Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Vintage Paper | Tagged: Matt Baker, Mountain Dew, St. John Publications

"Mountain Dew Murder" in 1954's Authentic Police Cases #33, at Auction

Authentic Police Cases #3 features a stand-out cover by Matt Baker, and a tale of bootlegging gone wrong called "Mountain Dew Murder."

A slang term for whiskey, "mountain dew" was a phrase of Scottish origin that could be found in London newspapers as early as 1818 and widely found in U.S. newspapers by the 1820s.  Drinks called "Mountain Dew Drop" were widely marketed as both an alcoholic beverage and mineral spring water through the 1870s-1890s.  Throughout the 19th and much of the 20th centuries in the U.S., the phrase came to be slang for moonshine — illegally made and distributed whiskey.

According to author Dick Bridgforth's outstanding Mountain Dew: The History, Tri-City Beverage of Johnson City, Tennessee, introduced the first version of the Mountain Dew soft drink brand in December 1954, after having acquired the rights from Knoxville bottlers Barney and Ally Hartman, who had developed the drink as a mixer but not sold it publicly.  So when St. John's Authentic Police Cases #33 came out earlier that year, the term mountain dew was still universally associated with bootleg moonshine. That issue's Mountain Dew Murder centers around exactly that.

The Mountain Dew Murder story in this issue was drawn by artist Antonio Canale.  Matt Baker's cover this issue is very loosely inspired by Murder, Inc.'s #1 Boy, a story drawn by Gene Colan.  A rarity for Authentic Police Cases in that it features a well-known real-life gangster, Murder, Inc's #1 Boy is the tale of Harry Maione, a hitman for the infamous Murder, Inc. enforcement arm of the National Crime Syndicate.  Maione was convicted of Murder and executed in the electric chair in 1942.

For Baker fans, his cover for this issue is another stand-out in a series of uniformly great covers. The Mountain Dew Murder story adds a unique angle with an area that crime comics of the period did not often chronicle, interestingly enough.  A St. John crime classic from near the end of the pre-Code era, there's an affordable copy of Authentic Police Cases #33 (St. John, 1954) up for auction in the 2024 July 18 The Matt Baker Comics Showcase Auction #40267 at Heritage Auctions.

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