Number 352



C'mon, get Happy!



Dan Barry was a hotshot, a slick, illustrative artist who started his career in the 1940s drawing comic books. He graduated to syndicated comic strips, and signed the Flash Gordon strip for years. Mr. Door Tree in his Golden Age Comic Book Stories blog posted this fine example of Barry's unseen work, done for artist/inker George Roussos' sketchbook. It was probably from around the time he was doing crime comics stories for Charles Biro. This story about "Happy" Maione is from Crime Does Not Pay #65.

There really was a gangland killer named Harry "Happy" Maione. As usual with these types of comics facts are askew and characters merged or changed altogether, but a kernal of the truth is in there. It's a violent and grim story, the kind that gave old Doc Wertham and his fellow comic book critics conniption fits.