Crime Can't Win #11

From 1952, this Atlas-era crime anthology delivers exactly the street-level tension the genre promised. Carl Burgos's cover drops us into a tense urban confrontation — a hunky figure in a brown jacket and green cap scrambles near a rumbling getaway car while a pursuing police officer closes in, speech balloons flying as criminals and cops trade urgent words across a busy city block of storefronts. With interior stories including "D.O.A. (Dead On Arrival)," written by Carl Wessler and illustrated by Jerry Robinson, Crime Can't Win #11 is a punchy snapshot of early-'50s crime comics at their most vivid.