(Daredevil Comics 005, 1941)
We open on a demonstration by one Dr Roe of his invention the Death Detector, which he purports is able to determine if someone is incapable of murder (yellow light displayed), potentially capable of murder (red light) or has in fact murdered someone (blue light).
While the implications and legalities of this device are legion (e.g., how does it determine this, does it distinguish between killing in self defense and manslaughter and premeditated murder, would widespread adoption of this technology create a semi-criminal class of Red Light People who are discriminated against despite having done nothing wrong, etc, etc), the really important thing about this demonstaration is that Bart "Daredevil" Hill taunts mobster "Nat" Nattony into going up on stage, whereupon he murders Dr Roe. Would the machine give Bart a blue light for being directly if inadvertently responsible for Roe's death, I wonder.
Daredevil makes off with the device in order to keep it safe, but the upside of whole sordid affair was that it provided a means of proving the machine's efficacy, as before taking off he had used it to search the crowd for Nattony and instead turned up a different wanted murderer. Now the FBI wants the Death Detector and the Daredevil aims to get it to them.
Nattony's boss Curly is understandably concerned about this development and calls the nation's gang bosses together in Atlantic City for a Crime Convention to discuss the matter. After a lot of goofy business with gangsters picking each others' pockets and so forth, the assembled ranks of crimedom take a vote and determine that the best way to deal with the Daredevil is to pick out twelve of gangland's most proficient killers and send them after him. Thus: the Deadly Dozen!
The members of the Deadly Dozen are: the Crusher, Egg Head, Snake Eyes, Skully, Benito, the Butcher, the Giant Killer, the Owl, Satan, the Sniffer, the Turk and Lady Killer, and though I love the idea of this group on many levels (gather together a bunch of vicious assassins! With diverse and distinct idiosyncrasies and fun names! Yes please!) there is one notable flaw with the concept of the Deadly Dozen, and that is that every single one of its appearances takes place in an anthology comic in which there is simply not enough room to spotlight every member of a twelve-strong team.
This might be the only story in which each member of the Dozen gets even a token shoutout, rather than mooching around in the background while a couple of highlighted characters get on with the action. As such, we'll take a quick look at them in the order that they appear in-story:
the Sniffer:
The Sniffer stands out from the moment that he appears in that initial group shot, and it's no surprise that he is the breakout star of the bunch, with his own ongoing feature starting in Daredevil Comics 008. A rough, crude, hairy, flat-headed brute who wears rough clothes and rope belt while everyone else is in a suit or tuxedo, the Sniffer is a real rough-and-tumble rowdy boy. As his name suggests, he also has a superhuman sense of smell, capable of locating, for example, the Daredevil in a warehouse full of criminals.
Lady Killer:
Lady Killer doesn't even get a line before he is beaten up and hung from the telephone pole he was lurking behind for the Daredevil. Hopefully his name derives from the fact that he is a handsome man and not from the fact that he tends to kill ladies, like his recent fellow Lev Gleason character, but it is possible that we will never know.
the Crusher and Egg Head:
The Crusher and Egg Head fall prey to the ol' duck-out-of-the-way-when-they're-about-to-shoot-you-from-two-sides-so-that-they-shoot-one-another trick, but don't worry, they survive. I'm no gun expert but I'll bet that they specifically tell you not to shoot at something that's in front of someone you don't want to shoot for exactly this reason.
Both Egg Head and Crusher are mainstays of the Deadly Dozen, with speaking lines in just about every story I scanned through just now. With Egg Head this is likely because of his visually distinct bald dome, while Crusher has the distinction of becoming known as Sniffer's best friend over time. He even appears in the very last Sniffer story in the far-distant future of 1956!
Snake Eyes, the Owl and the Turk:
Snake Eyes, the Owl and the Turk make a decent attempt at ambushing the Daredevil while pretending to be FBI agents, only to be beaten up in pretty short order. I haven't read through every Deadly Dozen appearance, but I reckon that this poor showing is also their career highlight, which is a real shame in the cases of the very visually-interesting Owl and Snake Eyes.
Skully and the Butcher:
Skully and the Butcher get tricked into shooting and knifing one another, respectively, with embarrassing ease by the Daredevil. Once again they are retroactively fine due to the demands of future stories, though this does call their competence as killers into question somewhat.
Though the Butcher seems to be just another face-in-the-crowd member of the Dozen, Skully gets a fair number of speaking roles going forward.
(Skull Score: 1 - just an emaciated face on ol' Skully I'm afraid)
the Sniffer (again), Satan, Giant Killer, Benito:
Here we have a very contrasting group, with Sniffer and Satan (de facto leader, visually interesting, always in a speaking role) alongside Benito (most boring member, couldn't even muster up a nickname, I'd be surprised if he ever gets another line of dialogue) and Giant Killer (solid middle of the roader, not just bald but short, probably gets a line now and then). All four of them get tossed off the train, and that's it for the Deadly Dozen.
Like I said, I love the Deadly Dozen conceptually and I love the Sniffer specifically, and it's nice to have those feeling about characters who will be returning, for once. I don't think that the problem of one dozen being too damn many members to showcase in a single comic, but who knows? Maybe I'm wrong and some hidden Golden Age gem awaits me still.
As for the Death Detector, not only does it get safely delivered to the FBI so that they can start planning out the dystopian society they're going to form around it (Gattaca meets Minority Report, I reckon), but the Daredevil is able to lead them back to Atlantic City to round up the whole Crime Convention for use as test subjects.
(almost forgot to include this terrific pic of Daredevil vs the Sniffer from the cover)
Categorized in: Alphanumeric (Twelve), Language (Superlatives - Deadly), Team Index
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