Four - Dust Bunny


                        

     It occurred to me--after reading the write-up Eric Burns did over at Websnark a few days before this page went up about old-time radio programs--that I've never acknowledged here the debt my Daily Grind comics owe to the old radio show I Love a Mystery.

     The show ran on several different networks from 1939 till 1953, I think, though I've only heard tapes of some episodes from 1949 and 1950 when it was on the Mutual Broadcasting System. The format was a 15 minute episode every day, Monday through Friday, so in that way, it's the perfect model for this contest. It concerned the adventures of Jack Packard, "Doc" Long, and Reggie York, three stalwart young men who ran the "A-1 Detective Agency" and traveled around the world confronting mystery.

     It was really odd, too--the characters were more than a little warped, and the stories had a slight supernatural tinge to them that was never quite dispelled even when everything turned out to be perfectly logical and mundane in the end. I've gone with a more "magic exists" approach in my stories--as Howlett's trying to explain here--but still, I like to think that I'm following in the footsteps of the program's writer and director, Charlton E. Morse, one of the great serial storytellers of our time.