Come Jail Away

DETECTIVE COMICS #237: The Sleuth Who Went to Jail

Wait, what? To jail? Wasn't he just in jail like three issues ago? How is he going to jail again?

It's like the writer of this comic wrote that first jail story, then three weeks later suddenly came up with a different jail story that he liked way better and felt so stupid for even writing that first one and didn't even care that John had just been to jail, he's writing this new jail story and he is writing it right goddamn now.

While John cringes at a hobo stirring up a fire in a garbage can, he notices that a jewelry store across the street is being robbed. As he peers inside with his Martian Vision, he is suddenly knocked out with a blow to the back of the head. 

When he awakes, he is in a prison courtyard, some sort of weird underworld prison where a group of thugs are jailing rival gangsters. I guess they want to try to reform them or something. THE SYSTEM DOESN'T WORK GUYS!

John wants to get close to the leader of the operation, so he decides to stir up trouble. A guard brings him bread and water, but John asks for a turkey dinner instead. The guard says no, so John walks through the wall to the nearest restaurant and returns.

With an entire turkey. 

As the....strangely well-dressed-for-a-fake-prison guard tells the warden about John's stunt, they allow him to continue consuming this whole turkey, and decide he should be placed on laundry duty. 

In the laundry room, they leave John alone and he of course uses his amazing Martian mental powers to make all of the clothes wash themselves.

The guard returns and is once again freaked the fuck out.

Fine detective. To the quarry with you!

John again uses his brain energy beams to smash the rocks and his Martian lungs to blow them all into the back of the truck. Fine, the warden says, they will bring the chief in on this.

They throw John in a room and tell him shovel coal into a...oh no! A fiery furnace! John is losing his powers, but also says he needs to keep shoveling because if that guard shoots him the bullets won't affect him and everyone will know his secret. 

As the prison leader arrives, John summons his last bit of energy to use his Martian vision and bring down the water tower, spilling into the room and extinguishing the fire.

He knocks out the gangsters and gets many congratulations from the...captain? 

I never know who his dang boss is.

CARPe Diem

DETECTIVE COMICS #236: The Great Earth-Mars Mystery

This dang crook is giving John one hell of a time. He steals shit, naturally, and then heads to the waterfront. He jumps in and seemingly disappears. Even John can't keep up with him! Even with his superspeed! And his, his...mist-dispersing vision. His magic eyes that do whatever they want!

After a tough night of trying to catch him, John returns to his home and tries to get a view beam through to Mars again.

I have no idea when he suddenly got this machine, how long he's had it, what it does, where it came from, anything. It is just suddenly there, and also suddenly working! On a screen in front of him are his parents, who were apparently expecting his uh, view beam. They ask J'onn where he is and he explains how he became stranded on earth. 

When are you coming home though? You never visit and you never call. You know how we worry about you. Don't you care about us? 

J'onn immediately regrets calling his parents and remembers why he left that damn planet in the first place. Wait no he didn't leave on purpose. He's just starting to wish he had. Stop bugging me mom! I live my own life now! I'm an awesome detective and stuff!

Well we could use a detective on Mars too, you know.

Moooooooooooooooooooommmmmm.

Wait no, they actually could use a detective on Mars.

See, some raiders are using the exact same escape trick the crook on earth is. They're plundering museums and leaping into the canals which are apparently the home of some fish that are covered with other smaller fish, and of course, the giant Martian cruise ship. 

Suddenly everyone is talking about meters like it's a measurement of time and I am momentarily confused. 10024 meters ago? What? J'onn says goodbye to his parents and spends a while pondering the two cases, when he has an epiphany and rushes to the waterfront where the Chief is on stakout.

He stares off at the nearby buildings when suddenly he sees the crook and takes off after him. 

He dives off the roof of the building he's on and sees the crook getting into a small underwater...boat thing. He chases him and crashes the boat, catching the criminal. He explains to the chief that crook was getting in this underwater boat and attaching it to the bottom of these other ships as they left the harbor. 

He figured this out from those weird fish on Mars.

Apparently the crooks on Mars are doing this too, but you never actually see J'onn say that or call his parents to let them know. 

He's too busy with his hip new earth life. 

Oh, Oh, Oh, It's Magic

DETECTIVE COMICS #235: The World's Greatest Magician

One day at the station, John and the Chief are approached by the owner of the circus that is passing through town. Someone has been stealing from him! Their latest take being the diamond-studded collar that their lion wore. My initial reaction was why do have that thing on a lion, but immediate retracted it, as "on a lion" is probably a pretty safe place to keep something like that. 

The circus owner suspects one of his performers but when he went to the police in another town, they had trouble figuring out who, as the crimes stopped once they were involved. How to catch them?! 

