EXTRACTS: Illustrators Crime Comics Special © 2020 Book Palace Books (144 pages in full edition)

2 Crime Comics - A Brief History Crime comics have been a staple of our reading for generations as Peter Richardson reveals. ABOVE: George Tuska’s depiction of Baby Face Nelson from Crime Does Not Pay, No. 52. Tuska was one of the greatest of the artists who contributed to the pages of this iconic comic book. ABOVE RIGHT: The cover to Crime Does Not Pay , 52 spotlights the bloody climax of the Baby Face Nelson feature. As was typical of the majority of the series covers, the art was handled by editor Charles Biro, who knew how to stage a scene to build the maximum impact with potential buyers. The fascination with crime as a source of schadenfreude-inducing entertainment is deeply ingrained in the human psyche. The evidence is all around us, from the never-ending appetite for crime-based fiction, to films such as The Godfather and Goodfellas , to TV docudramas and TV series like The Spiral —the appetite for crime stories is a constant—the bloodier the better. Crime comics have been around in one form or another since the days of public executions. In eighteenth century Britain, pamphlets recounting the crimes of those about to be hung would be sold to those