Tops: The Complete Collection of Charles Biro's Visionary 1949 Comic Book Series

Before EC, before His Name is…Savage!, before underground comix, this volume collects a pioneering attempt — from the creators of the first true crime comic — to publish stories aimed at adults in the comic book format. In 1949, the ambitious Biro — who had previously co-created the realistically brutal comic Crime Does Not Pay — edited and wrote an oversized comic aimed at adults, called Tops. Like several other radical adult comics projects that would follow, it proved to be a commercial failure and lasted only two Life magazine-sized issues. The original comics have since become a legendary holy grail among comics fans and historians, fetching as much as $6,000 on the collector's market: written about but rarely seen and never reprinted. Until now.