Number 2374: “Face the wall!” The St Valentine’s Day massacre

When the prohibition of alcohol became the law in 1920 it created a nation of scofflaws unwilling to give up drinking. The act had good intentions, but is a good example of the law of unintended consequences. With the demand for illegal alcohol came the gangsters, and with the gangsters came the wars between gangsters. The Valentine’s Day Massacre was one such incident. Gunmen, dressed as police officers and using Thompson submachine guns killed several rivals in a Chicago garage, and it caught the fancy of the public. Then, as now, the appetite for violent murder stories is strong. Crime comics did their bit to tell the tale.

The Grand Comics Database has no guesses for whom to give credit for story and artwork. This version of the murders is from ME Comics’ Guns of Fact and Fiction, a 1948 one-shot collection of gangster and Western gunmen stories.

Posted in: Pappy Comics