EXTRACTS: Illustrators Crime Comics Special © 2020 Book Palace Books (144 pages in full edition)

14 featured in the resultant plethora of superhero titles that followed in the wake of Superman ’s success. Partly it was because villains worthy of the attention of superheroes had to be more than petty criminals, and so they wore costumes and were endowed with powers that elevated them beyond the ranks of dime store stick-up men. It wasn’t until the absence of any real tension in the resultant scripts began to manifest itself that Charles Biro, one of the industry’s most visionary editors, set about redressing the situation by providing an antidote to the ubiquitous and increasingly formulaic superhero comics. The launch of Crime Does Not Pay, and its meteoric rise to best seller status, set the stage for a host of imitators of varying quality. The best of them utilised many of the artists that were working with Biro and Jack Cole’s ‘Murder, Morphine and Me’ stands out as one of the best stories from the post-war years. The story also gained an extra, if unwelcome, veneer of notoriety when a panel from the strip showing a woman’s eye about to be pierced by a hypodermic syringe, was included in Dr Frederic Wertham’s Cover and title page, as well as the infamous ‘needle in the eye’ scene, from True Crime issue 2 published in 1947. Although the success of Crime Does Not Pay spawned a host of lesser imitators, Jack Cole’s work was in an altogether different league. Famed for his work on Plastic Man , he was an ideal choice to edit a new crime title. There were only two issues of True Crime, confusingly numbered 2 & 3 : which were not preceded by an issue 1. However, the sheer inventiveness and power of each of the stories he created makes them remarkable examples of comic strip Imaged by Heritage Auctions (HA.com)