Why would I be skeptical? Well, comics like this one became targets for social critics, psychologists, and cranks who blamed the vivid portrayals of violence and illicit behavior for the corruption of America's youth. Even the series' logo indicates that we might be seeing just a bit more than a righteous series of cautionary warnings for impressionable readers. The title really looks like CRIME does not pay.
And sure enough, there is a lot of titillating material in these pages: gun play, blood, scantily clad women...and all of it is drawn in that Golden Age style that looks so crude to modern eyes, a style that makes the material seem even more lurid.
This book is so great that unless I offer some kind of structure to these posts, it will be way too easy for me to lapse into comments like, well, "This book is great!" So with each story, I will summarize what's going on and attempt to discern whether crime pays or doesn't pay in each case. I'll highlight a moment, if there is one, that even makes me cringe a bit today. I'll also ask what a 9-year-old version of me reading in, say 1949 would think.
Warning: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!
First up is "Two-Legged Rats (September 1942, Bob Montana)," the story of a false prophet in Corvallis, Oregon:
The self-proclaimed "Joshua the Second" lures many of the women of the area and forms a cult, mistreating them, demanding they bring him their money, and making a killing by predicting the outcomes of Oregon State football games.
OK, I made up that last one, but Joshua is doing enough other shenanigans to steam the menfolk. In one panel, a gent complains, "That fellow has my wife under a spell! She's broken all our dishes and I have to cook all my own meals!" A pipe-smoking neighbor chimes in with a "Same here!" Got to love the mid-20th century American male. Their spouses are spending the better part of each day with a raving lunatic with apocalyptic visions and a dominance complex, and they're bitching about having to fix a plate of franks and beans.
Things happen quickly in this ridiculously compressed 4-pager, and eventually Joshua is tarred and feathered, and presumably the men start filling up on beef wellington again before heading right back out to get drunk at the nearest saloon.
Perhaps my favorite moment in this one is the graphic swearing we are subjected to in this panel:
I promise to try to work *@!! into casual conversation when I can. It's unfortunate that it fell out of favor before George Carlin could give us the 8 dirty words you can't say on television.
This guy's misfire is the first in a frenzied chain of homicides and attempted homicides that closes the story. The "irate father" of a woman who joined Joshua's cult is unsuccessful in his assassination try, but two panels later, another woman's brother gets the job done. In the NEXT Panel, though, that same woman kills her brother!
Let's just look at the last two panels, as the tale ends with this puzzler:
Forget the shocking shooting in the back of her own brother. Forget the irony of Mitchell getting away with killing Joshua, only to be done in by the woman who was saving. The big question here is how does brunette Esther Mitchell become "blonde" in between panels?
DOES CRIME PAY? Well, everyone who harms someone else winds up either incarcerated or dead or otherwise punished--I imagine that off-panel those heartless women who made their hubbies cook a few dinners on their own were punished with at least a good, solid week of passive-aggressive neglect--so I suppose you could say no. Yet George Mitchell pretty much accomplished what he wanted to do and snuffed out a dangerous maniac, and her sister got revenge. As for "Joshua the Second," well, he had a pretty good run, with scores of female followers doing his bidding, and I ain't talking whist. So...it kind of does! I have to say yes and no in this story.
WHAT MAKES ME CRINGE TODAY: Actually not that much, as this short one is a comparatively tame opener for the book, but the tarring and feathering could have been a lot worse had Montana stretched it out over a few more panels.
WHAT YOUNG ME WOULD SAY IN 1942: Jeepers! She shot him right in the back! Ain't that just like a dame? I sure wish I know what that guy was saying when his gun flopped on him.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment