Comic Book Anthology Series
(1948-55)
AUTHENTIC POLICE CASES was a popular Golden Age comic anthology, featuring crime and detective stories, published by the St. John Publishing Company. It ran for thirty-eight issues, from February 1948 to March 1955, and featured an assortment reprints of newspaper strips colorized and reformatted, including tales featuring early comic book eyes Vic Flint and Lucky Coyne, as well as the usual array of cops, Mounties, FBI agents, gangsters, psychos, thugs, killers and the like. Beginning in its sixth issue, it also included “true” crimes stories, allegedly based on real police investigations.
It was also known (and much prized by collectors) for its dramatic covers by Matt Baker. It also gained some notoriety for several of its issues being fingered in the the anti-comics classic Seduction of the Innocent, the 1954 bestseller by German-American psychiatrist Fredric Wertham who argued that comic books caused juvenile delinquency, moral corruption and, I dunno, curvature of the spine and communism. It led to U.S. Senate hearings, and resulted in the comic industry creating the Comics Code Authority.
Like other lower tier comics that have quietly slipped into the public domain, rarely surfacing, Authentic Police Cases can be found in sometimes-dubious “collections” and online in places like Comic Book Plus.
COMICS
- AUTHENTIC POLICE CASES
(February 1948-March 1955, St. John Publications)
38 issues
Writers: Jack Cole, Walter Johnson, Paul Gattuso, Dean Franklin, Ray Osrin, Michael OMalley, Fred Schwab, Charles Biro, Paul Gustavson, Bert Phillips
Artists: Matt Baker, Paul Parker, George Tuska, Nick Cardy, Gus Ricca, Bob Fujitani, Joey Cavallo, Ernie Hart, Bob Lubbers, Jack Cole, Enrico Bagnoli, Antonio Canale.Bernard Sachs, Ralph Mayo, Paul Gattuso, Walter Johnson, Dean Franklin, Ralph Lane, Richard Speed, Fred Schwab, Paul Gustavson, Charles Biro
Respectfully compiled by Kevin Burton Smith. Any additional info would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Ron.
“Authentic Police Cases” and other St John titles (as well as some Fiction House comics) briefly featured great artwork by Italian artists, notably Enrico Bagnoli and Antonio Canale. They worked by mail through a local representative. Bagnoli was especially good at drawing the mandatory the suits, gats, and gun molls. Remarkably mature work considering Bagnoli was only in his early 20s.
Hey, thanks for the heads up, Ron.