (which, given his pidgin dialect and the bright neon colors used to depict Asians in the comics of the day), but The Crimson Avenger pulls off an impressive gambit, convincing amoral lawyer Block to provide witnesses to cover a murder of his own, while faking the murder of the District Attorney.

It’s a pretty impressive series of moves, actually, as getting the murder weapons and fake suicide note from Block means that only Block’s fingerprints are on them. The D.A. isn’t killed, but Block takes the fall for attempted murder, while The Crimson Avenger’s involvement comes off as a would-be racketeer trying to protect his own rep.

Jim Chambers, the artist (and probable writer) of this story and creator of The Crimson doesn’t have any other major comic creations to his name, but it’s worth noting that his illustrations have appeared in actual pulp magazine issues of The Shadow. All in all, the debut of The Crimson Avenger makes Detective Comics #20 a standout in the pre-Batman issues of the comic, setting the stage for the Caped Crusader’s debut seven issues later by providing a metaphorical bridge between the two-fisted detectives and the superheroes to come, earning 3 out of 5 stars overall. By the 1990s, the Crimson Avenger would be treated as the first of the costumed heroes in the pages of JLA, and the foundation built here is a major reason why.

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