Number 2374: “Face the wall!” The St Valentine’s Day massacre

When the prohibition of alcohol became the law in 1920 it created a nation of scofflaws unwilling to give up drinking. The act had good intentions, but is a good example of the law of unintended consequences. With the demand for illegal alcohol came the gangsters, and with the gangsters came the wars between gangsters. The Valentine’s Day Massacre was one such incident. Gunmen, dressed as police officers and using Thompson submachine guns killed several rivals in a Chicago garage, and it caught the fancy of the public. Then, as now, the appetite for violent murder stories is strong. Crime comics did their bit to tell the tale.

The Grand Comics Database has no guesses for whom to give credit for story and artwork. This version of the murders is from ME Comics’ Guns of Fact and Fiction, a 1948 one-shot collection of gangster and Western gunmen stories.

Number 1982: Bat Masterson, a Ghastly fellow

A Google search for Bat Masterson shows photos of him as a dandy wearing a derby hat. The “Bat Masterson” shown in this biographical story from ME’s GUNS of Fact and Fiction (1948) ( #13 in ME’s A-1 series, but actually the only issue) is more the standard Westerner, big cowboy hat and all. Photos of Bat Masterson show him as a natty dresser, and that was the image in the 1950s television series starring Gene Barry.

In The Old West: The Gunfighters from Time-Life Books (1974), I read the following about the flamboyant Bat Masterson: “When he first came to [Dodge City], he sported a Southwestern sombrero with a rattlesnake-skin band, a scarlet silk neckerchief and Mexican sash, gleaming silver-plated six-shooters in silver-studded holsters and a pair of gold-mounted spurs: an observer on Front Street suggested that all this finery might give Bat an edge in a gunfight by blinding his opponent.”

He liked attention. The claim of 40 men killed by Masterson is an exaggeration by dime novel writers of the era. Bat did get involved in some gunfights. He was a sheriff of Dodge City, and his brother Ed was killed in a gunfight. He was one of those lawmen who didn’t always observe the law. He never landed in prison, though, and worked his way through the West, including Texas and Colorado, before settling in New York in 1902. After a time as a boxing promoter and writer, and an appointment by President Theodore Roosevelt, Masterson wrote a column for the New York Telegraph. He died in 1921, not in a gunfight, but of a heart attack at his desk.

Graham “Ghastly” Ingels drew “Flame of the Frontier” which is another of those stories told by an inanimate object, in this case a pair of six-guns. Ghastly later became famous for his gothic horror tales for EC Comics, but before that he spent years in the comic book badlands, doing jobs like this.

Number 1969: Johnny Craig and Pretty Boy

Artist Johnny Craig did this version of the life of “Pretty Boy” Floyd for the 1948 ME one-shot, GUNS of Fact and Fiction. Before he became a major talent for the (in)famous EC Comics crew Craig was like the rest of them, free-lancing amongst the comic book publishers of the day. (“Ghastly” Graham Ingels drew the lead story of the issue.)

I don’t verify the truth in this comic book version of the gangster’s story. Floyd ended up shot down in a field and then he entered American bad guy immortality. Pretty Boy is celebrated for his place in the gaggle of gangsters of the early-to-mid 1930s, roaming the country robbing banks and thumbing their noses at law enforcement. The only truth I can verify is my appreciation for Craig’s clean-cut artwork, beautifully staged, crisply drawn and inked.