This comic features one TOUGH Charles Biro drawn action cover! Chuck "Crimebuster" Chandler just avoids being crushed between a brick wall and a crashing speedster by using a drain pipe to vault over the car. The gangster driver isn't so lucky-- he's shown thrown from the car, slamming his spine into the wall.
As Boy Comics #3 revealed, Crimebuster's origin makes Bruce Wayne's more famous family tragedy look like a picnic! After gruesomely losing both parents to Nazi murderers, Chuck Chandler swears to avenge himself on Iron Jaw, Nazis, and criminals in general. His only assets are a bit of military academy training, the hockey uniform he was wearing when he learned his father had been shot, and a pet monkey.
Yes, a _monkey_!
Somehow, though, these assets and a bit of grim determination were all that he needed.
This issue's Crimebuster lead tale opens with a splash page showing our 17 year old hero gripping two thugs by their collars as Squeeks, the monkey, pulls on the hair of one of the thugs. The page's ever-so sensitive caption reads:
"In America a man is innocent until he is proven guilty! [ Unless he's of Japanese descent, in which case he's locked away without due process in California. --- DVS ;( ] This is not so in dictator countries in Japan and Nazidom, it is just the opposite, but there are those in our country who take advantage of this great benefit of Democracy. They're the venomous enemies from within who would destroy all those principles for which we are giving our all to preserve. These criminals stop at nothing-- murder is their trade, but America has an answer which will be written in their blood upon the gallows and electric chairs of our prisons and that answer will read thus: Those who live by the sword, shall die by the sword! This is the story of some of those fools!" [Signed Charles Biro]
Our story opens in what appears to be a D.A.'s office, as the sick D.A. urges Crimebuster (he doesn't call him by his given name) to do his civic duty by filling in for him on a routine talk-circuit gig. With some reluctance, Crimebuster agrees to go to Dover and deliver a speech to "a bunch of old ladies" at a high school. The town of Dover will apparently one day be known as "Mayberry". The three man police force are mighty impressed by Crimebuster's reputation, and admit their town is so quiet that the city council is considering laying them off. One of these Barney Fife's actually opines that what the "town needs is a good murder!"
Cue the bad guys! Outside town, Dick and his wife Helen are driving along the back roads, discussing Dick's upcoming grand jury testimony. Their car runs out of gas, and the car that Helen is sure has been following them doesn't stop to offer assistance. Dick decides to walk to a gas station, leaving Helen in the car. Meanwhile, the car which had indeed been following them circles back. It's driver is "Johnny-on-the-Spot", apparently a mob enforcer interested in Dick's testimony.
Returning from his long walk with a now filled gas can, Dick finds a note pinned to his wife's chest with an extra large knife! "Your children will be next and then you, if you don't forget about a certain something a grand jury wants to know!" Understandably, Dick panics and beats feet back to town!
Meanwhile, the killers (who have been watching from the bushes) circle back to retrieve their knife, and drive on to the next gas station. The full service station attendant demands to see the crooks' gas coupons before he'll fill their tank. The lesser crook instead shows his gun.
"You guys are crazy!" exclaims the attendant. "You can't get away with this! It's a federal offense! Other mugs have tried it!"
"Yeah, but we're smarter! We don't leave nobody around to squeal!" responds the lesser thug, as he shoots the attendant in the back.
Johnny-on-the-Spot slaps his accomplice, reminding the dumb jerk that "using a gat is like leaving fingerprints!" Cops can trace bullets. To cover the crime, the pair set fire to the body and the station, drive off, then dump their stolen car and hop a train back to the city.
Meanwhile, back in Mayberry's Twin, Dick finally reaches the police station, where he screams that his wife has been murdered. Crimebuster and the Barney Fife trio soon investigate, finding the body, the bloody note, but not the murder weapon. Realizing that they're out of their league, the Dover Deputies justify their city council's concerns by asking the 17 year old to lead their investigation!
After securing a no interference pledge, Crimebuster agrees to take over the case, and asks Dick to recall his story, including everything leading up to the note. Seems that Dick, while painting landscapes near a river one morning, witnessed a guy (Johnny-on-the-Spot) pull up to the river and dump a duffle bag into it. The gangster left unaware that he'd been watched. After a while, Dick (who had continued to paint) noticed "a dark stain coming out of the bag." With police assistance, the bag is pulled ashore and opened to reveal the body of "Flanagan, owner of 'Club Monte'". Dick made a sworn statement to the D.A., and was scheduled to testify to a grande jury. That's why the killers slew Helen, rather than simply bump Dick off. If Dick were killed, his sworn statement with the D.A. would hold; better to try to scare him into retracting it.
