Crime comics are a genre of American comic books popular in the 1940s and 1950s. The genre 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 Great Britain, and the creation in the U.S. 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 U.S. comic books, effectively sounding the death knell for crime comics and their adult themes. Look up genre in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A comic book is a magazine or book containing the art form of comics. ... Leverett Gleason Publications was the publisher of a number of popular comic books during the 1940s and early 1950s, including Daredevil and Boy Comics. ... Charles Biro is an American comic book writer, chiefly known for creating the wartime comic Airboy. ... Combatants Major Allied powers: United Kingdom Soviet Union United States Republic of China and others Major Axis powers: Nazi Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Harry Truman Chiang Kai-Shek Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tojo Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead... Entertaining Comics was headed by William Gaines but is better known by its publishing name of EC Comics. ... The seal of the Comics Code Authority, which appears on the covers of approved comic books. ...

History

Although petty thieves, grifters and outright crooks have existed in U.S. comic books and strips since their inception, books and strips actually devoted to criminals and criminal activity are relatively rare. The comic strip Dick Tracy was perhaps 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. Dick Tracy inspired many features starring a variety of police, detectives, and lawyers but the most memorable devices of the strip would not be featured as prominently until the publication of Crime Does Not Pay in 1942. Dick Tracy is a comic strip detective and a popular character in American pop culture. ... Chester Gould (November 20, 1900 – May 11, 1985) was the creator of the Dick Tracy comic strip, which he wrote and drew from 1931 to 1977. ...

As edited and mostly written by Charles Biro, 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 oftentimes 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 becomes 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. The following persons are known under this name. ...

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. Crime SuspenStories was part of the EC Comics line in the early 1950s. ... Shock SuspenStories was part of the EC Comics line in the early 1950s. ... This still from The Big Combo (1955) demonstrates the visual style of film noir at its most extreme. ...

Decline

After the imposition of the Comics Code and the cancellation of the majority of crime-themed titles, U.S. crime comics went into a serious decline, with very few titles appearing over the next few decades. 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 1940s and 1950s appeared. Warren Publishing is a magazine firm founded by James Warren, who published his first magazines in 1957 and continued in the business for decades. ... Creepy was a horror-comics magazine launched by Warren Publishing in 1964. ... Look up eerie in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Notable crime comics of the 1970s included Jack Kirby's In the Days of the Mob and Gil Kane's Savage. Jack Kirby (August 28, 1917 – February 6, 1994) was one of the most influential, recognizable, and prolific artists in American comic books. ... Showcase #22 (Oct. ...

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 novel about 1930s gangsters. Max Allan Collins is a prolific American mystery writer who has been called mysterys Renaissance man. He has written novels, screenplays, comic books, comic strips, trading cards, short stories, movie adaptations and historical fiction. ... Terry Beatty is an artist who has worked as a penciler and inker in the comic book industry. ... Ms. ... Road to Perdition is a graphic novel written by Max Allan Collins and illustrated by Richard Piers Rayner that was made into a motion picture of the same name in 2002. ...

Beginning in the late-1980s and 1990s, several comic book writers have created interesting 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 Michael Bendis, Ed Brubaker, Frank Miller, David Lapham, and Paul Grist. Brian Michael Bendis (born August 18, 1967) is a American comic book writer and erstwhile artist. ... Ed Brubaker (born November 17, 1966) is an American cartoonist and a writer. ... Frank Miller in an interview about the Batman character. ... Laphams cover for Stray Bullets #1 (1995). ... Paul Grist (born 1960 in Sheffield, England) is a British comic book writer and artist, noted for his hard-boiled police series Kane and his unorthodox superhero series Jack Staff. ...

External links

• Crime Boss: Crime Comics of the 1940s & 50s.

• Crime Comics:The Many Colours of Noir by Paul Gravett