Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Vintage Paper | Tagged: Eddie Bentz, Gangsters Can't Win

Eddie Bentz, Alias The Ghost in Gangsters Can't Win #2, up for Auction

Eddie Bentz pulled off some of the most legendary bank robberies in American history and some of the proceeds to fund his collecting habits.

The true crime comic books of the Golden Age were generally faithful to their genre — they were at least loosely based on the real exploits of notorious criminals more often than you'd think. They largely seem unfamiliar today because the subjects of their stories have largely fallen into obscurity.  Although Eddie Bentz, the subject of Gangsters Can't Win #2's cover feature, is not a household name today, he was one of his era's most notorious bank robbers. Teaming up with the likes of Machine Gun Kelly and Baby Face Nelson, Bentz was also the likely mastermind of one of the most infamous bank robberies in history: the theft of $2.8M from the Lincoln National Bank of Lincoln, Nebraska in 1930.  Gangsters Can't Win #2 has an overview of Eddie Bentz's long and outrageous career, and there's a Gangsters Can't Win #2 (D.S. Publishing, 1948) Condition: Apparent GD- up for auction in the 2024 May 26-28 Sunday, Monday & Tuesday Comic Books Select Auction #122422 at Heritage Auctions.

As outlined in Gangsters Can't Win #2 and implied by its symbolic cover, Eddie Bentz became known for his meticulous planning of his heists and their exit strategies.  The Lincoln National robbery stood as the largest cash bank robbery in the country for decades. Bentz used the proceeds from his exploits to fund an extravagant lifestyle, including collecting rare books and coins. He was ultimately apprehended by the FBI in 1936, and asked to be sent to Alcatraz, reportedly telling the judge that all of his friends were already there. And that's where the Eddie Bentz story in Gangsters Can't Win #2 ends.

D.S. Publishing began life in 1940 when publisher Richard Davis acquired the highly-regarded Dance Magazine from the magazine's founder MacFadden.  The company then moved into publishing "song sheet" magazines which reprinted lyrics of popular songs of the time (comic book publisher Charlton was in the song sheet business as well) along with a wide range of other magazines like Tune In covering the radio industry, fashion magazine Silhouette. D.S. Publishing entered the comic book field in 1948 and is best remembered today for a short-lived but extensive crime comic book line, including titles like Gangsters Can't Win, Outlaws, Public Enemies, Pay-Off, Underworld, and Exposed. The publisher effectively ceased operations in 1951 when it failed to launch a planned pair of pulp-style digests called American Mystery and American Western due to paper shortages that had an impact across the entire industry that year.  The American publishing industry had been impacted by such shortages frequently in the post-WWII era.

Ironically, Bentz was paroled from Alcatraz a few months after Gangsters Can't Win #2 was published.  In his book Persons in Hiding, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover said of Bentz's collecting habits, "Bentz owned several hundred volumes of rare books, old editions of such things as Pilgrines Progress, Stevenson, Voltaire, and others which ranged in subject from the works of Washington Irving to Casanova and Anatole France. Sometimes he kept his library in storage; often he moved it to his lodgings when he took up an extended residence in a hideout city. In searching out these volumes, he visited old bookstores from coast to coast. His collection of old coins brought him into correspondence and association as a reputable collector with many numismatic agencies. Anything old interested him, from Roman coins to Liberty Cap dollars."

One can't help but wonder what a man who pulled off some of the greatest robberies in history and used some of the proceeds to fund his collecting habit would think of the notion that a comic book featuring him was now sought after by collectors today. A historically interesting crime comic book, there's a Gangsters Can't Win #2 (D.S. Publishing, 1948) Condition: Apparent GD- up for auction in the 2024 May 26-28 Sunday, Monday & Tuesday Comic Books Select Auction #122422 at Heritage Auctions.

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