Jimmie Dale

Fictional biography

A wealthy playboy by day, at night he puts on inconspicuous clothes and becomes The Gray Seal, who enters businesses or homes and cracks safes, always leaving a diamond shaped, gray paper "seal" behind to mark his conquest, but never taking anything. He was just doing it for "the sheer deviltry of it" at first, but when a woman known only as Tocsin catches him she blackmails him to war on certain crime organizations.

Books

Dale's adventures first appeared in People's Magazine and then were collected into novels with the serializations generally appearing the year before the novel version was published.

In 2007, the first two books featuring Jimmie Dale/The Gray Seal were re-released as an e-book entitled Return of The Gray Seal.

Film serial

He also appeared in a movie serial, Jimmie Dale Alias the Gray Seal, in 1917.

Chapters titles were: 1. The Grey Seal 2. The Stolen Rubies 3. The Counterfeit Five 4. The Metzer Murder Mystery 5. A Fight for Honor 6. Below the Deadline 7. The Devil's Work 8. The Underdog 9. The Alibi 10. Two Crooks and a Knave 11. A Rogue's Defeat 12. The Man Higher Up 13. Good for Evil 14. A Sheep Among Wolves 15. The Tapped Wires 16. The Victory.

Legacy

Jimmie Dale/The Gray Seal is often credited with popularizing and evolving what would greatly influence later pulp and comic book heroes. The foppish playboy by-day-crimefighter-by-night routine had a precursor in The Scarlet Pimpernel, but it was Jimmie Dale that brought the idea into a contemporary setting and added the idea of a costume and mask for his secret identity, serving as a possible influence for characters like Zorro and The Shadow.

He also established the concept of a hero's secret hideout or lair, The Sanctuary, a precursor of the Batcave or the Fortress of Solitude.