Police Comics #123

Police Comics #123 (January 1953) delivers exactly what Quality Comics promised — "suspense, mystery, adventure, and intrigue" — in one gut-punch cover by Reed Crandall (pencils) and Chuck Cuidera (inks). The image is hard to look away from: a man's face contorted in terror as a garrote rope cinches tight around his throat, while a wide-eyed blonde woman and a grim-faced man in a yellow jacket look on in alarm. The featured Ken Shannon thriller, "Death Came Screaming," teases an invisible strangler who "cracked necks like match-sticks," and Crandall and Cuidera's visceral linework makes every ounce of that dread utterly believable.