Number 1572: Tough-talkin' and straight-shootin' — Good night, Irene!

Irene Shrader  (sometimes spelled Schroeder), took up with Glenn Dague, who had left his wife and children for her. What interested me about the story is that a part of it (the part that got the pair the electric chair) took place near my son’s home in Western Pennsylvania. This article from The Lawrence County [PA] Memoirs is one of the better articles I’ve read about the pair.

There is a way crime comics presented women as criminals, which was to show them tougher than their men. The males were portrayed as being followers, even wimpy. The women robbed and killed without mercy and ordered their significant others to do the same. This version, drawn by George Tuska for Crime Does Not Pay #57 (1947) has a fairly standard panel-by-panel description of Shrader/Schroeder and Dague’s short but murderous career. Lots of tough dialogue and action to match. There is also Irene’s speech in the final panel where she says to Dague, “We were wrong in goin' bad, Glenn! It doesn’t pay!” Considering Irene’s psychopathy I doubt she ever expressed such a thought. Part of any psychopath’s mental make-up is to blame their victims rather than themselves.

Shrader/Schroeder has the dubious distinction of being the first woman executed by electric chair in Pennsylvania, and only the fourth woman in America executed by that method.

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Number 1422: Brother Rats

Another sensational crime further sensationalized by Charles Biro and George Tuska, from Crime Does Not Pay #49 (1947). (Thanks to Darkmark for the issue number correction.) The DeAutremont brothers were Oregon lumberjacks who tried to rob a train in 1923, killed three men, and then fled.

It took four years, forensics work and wanted posters to bring the brothers to justice. All of them were caught, all were sentenced to long terms in prison. The panel of the calendar leaves shows 1942, by which time all three brothers were serving their sentences. The sequence that follows, of Hugh DeAutremont as a soldier in the U.S. Army serving in the Philippines and being recognized, actually happened in 1927. It is a reminder that when you see the word “true” in a crime comic, better doublecheck the story. You can read more about the DeAutremonts here.

I posted this story several years ago, but these are new scans:

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Number 1388: Tough guy Tuska

A story about George Tuska has gone around for a long time. (It is also in semi-fictional form in The Dreamer by Will Eisner.) A woman — memory tells me it was Toni Blum — who wrote scripts for the artists in the comic shop bullpen was the subject of talk by the guys. Tuska liked her. Bob Powell apparently said something sexually insulting about her and Tuska got up from his board and punched Powell to the floor. In another report I read, Tuska, who was a big guy — and Powell was not — stood over Powell and said in the voice of Lennie (Lon Chaney Jr in Of Mice and Men), “You shouldn’t ought to have done that, Bob.” True, or exaggerated? I dunno. Good story no matter the truth? Hell, yeah!

Tuska did the artwork on this lead story from Crime Does Not Pay #56 (1947). Cover by Biro.

Tuska, in my opinion, was at the absolute top of his illustrative skills when he did stories for Charlie Biro at Crime Does Not Pay. Biro was a demanding editor who made the artists draw everything, and that was even though the stories were burdened with text, captions and overloaded speech balloons. Still, Tuska managed to get all of the characters and violence into the panels. And speaking of violence, the sensitive among you need to be warned of some of the panels: a knife slices a cheek, a woman is shot.

Violence like that was part of what inflamed adults about crime comics being sold to children. Something a bit more subtle in this story is the message about being a squealer. Guys who tell on criminals meet a bad end. Remember that, kids.

 More classic Tuska: Butt Riley! Click on the picture.

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Your eyes will pop!

Another thing to cause concern amongst crime comic critics of the era is this ad from the same issue of Crime Does Not Pay: additional reading material from a third-party publisher. Five books, four of them concerned with crime. I don’t know for sure about the kids in 1947, but I sure would like to read them, and get the “hidden secrets, helpful information, inside ‘dope’.” That could be interpreted as ways to commit crimes. But there is one book, How Detectives Catch Crooks, that would be especially helpful. We still have that today: television programs about crime-busting through forensics, showing police methods, have helped some criminals.

It’s human nature to want to know about “Big-shot Gangsters, their crimes, careers and deaths!” and I’m no different. But I don’t plan to emulate them. I don’t commit crimes because I’m not a criminal, no matter how many books I read or TV shows I watch about crime. I suspect that’s true about most people, or despite all the crime-saturated entertainment the crime rate would be a lot higher than it is.

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Number 1125: Butt Riley's back in town!

George Tuska was a longtime comic book journeyman, coming into the industry in its first days and working for several decades at his drawing board. He drew comic books, but in his career he also drew newspaper comic strips Scorchy Smith, Buck Rogers and World's Greatest Superheroes.

My personal preference for Tuska's art wasn't his superhero work, but his stories in comics like Crime Does Not Pay. "Butt Riley, King Of the Hoodlums" is from Crime Does Not Pay #48 (1947). (Butt gets his name from his style of fighting, and yeah, it's a funny name.) It presages the superhero stage of Tuska's later career by showcasing his ability to draw muscular figures in action. His anatomy—unlike the muscular monsters some of today's artists draw that pass for superheroes (my opinion)—looks to be correct. He gets to show off his skill because Butt Riley doesn't wear a shirt for the first four pages.

Crime Files #5* (1952) features another Tuska story. Grand Comics Database uses their famous ? to indicate they're not sure Tuska drew the story, but I'm sure. At least he penciled it; the inks appear to be by someone else. Tuska's strong sense of composition and storytelling stand out for me.

Tuska died in 2009 at age 93, his legacy assured by the thousands of comic book pages and comic strips he drew over his career.

















*Actually #1, if you remember I told you that Standard started all their titles with #5 to trick retailers into thinking they had a track record.

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Crime did not pay for Bob Wood

On an August afternoon in 1970 I sat down with Otto Binder in his Chestertown, New York, home and talked over a wide range of subjects, but mostly about his work in the early comic books. It was a time when many of the early comic book men were still alive and able to share their memories; talking with Otto made for a very special afternoon for me. During the wide-ranging conversation Otto mentioned a particular incident with "...it was when Wally Wood's brother went to prison for killing his wife." It was the first I'd heard that, and it startled me. Otto quickly got off onto another conversational tack before I had a chance to ask him further questions. I found out later that Otto was mistaken, under a false impression.

It would be easy to be confused, even for someone in the business at the time, because I can think of four Woods from the Golden Age: Wallace, of course, Dick and Dave Wood, writers who were not related to Wally, but brothers who had scripted the newspaper strip, Sky Masters, which Wally Wood inked for Jack Kirby, and comic book editor/cartoonist Bob Wood. Bob was also not Wallace Wood's brother. I don't know if he was related to Dick and Dave.

And Bob Wood did not kill his wife, but a girlfriend, after an 11-day alcoholic binge in a New York hotel. The details, or what is now known of them from contemporary newspaper reports, is available in Blackjacked and Pistol-Whipped: Crime Does Not Pay. The article on Wood and his business partnership with Charles Biro, working for publisher Lev (Leverett) Gleason, and their infamous Crime Does Not Pay comics, takes only 11 pages of the 220+ page book. The rest of the volume is made up of excellent full color reprints of stories from that magazine. It's edited with an eye toward the more lurid and violent tales. There were many of those over the history of that groundbreaking comic book, but also many that aren't quite so over the top, as shown by the George Tuska story above.

It's a trade paperback, designed by Kitchen, Lind and Associates, for Dark Horse Comics. The book is available from the usual booksellers, affordably priced at $19.99.

I have a Claw story written and drawn by Bob Wood for Daredevil Comics coming up next Monday.

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