1st Issue Special #4 - Lady Cop!

Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon. 

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There comes a time in every blogger's life when he must confront the inevitable.

And that inevitable is Lady Cop.

Lady Cop is, of course, a legend in comic circles and probably owes nothing at all to the TV show Police Woman.

But how does it go?

One day, Liza Warner's minding her own business, lying under her bed, when a man wearing skull and crossbones boots decides to murder her flatmates before leaving behind a playing card with the Ace of Spades on it.

Needless to say, this makes her feel bad and, so, because an officer of the law's told her she has great powers of observation, she decides to become a cop, so she can track down and bring the mysterious killer to justice.

After what seems like five minutes of training, she graduates but the ceremony's interrupted by an ex-trainee who flunked the academy and reacts as anyone would, by opting to explode everyone present. Fortunately, Liza bursts into action, smacks him one, grabs his grenade off him and disposes of it in a trash can.

From that moment on, no longer is she just Liza Warner. She is now, indisputably and for always, Lady Cop.

Instantly upon starting work, Lady Cop's plunged into a world of violence and VD.

Fortunately, it's not her own VD but that of a young girl who she discovers being threatened, on a rooftop, by her appalling boyfriend.

When he tries to foist his attentions upon our heroine, she arrests him and his bezzie mate but, as he's taken away in the car, he swears he will have his revenge upon Lady Cop.

Not that she cares. She's still on the lookout for the man in the boots.

And for the girl with the clap, who's run away.

Still, a woman doesn't live on arrests alone and, so, she takes a break from crime-fighting, to buy an ice cream for a black girl with no money.

That done, she, instantly, has to deal with a man robbing a grocery store. He knifes her in the arm but that's not going to stop Lady Cop and she swiftly beats him up.

But the grocer's stopped breathing!

Presumably, this is due to a heart attack, rather than ennui and thus it is that she has to give him mouth to mouth. This is the third occasion, so far in the tale, where her lips have met those of another.

Speaking of which, Lady Cop might be a one-woman justice machine but she's still a human, which means that, the day's work done, she then has to get some canoodling-time in with her never-before-mentioned boyfriend who demands she quits her job, so his friends'll stop laughing at him.

You might think she'd dump him at this point but she's too busy worrying about catching the man who killed her flatmates.

It's at this moment you realise we're about to get the shock revelation that her boyfriend is the killer.

Except we don't. We get more of VD Girl who Lady Cop now convinces to tell her father about her disease.

At first, her father takes it well by trying to punch her in the face but, with a quick speech, Lady Cop gets him to calm down and that's that sorted.

Except, no sooner has she done that than a friend of VD Girl's boyfriend appears and attacks Lady Cop with a chain. She and he plunge into the river but he can't swim, so she has to rescue him.

And, as the day ends and Lady Cop stands there, looking sideways at some buildings, she wonders if she'll ever catch her flatmates' killer.

And did she ever catch him?

I don't know. Apparently, after this, she made the odd appearance in other comics, including the Atom's and has even shown up on TV, in a more sinister form but what became of her mission, I've no idea.

What's good about this comic is it doesn't bore you. Robert Kanigher's script just rattles along at an insane pace, with incident piled upon incident, until you start to wonder how the poor woman doesn't have an untreatable level of PTSD before she even reaches her first lunch break.

It's also pleasingly drawn by John Rosenberger and Vince Colletta in that DC Romance comic house-style we're all familiar with.

What's bad about it is pretty much all the stuff that's good about it. It's so dramatic and incident-packed that it quickly becomes ludicrous, especially as Liza has no space at all to develop as an actual human being and just becomes a walking paragon.

Also, to be honest, the violence is a bit too sexy for my liking. I can't help feeling it's not sending out a good message to readers, and the dialogue's often ridiculous, to boot. I know VD's no laughing matter but Lady Cop's repeated pronouncements about it quickly turn it into one.

And there is, of course, the fact that everyone she encounters, from her own colleagues to criminals to victims, instantly takes to calling her, "Lady Cop," on sight.

You know what it all reminds me of?

Atlas Comics. With its rampant drama and lack of believable characterisation, it feels just like an Atlas comic but without the cannibalism.

So, this means I can't recommend it?

Too right I can.

It's Lady Cop. It's unique. It's magnificent and nobody should go to their grave without having read it.