DETECTIVE COMICS #229: The Phantom Bodyguard
Thankfully we seem to have broken the habit of recapping the entire premise of the comic in the first 4 frames of each issue, but don’t worry, the newer, fancier “single frame recap” is coming up, and soon!
First though, millionaire Drexel Mansfield (I am totally gonna try to encourage people to name their babies “Drexel”) is standing outside near a cliff. Suddenly a strange figure that we don’t see pushes him off, but thankfully he falls into a net that was, I guess there for some reason. I don’t really get ocean stuff; it’s a mystery to me. At any rate the guy trying to kill him sure sucks at it. You push him off a cliff into the ONE NET that is there, jeesh.
Mansfield goes to the police to tell him that he thinks his business partner is trying to kill him to take full control. The captain assigns John Jones to be Drexel’s bodyguard until this is all taken care of. Meaning until John figures it out. No one else is going to bother trying to figure it out.
TIME FOR THE SINGLE FRAME RECAP! YAY!
And hey, we’re back to the J’onzz spelling again. Will it last? Only time can tell!
For some reason, Mansfield decides that the most awesomest thing to do in this situation is to go on a deep-sea fishing trip. What the hell. J’onn makes a mental note that Mansfield is really smelly, like whoa you knew we were gonna be hanging out today, couldn’t you at least take a shower?
As they fish, Mansfield heads to the back of the boat while J’onn at the front notices another boat coming at them at full speed. They crash and both Mansfield and J’onn are thrown overboard. The waters are…just goddamn FULL of sharks. No wonder they weren’t catching any FISH. It’s just fucking sharks.
Thankfully they don’t seem to be bothering Mansfield, and J’onn just turns into his Martian form to scare them off, which works for some reason.
It’s not like sharks are really scared of things. As J’onn changes back and swims to the surface he hears Mansfield yelling for help because he can’t swim. For fuck’s sake, I have to do everything, J’onn thinks to himself.
They go back to Mans’s mansion, where god-willing, some more weird shit will happen. The phone rings and Mans goes to answer it. As he does, the chandelier fucking comes loose and starts to plummet towards him. J’onn uses his Martian lung power to instead, lower it slowly to the ground. And when Mansfield asks him HOW he did that? He tells him that there were still a few wires holding it and lowering it down. Completely believable!
J’onn finally believes that someone is indeed out to kill Mansfield. He tells him to wait at his house while he goes to talk to his business partner Cowan. Using his powers, he walks through the wall into Cowan’s office. Startled, Cowan asked where he came from and J’onn just says that he’s been waiting here. What? Are you fucking serious? You’ve been WAITING there?
For some inexplicable reason Cowan just goes with this, and answers J’onn’s questions, particularly about the picture of him and Mansfield together on the swim team. Curious eh?
J’onn leaves the office with some sort of master plan for Mansfield’s party tonight. At the party, Mans tells him that he bought a gun, and he’s gonna use it if he’s gotta. J’onn, I guess, checks his permit and says it’s cool.
At the party, Cowan jumps out at Mansfield. Mansfield, ready with his gun, explains how he’s been faking the murder attempts so that when he shoots Cowan now it’ll seem perfectly reasonable. J’onn then jumps out from some bushes and tells Mansfield that he’s totally BUSTED. He knows Mansfield can swim, and that he was smelly because of all the shark repellent he was wearing. And you are going to jail! BAM!
Also your butler, because he helped you, but we’re not really gonna go over that very much we’re just mentioning him quick in case people try to poke holes in this!
It was the butler!