Down with Crime #7
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeDown with Crime #7 closes out Fawcett's short-lived true-crime anthology run, making it the final issue of a seven-issue series that placed the publisher best known for Captain Marvel squarely inside the pre-Code crime comics wave of the early 1950s. As the last chapter of a title produced while Fawcett's entire comics operation was visibly contracting — the DC lawsuit over Captain Marvel had already been decided against Fawcett in 1951 — the issue documents a publisher pivoting genre strategies in its waning months. The series as a whole represents Fawcett's attempt to compete with the crime anthology boom pioneered by EC and others, and issue #7 marks where that experiment ended. A cover detail noted by dealers — that the masked figure depicted bears a notable resemblance to the Golden Age Sandman — gives the issue an unintentional pop-culture footnote of its own.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
Down with Crime launched with a November 1951 cover date and ran bimonthly for seven issues through November 1952, produced by Fawcett Publications as part of a broader diversification into crime and horror genres after the company's superhero line came under fatal legal pressure. The series was an anthology of standalone 'true crime'-styled stories, formatted at 32 pages in full color at the standard dime cover price, edited (at least in early issues) by Roy Ald. Fawcett shut down its comics division entirely in 1953, and DC Comics eventually acquired the Fawcett comic book assets in 1991, making DC the current intellectual property holder for the title.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Down with Crime #7 is the final issue of the series — the run concluded with this November 1952 cover-dated issue after seven total installments beginning in November 1951.
- The series was published by Fawcett Publications and is classified as a pre-Code true-crime anthology; DC Comics acquired the Fawcett comic book assets in 1991 and is the current rights holder.
- Issue #7 contains four stories: 'The Dictator,' 'Blackmail,' 'The Tin Can Murder,' and 'The Payoff.'
- The cover figure has been noted by dealers to bear a strong resemblance to the Golden Age Sandman, an unintentional visual echo of a DC/All-American character.
- The standard format for each issue in the run was 32 pages, full color, at a 10-cent cover price — typical for Fawcett anthology titles of the era.
- Contributing artists across the Down with Crime series included Bob Powell, Bernard Baily, Mike Sekowsky, Charlie Tomsey, and Myron Fass; specific interior credits for issue #7 are not fully documented in available sources.
- The series ran concurrently with Fawcett's final years as a comics publisher — the company ceased its comics division in 1953, meaning Down with Crime #7 appeared roughly a year before that shutdown.
- Comic Book Plus, which has digitized much of the Fawcett pre-Code catalog, hosts issues #1–#6 of Down with Crime but does not appear to have issue #7 in its archive.
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