Tuesday, July 10, 2012

POLICE BADGE #479 "Rookie Cop"

After the whole Seduction of the Innocent mishigas in the early-1950s...
...comics went out of their way to "clean up" their image with series like this one from Atlas Comics, the predecessor to Marvel Comics.
Though the concept for Police Badge #479 could've been great, showing the possessors of the badge through history, the single issue of the title concentrated on the current cop wearing the tin, Jim Hudson.
(It's mentioned that his father was also a cop who died of a heart attack while on the job, but not that badge #479 was his, so they could've shown more of his father as, perhaps, the partner of the previous possessor of #479 or somesuch.)
At any rate, Hudson is an idealized image of a police officer and the stories, though well-told, lacked humanity, serving more as moralistic points than plotlines.
The art by Don Heck for this lead story from Police Badge #479 #5 (1955) is clean and dynamic, but the script by an unknown writer is only so-so.
Compare it with the tale we presented last week, from the same period of the 1950s, and you'll see the difference.

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