I was just looking again at my collection of Pacific Comics'
SUN RUNNERS series, and the "Mike Mahogany" backup feature in issues 2-4, by Roger McKenzie and Paul Smith. Another great character with too few appearances.
The title character is a ventriloquist's dummy, whose standup comedian owner is murdered, and the dummy comes to life and becomes a hardboiled private detective, and inadvertently ends up on the trail of his former owner's killer.
Here's a sample, the
first page of the series.
Part Philip Marlowe, part Pinocchio, and maybe a touch of Eisner's THE SPIRIT, this is a fun little series that's complete in 3 issues. It's also among the first times I saw Paul Smith do both pencils and inks of his own art (the only other I can think of offhand from that period was Paul Smith's Howard the Duck story in BIZARRE ADVENTURES 34, another excellent story.)
There was a
double-page house ad for the series in SILVERHEELS 2 (and possibly ran in other Pacific titles) that would have made a nice wraparound cover for a collected edition of the three 8-page stories.
