Mr. District Attorney #16

Based on radio's number-one hit show, Mr. District Attorney #16 brings DC's crime-fighting series to life with a tense cover by Howard Purcell and Charles Paris — a suited man with a gun backs through a doorway in alarm while another figure bursts in from the left and a third man operates what appears to be wiretapping equipment in the shadowy background. Promising "the story the headlines didn't tell," this 1950 issue tackles "The Wire-Tap Crimes!" — a tale ripped straight from the era's anxieties about surveillance and organized crime. Fifty-two big pages for a dime made this one of the better deals on the newsstand that summer.