The Eye & the Secret Science of Keen Detective Funnies #20, at Auction

Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Vintage Paper | Tagged: centaur

Keen Detective #20 features an iconic Frank Thomas cover for his character The Eye, plus superscience from the Masked Marvel and Dean Denton.

Keen Detective Funnies had become one of the most interesting anthologies in comics by the time #20 arrived.  Hitting newsstands around the same time as Adventure Comics #48 (which was introducing Hour Man in that issue) and Marvel Mystery Comics #6, there was certainly plenty of competition by that time, and like some others, the issue is a fascinating snapshot of the early 1940 news cycle. The Masked Marvel deals with high-tech super-weapons that echo newspaper pieces about rumored Tesla death rays and superweapons. Dan Dennis plays G-Man in a fifth-column espionage scenario.  Dean Denton faces a “Magnetic Mine Menace” that borrows directly from Admiralty briefings.  The most memorable character of the series is The Eye, who tackles “alien smugglers” running illegal flights from Canada into Montana in this issue.  If you’ve ever seen an image of The Eye, chances are it’s the cover of Keen Detective Funnies #20, which Overstreet deservedly calls a classic.

Created by Frank Thomas, The Eye is literally a giant, disembodied eye haloed in some weird energy that arrives unannounced to watch, judge, and intervene. The character has no conventional origin, no secret identity, and no costume. It simply appears in rooms and over landscapes, speaks with absolute authority, and bends reality to enforce its sense of justice.  That concept appears to have been inspired by a specific visual from American history, resembling a literal version of the famous Pinkerton National Detective Agency logo, with its watchful eye and the motto “We Never Sleep.” The idea that the character’s brief series was named Detective Eye seems to reinforce this inspiration from what was once the most powerful private detective and law enforcement entity in the world, although one with a mixed historical reputation at best. The Eye of the Keen Detective Funnies #20 era has evolved into a supernatural representation of that symbolism.

While not as over-the-top as The Eye in this issue, Dean Denton’s Magnetic Mine Menace feature pulls even more directly from the war.  As an editorial caption notes early on, Magnetic Mines were “a new mystery weapon, dropped from planes.”  The real-world story, in which a mine dropped in the Thames Estuary failed to detonate and was disarmed and examined by Lieutenant Commander J.G.D. Ouvry and his team, reads like it could have come from a pulp or comic book.  And from there, the British turned this into an engineering problem and solved it. This Dean Denton story translates that chain of events into a fictionalized comic book form.  Given that the British efforts achieved experimental success on January 4, 1940, and Keen Detective Funnies #20 hit newsstands at the end of February, either Harry Campbell, the creator of Dean Denton, had an inside source or made some very good assumptions.

Keen Detective Funnies #20 was rated a Gerber 7 on the on the Photo-Journal Guide to Comic Books’ Scarcity Index, and recent sales have made that scarcity tangible. A CGC 7.0 sold for $7,800 in January 2025, a figure that takes Keen Detective Funnies #20 into new territory.  Overall, there are only 17 unrestored entries for the issue on the CGC census, and only five of those graded higher than this Keen Detective Funnies #20 (Centaur, 1940) CGC VG/FN 5.0 Cream to off-white pages copy up for auction at the 2025 December 11 Golden Age Comics Century Showcase Auction IV.

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