A Little Ditty About John and Diane

DETECTIVE COMICS #246: John Jones’ Female Nemesis

I am surprised by the bluntness of this issue’s first panel (after the weird teaser they always have). It just plainly says “At police headquarters, it’s always Detective John Jones who gets the day’s toughest assignment…”

Oh. So they’re actually just purposely making his life miserable. Got it.

Today the Captain wants John to round up Tiger Raffity, a recently escaped convict. As John leaves, the young woman in the room asks the Captain if she can go on her first assignment with John. The Captain identifies the young lady as the daughter of the commissioner we have never met, Diane Meade. She’s recently passed her policewoman’s test, and he figures why not, she’ll be safest with Jones. Even though we just determined he always get the toughest assignments.

Diane puts on some lipstick and is super excited to hang with John because she has some wicked hots for him.

Out on the town, John has already tracked down this escaped con, who is just hanging out in a doorway. He uses Martian Angle Vision to see around a corner, then moves all his molecules to suddenly appear behind him and capture him. All in a matter of two panels. Then I guess he takes him back to jail and goes back to headquarters for the day’s second toughest assignment. You’d think they’d give him the rest of the day off or something. NO SUCH LUCK, JONES.

The Captain now informs John that it’s like a regular fuckin’ crime spree out there, as the Barnes Museum just reported the theft of a jeweled African mask and John needs to go take care of it and he needs to take Diane with him. He’s a little like, OH GREAT, but agrees that he can probably keep a lady from gettin’ murdered or something.

As they leave the police station, Diane lights a cigarette and asks John if he minds if she smokes. John immediately thinks “GOD FUCKING DAMMIT” to himself then tells Diane that it’s against regulations for probationary officers to smoke. Smooth, John. Maybe you could’ve just said, yeah actually, I do mind. No, make up a fake rule instead.

At the museum, the uh, curator, I guess? Some guy explains that shortly after they unpacked some new gem-studded mask, two guys in black-masks broke in and stole it. And it happened while his two assistants were out at lunch. How convenient.  John uses some Martian Vision to see tiny bits of black lint on their faces, but really those two guys just look fishy as shit and you don’t need eyes from Mars to know that.

John suggests to the curator that he leave him and Diane alone in the museum to look for clues. If I didn’t know better, I would assume he was going to put his moves on her in some ancient Egypt exhibit, but no this is actually just part of some elaborate plan. The curator leaves and sounds SO SUSPICIOUS as he does.

It’s like that whole panel is just full of ulterior motives, except there actually are none in it.

Once alone, John tells Diane that he suspects the two fishy assistants, not because they were fishy looking but because no one else knew the mask was coming. The two assistants though are listening in on the conversation on some weird intercom thing and decide to take care of John and Diane and fuck even bothering with masks this time. They push a totem pole over on top of John, unable to use his powers for fear of giving away his Martian identity.

The crooks lock them in a reconstructed prehistoric cave and take off, assuming they’ll be long gone by the time they find them there. When John wakes up in the cave, he needs to figure a way out so he does some weird thing with his arm that really, even if I typed it up your brain would just process it as “did some weird thing with his arm.” It makes the rocks blocking the cave move out of the way which causes Diane to declare that John MUST HAVE SUPER NATURAL POWERS.

How she came to this conclusion, I have no idea. But John shows her that no, I don’t, it was obviously just a freak avalanche that caused the rocks to move.  He needs to make a mental note though, right freakin’ now, this woman will leap to wild conclusions with little to no provocation.

Outside, John can easily follow the exhaust fumes of the crooks’ car, but can’t tell Diane this, so he suggests they split up. She go to one apartment and he’ll go to the other. DON’T GO IN THOUGH, he says, WAIT OUTSIDE FOR THE LOVE GOD.

As soon as she’s gone, he revs up his Martian Powers and quickly finds the crooks driving away from the city. He flies over them invisible, knocks them out, then picks them up out of their car, turns them invisible too, and flies them to the one’s apartment where Diane is waiting.

There they wake up and just assume they must’ve crashed the car and wandered back here. John goes around to where Diane is waiting and kicks in the door. These crooks must be seriously fucking confused. How did we get caught? How did we end up back here? What is happening? CURSE THAT DETECTIVE JONES.

Diane thanks John for letting her tag along, and John wistfully thinks of how fun it was having a pretty lady on the case.

Oh but if only she knew he was a Martian.

Aw it’s cool John.

I know some ladies who would be really into that sort of thing.