Murder in the Maze

"Our readers are children! Millions of bloodthirsty little kids, and we give them what they want!"

"The Adventure of the Comic Book Crusader"

Note to self: when planning posts in advance, make sure not to skip a week by accident, resulting in me having to write a post hastily because apparently, I didn't have a post scheduled for this week until I noticed last minute.

I have read a lot of mystery comics from Japan. I am of course reading series that are still running like Detective Conan and Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo, but also read a lot of shorter, older series, especially after the release of the fantastic Honkaku Mystery Manga Zemi ("Honkaku Mystery Comics Seminar", 2018), which provides an overview of the many, many mystery comics that have been published in Japan. In particular, this book focused on honkaku mystery comics, so puzzle-plot focused stories and as you peruse this book, you'll learn that this genre has a long history in Japan, and have been extremely succesful starting in the nineties. On the other hand, I have always wondered about such comics outside Japan. I know of a few of them, of course, like the Mickey Mouse comics, or Inspecteur Netjes, and while I know there have been comic versions of Ellery Queen and other characters, I was more interested in original characters. One of the names you'll likely to come across sooner or later when looking for puzzle plot-focused American comics is The Maze Agency, created by Mike W. Barr, with various artists working on various series (runs). Originally published privately by Barr (with art by Alan Davis), the series was professionally published starting 1988 and has since seen also seen two follow-up series in the nineties and the early 2000s. The Maze Agency will even see even a completely new series later this year, as the fourth series will start late 2023. So it's a series that's been around for a while, even if it runs very irregularly.

The series is about Gabriel Webb, a a young true crime writer who would rather write puzzle plot mysteries. As of late, he has been trying to woe Jennifer Mays, a former CIA agent who now runs the succesful private detective burea the Maze Agency (Mays... Maze...). While the determined, headfast Jennifer runs a very efficient detective bureau herself, she occassionally does take Gabriel along for non-conventional jobs, because as it turns out, while Gabriel is a bit scatter-minded and clumsy, his free mind is precisely the type of brain needed for the more baffling cases Jennifer sometimes handles, like a supercar disappearing within seconds, a psychic being targeted by an unknown assailant or an art thief who steals the frames, but leaves the paintings!

The series was strongly inspired by Ellery Queen, and in fact, in essence, The Maze Agency is built up as a fair-play mystery, with proper clewing, and while there's not always an informal Challenge to the Reader, the fact each issue is about 30 pages long means that you know that around page 25 you should have all the necessary clues to, in theory, solve the crime. I say in principle, for there are plenty of issues where the clewing is so clumsily done to "surprise" the reader or the art doesn't really convey a clue well enough, so they end up feeling not as fair as the story pretends it to be. That said, having read about ten issues now, it is a fairly entertaining series, if not to see how Jennifer and Gabriel's relation very slowly evolves while they are solving all these crimes. The crimes themselves are often quite alluring, and the story-telling is dynamic, with twists and turns.

The first few issues follow a very familiar formula, with the initial crime, Jennifer and Gabriel investigating the crime, "some kind of dangerous scene" happening to create some suspense (like the murderer trying to attack Jennifer and Gabriel for nosing around too much), an occasional second murder and then the denouement, where Gabriel and Jennifer explain how the crime was done and where they point out the clues the reader should've picked up. Later issues move a little bit away from this, but as each issue is about the same in length and always last for only that one 30-page issue, the story beats usually don't change too much per story, even if the stories themselves can be varied. The second issue Murder - the Lost Episodes for example involves an interesting plot regarding a legendary television show, and while I think the last reveal of the murderer could've felt so much more satisfying if there had been more clues, I think the part preceding that was a fun idea. Issue 4, The Return of Jack the Ripper, is about members of a Jack the Ripper society being killed one by one. One clue pointing to the killer is quite nicely thought off, and mixed well with the Ripper theme. Issue 6, Double Edge, involves a locked room murder occuring during Gabriel's birthday party at a club. While the trick is a bit silly and unlikely to work, it is the kind of trick that makes you realize writer Barr does really like classic mystery fiction, as this is the kind of trick you could imagine to see in a classic locked room murder mystery. Issue 7, Hearts of Glass, where Jennifer meets an old friend who worked at the CIA, but who is killed in a locked room, similarly has a trick that is just a bit silly, but just imaginative enough to work for me.

A highlight is issue 9, where Gabriel and Jennifer team up with none other than... Ellery Queen! Written to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Ellery Queen, The English Channeler Mystery starts with an attempt on the life of a medium who channels the spirit Noraga has been made by poisoning her water, so Jennifer is hired to investigate the case, as well as Ellery. who via his father and Sergeant Velie also learns the details of the case. They are not capable of stopping an actual murder from happening, but they can work together to solve this murder. While the plotting is certainly not top-level, the type of reasoning seen in this story is particularly close to the Queen style of eliminating suspects, and it really fits this Queen crossover. And yes, this time, there is a Challenge to the Reader!

Overall, I do feel these first ten or so issues of The Maze Agency often feel just too short to really work out the clewing that these plots, in theory, provide. A lot of the gripes I have with these stories could easily have been solved just by allowing for more pages to tell the story more slowly and plant more clues and they end up feel a bit rushed in the thirty page limit. Artwork also differs sometimes per issue, and the placing of visual clues is perhaps therefore not always really strong. For example, clues like "look at how high this is" aren't really conveyed well via establishing shots or shots that clearly show certain characters' heights in comparison etc. Partially a problem of the artist, partially a matter of the writer needing to clearly point out that something is a visual clue.

But reading an issue of The Maze Agency once in a while is pretty fun, and I am interested to see how this new series will turn out, especially as surely series like Detective Conan being available in official English translation for decades now must have had some influence on how to do a fair-play mystery comic, right? I'll probably read more of this series in the future too, and if there's a really great issue I'll be sure to discuss them again.