Murder Most Funny: Bret M. Herholz takes murder off the streets and puts it back in the mansion where it belongs.

Diary Of The Black Widow
Written/illustrated by Bret M. Herholz
Alterna Comics
Cover Price: $3; Available Here

From Mack Sennett’s silent “Keystone Cops” films to Peter Sellers Inspector Clouseau, there has been a rich tradition of bumbling, awkward — oh, let’s just say it — stupid cops in films.

But American comic books, born at the end of the 1930’s “gangster era” of Al Capone and Lucky Luciano, have always been a bit more supportive of the police.

During the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was featured in many comic books and often seemed more popular with comic book creators than with most of the guys who occupied the Oval Office. Commissioner Gordon may not be the world’s greatest detective, but he has consistently been Batman’s friend and ally — and maybe the only completely honest cop ever employed by the Gotham City Police Force. Comic book cops from Captain George Stacy in Spider-Man to Sam and Twitch in Spawn, may be cynical, but most of them are good at their jobs.

So it’s kind of a novelty to see a dumb cop in a comic book and they don’t come much dumber than the Detective Inspector in Alterna Comics Diary Of The Black Widow.

The 3-issue series, written, penciled and inked by Bret M. Herholz, features an Inspector (he may have a actual name, but it wasn’t given in the issue I read), that has detective skills as keen as Barney Phyfe or Chief Wiggins.

While the Detective Inspector is smitten with a woman (the Black Widow of the title) who is obviously a brazen murderess, he overlooks clues that would be obvious to two or more of The Three Stooges. The true detective in Diary Of The Black Widow is the Detective Inspector’s assistant, Jenkins, who is mocked and/or ignored by his arrogant boss.

When Jenkins finds a graveyard behind the Black Widow’s Manor House displaying tombstones with numbers instead of names, The Detective Inspector dismisses it as a pet cemetery. When Jenkins mentions the graves are a bit large for a pet cemetery, the Detective Inspector assures his assistant they may be occupied by “very large cats.” When Jenkins finds a human corpse in the cemetery, The Detective Inspector explains it as “a grave robber who accidentally tripped and impaled himself on his own spade.”

But if an arrogant Inspector berating a hapless subordinate was the only humor in Diary Of The Black Widow, it would get tedious quickly. Fortunately, Herholz inserts some clever and funny dialogue in the exchanges between Jenkins and his clueless boss. The Detective Inspector enthuses that “It’s an absolutely splendid night for an atrocity.” There is also a Butler named Merleigh (pronounced “merely”), a pretty good gas joke, and a nice bit about a murder victim strangling himself so as not to leave fingerprints.

But one of the greatest pleasures of Diary Of The Black Widow is its artwork. Illustrated by Herholz in a style reminiscent of Edward Gorey, the artwork is both fatally earnest and quietly engaging. The dry crispness of the art matches the dry humor of the story.

I hope all three issues of Diary Of The Black Widow are soon available as a trade paperback so I can read them all at once. As the second story of a 3-issue trilogy, this stands up well on its own, but I’d like to read the whole thing as a single body of work.

If your sense of humor includes the irreverent and the macabre, Diary Of The Black Widow may give you a few laughs.

And if you enjoy a droll parody of the kind of murder mysteries Agatha Christie excelled at writing, Diary Of The Black Widow may give you considerably more than a few laughs.