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![]() Cover to an issue of Crime Does Not Pay , one of the earliest crime comics | |
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Crime comics is a genre of American comic books and format of crime fiction. The genre was originally popular in the late 1940s and early 1950s and is marked by a moralistic editorial tone and graphic depictions of violence and criminal activity. Crime comics began in 1942 with the publication of Crime Does Not Pay published by Lev Gleason Publications and edited by Charles Biro. As sales for superhero comic books declined in the years after World War II, other publishers began to emulate the popular format, content and subject matter of Crime Does Not Pay, leading to a deluge of crime-themed comics. Crime and horror comics, especially those published by EC Comics, came under official scrutiny in the late 1940s and early 1950s, leading to legislation in Canada and the United Kingdom, the creation in the United States of the Comics Magazine Association of America and the imposition of the Comics Code Authority in 1954. This code placed limits on the degree and kind of criminal activity that could be depicted in American comic books, effectively sounding the death knell for crime comics and their adult themes.
Petty thieves, grifters, and outright crooks have existed in American comic books and strips since their inception, while books and strips devoted to them and their activities are relatively rare. The comic strip Dick Tracy was the first to focus on the character and plots of a vast array of gangsters. Chester Gould's strip, begun in 1931, made effective use of grotesque villains, actual police methods, and shocking depictions of violence. It inspired many features starring a variety of police, detectives and lawyers.
As edited and mostly written by Charles Biro (with Bob Wood), Crime Does Not Pay was a 64-page (later 52-page) anthology comic book published by Lev Gleason Publications beginning in 1942 and running for 147 issues until 1955. Each issue of the series featured several stories about the lives of actual criminals taken from newspaper accounts, history books, and occasionally, as advertised, "actual police files." The stories provided details of actual criminal activity and, in making the protagonists of the stories actual criminals — albeit criminals who were eventually caught and punished, usually in a violent manner, by story's end — seemed to glorify criminal activity, according to several critics. An immediate success, the series remained virtually unchallenged in the field of non-fiction comic books for several years until the post-World War II decline in other genres of comic books, including superhero comic books, made it more viable to publish new genres.
Beginning in 1947, publishers began issuing new titles in the crime comics genre, sometimes changing the direction of existing series but often creating new books whole cloth. Many of these titles were direct imitations of the format and content of Crime Does Not Pay.
In May, 1947, Arthur Bernhard's Magazine Village company published True Crime Comics , designed and edited by Jack Cole. The first issue (#2) featured Cole's "Murder, Morphine, and Me", the story of a young female drug addict who became involved with gangsters. The story would become one of the most controversial of the period and samples of the art, including a panel from a dream sequence in which the heroine has her eye held open and threatened with a hypodermic needle, would be used in articles and books (like Geoffrey Wagner's Parade of Pleasure) about the pernicious influence and obscene imagery of crime comics.
Later in 1947, the team of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby began packaging a pair of crime comics for the Prize Comics line. Headline Comics (with a cover date of March) was transformed from adventure to a crime theme. Published with a date of October/November, Justice Traps the Guilty was a full-fledged crime comic from the onset, and besides Simon and Kirby, featured art by Marvin Stein, Mort Meskin, and John Severin. At the same time, Simon and Kirby revitalized Real Clue Comics for Hillman Comics, giving the title a true-crime veneer and transforming it from a serial character-driven mystery title.
EC Comics began publishing Crime SuspenStories in 1950 and Shock SuspenStories in 1952. Both titles featured, in the manner of the EC horror comics, fictional noir-style stories of murder and revenge with stunning art and tightly plotted twist endings.
In 1949, spearheaded by the campaigning of MP Davie Fulton, crime comics were banned in Canada in Bill 10 of the 21st Canadian Parliament's 1st session (informally known as the Fulton Bill). [1] The Criminal Code defined crime comics as a magazine, periodical or book that exclusively or substantially comprises matter depicting pictorially (a) the commission of crimes, real or fictitious; or (b) events connected with the commission of crimes, real or fictitious, whether occurring before or after the commission of the crime and made it an offence to produce, publish or distribute them. The provisions remained in the Criminal Code until December 2018 when Bill C-51 was adopted during the 42nd Canadian Parliament. [2] [3] Previously, crime comics also could be ordered forfeited by the provincial courts. [4]
Mystery, crime, and horror stories appeared in a number of anthology titles from various publishers but it was not until the advent of Warren Publishing's Creepy and Eerie in 1964 that the occasional crime story with a modicum of the style or violence that marked the comics of the late 1940s and early 1950s appeared.
