After the previous month of vampires, banshees, and other assorted supernatural fiends, it's time to unleash the tragic tale of an unrelentless, ultra violent, human monster. This shotgun rampage of brutal crime originally saw print in the August 1948 issue of Law Against Crime #3, published by the very short-lived, Essankay, who appears to have only existed for two years, releasing two different series titles for a whoppin' total of only 4 issues. Great L.B. Cole cover on this one, and yep, Wertham hated this issue of course, mentioning it in his infamous Seduction of the Innocent book.
8 comments:
There is nothing scarier than an abusive trigger happy husband. Makes you prefer all the vampires and werewolves because they aren't very realistic compared to that.
Wow, not really into crime comics. There is too much of it today. I prefer fantasy. That being said I still love Thoia and truly appreciate your postings.
There are three covers so similar to this ... An Action, a Captain Marvel Jr., and a Kid Eternity. Probably dozens more. I'd post pics but I don't have these Golden Agers.
First, that's a awesome cover, but the cherub-y cop should have probably been nixed!
So, as with these true crime comics, I have to look up the real incident ... and ... yeah, it basically happened. He was angry about alimony payments, BTW, not that his wife left him.
One other funny thing -- he did just as they said and went to the police station BUT he actually cornered a cop, the dispatcher, and two military policemen! They were only saved because two other cops showed up before he gunned them down (he had them lined up to do it.) So, Wertham aside, the author made the story work a lot better for the cops.
Al Molinaro as Murray the cop was hardly more "cherub-y"!
It's strange how the wife just disappears from the story. I mean, pretty smart move on her part, but still. I guess that's a telltale remnant of the reality behind this fictionalized account. Because I can't imagine anyone making this thing up without circling back around to the cliche of menacing her again at the end.
And they sort of tried to, I guess, in that wonderfully under-produced outsider art final splash panel in which the monstrous specter of Austin Cox haunts the imagination of his (newly brunette?) wife. That's so great: The writer's deep-seated need to shoehorn in tried-and-true narrative beats masquerading as the throes of diegetic toxic masculinity PTSD. It's maybe a peek behind the curtain, but I'm still impressed.
I don't know what to say that hasn't been already said, except that if one looks at newspaper accounts from the 1920's and earlier, you will find tales of violent men and women whose carnage would make a werewolf seem like a puppy, or vampire seem like a fruit bat.
That is one thoroughly psychotic, unhinged psychopathia... phew!
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