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Curated playlist

Fictional private investigators

  • Dick GraysonDick Grayson, the DC Comics hero who first appeared in Detective Comics #38 in April 1940, has changed more often than almost any character in superhero comics. He began as a child performer in a circus family. Since then he has carried at…
  • Sherlock HolmesSherlock Holmes never says "Elementary, my dear Watson" in any of the sixty Conan Doyle stories.
  • Mike EhrmantrautMike Ehrmantraut began life as a placeholder. The writers of Breaking Bad needed someone to fill a gap in the second-season finale, titled ABQ, because Bob Odenkirk, the actor who plays Saul Goodman, had a commitment to appear in How I Met…
  • Mac GarganMac Gargan, a Marvel Comics supervillain, once said he would go through anything "just so long as the pay is good!" That line tells you most of what you need to know about the man before the costumes. Gargan began as a private…
  • Dante (Devil May Cry)Dante of Devil May Cry was almost a Western policeman. His early name was Tony Redgrave.
  • Spider-Woman (Jessica Drew)Spider-Woman, the Marvel Comics heroine whose civilian name is Jessica Drew, began as a legal precaution. In 1978, Marvel's publisher Stan Lee explained that he feared a rival company might publish its own book called Spider-Woman and then…
  • Rorschach (character)Rorschach, whose real name is Walter Joseph Kovacs, is the masked vigilante at the center of Watchmen, the graphic novel series DC Comics published in 1986. The very first character to appear in that series is a red-haired man carrying a…
  • Jessica JonesJessica Jones is a Marvel Comics superhero who spends much of her story trying not to be one. She runs a detective agency called Alias Private Investigations, and she is usually its only employee. Yet Marvel eventually placed her in a high…
  • Iron Fist (character)Iron Fist is a Marvel Comics superhero whose hidden home city appears on Earth only once every 10 years. His full name is Daniel Thomas Rand-K'ai, though readers know him as Danny Rand. He is a martial artist who can gather his chi into a…
  • John ConstantineAccording to Alan Moore, John Constantine once walked up a flight of stairs into a sandwich bar in Westminster, London. Moore told Wizard magazine about it in 1993. The man wore a trenchcoat and a short haircut, and Moore said he looked…
  • Mystique (character)Mystique, the blue-skinned shapeshifter of Marvel Comics, has an earliest recorded appearance in her own stories that dates to the years around 1900. At that time she lived in a male guise as a consulting detective. She formed a romance…
  • Sam & MaxSam & Max is an American media franchise built around a dog and a rabbity creature who work as vigilante private investigators. In 2007, their creator Steve Purcell admitted he was somewhat surprised by how far they had travelled. Their…
  • MetamorphoMetamorpho, the DC Comics hero, begins as a mercenary named Rex Mason who takes a job to steal an Egyptian artifact called the Orb of Ra. For a man who sells his skills to the highest bidder, it should be a routine theft. Instead it sends…

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