Ken Shannon
Created by ??

A comic book private eye from the early fifties, handsome, two-fisted shamus KEN SHANNON had a short run with his own comic book, after making his debut in issue 103 of Police Comics.

Alas, it was not to be. As of issue #11, Ken Shannon became Gabby, a teen humor mag. Must have been quite a change from the opium den story that ran in #8.

But in his short, glorious run, Ken had some fun, going up against white slavers, Oriental criminal masterminds, shrunken heads and, on one memorable occasion, zombies. Billed as "the crime-busting private eye," lantern-jawed Ken supposedly bore more than a passing resemblance to My Three Sons' Fred MacMurray -- including a bowtie. Like the blurb says, "Uncanny, Terrifying!"

Tough as Ken was (he was sometimes referred to as "The Mad Irishman!"), it seems that his plucky, red-headed gal Friday ("and any other day of the week") Dee-Dee Dawson, may have just been a little tougher. Or at least she got some of the best lines. "Not that I scare easy, Kenny, but at this moment even my goose pimples have goose pimples."

Or how about, "Oooh, lovely, Ken! Hit him again!"

Okay, so it's not Hammett or Chandler, but come on, admit it -- they just don't write 'em like that anymore.

COMIC BOOKS

• POLICE COMICS
  (Quality Comics Group)
  Art: Reed Crandall, Jack Cole
  Ken Shannon made his debut in #103, and several subsequent appearance in this mag until getting his own book in 1951.

• (December 1950, #103)
• "The Bullet-Riddled Bookkeeper" (July, #117)
• "The Lonely Hearts Killer" (#122).

• KEN SHANNON
  (1951-53, Quality Comics Group)
  10 issues, April 1951-October 53
  Art: Reed Crandall, Jack Cole

• "The Evil Eye of Count Ducrie" (#1)
• "Cut Rate Corpses" (December 1951, #2)
• "The Corpse ThatWouldn't Sleep" (February 1952, #3)
• "One Day I'll Kill You" (February 1952, #3)
• "In the Shadow of the Chair" (April 1953, #10)

STRANGE BUT TRUE

• The Ken Shannon story "The Corpse That Wouldn't Sleep" was reprinted in Craig Yoe and Steve Banes' Zombies: The Chilling Archives of Horror Comics Vol. 3. I kid you not.