Wednesday, December 14, 2022

CDNP: More Bernstein, a Little More Wessler

As of 1950 Carl Wessler's personal records are complete enough to name most of his scripts for Crime Does Not Pay at Lev Gleason, so stories are noted as his on the Grand Comics Database. The source is Robin Snyder's Wessler bibilography in The Comics, compiled from those records. Here I have another couple of his where the records didn't give the titles. "The Last Mile for Tony" contains both an "Ohoo" and an "Owooo" to show Wessler wrote it. I haven't found any Wessler stories on CDNP after mid-'51 that he didn't fully record.

The GCD wonders if "The Rabbit-Punch Murder Case" could be the 9-page 1951 script for Chip Gardner that Wessler records without a title. Here is an example of why I attribute it to Robert Bernstein: "Ieee!"

CDNP 103 Rabbit-Punch Murder 'Ieee'

Crime Does Not Pay Anthology Stories
1951-52
Written by Robert Bernstein


Feb/51 95  Having a Wonderful Crime
May/     98  Shock Treatment
July/     100  The Smell of Death
    Mission: Murder
Aug/     101  Cain versus Abel
    The Case of the Crooked Politician [CHIP GARDNER]
Oct/     103  The Rabbit-Punch Murder Case [CHIP GARDNER]
The Fruits of Crime
Dec/     105  The Big Cut
Feb/52 107  You Can't Beat the Rackets!
    The State versus "Rock" Madden
Mar/     108  Jim Franton, Bootlegger, versus Bud Rollins, Con-Man
Apr/      109  The Vicious Vendetta Massacre
May/     110  Journey into Horror
    Bootleg "Gold"
July/      112  The Tragic Tale of "Sap" Doretti  (art: Sid Greene)
Oct/      115  Trapped by the Dead
Dec/     117  The End of the Underworld

Written by Carl Wessler


Apr/51 97  The Last Mile for Tony
June/     99  Reprieve Granted--Prisoner Is Dead