"Meet Jennifer Mays, New York's prettiest detective, and Gabriel Webb, amateur sleuth and true crime writer, in another fair-play whodunit -- challenging you to solve the mystery as it unfolds!": The Maze Agency #6–23

The first four or five issues of The Maze Agency have been collected two or three times, by my reckoning. However, the original series ran twenty-three issues plus an annual and a special, and aside from one story from the annual and one from the special, none of that material has ever been collected. But it is all available on the secondary market for pretty reasonable prices.

Interestingly, the series was cancelled by publisher Comico after June 1989's issue #7, but the series was picked up by Innovation Comics... even continuing the numbering with December 1989's issue #8! (Issue #8 credits Comico editor Michael Eury, so I'd guess the issue was originally prepared for them.) If you're trying to read it all in order, note that special #1 was published between issues #12 and 13, and annual #1 between issues #15 and 16. It is very clear that the comic struggled in the comics market of the 1980s and '90s; it had acclaim, but never a wide audience. (It probably doesn't help that once Adam Hughes gets snapped up to draw JLA, the series never really has a regular penciller again; Hughes draws #8, 9, and 12; the other fifteen issues of the regular series feature eleven different pencillers.)

If you've read the first five issues, how these ones unfold won't be a big surprise to you: every issue features a done-in-one murder mystery when Jen and Gabe solve the crime. Supposedly they are all "fair-play whodunits," meaning the reader can look at all the clues and solve the mystery too. I didn't really attempt to do this because, though I enjoy reading them, I am not "good" at murder mysteries. Only one time, with issue #11's "…Twas the Crime Before Christmas…" (pencils by Robb Phipps), did I even come close, thanks to a very obvious clue about color blindness. In some stories, the explanations can get pretty convoluted, but that's all part of the genre in my experience; you've just got to roll with it. (I found #9's "The English Channeler Mystery: A Problem In Deduction" particularly far-fetched; I must not have been the only one, because someone actually writes into the lettercol with a completely different solution, claiming it fits all the facts, though writer Mike Barr disagrees. I also thought the "clues" in the one about a group of authors being murdered, #16's "If Books Could Kill…", beggared belief, though all the book stuff was quite fun.)

But when it hits, it hits. These are almost never not pleasurable in the way that murder mysteries ought to be pleasurable: fun characters, including some engaging cops for our leads to interact with, enjoyable pulling together of threads and ideas. I particularly enjoyed the aforementioned Christmas story in #11; the one where Jen's police ally herself becomes a suspect, #15's "Too Much Bliss" (art by Mike Okamoto, Mike Witherby, and Rick Magyar); and the one about a homophobic serial killer, #21's "Valentine's Slay." Surely the best of all, though, was issue #14's "Before Midnight" (pencils by Robb Phipps), where a death-row inmate who Jen helped put away is murdered just before his execution. Really tense and clever and well put together.

And though, as I said, the series never regains a regular penciller, there's still some solid artwork across these issues. I particularly liked Mary Mitchell's pencils on issues #16 and 21. (Alas, it doesn't seem like she had much of a subsequent career; her last credited work on League of Comic Geeks is a ten-page story in Marvel Valentine Special #1 from 1997.) I was also pleased to see some early-career work from Rob Davis on #19, who went on to do some excellent art and writing for Doctor Who Magazine from 2007 to 2011. Rick Magyar does most of the inks from issue #8 to 14, which helps maintain consistency, and he's definitely good value.

I only have two real complaints about this run. The first is that it stretches credulity for me when people investigate murders professionally just happen to encounter a murder mystery. I get this is a feature of the genre, but it gets overused a bit: in #6, Jen and Gabe go on vacation and encounter a murder, then in #7, they go to visit Jen's parents and encounter a murder, and then in #8 there's a murder in Gabe's apartment building. Quite a run there! Similarly, issues #16, 17, and 19 all feature murders they just happen to bump into, rather than ones Jen is hired to solve. It's a device that needs to be used more sparingly.

The other is that I felt like in the earlier issues Barr was setting up some stuff about how the two of them met that never gets paid off. A lot of the early issues revolve around Gabe wanted more of a relationship while Jen is reluctant, and I really enjoyed seeming them slowly grow closer together. But it seemed like the early issues implied there was a bit of a story there, and we never get to hear it. Also there's a lot of focus on Jen's family... but what about Gabe's? (Maybe I just wanted a story set in Ohio.)

The special and the annual are also good stuff. Special #1 sees Jen and Gabe solve three murders in one day, each one drawn by a different artist. I particularly liked the one based around Jen's haircut, "Afternoon: Murder by a Hair," one of the only times Rick Magyar provides pencils. Annual #1 is mostly a Spirit tribute (art by Rick Magyar, Darick Robertson, & Wm. Messner-Loebs); I haven't read any Spirit, but the stylistic diversion is enjoyable. 

All that said... if you like well-constructed comics and fun characters, this is definitely a highlight of the medium and the genre. It's a shame no one has ever crowdfunded some kind of definitive omnibus collection, but they're worth tracking down for sure. 

This is the second in a series of posts about Mike W. Barr's The Maze Agency. The next covers volume 2 from Caliber. Previous installments are listed below:

1. The Maze Agency vol. 1 #1-5 (1988-90)