Smile When You Say That, Podnuh, Department
Created by Joe Millard and Alex Toth

SIERRA SMITH was actually one of the first private eyes to appear in DC comics, outside of its flagship magazine, Detective Comics.

The catch here was that Sierra was a "Western Detective." He roamed the American west with his "lovely female assistant/secretary named Nan in the late 1800s, working "cases" and slugging and shooting it out with an assortment of desperadoes, renegades, rustlers, train robbers and the like. He may have been a bit heavy-handed in dispensing his own peculiar brand of western justice -- he seemed to get in almost as many brawls as Slam Bradley -- but he considered Marshall Bat Logan one of his best friends.

Appropriately enough, he made his first appearance in Dale Evans #1, September-October 1948, as a back-up feature, and went on to appear over twenty times in that magazine, and occasionally in other DC comics.

Sierra was created by Joe Millard and illustrated at least in the first eleven issues of Dale Evans by the legendary Alex Toth. This early work by Toth is much sought after by collectors -- Toth wasn't even old enough to legally vote at the time. As even more incentive, some of this work was inked by an equally young Joe Kubert.

COMIC BOOKS

• DALE EVANS
  (1948 --, DC Comics)
  Writers: Joe Millard
  Artists: Alex Toth, Joe Kubert
  Sierra appearred as a back-up feature in issues # 1--19 and 21-23

• "The Case of the Terrified Tenderfoot" (September-October 1948, #1; reprinted in Detective Comics #418, 1971)
• "The Case of the Battered Balloonist"" (November-December 1948, #2)
• "The Case of the Perfumed Plunder" (January-February 1949, #3)
• "The Case of the Outdated Outlaw" (March-April 1949, #4)
• "The Case of the Forgotten Stagecoach" (May-June 1949, #5)
• "The Case of the Colossal Fossil" (July-August 1949, #6)
• "The Case of the Teetering Tower" (September-October 1949, #7; reprinted in 1972, Detective Comics #424)
• "The Case of the Five-Cent Fortune" (November-December 1949, #8)
• "The Case of the Haunted Horse" (January-February 1950, #9; reprinted in 1974, Detective Comics #444)
• "The Case of the Oily Worm" (March-April 1950, #10)
• "The Case of the Furious Fiddler" (May-June 1950, #11)
• "The Case of the Ailing Elephant" (July-August 1950, #12)
• "The Case of the Missing Totem Heads" (September-October 1950, #13)
• "The Midnight Marauders" (September-October 1950, #13 ; reprinted in 1958, My Greatest Adventure #22)
• "The Ghost of Castle Ranch" (November-December 1950, #14)
• "The Case of the Lost Locomotive" (January-February 1951, #15)
• "The Case of the Moonlight Masterpiece" (March-April 1951, #16)
• "The Rustled Wrestler" (May-June 1951, #17)
• "The City That Was Stolen" (July-August 1951, #18)
• "The Case of the Baffled Bloodhound" (September-October 1951, #19)
• "The Case of the Baffling Baseball Diamonds" (January-February 1952, #20)
• "The Double Who Almost Died" (March-April 1952, #21)
• "The Case of the Jovial Jackdaw" (May-June 1952, #22)

• DETECTIVE COMICS
  (1937--, DC Comics)
  
  

• ""The Case of the Slumbering Sleuth" (April 1954, # 206)

Sierra rfeprints also appearred occasionally as a back-up feature in Detective Comics.

RELATED LINKS

• The Thrilling Detective Web Site: Detective Comics
  A listing of all the private eyes who have shown up in DC Comics.

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.