Number 2453: Prison: nasty or nice?

A story from a crime comic book got my attention with a bare-knuckled, nose-busting fistfight. In this corner, prison guard Frank Brandon, and in the other corner, Henry “Mad Dog” Kelt. Kelt is a prison bully, extorting money and food from other prisoners. Frank is a prison guard who cares.

The action artwork is by artist Robert Q. Sale. “Tension!” is from Atlas’s Crime Fighters #12 (1954), a few months before the Comics Code went into business, and would probably have given a first-round knockout to a story like this.

As a person whose weightlifting and muscle building regimen means lifting a pencil, or getting my butt out of bed in the morning, this is another good example (of many) of why I would not want to go to prison.

In 1945 the Department of Corrections for the State of California issued a 12 page pamphlet for new prison inmates. It shows prison to be a place where training for improvements in one's life can be made. Which depiction do I believe? That is a rhetorical question. Since my personal belief is I would not last a day in prison, I have to go with prison being an unpleasant and rough place, and not believe the relatively placid look at captivity in the latter.

The artist, who signed his name “Peek,” was described only as “a talented inmate.” Peek showed the skills of a commercial artist from that era. The display lettering, which was important to an artist in those days, is impeccable. The illustrations, probably done from photographs, are also good. I hope when Peek’s time was up he got out, got a job as an artist, and never went back to prison.

Number 1347: It’s a jungle out there

Here’s another of my “Crime Wave” selections. You may remember a few weeks ago I told you that I had planned on introducing a new blog to show just crime comics stories, but decided I was too lazy busy to do it justice. So occasionally I'll be showing crime stories under this logo just so my plan won’t go totally to waste.

“The Jungle.” a story of a prison escape, is from Crime and Punishment #43 (1951). It’s drawn by the under-rated Robert Q. Sale, who worked in comics for a few years, and did excellent work for several companies. The Lambiek Comiclopedia gives Sale another name, Robert Q. Siegel, which I assume was his birth name. Also according to Lambiek, he died in 1962 at the very young age of 38. The story I had heard about Sale was for a time he shared studio space with Harvey Kurtzman, John Severin and Will Elder in the Charles William Harvey Studio.

Number 1085


Police Action!


Atlas Comics' Police Action #1 is another of those comics I think is interesting enough to show all the stories. I'm guessing here, but I imagine it was published with "police" in the title, cops as heroes, to deflect criticism from the crime comics that had been getting the comics in trouble. Of course, even with the emphasis being on police, this is still a crime comic.

Atlas fave Joe Maneely did the outstanding cover. Robert Q. Sale, who was a studio mate for a time with Severin, Elder and Kurtzman, did the lead story. Sale was a good artist, but his faces can be grotesque, homely with popping eyes. His action-packed splash panel of "Riot Squad" is great.

John Forte, a favorite of mine, did the story, "Homicide." Forte was another journeyman comic book artist, coming into the field in 1940. He went from drawing fantasy at ACG to DC in 1961 to do "Tales of the Bizarro World" in Adventure Comics. When that was canceled he went on to draw "The Legion of Superheroes" until his death in 1965.

Paul Reinman, whose work on Green Lantern I showed last week, did the third story, set in Paris. Gene Colan did the last story; it suffers from poor reproduction, turning Colan's finer lines into inky blobs, but the elements of action art that are central to Colan's work are here.

Police Action lasted for seven issues, all dated 1954.