By Andrew A. Smith
Tribune Content Agency
In the late 1940s and '50s, one of the best-selling comic books in America was titled Crime Does Not Pay. Ridiculous! Now, as then, crime pays pretty well -- at least in comics.
If you think about it, most superhero comics are crime comics. The Riddler robs a bank, for example, and Batman -- acting in lieu of the police -- nabs him. But true crime comics have no superheroes or extraordinary events. They're usually, but not always, morality tales, and while most are fiction, some are based on true events, or events as we'd like for them to have happened.
That's the case with Louise Brooks, Detective (NBM, $15.99), which tells a fake tale of a real actress set during real events of her real life in her real hometown of Wichita, Kansas -- which is not only a real city, but is the only part of the story that still exists. Brooks was an actress, briefly an "it girl" in silent movies, who is widely considered to have popularized bangs as a hair style for women. But for various reasons she left Hollywood, and moved back to her hometown of Wichita for a couple of years. There she ran a dance studio (unsuccessfully) before eventually moving on to other ventures, notably in New York.
Louise Brooks, Detective is set in that Wichita sojourn, and depicts the dance studio, but is otherwise fictitious. The actress just happens to be on hand when a locked-room murder occurs. But that's not what makes her a detective. Instead, she happens to be further on hand when another murder occurs, one that hits much closer to home. So close, in fact, that her inside knowledge of the various players allows her to solve not only that murder, but the first one that launched the book! Then, of course, she has to survive her cleverness ...
Louise Brooks, Detective is written and drawn by Rick Geary, whose terrific "Treasury of Victorian Murder" and "Treasury of XXth Century Murder" series demonstrate how well he knows his way around both history and crime stories. Geary is also possessed of a unique and charming art style, something I've dubbed "faux woodcut," which makes everything he draws look like it's lifted from some magical era of the past that never really existed, but should have.
All of which combines into the breezy Detective, a story that for all its murder and intrigue is little more than a love letter to a long-dead actress set in a homespun, somewhat fanciful Midwest of 100 years ago. It's a bit of fluff, but Geary's stately storytelling style and endearing art make it seem both more important and more plausible than it really is.
Speaking of crime comics, some of the best of them were published more than 60 years ago, by one of the best comic book publishers ever, EC Comics. Dark Horse Comics, bless its flea-bitten hide, has committed to reprinting all of EC's titles in oversize collections, with the latest being Shock SuspenStories Volume 3 ($49.99). Happily, is almost entirely crime comics.
And, oh, what wonderful crime comics they are!
Most of the crimes are murder, and for all the big reasons: revenge, jealousy, money. But a lot of these murders are for nasty little reasons, too, like boredom or drugs or opportunity or thrills or maybe just to join a fraternity.
And are they morality tales, with justice prevailing? Ho, ho! Not on your life! Husbands lie dying or burn in ovens as their wives share a kiss -- and life insurance money -- with their lovers. A vigilante mob storms a jail and strings up an innocent man, then drifts away as the real killer chortles up his sleeve. A horror actor lifts a glass in toast as those who ruined his career learn how horrible he can be.
And it really doesn't pay to be innocent in these stories. Like the newlyweds who are stranded at sea -- and are rescued a bit too late. Or the girl who tells her reluctant boyfriend she's pregnant -- a little too close to the roller coaster. Or the daughter of a bigot -- who makes the mistake of dating a Hispanic guy. Or the brain-damaged girl -- who rejects her lustful employer's advances because she's in love with a scarecrow.
OK, OK, sometimes the bad guys get their just desserts. But only rarely is it because of the justice system. Usually they trip themselves up, by getting amnesia at the wrong time, or hiring a hit man when they shouldn't oughtta. Or, my favorite, when the rats turn on each other. Heh, heh, hehhhh ... it's all so deliciously evil.
Reading these stories, it's hard to believe they were written so long ago, because the topics are as fresh as this morning's newspaper. Bigotry, rape, drugs -- it's all there (although sex is only implied rather than shown or confirmed in dialogue). These were among the books, in fact, that caused comics to come under fire as unwholesome for children, a charge that produced the Comics Code of 1954 and forced EC -- and a lot of other publishers -- out of the funnybook biz.
After Shock SuspenStories, the stories in the actual Crime Does Not Pay almost seem mild. But as seen in the latest collection (Crime Does Not Pay Volume 9, Dark Horse, $$9.99), they're still pretty good.
Crime is not only front and center in these stories, it is as violent and ugly as it can be. It's really quite surprising how modern the depictions are, and even the dialogue gets away with a few damns and hells. Again, sex is verbally and visually verboten, but it is certainly implied. It doesn't take any imagination to figure molls did more than play pinochle with their gangster boyfriends in all those cheap motels we see. But you have to read between the lines for sex, while gunplay, stabbings, executions and so forth are the lines themselves.
And some of it is true! Sort of. Every issue has "All True Crime Stories" screaming from the cover, but as we learn from a lively and informative foreward by Max Allan Collins ("Dick Tracy," Road to Perdition), fact and fancy is mixed willy and nilly on the pages within. Sure Bonnie and Clyde, Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, Peter Treadway, Mike Malloy, Gerald Chapman, Herman Duker, Paul Jawarski and Irene Dague lived and died on the wrong side of the law ... just not quite as depicted here. And characters like "Shoebox" Annie and cross-dressing Clarence McQueen appear, as far as Collins can find, to be entirely made up.
And then there's "the bloody Benders," the murderous family that waylaid travelers along the Osage Trail in 1870s Kansas. Yes, they existed, and yes, the foursome killed their victims with a vicious hammer blow to the head. Crime Does Not Pay gets that part right. But it also shows the quartet hanging for the crimes -- the title is "Crime Does Not Pay," after all -- while in reality they disappeared.
And I know this because Rick Geary told "The Saga of the Bloody Benders" accurately in his "Treasury of Victorian Murder" series. And if that isn't coincidence enough, Collins mentions the movie The Public Enemy in his foreward to CDNP -- which happens to be one of the movies Louise Brooks refused when she turned her back on Hollywood. (The role went instead to Jean Harlow, launching her career into the stratosphere.)
So apparently crime does pay, at least in the entertainment industry. Because we just can't stop telling stories about it!
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Replies
No thanks needed; Rick Geary is a national treasure.
I suspect a big reason why the Comics Code said crooks had to pay for their crimes was the stories in Shock Suspenstories that were labeled "Shock" instead of Crime or Science Fiction or even Horror, like the guy that was beaten to death because someone thought he sneered at the American flag, that turned out to be a veteran that was blinded and disfigured in WWII, and the plastic surgery to restore his face made him seem to sneer when he tried to smile. Even today characters that get killed tend to deserve it because the audience gets so emotional about innocents being killed.