Crime and Punishment

    (Lev Gleason, 1948-1955)
™ and ©1953 Lev Gleason Publications, Inc.

The crime comics of the late 1940s were the stage for some of the most intense, complex, and disturbing stories ever told in graphic form. Possibly the greatest of all the crime comic publishers was Lev Gleason, who pioneered the genre with the ground-breaking Crime Does Not Pay and other titles, including Crime and Punishment.

Like their counterparts in film noir movies of the period, comic book criminals rarely, if ever, escape ultimate punishment for their misdeeds. Nevertheless, the emphasis on their activities and personalities made the criminals into “heroes,” or at least stars. Editor/artist Charles Biro had a real feel for the moral geography of the criminal classes, and his stories in Gleason’s magazines had an authenticity and sociological rigor that others often lacked. The Comics Code obliterated much of the ambiguity (and drama) of crime comics, and doomed the genre by the mid-1950s.
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  NotesWriterArtist
#11

February, 1949
Cover Price: $0.10
1 copy available for $63.00 		Chuck Stanley, Sidney M. Elias, Claude MooreBob Fujitani, Fred Guardineer, Al Borth, Claude Moore