Big Town #19

Tied to TV's hit show, this 1953 DC mystery offering presents one of the more unsettling cover setups of the era: a man hunched over a drawing board, phone pressed to his ear, sketching out what appears to be a figure at a desk while a chilling speech bubble demands he use his one minute to "draw up a plan to kill Steve Wilson." The story inside, "Club of Condemned Men," is crafted by writer John Broome with art by Manny Stallman and inks by John Giunta, while the cover itself — penciled by Gil Kane and inked by Joe Giella — wrings real tension from the simple but clever conceit of crime plotted through cartooning. "The Cartoon Crimes" promises a thrilling Big Town mystery that makes this ten-cent issue a genuinely fun slice of early-'50s crime comics.