Pappy's Golden Age Comics Blogzine

Number 118


Bill Everett loses a button!


Mrs. Pappy walked through the living room while I was watching TV.

"Are you watching that CSI show again?" She sniffed. "What is it you like about this stuff?"

I confessed. "I'm hoping to learn enough that when I begin my life of crime I won't make the same mistakes the crooks make on these shows."

It's true. On CSI someone always leaves a fingerprint, DNA, or even epithelials at the scene of the crime. I wouldn't want to do that. I know I could never do jail time. In the heyday of the crime comic books of the 1940s and '50s parents groups complained loudly that crime comics glorified criminals and were actually blueprints for crime. Nowadays a kid doesn't have to read a comic book. He can just watch TV and get all the ideas he wants.

In this story from Lev Gleason's Crime and Punishment #31, October, 1950, the great Bill Everett* draws a story about a criminal who worries about leaving behind evidence, and finds his paranoia correctly placed.

It's a five-page short with great art and a great moral for all you wannabe criminals: don't get caught. Errrr, I mean, don't leave any evidence…errrrr, what I really mean is CRIME DOES NOT PAY! Heh-heh.

*Formerly seen in Pappy's #8.