The same month that Culture Publications introduced the reading public to Spicy-Adventure Stories, they also debuted one of their leading characters in Spicy Detective Stories — Sally the Sleuth.
Sally was created by Adolphe Barreaux, the art director of Donenfeld Magazines and Culture Publications. Born January 9, 1899, it will soon be the 125th anniversary of the artist’s birth.
A former student of the Yale University School of Fine Arts, Barreaux joined Donenfeld Magazines in July 1933, initially working on The Police Gazette. As the publishing company grew, it naturally required more illustrations.
In 1934, Barreaux formed an artist agency to coordinate the production of all the interior art that appeared in Donenfeld magazines, including comic strips. The Majestic Art Studio became the first comic shop, a model later duplicated by Harry Chesler, Jack Binder, and others.
Soon after Harry Donenfeld and Frank Armer introduced the first of their Spicy pulps in 1934, Barreaux convinced them to include a comic strip in each issue of Spicy Detective Stories. The artist’s Sally the Sleuth debuted in the November 1934 issue of the Culture Publications detective pulp.
In The Spectacular Sisterhood of Superwomen: Awesome Female Characters from Comic Book History, Hope Nicholson writes:
In strictly formatted two-page, twelve-panel adventures, Sally would be pitted against dangerous criminals on the orders of her private detective boss. Sometimes she operated with the aid of a strange little boy called Peanuts, who had a crush on her.
Sally was an incredibly good detective, with a keen mind for quick and fast deductions based on the most minimal of clues. She frequently went undercover (usually as a showgirl or a professional flirt) and would do anything to crack a case. That almost always meant that she ended up dressed in a sheer negligee, or was completely naked. Despite a lack of clothing, Sally usually managed to conceal a gun on her person, and she saved herself about as often as she needed to be rescued.
The success of the Sally the Sleuth comic strip led Culture Publications to feature strips in their other pulps, including Diana Daw in Spicy-Adventure Stories and Speed Adventure Stories; Olga Mesmer, the Girl With the X-Ray Eyes and Vera Ray in Spicy Mystery Stories and Speed Mystery; Polly of the Plains in Spicy Western Stories; Marcia of the Movies in Saucy Movie Tales; and Dan Turner in Hollywood Detective. Barreux’s Majestic Studio also created strips for other pulp magazine publishers as well as for the growing comic book industry.
In 1949, Adolphe Barreaux became Editor-in-Chief of Trojan Magazines and co-owner — with Harry Donenfeld — of the short-lived Trojan Comics in 1950. He later joined Fawcett Publications as an editor for their Special Interest Books Division. He died in 1985, at the age of eighty-six.
So happy birthday Adolphe Barreaux and happy New Year from PulpFest and Sally the Sleuth!
Our featured image has a New Year kind of look and is excerpted from the cover art for Spicy Detective Stories for January 1937. Our lead image is from Spicy Detective Stories for November 1934. It features the first appearance of the Sally the Sleuth comic strip. Both covers are by H. J. Ward.
Our example of Adolphe Barreaux’s Sally the Sleuth comic strip is excerpted from “Coke for Co-Eds,” originally published in the January 1938 issue of Spicy Detective Stories.
Nearly 20 years after her debut, Sally was still battling crime in the pages of Trojan Comics’ Crime Smashers. She’s the blonde in the background of Joe Kubert’s cover for Crime Smashers#2, dated December 1950.
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