Crime Does Not Pay #98

One of crime comics' longest-running titles delivers another tense dispatch with issue #98, featuring a cover by Bob Fujitani that pulls no punches: a gagged and bound woman is held in the foreground while a fedora-wearing thug looms over her, as a determined man in a blue suit enters through the doorway behind them, gun drawn and ready. The bottom banner promises Chip Gardner, Private Eye, in "Setup for Murder" — and Fujitani's painted tension makes it easy to see why this series kept readers coming back month after month. At ten cents for a full 52-page magazine in 1951, this was hard-boiled entertainment at its most vivid.