True Crime Comics Covers

Contrary to what people say we all judge books by their covers! When we look at comic book covers there is often a clear representation of a certain genre. The genres have varying art styles to match, along with color schemes, even certain words that trigger certain genre expectations. This is prevalent, especially in the 40’s with Plastic Man # 19 and True Crime Comics #2.
The true crime genre was undoubtedly one of the most memorable genres of comics during the 40’s. It had highly deplorable themes and images. People expected the true crime genre to be both horrifying for their children yet addictively horrible for adults. More than anything though it was left appalling to the public because of its striking content. The topics for these comics …show more content…
One thing that was held important in these comics was the fact that the vivid and horrifying cover pulled you in. The artist that made these comics made sure they used a brute art style along with warm colors against a dark background. Covers also tended to have a displeasing event or some displeasing items in plain sight. For example when you look at the first page of “Murder, Morphine, and Me.” they would see a large needle, a smoking seductress, and men in agony. If “Murder, Morphine, and Me.” is further examined you would see that it follows a good example of the work to make the melodramatic effects in crime comics. On page 2 of the comics two things are worth pointing out. The artist goes back and forth from clean to brute styles so that the reader’s emotions change with the feelings in the panel. For the most part the style is clean until the man gets violent with the woman, at this point we can the style get brute and her face gets more definition to show how afraid she is. The background changes to completely red when it was just purple. Then the artist even tils his panel and makes the edges jagged to emphasize and dramatize the scene in all its horror. All of the