Crime Does Not Pay (comics)

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Crime Does Not Pay
Electrocution cover, issue 42
Publication information
PublisherLev Gleason Publications
ScheduleMonthly
FormatOngoing series
Publication dateJuly 1942 – July 1955
Creative team
Created byCharles Biro
Bob Wood
Written byCharles Biro
Bob Wood
Artist(s)Charles Biro
George Tuska
Splash panel from Crime Does Not Pay number 55, September 1947. Artwork by Dan Barry.

Crime Does Not Pay is an American

The 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."[2]

Origin

When

MGM
film series.

First issues

Heralded by ads in other Gleason tiles, Crime Does Not Pay took over the numbering of Silver Streak comics with issue 22

"Diamond Joe" Esposito, and gunfighter Wild Bill Hickok
.

Initial issues sold approximately 200,000 copies each, a healthy number for the time, but by the end of World War II the title was selling 800,000 per issue. When sales reached one million in 1948, the editors added the claim "More Than 5,000,000 Readers Monthly" to the cover, a reference to the pass-along effect of comics circulation.[3][6]

Content

Mostly written by Charles Biro, the stories in Crime Does Not Pay became known for their lurid detail, confessional tone, and exceptional, violent artwork. The stories often dealt frankly with adult relationships, drug use and sex, in addition to the depictions of physical violence, torture, and murder that were standard for every issue.

Recurring features included "Officer Common Sense", beginning with issue 41, "Chip Gardner", issue 22, and "Who Dunnit", puzzle mystery series with art by Fred Guardineer, beginning with issue 39.

Mr. Crime

Issue 24 introduced the Biro-designed figure of Mr. Crime, the cartoon mascot of the series, who narrated and commented on the action depicted in the comics, addressing his readers in a joking, conspiratorial tone. Mr. Crime dressed in a white top hat (labeled "Crime") and white sheet. His bizarre visage resembled a gremlin, with pointed ears, nose and teeth. In many ways he was similar to the character of Mr. Coffee Nerves from a series of print ads for

Inner Sanctum
radio program.

Mr. Crime's attitude toward the tales he narrated was ambivalent at best. In some panels he seemed to approve of and even encourage the crimes of a story's miscreants (acting as a sort of anti-

denouement
, to remind readers that, as the title indicated, "Crime Does Not Pay".

Other crime comics

Prize Comics, November 1947). Artwork by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby.

The series remained essentially alone in its choice of subject matter for most of the 1940s but eventually inspired a host of imitators, including Jack Kirby and Joe Simon's Headline Comics and Real Clue for Hillman Periodicals (1947), Marvel's Official True Crime Cases (1947), DC's Gang Busters (1947), and Fox's Crimes by Women (1948). In response, Gleason and Biro ran attack ads in their own comics and launched a companion title to Crime Does Not Pay, called Crime and Punishment, in 1948. However, 1948 also saw more publishers enter the genre, with the result that, by one estimate "thirty different crime comics were on the stands by the end of 1948 and by 1949 roughly one in seven comics was a crime comics."[7]

Demise

Although continuously popular in terms of sales, Crime Does Not Pay and other crime comics increasingly became the targets of concerned parents, clergy, and other groups who were disturbed by the content of the comics and saw the stories as one of the root causes of a variety of social ills, including illiteracy and

Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, many publishers, including Lev Gleason, censored their own comics and adopted a strict code administered by the Comics Code Authority
. The sanitized Crime Does Not Pay that resulted lasted only a few issues before being canceled with issue #147 in 1955.

Spinoffs

Crime and Punishment
Cover of Crime and Punishment #1 (April 1948) by Charles Biro.
Publication information
PublisherLev Gleason Publications
FormatOngoing series
GenreTrue crime
Publication dateApril 1948 – August 1955
No. of issues74
Editor(s)Charles Biro
Bob Wood

The success of CDNP inspired Gleason and company to release Crime and Punishment, which ran from 1948 until 1954. The series ran for 74 issues and was primarily overseen by the same creative team from CDNP, Charles Biro and Bob Wood. The series differed from CDNP in that it featured less violent editorial content and featured stories that more prominently depicted police officers. The series' ghostly narrator, instead of the ghoulish Mr. Crime, was a policeman killed in the line of duty.

Reprints

In Fall 2011,

Eisner Award
for Best Archival Collection/Project in 2013 with 10 volumes released. Dark Horse has scuttled plans to continue the line, although Volumes 11 and 12 were announced but never published.

References

  1. ISBN 978-1605490892
    .
  2. ^ Jones 194
  3. ^ a b Wright 26
  4. ^ Goulart 231
  5. ^ Markstein, Don. "Crime Does Not Pay". Don Markstein's Toonopedia. Retrieved 22 April 2020.
  6. ^ Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed #163 Archived 2008-08-28 at the Wayback Machine, Comic Book Resources, July 10, 2008
  7. ^ Wright 58
  8. ^ Robot 6. "2012 Harvey Awards nominees announced". robot6.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

Further reading

External links

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