The Weed of Crime Bears Bitter Fruit

[skjam]

Back in 1942, the Lev Gleason line of comics had a profit sharing arrangement with their top cartoonists, Bob Wood and Charles Biro. They came up with the idea of a comic book concentrating on the crime genre, with an emphasis on stories ripped from the headlines of actual crooks. Silver Streak Comics became "Crime Does Not Pay", the first crime comic.

Reaching a paid circulation of one million at one point, Crime Does Not Pay paid very well indeed, eventually spawning many imitators. But a backlash of moral outrage from parents and educators eventually created the Comics Code, which sanitized the industry and protected it from outside regulation at the cost of losing much of the maturation process it had begun.

Crime Does Not Pay struggled on under the new regime, but with the loss of much of its luridness, circulation dropped drastically. Today's story is from the dying days of the magazine, #132, the March 1953 issue. As all the Lev Gleason line has fallen into the public domain, we can present this story in its entirety.













There's also a story about a cabbie who finds a dropped envelope, and one about a gambler who makes one too many tosses--if there's interest they might pop up later.

Your thoughts and comments?

Comments

[skjam]

1. Doiby Dickles fan?

2. You can tell they're amateurs...never blackmail someone who solves all his problems with murder.

3. I wonder if that was on his resume? "Hmm, good grades in law school, is working on passing the bar...master of disguise, eh? That will go well with my FBI training!"