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

91 launch of Crime Does Not Pay, renders this as yet another titillating urban myth—the more pragmatic explanation is that the title originated from the film of the same name, and the pulling power that gangland still exercised over audiences. Biro’s pitch was that a comic devoted to the lurid world of real crime would be a powerful alternative to the endless cavalcade of super- hero comics that currently dominated the news-stands. It’s also worth noting that both Biro and Wood, along with many of their colleagues, were devotees of the current wave of gangster and crime-orientated movies that dominated cinema screens. The first issue of Crime Does Not Pay was dated July 1942 and was issue 22, continuing the numbering from Silver Streak comics which it replaced. The anomaly was created by the desire to avoid having to register the new title and incurring a postal permit fee in the process. The covers were lurid in the extreme, and were exclusively executed by Biroin the early years of its run. His cavalier approach to perspective was more than compensated by Illustration by Peter Richardson BELOW: Pat Ward, the woman at the centre of the “sex-slave scandal” and chief witness for the prosecution in the trial of Mickey Jelke heir to the Oleomargarine empire. The trial took place in March 1953—some 11 years after the launch of Crime Does Not Pay . More of a tantalising urban legend than a plausible explanation for the creation of the US’s most notorious crime comic.