Crimebuster asks Chief Flatfoot to send an alarm to all the neighboring towns, and a wire to all trains in the vicinity, just in case the murderers ditched their car and hopped a train.
"I'm going to get those murdering skunks if it's the last thing I do!" swears CB. "There's nothing lower that a rat who kills innocent people just to scare or hurt somebody else!"
Returning to Dick, CB asks the artist if he can sketch the guy he saw throwing the duffle bag into the river, and the guy he saw driving the car. Surprised that he hadn't thought of it before, Dick soon hands CB a sketch of the issue's killers.
Meanwhile, the murderers have finally found their way to the mail car on the train they hopped, just as the wireless operator receives the alarm about the Dover murder. Overhearing the operator mentioning the case to the conductor, the thugs opt to add two more murders to their list of crimes before jumping off the train.
A day passes, and Crimebuster decides to conduct a personal undercover investigation at the Club Monte. Dressed in hat and suit, CB drops hints that he's a rich playboy looking for "a little excitement". Without so much as carding the lone youth, Chuck is led into the club's secret gambling room, somehow picking up Squeaks along the way. CB recognizes one of the employees as the fat man in Dick's sketch. After dropping a wad of cash at the roulette wheel, Chuck proposes to continue gambling by check. As expected, the fat man tells Chuck that checks require approval from the boss, and is led into Johnny-on-the-Spot's office. Proving himself much smarter than his lackeys, Johnny recognizes that CB is just a kid, and tells the boy to scram, which is okay by Chuck since he recognizes Johnny as the second man in Dick's sketch. Unfortunately, Johnny spots Chuck's monkey as he leaves, and shouts "Holy Cats! It's Crimebuster! Don't let him out!"
One page turn later, Chuck has suddenly and inexplicably lost the dress suit and is once again clad in his hockey uniform, just in time for the big fight scene. Using an emergency fire hose, bar seats, beer mugs, and assisted by his table cloth and gin bottle wielding monkey, Crimebuster knocks out at least six of Johnny's henchmen (possibly seven, but I think the seventh thug is just the sixth thug after a sudden and inexplicable costume change from a green to brown suit).
Now, rather than simply trying to shoot the boy, multiple murderer Johnny decides to make a break for his car. Crimebuster spots the escape attempt from the Club's second story window, and gives chase by sliding down the drain pipe. Johnny attempts to run CB down, but Crimebuster manages to tear a long segment of drain pipe from the wall, and uses it to vault over Johnny's car, just seconds before it crunches into the Club's brick wall. The engine catches fire, and Johnny screams for help lest he be roasted alive.
"If you don't tell me why you murdered Flanagan, I'll let you fry!" vows Crimebuster.
"I was his silent partner!" confesses Johnny. "The club wasn't payin', so I wanted a gambling room, but he wouldn't play ball! ... He was gonna stool to the cops!"
Satisfied, CB rescues the thug off panel, and soon presents the local constabulary with a "neat bundle of killers."
The story concludes by the sick bed of CB's D.A. pal.
"You don't have to say it, C.B.! I know-- it was dull and you were bored stiff!"
"What was? Oh, the speech! My gosh, I forgot all about it!"
Hmmm... well, I'll admit the cover was better than the story. Still, in spite of gross police incompetence, an unbelievable lack of customer scrutiny at an underworld gambling joint, and instant and unexplained costume changes and crowd disappearance, this was one crackling tale, with a level of violence that raised the hair on even this thought-he-was-jaded-by-modern-media-violence reviewer.
The issue's other features include "Swoop Storm" (a boy pilot), the "True Story of Jan Smudek, Check (sic) Hero" (young Czechoslovakian who helps blow up Nazi army camps), a text piece titled "Daredevil's Greatest Battle", "Little Dynamite", "Young Robinhood and his Band", "Yankee Longago (The Boy of To-Day in the Land of Yesteday)", and ads for Charles Atlas and Glover's anti-dandruff treatment ("They used to giggle, laugh and smirk/ Girls thought I was an awful jerk/ With Glover's now my rating's high/ My hair's got class I'm a different guy!").
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What this comic book taught me:
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1. If you testify against the mob, always make sure you have a full tank of gas, or at least make sure your wife is armed with a semi-automatic.
2. All some towns need is a good murder or two to keep the police force happy.
3. If you're really good, you can change from a suit and tie to a hockey uniform and cape in less than 30 seconds.
4. Never underestimate a table cloth-toting monkey.
-- And --
5. Always buckle up and carry a fire extinguisher before trying to plow down teenagers standing in front of brick walls.
Daniel Smith
