Who Is Louie Lue??

Longer-term readers of my blog know that I've become a fan of the old Charlton Comics comic books. But I haven't written much about my secret love of Charlie Chan -- particularly the various movies starring Warner Oland and Sidney Toler. I understand that these movies are racially insensitive from today's standards, but there are great detective stories within those movies. I have often wished that PBS would create modern adaptations of the various "Charlie Chan" books. I'm not holding my breath, but it would certainly be a great opportunity to reintroduce the character for a modern audience in a much more responsible manner.

Anyway, there used to be CHARLIE CHAN comic book published by Charlton Comics back in 1955. Eventually, Charlton Comics lost the publishing rights to Charlie Chan and the character moved to DC Comics, of all places. But Charlton Comics had already commissioned a story for its CHARLIE CHAN comic book that went unpublished. Not a company to waste money on unpublished stories, they tinkered with the character and the artwork and came up with a brand-new Charlton Comics original character: Louie Lue!

Basically, Louie Lue is Charlie Chan with a different outfit and a pair of glasses. The two men talk the same. They both share adventures with their Number One Son. And they are both master detectives. It's just that Charlton Comics owned this character.

Louie Lue made his comic book debut in his one and only story, "Penthouse Prisoner," in ZAZA THE MYSTIC #10. The story featured story by Joe Gill, art by Charles Nicholas, and lettering by Jon D'Agnostino.

The story starts out with Number One Son (never actually named in the story) excited to discover money dropping out of the sky from a nearby penthouse. The bills themselves have cryptic messages on them: "Whoever gets this, call Walter at Frisky Fred's! Reward." Keep in mind that Frisky Fred's is a now-defunct gambling joint that had been shut down by the police. In other words, only somebody who has been out of touch for a while wouldn't know that Frisky Fred's is no more -- and one of the gambling ring's leaders had disappeared months ago and escaped prison. Is the gambling ring's leader, Augie Schmidt, hidden away in that penthouse? And if so, why?


Unfortunately, the penthouse elevator is guarded by a pair of gun-toting gangsters. Not too suspicious, eh? Leave it to Louie figure out a way into the penthouse to discover and capture the missing Augie Schmidt!


I've been mulling over short story ideas featuring public domain characters from Charlton Comics (as well as Dell Comics) and am starting to think about resurrecting Louie Lou, but I think that I would try to recapture the mystic atmosphere from some of the better "Charlie Chan" movies.