Meanwhile, the genre had developed substantially in the hands of European and Japanese creators. In Europe, creators like Vittorio Giardino, Jacques Tardi, José Muñoz, Carlos Sampayo, William Vance and Jean Van Hamme have devoted substantial portions of their oeuvres to crime comics, especially to stories concerned with the trappings of detective fiction and police procedurals, often with a cynical, existentialist bent. Japanese creators like Osamu Tezuka ( MW , The Book of Human Insects ), Akimi Yoshida ( Banana Fish ), Takao Saito ( Golgo 13 ), and Kazuo Koike ( Crying Freeman ) have explored subject matter ranging from the criminal mind to Yakuza gangs in manga form.
American crime comics of the 1970s included Jack Kirby's In the Days of the Mob and Gil Kane's Savage.
In the 1980s, Max Allan Collins and Terry Beatty created the Ms. Tree series about the adventures of a female private investigator. Collins would go on to write the Road to Perdition graphic novels about 1930s gangsters.
Beginning in the late-1980s and 1990s, several American and British comic book writers have created notable work in the crime comics genre, sometimes incorporating noir themes and novelistic storytelling into realistic crime dramas and even into superhero comics. These writers include Brian Azzarello ( 100 Bullets , Jonny Double ), Brian Michael Bendis ( Sam and Twitch , Jinx , Powers , Alias ), Ed Brubaker ( Gotham Central , Criminal ), Frank Miller, David Lapham, John Wagner ( A History of Violence , Button Man ), and Paul Grist.
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)The Silver Age of Comic Books was a period of artistic advancement and widespread commercial success in mainstream American comic books, predominantly those featuring the superhero archetype. Following the Golden Age of Comic Books, the Silver Age is considered to cover the period from 1956 to 1970, and was succeeded by the Bronze Age.
Entertaining Comics, more commonly known as EC Comics, was an American publisher of comic books, which specialized in horror fiction, crime fiction, satire, military fiction, dark fantasy, and science fiction from the 1940s through the mid-1950s, notably the Tales from the Crypt series. Initially, EC was owned by Maxwell Gaines and specialized in educational and child-oriented stories. After Max Gaines' death in a boating accident in 1947, his son William Gaines took over the company and began to print more mature stories, delving into the genres of horror, war, fantasy, science-fiction, adventure, and others. Noted for their high quality and shock endings, these stories were also unique in their socially conscious, progressive themes that anticipated the Civil Rights Movement and the dawn of the 1960s counterculture. In 1954–55, censorship pressures prompted it to concentrate on the humor magazine Mad, leading to the company's greatest and most enduring success. Consequently, by 1956, the company ceased publishing all of its comic lines except Mad.
An American comic book is a thin periodical originating in the United States, on average 32 pages, containing comics. While the form originated in 1933, American comic books first gained popularity after the 1938 publication of Action Comics, which included the debut of the superhero Superman. This was followed by a superhero boom that lasted until the end of World War II. After the war, while superheroes were marginalized, the comic book industry rapidly expanded and genres such as horror, crime, science fiction and romance became popular. The 1950s saw a gradual decline, due to a shift away from print media in the wake of television and the impact of the Comics Code Authority. The late 1950s and the 1960s saw a superhero revival and superheroes remained the dominant character archetype throughout the late 20th century into the 21st century.
The Bronze Age of Comic Books is an informal name for a period in the history of American superhero comic books, usually said to run from 1970 to 1985. It follows the Silver Age of Comic Books and is followed by the Modern Age of Comic Books.
The Haunt of Fear was an American bi-monthly horror comic anthology series published by EC Comics, starting in 1950. Along with Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror, it formed a trifecta of popular EC horror anthologies. The Haunt of Fear was sold at newsstands beginning with its May/June 1950 issue.
Charles Biro was an American comic book creator and cartoonist. He created the comic book characters Airboy and Steel Sterling, and worked on Daredevil Comics and Crime Does Not Pay at Lev Gleason Publications.
