Racket Squad in Action #17

Charlton's crime-fighting anthology returns with issue #17, its cover by Dick Giordano and Vince Alascia presenting a sharply dressed, cigarette-smoking schemer in a wide-brimmed fedora — a wallet in hand and suspicion written across every angle of his face — while the portraits of a silver-haired man, a bespectacled older woman, and a blonde surround him like potential marks. The bold cover copy warns readers directly: "The next victim of the notorious rackets exposed in this issue may be you… avoid this!!!" — a deliciously urgent pitch that fits perfectly with the con-man world of "The Smoothest Spiel of Them All." A fine slice of 1955 crime comics from Charlton, carrying the Comics Code seal and all the street-level tension the genre does so well.