Crime Machine #2 - Skywald

I have to admit, I was a tad disappointed to learn that Skywald's Crime Machine was filled with nothing but reprints from old crime comics from the 1950's, not original material.

When I first learned of this mag's existence, I was dreaming of some of talent Skywald was using at the time for its Nightmare and Psycho books, except on crime material. I mean, even the name sounds cool and hard and mean--Crime Machine. But, no. Maybe that's why it only lasted two issues?

Anyway, Skywald did spring for a new cover by Tom Palmer, which is quite nice. The Table of Contents features top cop Nat Grover(not exactly "Cannon" or "Hunter", but...) introducing the stories, talking fast so hopefully the reader won't discover he's just paid 50 cents for a book full of reprints(ok, I'll stop).

The first story is "No Jail Can Hold Him!" by an unknown writer(alas, all of these tales writers are lost to the mists of time) and drawn by Carmine Infantino and Vince Alascia. A mobster's bookworm brother breaks him out of jail, and in doing so they take some hostages and force one of them to promise to name their upcoming child after him! They do which buys the hostages some time, enough for the cops to catch up with them and open fire!

The bookworm brother gives up with one of the more unconvincing changes of heart, ever: "I don't know what came over me. Please let me go back to my Sunday School teaching again...I don't want any more excitement!" And the cops buy this.

One odd thing(well, one more odd thing) in this story is that, judging by the lettering, all the names of these characters have been changed somewhere down the line. Whether it looked like this in its original appearance in Prison Break #5 (1951, Avon) or was altered by Skywald, I don't know.

Next is "Francine O'Connor...The Empress of Crime!" drawn by the late, great Tex Blaisdell(a former Kubert School instructor of mine, great guy with amazing stories to tell), about a beautiful moll who felt no remorse about killing people who got in her way! The story takes a million twists and turns in just seven pages, and has room for this panel:

Good old-fashioned nightmare fuel!

Third is "Charlie Lupetti and His Bullet-Proof Gang", drawn by...unknown! It features a criminal with enough chutzpah to try and break into prison! It has a fun, ghoulish ending, more horror comic-ish than you'd expect.

Following that is a text fiction piece "The Corpse In The Lake!", and then we have "Lou 'Limpy' Savatto--Hired Gunman", again by unknown, about a kid who runs away from home and quickly falls into a life of crime. It ends with the uninspiringly-named "Limpy" dead, "lay[ing] in a pool of his own gore." Hmm, maybe Dr. Wertham was right...

Next is "Leech McCoy--Incendiary Killer!", credits also unknown, but featuring a much different art style than the rest of these tales--its much more realistic and seems photo-referenced in some spots, with a lot of heavy blacks. Leech--or Leach, as its spelled in some places in the story--gets it in the end, of course, but he was hoping to take the dirty rat coppers with him!

After that is the wonderfully titled "Juanita Perez, The Gypsy Killer!", again by the Tex Blasidell. Juanita is a tough little broad, always using her feminine wiles to talk dim bulbs into stealing for her--but as Juanita says:

I had a girlfriend like this once.

Next is "Waxie Gordon!" (what is with these mobster's names? Limpy, Leech, Waxie?) drawn by Mike Becker and Rocke Mastroserio. Waxie is a two-bit pickpocket who ends up running the whole show! That is, of course, until he runs into Uncle Sam's T-Men!(sorry, I slipped into Walter Winchell there for a second) It features one of the most gripping final panels in the history of comics!:

You monster!

...as if anything could follow that, we've got "The Masqueraders" written and drawn by ?, from I.W.'s Justice Traps The Guilty #83. It features a gang of masked crooks, some nice clean art, and a detective who notices a clue so obscure it would've put Batman to shame.

Then there's another text piece, "Death In The Air!" and following that(*whew!*) is "Easy Money" by Becker and Alascia, again from Avon's Prison Break, about a crook brought down by a double-cross. Why, I oughta...

Then we end with one more text piece, "Habit Traps A Killer!" I'd love to describe what happens, but after reading so many similar crime stories I was so exhausted that I barely remember what it said, and that was twenty minutes ago. You have to give Skywald credit--this mag may have been filled with old reprints, but they squeezed in as much as they could in sixty-eight pages.

Oh, and there's an ad for David Cassidy and Bobby Sherman posters, contrasting quite nicely with the out-of-date crime material.