Friday, June 07, 2024
Toppers: Public Enemies Through the Ages
Imagine you are a criminal in the 1910s or 20s. You are really in the catbird seat, because whenever you rob or kill someone, your successful escape from the area is practically assured by having a car, even if it's a lowly tin lizzy. In those days if a policeman discovered your crime even just moments after you left, you are practically uncatchable. The police officer can find a telephone or a call box to report the crime to headquarters, and he might even know what kind of car you drove, but then what? Yes, some cops did have cars, so they could chase you, but assuming they were out on patrol and not lolling around the stationhouse, there is no way for headquarters to tell them to look for your Model T with license plate thus-and-such.
The reign of terror would finally be over for you, you rotten criminal, when in 1933 the Bayonne New Jersey police force was the first to use a two-way radio link-up between the station and their cars, which came to be known as radio cars. (Detroit had a one-way version in 1928, but it was not nearly as effective in crime-fighting as the two-way version). Now when you committed a crime, the word was out to the entire force of radio cars as soon as the crime was reported, and if they knew where you were, or knew what you were driving, well, your chances of getting away with it just went to bad odds.
This incredible and impressive use of new technology came at a moment in American history when crime was rampant, so the two-way radio quickly became well-known and the roll of captured criminals a long one. Police "radio cars" were quickly incorporated into all popular media, including comic strips.
Artist Charlie Schmidt and writer Edward Sullivan came up with a kid detective strip Pinkerton Junior, debuting on August 7 1933 in the Hearst-owned Boston Daily Record where both of them were editors. The strip was popular enough that news of it filtered through the Hearst organization, and it was decided that it might succeed in national syndication. However, what appealed to the syndicate were the radio car cops who co-starred with Pinky. The strip was renamed Radio Patrol when national syndication began on April 10 1934, and the new technology was now the acknowledged star of the show.
Radio Patrol is the very first adventure strip to star uniformed cops, says Ron Goulart, and I'm inclined to agree. There were lots of earlier cop strips, but they were generally played for laughs. When it came to adventure, the police detectives seemed to have cornered the early adventure strip market. So Schmidt and Sullivan had a unique tiger by the tail. Strangely, though, Radio Patrol never did all that well in syndication, appearing mostly in Hearst-owned papers. It wasn't for lack of quality, either, because both the art and storytelling were firmly in the grade of B to B-, no classic but eminently serviceable.
Anyway, all this discussion was to get to the one and only topper that ever ran with the Sunday Radio Patrol, and it came and went so quickly you'd need a radio car to chase it down. The reason for the lack of toppers is that Radio Patrol was only available in half or tab format, eliminating the need for Hearst-required toppers on the full size. Tabs did often use toppers, but they were not an absolute requirement, and so Schmidt and Sullivan generally eschewed their use except for the short experiment that was Public Enemies Through the Ages.
The criminal history strip Public Enemies Through The Ages began on May 26 1935*, about six months after the Sunday page itself had been added, and the first story reached back a thousand years to tell the tale of Hassan Sabbah, leader of the Order of Assassins. His reputation these days is pretty thoroughly scrubbed of wrongdoing (see the Wiki write-up), but the Radio Patrol version of his life story is of a bloodthirsty criminal mastermind. The story was well-told but I imagine of very limited interest to readers of Radio Patrol. Well, readers didn't have to put up with it for long. While still in the middle of the Hassan Sabbah bio the topper vanished, last appearing on July 6 1935**. The tabloid Sundays reverted to offering the whole page to the stars of the show, and no other topper was ever used again for the life of the Sunday page, which ended in 1946.
* Source: San Francisco Examiner
** Source: Honolulu Advertiser
Labels: Topper Features
Anyway, the 1937 Radio Patrol serial is available on DVD from VCI. While not as outrageous or silly as Flash Gordon, it's affable fun. Every episode begins with an unidentified kid gawking at an awkward pasteup of Radio Patrol strips. Here as in some others, chapter recaps are presented as comic strips.
