Without Sally the Sleuth there would be no Superman.

Sally the Sleuth premiered in 1934 as a crimefighting heroine, known for a penchant for shedding her clothes through the pages of Spicy Detective pulp paperbacks. From saving cocaine co-eds, fighting gun-toting gangsters, and escaping from a multitude of murderous monsters, Sally triumphed over the evils of the world – in nothing but her underwear.

Soon, Sally cleaned up her act and premiered in full-colour adventures – this time fully clothed. After a few short years, Sally’s adventures ended and by 1953 she vanished forever. As one of the highlighting heroines of the publisher that would later become DC Comics, Sally still has often been overlooked and ignored, and we’re aiming to bring back her place in comics history.

Content Warning:

This book depicts scenes of nudity and sexual assault, and contains some offensive depictions of women and people of colour. It should be remembered that the origins of the comics industry are not pure nor always pleasant, and we do not gloss over this in our edition. Remember this was the same publisher that had the rule of "only partial nudity allowed - unless it's a female corpse".

The Book

The main item for this project will be a 276 page, 6x9 edition of Sally the Sleuth’s adventures, with a 109 page colour insert.

A previous B&W version was released via print-on-demand in March 2018, and is included as a level.

The colour edition includes content found through private purchases of rare comics, and scans sent in from private collectors to offer over 25 extra pages from the black and white edition (which itself is over 100 pages longer than any other previous reprint of Sally’s adventures)! In addition, this new edition will have all of her colour adventures restored and reprinted, and printed through a Canadian printer to give the book extra quality.

The Research

A historical foreword has been provided by all-star historian Tim Hanley (Wonder Woman Unbound, Investigating Lois Lane).

Budget

The funds raised from this project go towards printing (23%), shipping (38%), colour restoration (29%) and payment processing fees (10%). The restoration will be done as a collaborative effort between Digikore Studios and Hope Nicholson. The budget is based on a print run of 350 copies, the minimum needed to keep the books at a $20 price tag each.

*Update July 10* Due to funding being lower than expected, the restoration will be done just by Hope Nicholson in order to make the goal.

The Rewards

There’s just a few rewards!

• E-book – this will be an ebook available through PDF made from the extended edition. Because of the quality of some of the archival scans, a comiXology version will not be made available for this project.
• Black and White Edition – 248 pages, 6x9, black and white
• Extended Colour Edition – 276 pages, 6x9, colour insert

Pick-up Options

If you are based in Winnipeg or Toronto we will arrange pick-up locations if you want to save on shipping! If you accidentally select this level and can't make the pick-up, we will arrange shipping at a later date.

Missing Issues

While this is the largest collection of Sally the Sleuth stories ever completed, it is not complete. Have one of the following stories? Let us know!

• "Secret Formula" (unknown date, Spicy Detective Stories)
• "unknown title" (May 1937, Saucy Detective Stories)
• "unknown title" (May 1939, Spicy Detective Stories)
• "unknown title" (October 1939, Spicy Detective Stories)
• "Human Contraband" (November 1939, Spicy Detective Stories) "Stand-In" (December 1939, Spicy Detective Stories)
• "Locked Room Mystery" (March 1940, Spicy Detective Stories)
• "unknown title" (September 1940, Spicy Detective Stories)
• "The Fifth Column Case" (November 1940, Spicy Detective Stories)
• "House of Horror" (March 1941, Spicy Detective Stories)
• "unknown title" (January 1942, Spicy Detective Stories)
• "Dictator of the Zombies" (January 1943, Speed Detective Stories)
• "Nazi Rats in the Beer Vats" (February 1943, Speed Detective Stories)
• "Peril in the Deep" (April 1943, Speed Detective Stories)
• "A Sweet Racket" (May 1943, Speed Detective Stories)
• "Night Club Trail" (June 1943, Speed Detective Stories)
• "Death at the Ball" (April 1949, Private Detective Stories)

Note to Canadian funders: ifundwomen.com charges in USD funds so please be aware in advance of pledging.