ATLAS COMICS LIBRARY Volume 5 Police Action

Pre-Code cops and robbers' action from the early 1950s! This is the fifth stand-alone genre-themed collection in Fantagraphics’ archival series of mid-century Marvel Comics. Police Action had a seven-issue run of violent and noir-ish morality plays, pitting the officers of the law against the forces of urban malevolence. With the cream of the Atlas freelance roster, including Joe Maneely, Robert Q. Sale, Gene Colan, Art Peddy, Mort Lawrence, Carl Burgos, Don Heck, Werner Roth and Bob Powell. Plus an extraordinary sixteen page introduction as Vassallo examines the entire history of Timely's crime pulps & magazines, crime comics in general, and all of Atlas's crime comics--with dozens and dozens of rare covers. Super informative and visually a real gas. Under the Timely imprint from 1947, and Atlas from 1951, they published eleven crime titles, including Justice Comics, Official True Crime Cases, All-True Crime, Crime Cases, Crime Can't Win, Crime Must Lose, and Crime Exposed. All muscling each other and dozens of other crime titles for newstand space! Stories included here: The Rat Hole, Riot Squad, The Specialists, Tough Guy, Mob Violence, Road Black, Hired Hood, The Perfect Crime and many more.... For the first crime-themed volume in Fantagraphics' ongoing project to restore and resurrect pre-Marvel pulp classics, the Atlas Library has selected a book that debuted as the genre peaked, just before a Senate hearing and the institution of the Comics Code banned the use of the word "Crime" from even appearing in a comic's title. Rounding the volume off, also presented is a post-Code one-shot, Police Badge #479, a snapshot of the industry's attempts to adapt to new strictures on the crime genre: here we view "our boys in blue" in the fight against rank corruption, highlighting the work of Don Heck and Joe Maneely. Vassallo's full illustrated introduction is to die for (hey, we're talking crime here, right?). He starts out detailing the history of Timely's many crime pulps and true crime magazines, with salacious covers, dozens of them reproduced. Then he looks at the entire Crime Comics trend, which began with Crime Does Not Pay and how Timely/Atlas jumped on the bandwagon with their many crime titles. Thus Police Action gets put in its proper place in the history. Wonderful repros of rare 1930s and 1940 pulps with art by Saunders, Higgins and many others. Not to be missed. Vassallo does these kind of highly detailed and lengthy introductions for each of these Atlas volumes, and I love reading them. - Bud