Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Vintage Paper | Tagged: gardner fox, Magazine Enterprises, ogden whitney
Gardner Fox’s Maid in the Morgue in Manhunt #6, at Auction
Gardner Fox and Ogden Whitney had worked together since 1939 on the likes of Adventure Comics, Skyman, and More — including Manhunt’s “Maid in the Morgue”
In an era when comic book covers sometimes had little connection to the issue’s interior stories, Ogden Whitney‘s cover for Manhunt #6 points the reader right to it: “Maid in the Morgue. See Next Page.” But opening this issue leads to something different from the comic book adventure the image might suggest. The bound woman, morgue drawer, and threatening knife represent a two-page prose mystery by Gardner F. Fox, printed on the inside front and back covers. And while Whitney’s bondage cover emphasizes the woman’s helplessness, Fox’s story gives its reporter heroine the deductions that expose a murder. Her ability to solve the crime is what gets her into trouble.
Gardner Fox’s Maid in the Morgue
The reporter is Myra Hallowell, and the supposed suicide of Billy Morany’s wife doesn’t add up. The dead woman was right-handed, but the gun was placed in her left hand. A second bullet mark behind a radio cabinet gives Myra another reason to question what really happened. Fox builds his murder mystery around these physical details quite well, while Whitney represents the story with a classic 1950s crime comic bondage cover.
Probably best remembered as the co-creator of Herbie Popnecker at publisher American Comics Group, Whitney had worked with Gardner Fox since the beginning of his career, with his earliest identified work being a Fox-written story in DC Comics’ Adventure Comics #42. Whitney and Fox co-created the superhero character Skyman for Columbia Comics. Whitney had done sporadic Magazine Enterprises work since 1943. His work there picked up after the war, and it eventually included crime and espionage. In this issue, he provided art for both the Fallon of the FBI and Undercover Girl stories as well as the cover.
Fallon’s “The School for Spies” in this issue is particularly noteworthy as an agricultural front in upstate New York conceals a Communist school intended to infiltrate labor unions. Such a hidden “Communist school” was already a subject of newspaper headlines: a September 8, 1947 Neosho Daily News report described UP correspondent Lyle Wilson’s account of a Communist school in New York.
The CGC census lists 30 Universal entries, with two at 7.0 and six higher. A classic Ogden Whitney bondage cover with a Gardner Fox story to mach, there’s a Manhunt #6 (Magazine Enterprises, 1948) CGC FN/VF 7.0 copy with light tan to off-white pages up for auction at the 2026 September 24-26 Comic Books Signature Auction #7469.
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