A duuuuh, says John. I'll go undercover! I totally used to be a magician!

You...um okay. The circus owner agrees and John uses "concentration" to grow a goatee. I'm not sure of the actual mechanics behind this growing. Did he shapeshift a goatee? Or is he like, actually just growing it fast? How does this work? 

The owner introduces John to the rest of the circus as J'onzz the Great and he performs his first show that night. First he makes an elephant float by uh concentrating at it, it would seem. I think if J'onn just thinks hard enough he can do absolutely anything. 

The other circus performers are absolute flipping out at this. This damn magician has gone too goddamn far. He can't float an elephant, that's just too much. Next J'onn climbs into a box and has them stab him with swords that he just allows to pass through his translucent body. 

Finally he climbs up to the high wire, except that it's no wire! It's a strand of thread! 

Everyone is having an absolute shit-fit at his goddamn stunts. Who does he think he is? 

Unfortunately none of his crazy tricks manage to lure out the thief, so John decides he needs to sweeten the pot.

The next night, he has a boy place an object in a box and says that he will duplicate the object in another box.

Someone from the audience shouts that this is just too far! TOO FAR J'ONZZ! YOU'LL PAY FOR CRIMES AGAINST MAN AND GOD!

First he looks in the box and sees it is an ice cream cone. Then he uses...component parts from the very atoms in the air and make another ice cream. 

He continues to make duplicates of various things for audience members for 30 damn minutes, until finally one guy doesn't want to reveal what he had duplicated. Like he had the magician duplicate his favorite sex toys or something. NO! DON'T SHOW EVERYONE! IT'S TOO EMBARRASSING!

Oh wait no, he had J'onn duplicate the diamond-studded lion collar he stole! 

The thief runs towards the fire-eaters flaming torches though, having noticed earlier that they startled J'onn. J'onn blows them out from across the room though and apprehends the criminal who turns out to be the circus's clown. 

The circus owner asks J'onn one last time how he blew out those torches. J'onn says "I'm a Martian! A freakin' Martian! Hahahahaahahaha!"

N0, he says he can't tell  because of some Magician's Oath crap.

JUMPING CATS!

DETECTIVE COMICS #234: The Martian Convict

This is maybe, maybe the most sensible story in this entire book. J'onn goes undercover at a prison to figure out who is planning a prison break that the warden suspects is going to happen.

Don't worry though, dumb stuff will still happen.

At the station, the chief sends Detective Jones down to the prison to check out this prison break rumor. It's important to figure it out before the break occurs, even though the chief states that the prison is apparently escape-proof. Escape-proof! It is far better designed than the martian prisons where you float in space for the rest of your life. 

John decides he needs a disguise, as many of the criminals would recognize him as the detective that arrested them. Unless they were arrested when he pretended to be a ghost and drove them to confess their crimes. Those ones won't recognize him. 

The disguise they stick on him is, quite seriously, a bigger nose and a pair of glasses. While they put the uh...nose on him, the cheif lights up a cigarette and J'onn momentarily panicks. I strap in for a large fire to start later. 

In the prison, they put John near the break's presumed ring leader Big Mike. They suspect there are two other ring leaders, and John turns invisible and walks into Mike's cell late at night to eavesdrop on their plans. 

The next morning while still covertly spying on Mike during laundry duty, a big basket of laundry hits John in the back and knocks his disguise off. 

I am still a bit flabbergasted as to why a shapeshifter would wear a fake nose, but when it gets knocked off one of the cons recognizes him and rushes off to tell Mike, who says that Jones is on his last case! I get excited for the big fire! Oh boy!

Then as John is working lumber detail (lumber detail? what?) the line on the crane snaps somehow and a pile of lumber almost crushes John. I guess it's presumed that the cons did that to try to kill him, but I don't know how or when. Later John is in the license plate plant (god, seriously?) when a barrel rolls towards him somehow (there's no one near it) and almost knocks him into the stamping machine. A guard notices his second near-death experience in one day, and tells John to man, go take a nap or something, I'm tired just watching you. 

Big Mike is frustrated at his failure to kill Jones, and decides instead to frame another convict as being one of the escape plans leaders. He tucks a note into a the pants of another con, and John sees it, grabs it and arrests everyone he can right then and there. Big Mike throws the bar of soap that he apparently carries around with him at another con that his laughing at him. 

As John looks over the record of the framed convict he realizes that he's been had, and also figures out who the third break leader actually is! He runs back to the guy Mike threw the soap at. It's him! And inside the soap is the evidence!

What?

Who hides evidence in..

I guess convicts.

And that's the end, prison break busted.

HEY WAIT WHERE WAS MY FIRE? WHAT THE HELL?