Welcome to Crimeboss

Welcome to my little piece of cyberspace, which is dedicated to my hobby: collecting crime comics from the 1940s and 1950s. I hope you enjoy your visit, and I really hope that you have some of the books on my want list that you wish to sell me. I started this website for a couple of reasons:

It provides a much-needed incentive to brush up on my HTML skills. I’m one of those people who can’t learn anything new unless I have to.
It gives me a place to publish my comic book want list on the internet. I occasionally advertise my wants in the Comics Buyers’ Guide, and I always thought it would be neat if I could say “check out my want list on the web.” Well, now I can. We’ll see how well it works. Make sure to e-mail me if you have books that I need.
Maybe I can impart some of my enthusiasm for this genre to others of you. But not too many of you...these books are hard enough to find as it is.

I’ve been collecting comics since 1987 or so. I started out strictly a Silver Age Marvel guy. Don’t get me wrong, I still love Spidey, Daredevil, and especially the Silver Surfer. But there was something about collecting these types of books that was missing (for me anyway): the challenge.

In 1993, I attended the San Diego Comic-Con (as it was called back in those days). While I was there, it dawned on me: There’s only one real obstacle to putting together a nice run of Amazing Spider-Man...money. Where’s the challenge in that? Where’s the thrill of the hunt? What’s the fun of collecting something that isn’t even really all that scarce?

While I was in San Diego, I was awed by the massive amounts of Golden Age books on display. I love looking at those great covers, but the books are so expensive that I never really considered collecting them. Crime comics also have some of the best covers from this era (see for yourself) but are, for the most part, reasonably inexpensive to collect.

Inexpensive, yes...easy, no. Some of these books are very difficult to find, and I've had a lot of fun trying to track them down. I’ve been working on completing a run of Crime Does Not Pay (the very first crime comic) for almost five years, and I’ve still got a few books to go. Some of these are simply impossible to find. Trust me, I could tell Gerber a thing or two about his scarcity rating for some of these books.

I’ve put together a cover gallery of some of my favorite books. I plan on adding to it occasionally, so check back every now and again. Enjoy the covers, for they are the best part of this genre (with the notable exception of Lev Gleason Publications and E.C. Comics, the stories and interior art are often dreadful). I’d love to hear any comments that you might have. Send me some e-mail.

Sincerely,