Leslie Lenrow, aka "The Ferret"
Created by Stockridge Winslow

THE FERRET is an early private eye character who irst appeared in Marvel Mystery Comics way back in 1940. According to the comics, he's a "well-known author and private investigator" who lives in Greenwich Village.

Unlike most of the other heroes (The Human Torch, Electro, The Submariner, etc.) who appeared in the book, The Ferret didn't have any real superpowers but he did have a bullet proof vest and a trained pet ferret named Nosey, so there.

He was also a pretty good detective, handy with his fists or a gun--which he had no problem using. But he was more than just another hard-boiled slugger, like DC's Slam Bradley -- he usedwhat were the time relatively scientific methods when working his cases. His typical cases involved jewel thieves, counterfeiters, bank robbers and assorted gangsters, who weren't exactly fans of his long string of "crime doesn't pay" articles.

The local constabulary weren't big fans either -- mostly because The Ferret delighted in embarrasing them.The Ferret appeared only about a half dozen times in the forties but more recently he has popped up in a few flashback tales with the Human Torch, and even in Ed Brubaker/Steve Epting-scripted The Marvels Project for a few issues before being bumped off by the Nazis.

Or at least as bumpoed off as anybody in comics can be. I'm sure he'll be back.

• The Ferret is not the first privat eeye from comics' past that Ed Brubaker has had a hand in bringing back from the dead -- he's performed the same duties for Slam Bradley and Dakota North.

• MARVEL MYSTERY COMICS
  (1940, Timely Publications).

• "Ferret: Mystery Detective" (#4, February 1940)
• "King of the Counterfeiters (#5, March 1940)
• "Murder of a Cosmetics Queen" (#6, April 1940)
• "Ferret: Mystery Detective" (#7, May 1940)
• "Mystery Detective" (#8, June 1940)
• "Ferret" (#9, July 1940)

Report submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. A very special thanks to Rick Frisby for ferreting out the goods on this weasel.