Number 1999: “Come and get me, coppers! Ha ha ha!”

This is day three of our crime comics week.

The usually staid DC Comics got into the crime comics business in 1948 when several other publishers flooded the newsstands with gangsters and gunplay. DC did it a different way, by licensing a popular radio show, Gang Busters. Maybe the powers at DC thought that would keep away the outrage from censorious groups. But looking at the cover of Gang Busters #1 we find some of the same elements as we’d find in other crime comics, including a crook getting shot by a cop, and a pretty girl for sex appeal.

In the story, “Crime Agency,” we see other things we have come to expect from crime comics: bondage, shootings, a criminal conspiracy. We also get a crook under fire yelling, “Come and get me, coppers!” Did any crook in the history of crookdom every really yell, “Come and get me, coppers!" at the cops firing at him? Maybe.

Dan Barry did the beautiful art for this tale of a policewoman working undercover for a gang burglarizing the homes of the wealthy. From Gang Busters #1 (1948):

Posted in: Pappy Comics