Number 1322: Crime and/or Punishment

For day two of Pappy’s Crime Wave week (see yesterday's post for an explanation) we have the standard crime comic; i.e., what most people, especially censors, bluenoses and joykillers, meant when they pointed at something and said, “That's a crime comic!”

Crime and Punishment #1* came out in late 1947 and became the companion publication to the standard-bearer of the genre, Crime Does Not Pay. The publisher was Lev Gleason, the editors Charles Biro and Bob Wood, just like Crime Does Not Pay. We find the same kind of contents in the latter magazine as we do in the former...panel after panel of lurid criminal acts and in the last couple of panels some sort of moral and the criminal’s just due. He (or she in many cases) either ended up on the gallows, in the electric chair, or died a violent death by either cops or fellow crooks.

The contents of crime comics varied with American crime mixed in with crime in other countries. In this case we see Dan Barry’s great artwork on “Danny Iamasca, Dutch Schultz’s Triggerman” and Jack Alderman’s ink-heavy art on “The Butcher of Düsseldorf.” A note about crime comics: Their use of the word “true” doesn’t mean their version of truth got in the way of telling a good story. Truth may have figured in there somewhere, but not at the expense of cheap thrills. An exception might be made in the case of Peter Kürten, the Butcher of Düsseldorf (also called the Düsseldorf Vampire). His many crimes were so depraved the scripter and artist restrained themselves in telling the story. And that’s the truth.

C.H. Moore had a regular gig doing these informational pages. They were quite good. Moore used a style perfected by sports cartoonists in newspapers and also in the famous “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not.”

*There’s internal evidence that the title of the comic was originally Obey the Law but was changed to Crime and Punishment during production.

Number 1005





Boy King and the Giant





The Boy King rules a country called Swisslakia, which is taken over by Nazis. (This takes place during World War II, if you haven't guessed.) He has a huge stone friend who helps him.



This story is from Clue Comics #1, 1943, published by Hillman. They also published Air Fighters Comics, which became Airboy Comics. According to the Grand Comics Database this origin story is drawn by Alan Mandel and Dan Barry, and written by Charles Biro and Bob Wood. Clue Comics only lasted 15 issues, by which time it had some stories drawn by Jack Kirby. But the Boy King only lasted for nine issues before he was gone, and his last cover appearance was #8.

Number 996





The last time I saw Alcatraz...





...I was a visitor (not an inmate, although my mother told me often enough she expected me to end up in prison). Something that struck me immediately about the old federal penitentiary, on its own little island in San Francisco Bay, is how small it is. The impression from movies is that Alcatraz is a large, sprawling facility, but I have more room in my bedroom closet than the inmates had in their cells, and the mess hall was approximately the size of the lunchroom in an elementary school.



This close-in living with dozens of fellow psychopaths and the toughness of the prison's reputation provides the recipe for such an event as the Alcatraz mutiny. It's told here in a story from Crime Does Not Pay #48, 1946, beautifully illustrated by Dan Barry. As always, I'm cautioning you about the use of the word "true" in the splash panel. "True" was a floating concept in crime comics.

Number 934


Buster Brown and the Gods of Egypt


Buster Brown Comic Book was published by Brown Shoe Company for several years in the 1940s and '50s. They used some top comic artists, and they had interesting stories set in interesting locales. These two stories are set in Egypt, one in ancient times, one modern. They are written by Hobart Donovan, who was apparently the only scripter for Buster Brown Comic Book, or at least the only one given credit.

The Grand Comics Database does a guess on the artwork for "The Power Of The Great Cat" from BBCB #9, dated Fall, 1947. They credit Alex Kotzky?, so if you're a Kotzky art-spotter you tell us if it is by him. "Seb-Ek Crocodile God Of The Nile," signed by Dan Barry, is from BBCB #12, and is dated Summer 1948. I'm not sure how Grand Comics Database knows the dates, unless someone checked them with the Brown Shoe Company records. You won't find any dates in the comics because they don't include an indicia, or any kind of copyright notice, for that matter. Maybe the Brown Shoe Company didn't care. Maybe for them it was enough to publish these comic books to be given away to young customers in their shoe stores, and to make the kids holler, "I want Buster Brown!" when Mom and Dad said it was time for shoes. What I remember about the Buster Brown shoe store where my mom bought my shoes, besides making sure I got a copy of the free comic book, was sticking my foot in the fluoroscope and seeing the bones of my foot. That sort of thing is banned nowadays, but six decades on I haven't detected any problems with my feet caused by Buster Brown's fluoroscope. Any damage from the Buster Brown Comic Book is co-mingled in my brain with the thousands of comics I read in my life.

Note the variant spelling of pharaoh as "pharo" in the first story. Was this ever an accepted spelling?