Crime

CRIME COMICS

LEV GLEASON PUBLICATIONS

http://class.georgiasouthern.edu/writ3030/MurderIncorporated.html

Crime Does Not Pay is the title of an American comic book series published between 1942 and 1955 by Lev Gleason Publications. Edited and chiefly written by Charles Biro, the title launched the crime comics genre and was the first "true crime" comic book series. At the height of its popularity, Crime Does Not Pay would claim a readership of six million on its covers. The series' sensationalized recountings of the deeds of gangsters such as Baby Face Nelson and Machine Gun Kelly were illustrated by artists Bob Wood, George Tuska, and others. Stories were often introduced and commented upon by "Mr. Crime", a ghoulish figure in a top hat, and the precursor of "horror hosts" such as EC Comics' Crypt Keeper. According to Gerard Jones, Crime Does Not Pay was "the first nonhumor comic to rival the superheroes in sales, the first to open the comic book market to large numbers of late adolescent and young males."^[1]

^{MORE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_Does_Not_Pay_(comic}

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FOX FEATURES SYNDICATE

http://class.georgiasouthern.edu/writ3030/FamousCrimes.html

Fox Features Syndicate

Murder Incorporated #1
Fox Features Syndicate
January, 1948

This book marks the entry of publisher Victor Fox into the crime genre, with the titles Famous Crimes and Crimes By Women only months behind. The Fox titles are (obviously) among my very favorites. If Victor Fox understood nothing else, he certainly knew that a good cover meant strong sales. For the most part, Fox crime comics are unreadable due to awful interior content (both the art and the writing, usually)...but the covers make it all worthwhile!

http://www.crimeboss.com/gallery_faves.html

A crime comic with a twist came out in early 1948. This was called Murder Incorporated, named after a famous group of mob hit men that were in the news. It was published by Fox Features Syndicate and had an Adults Only label on it. This would be the first newsstand comic that attempted to make their comic for adult readers only. Inside were 3 stories all said to be true. They involve Charlie Birger, Michael Malloy and the duo of Arthur J Wright and Winnie McKeever. The first two has been identified as having some basis in fact, the last one I have not found any evidence of being true yet. There are no credits inside the comic. As with other Fox comics, the cover is slighter thicker paper than the insides and the first story page starts on the inside cover. The stories do show a lot of violence, with bullets going through people (men and women) and red, bloody bullet wounds. The murderers inside are very callous and think nothing of killing people. After two issues the Adults Only label was dropped. The title went 16 issues but oddly there would be 2 issue #9s. Then the series became a romance title called My Private Life. Fox would bring Murder Inc. back in 1950 starting with issue #5, but the following 2 issues would be numbered 2 and 3.

http://www.thegraphicnovels.com/nsp1-20.html

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Crime Reporter #1
St. John Publications
August, 1948

Though it only ran for three issues, Crime Reporter is one of my favorite titles. The cover art on all three issues is spectacular. Interestingly, the covers to issues 2 and 3 are attributed to Matt Baker (of Phantom Lady fame) in Overstreet and Gerber, and indeed they are signed "Baker" visibly. This cover sure looks like Baker's work to me. If anyone has any info on this cover's artist I'd greatly appreciate an e-mail.

MORE: http://www.crimeboss.com/gallery_faves.html

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BEST CRIME COMICS:
EVERY SHADE OF NOIR

The following article originally appeared as the introduction to the comics-anthology The Mammoth Book Of Best Crime Comics, edited by Paul Gravett and designed by Peter Stanbury, published in July 2008. Best Crime Comics is a 480-page collection of 24 of the greatest crime comics ever - some of the slickest, moodiest graphic short stories ever collected, from the mean streets and sin cities of crime. They range from America's classic newspaper-strip serials and notorious uncensored comic books to modern graphic novel masterpieces and features some of the greatest writers and artists in comics, including Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Joe Simon, Jack Kirby, Johnny Craig, Alex Toth, Bernie Krigstein, Jack Cole, Jacques Tardi, Gianni De Luca, Paul Grist, Charles Burns, Will Eisner, Alex Raymond and others.

If your only real exposure so far to crime comics has been the Sin City graphic novels by Frank Miller or maybe their faithful big-screen adaptations, you'd better fasten your seat belt, you're in for a foot-to-the-floor ride through this compendium of the cream of crime comics. Along the way, you'll see how several of Miller's acknowledged masters and peers enthrall with their pacing, atmosphere and verbal and visual panache. You'll also see how Miller's battered, bandaged Marvin belongs in a long line-up of lean, mean machismo going back to the Thirties and before, when gangsters fought the cops for control of America's cities.

It was a war back then, fought on the streets and in the strips. Newspaper comics may have started out as 'The Funnies' offering mainly light relief from the grim front pages, but all that changed on August 13th 1931. After ten years of rejections, cartoonist Chester Gould received the telegram he'd been waiting for: publisher Captain Joseph Patterson of the Chicago Tribune syndicate wanted to see him about his latest ideas for a strip, Plainclothes Tracy: "I decided that if that police couldn't catch the gangsters, I'd create a fellow who could." Gould kept that telegram framed on the wall as his most cherished possession, after Patterson signed up Gould's concept, shrewdly shortening the name to the punchier Dick Tracy, who rapidly became a circulation-boosting phenomenon.

MORE: http://www.paulgravett.com/articles/154_bcc/154_bcc.htm

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So here it was, late 1946 and some publishers began to take note of small publisher Lev Gleason. Gleason had a almost unnoticeable section on the news racks because he only sold a handful of titles. One was Daredevil Comics which sold very well, and another was titled "Crime Does Not Pay", which first came out in 1942.

It was a highly successful title, depicting according to the blurb on the cover "ALL TRUE crime stories". The covers were real gruesome events. On one a maniac is forcing a woman's head onto a burning stove top, on the next three guys are blasting away with machine guns at a bloodied bank teller, the next cover had a bloodied man thrown from a speeding car and yet another had a guy about to hack a woman with a cleaver while there were five dead men "hanging" from a tree limb nearby. It is not difficult to understand why this title was so popular, but it is difficult to understand why comic publishers took so long, five years, to cash in on the crime title's success.

So here it was, 1946/47 and suddenly a whole assortment of crime comics were coming out. True Crime, True Western Crime, Women Outlaws, War Against Crime and Crimes By Women. EC publisher Bill Gaines was converting titles like International Comics into Crime Patrol, and crime comics were all over the place, and they were a smash, and the companies profits soared again.

MORE: http://www.comic-art.com/history/history5.htm