Crime SuspenStories was a bi-monthly anthology crime comic published by EC Comics in the early 1950s. The title first arrived on newsstands with its October/November 1950 issue and ceased publication with its February/March 1955 issue, producing a total of 27 issues. Years after its demise, the title was reprinted in its entirety, and four stories were adapted for television in the HBO's Tales From The Crypt.
Shock SuspenStories was part of the EC Comics line in the early 1950s. The bi-monthly comic, published by Bill Gaines and edited by Al Feldstein, began with issue 1 in February/March 1952. Over a four-year span, it ran for 18 issues, ending with the December/January 1955 issue.
John Thomas Alexis Craig, was an American comic book artist notable for his work with the EC Comics line of the 1950s. He sometimes used the pseudonyms Jay Taycee and F. C. Aljohn.
George Roussos, also known under the pseudonym George Bell, was an American comic book artist best known as one of Jack Kirby's Silver Age inkers, including on landmark early issues of Marvel Comics' Fantastic Four. Over five decades, he created artwork for numerous publishers, including EC Comics, and he was a staff colorist for Marvel Comics.
Crestwood Publications, also known as Feature Publications, was a magazine publisher that also published comic books from the 1940s through the 1960s. Its title Prize Comics contained what is considered the first ongoing horror comic-book feature, Dick Briefer's "Frankenstein". Crestwood is best known for its Prize Group imprint, published in the late 1940s to mid-1950s through packagers Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, who created such historically prominent titles as the horror comic Black Magic, the creator-owned superhero satire Fighting American, and the first romance comic title, Young Romance.
Blue Ribbon Comics is the name of two American comic book anthology series, the first published by the Archie Comics predecessor MLJ Magazines Inc., commonly known as MLJ Comics, from 1939 to 1942, during the Golden Age of Comic Books. The revival was the second comic published in the 1980s by Archie Comics under the Red Circle and Archie Adventure Series banners.
Crime Does Not Pay is 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's 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."
Carroll O. Wessler, better known as Carl Wessler, was an American animator of the 1930s and a comic book writer from the 1940s though the 1980s for such companies as DC Comics, EC Comics, Marvel Comics, and Warren Publishing.
Novelty Press was an American Golden Age comic-book publisher that operated from 1940 to 1949. It was the comic book imprint of Curtis Publishing Company, publisher of The Saturday Evening Post. Among Novelty's best-known and longest-running titles were the companion titles Blue Bolt and Target Comics.
The EC Archives are an ongoing series of American hardcover collections of full-color comic book reprints of EC Comics, published by Russ Cochran and Gemstone Publishing from 2006 to 2008, and then continued by Cochran and Grant Geissman's GC imprint (2011–2012), and finally taken over by Dark Horse in 2013.
Horror comics are comic books, graphic novels, black-and-white comics magazines, and manga focusing on horror fiction. In the US market, horror comic books reached a peak in the late 1940s through the mid-1950s, when concern over content and the imposition of the self-censorship Comics Code Authority contributed to the demise of many titles and the toning down of others. Black-and-white horror-comics magazines, which did not fall under the Code, flourished from the mid-1960s through the early 1980s from a variety of publishers. Mainstream American color comic books experienced a horror resurgence in the 1970s, following a loosening of the Code. While the genre has had greater and lesser periods of popularity, it occupies a firm niche in comics as of the 2010s.
Headline Comics (For The American Boy) was an American comics magazine published by Prize Comics (under the indicia titles American Boys' Comics, Inc. for 21 issues, and Headline Publications, Inc. for 26 issues) from February 1943 – October 1956. The comic was transformed from a boy superhero/adventure title to a crime comic in 1947, with issue #23 (March). The publication became an anthology of the deeds of gangsters and murderers.
Jack Oleck was an American novelist and comic book writer particularly known for his work in the horror genre.
Arnold Book Company (ABC) was a British publisher of comic books that operated in the late 1940s and 1950s, most actively from 1950 to 1954. ABC published original titles like the war comic Ace Malloy of the Special Squadron and the science fiction title Space Comics, and reprints of American horror and crime titles like Adventures into the Unknown, Black Magic Comics, and Justice Traps the Guilty. British contributors to the company's titles include Mick Anglo and Denis Gifford. Arnold Book Company was closely connected to the fellow British comics publisher L. Miller & Son.