With a title ripped off from the long-running Lev Gleason comic book of the same name, CRIME DOES NOT PAY was published by Myron Fass with the same style of lurid painted covers that were used to such great effect on his Eerie Publications horror titles. The stories themselves ran from the sensational to the salacious and were based on true accounts of gangsters, murderers and other criminals. The text articles were all accompanied by a generous amount of photos depicting plenty of shootout aftermaths and a few morgue shots for good measure.
CRIME DOES NOT PAY was published by Fass' M.F. Publications. Neither he or his brother, Irving, are named under the masthead so it is not certain how much of a hand they had in its production, if any.
Articles include profiles on Charles Starkweather, whose midwest killing spree in the 1950's left the nation shocked, Al Capone's counterfeiter, John Dillinger's bank robbery organizer and mob hitman, Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll. There's also an exposé on the Chinese sex slave market in America, complete with a photo of a presumably underage topless Chinese girl for an added bit of titillation.
This is pretty rough stuff for a mainstream newsstand publication, but by the nature of their subject matter, true crime periodicals and newspapers always had a knack for being scandalous and racy in ways that makes one want to take a shower after reading one.
With Fass's crazing numbering system, it's hard to determine how many issues of this title were published. That they are also rather scarce on the collector's market makes it that much more difficult. Currently, copies on eBay are selling up to the hundreds of dollars. The issue shown here is Vol. 2, No. 7 with a cover date of December 1969.
This kind of stuff is the only thing I remember my Dad reading aside from the newspaper. It was the closest to porn that ever got into the house. I didn't really care for them that much, but I remember the smell of the pulp paper as it decayed.
ReplyDeleteMy Dad was a True West/Frontier Times reader. I seem to remember he bought a Stag or two. My friend's older brother on the other hand always had a stack of men's adventure magazines on his nightstand. They were a strange fascination . . .
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