Number 2077: “What you gonna do when they come for you?”

In their heyday of the late forties, most American crime comics stuck to the proven template: show the bad guy doing bad things, then in the last panel have him caught and on his way to prison, or being sentenced by a judge, or killed by police. There will always be some moralizing at the end. Remember kids, now that you’ve lived through nine pages of vicarious thrills, in the end Crime Does Not Pay! Kids and adults saw through that one.

This issue of Justice Comics from Marvel Comics is no different: Johnny “the Gun” Sanchico is a typical criminal psychopath who blasts his way through the story, only to end up dead on the floor in the last panel. Well, serves that punk right! It is a good example of the objections made by some to comics sold to children (they sold to many adults, also, but they weren’t included in the strong criticism). What sets it apart — for me, anyway — is that it is an early example of John Buscema’s artwork. For a while Buscema worked in Stan Lee’s Marvel bullpen. I am always interested in seeing an artist’s early work. This story looks like Buscema needed some practice to get to be one of the industry’s top professionals. I did not recognize this story as being by Buscema, depending on the expertise of Jim Vadeboncoeur Jr, who identified it for Atlas Tales and the Grand Comics Database.

From Justice Comics #9 (actual #3, 1949):

More crime from Buscema. Done in 1950 and 1953, it shows he came a long way in a short time.

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