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I have been scammed through time. Someone put a big, big sack with a dollar bill on it under a box, held up by a stick attached to a long string, in 1951, and in 2026 I crawled right in. A comic book promised me dames, see! It promised me gams, and the graphic story of boys and girls running wild in the violence-ridden slums of today. What I got was some romance stories about how crime is awesome and leads to adorable chaste smooches.

This cover is an early example of click bait. You’re supposed to see the pretty lady and buy the comic with between 0 and very few questions asked. I read this whole comic book, and there were almost no gams. Very few loose morals, even! Each story has the cadence of a Disney movie where crimes are the jealous witch that ruins the middle of the story.

I fully support a comic book D.A.R.E. program just for young girls that warns them about terrible men, but I don’t think putting a smoking woman bending over on the cover is going to attract the audience for that. Also, all of these crimes lead to the main character's future happiness. If I were a teenager and I read this I would go commit some burglary to try and find my one true love.

We open with the titular story “Reform School Girl.” We’re promised that this could be anybody’s story by a glamorous, blonde, smoking woman who looks like she has never pooped in her life, and not because she has horrific IBS-C. Don’t be like this woman, the coolest woman in the world. Look away from her amazing hair and sick outfit, ladies! Is the message the reader receives.

Our heroine’s name is Faith Butler, and she’s appearing before a parole board at her reform school. Her two traits are that she has no self-esteem and is obsessed with Jeff Nason, who will only like her after a makeover. The comic doesn’t specify what Jeff wants her to look like, but I’m guessing the note was sluttier.

She explains to the parole board that she had to start stealing to get access to the outfits she needed to obtain those sweet Jeff kisses. Who does Jeff think he is, Tim Gunn? He can kiss her in last season’s poodle skirt and not complain about it. The parole board is unmoved by her medical Jeff kisses deficiency. “Your fashionable boyfriend is no excuse,” they said. "Some really weird shit," she said:

The board is like, “Actually, the crime was stealing, which you just admitted to doing a lot of, and you showed absolutely no remorse, so it seems like you need more reforming.” She’s sentenced to another six months for not lying to the parole board like a smart teen. Immediately, she decides that she can’t go that long without fulfilling her Jeff addiction, and she breaks out.

Unfortunately, Jeff has plans that evening to rob a bunch of sailors who are coming into town, so he doesn’t want his reform school escapee girlfriend around to attract the cops. He tells her this politely and I’m kidding, he choke slams her to the ground like he thinks she’s the Undertaker.

Faith Butler very reasonably decides to get revenge by calling the cops and reporting that her dirtbag boyfriend and his gang are planning to rob some sailors. As soon as she does this, Jeff reappears and says he just choke slammed her to impress his friends! That makes it ok. We had Jeff all wrong! They should get married! Is I guess what we’re supposed to think?

After they reunite, Jeff heads off to rob those sailors he mentioned earlier, and Faith realizes she still tipped off the cops, so Jeff is most likely going to prison. She rushes to the docks, yelling Jeff’s name like she has a quota to make for saying Jeff in this comic. Unfortunately, the cops are already there, and Faith ends up taking a bullet for Jeff. They should give her a methadone for Jeff kisses. Give this woman a Jeffadone, stat!

Faith survives and ends up back in the reform school for three years. Getting shot for Jeff is a one-step Jeff rehab program, so she’s no longer interested in locating him when she gets out. The reform school gets her a job “in defense,” which I think is gun manufacturing. Sending all the reformed criminals to work at the gun factory makes perfect sense, and Faith is incredible at her job. She’s the best lady gun manufacturer they’ve got, and only one man has beaten her record.

So she pushes herself and works through breaks until she makes more guns to send to Korea than anyone else. The owner of the factory decides to introduce her to the man who previously held the record, and I’m so sorry, I don’t know how to tell you this, but it’s fucking Jeff. Faith takes one look at Jeff and is like, “You’ve changed; I can tell. You’re no longer the man who told me I would be hot if I dressed better and then choke slammed me to impress your friends; you’re the opposite of that now, I’m assuming!”

I was promised debauchery on the cover of this comic book, and it seems like this girl's poor choices mainly stemmed from a lack of guidance and growing up in poverty. All she ever wanted was to kiss the wrong boy and, wait, I’m sorry, apparently Jeff was the right boy because they kiss and that’s the happy ending. Is this a stealth recruitment ad for the army? This story turned out pretty great for fucking Jeff.

Unbelievable ending. This feels like if the ending of an anti-drug PSA was a man learning to enjoy a reasonable amount of cocaine. You know, just on the weekends socially. Remember, ladies, if a man promises he’s changed and is sorry for all of those terrible things he did to you, it’s almost always true. Get it girl.

"Reform School Girl" isn’t the only story of the penalty hundreds of pretty girls have to pay when they allow themselves to fall victim to unscrupulous men, their own wayward emotions, and the other hidden pitfalls of a sensation-crazed society! In most of the stories the girls go to reform school at some point and regret all of their misdeeds, except for the final story, "fast company!".

"fast company!" is the tale of how criminals sometimes provide a pretty good dating service. A woman named Bea makes a bet with her new acquaintance Nick that she can date a rich man whose engagement announcement has just appeared in the paper. She’s totally right! She can date him even though he’s engaged; it’s not even hard. In fact, he falls in love with her after one date and plans to dump his fiancĂ© for her.

Unfortunately, Nick has gotten photos of them together and plans to blackmail George with them, a plan he never let Bea in on. She thinks she’s just seducing an engaged man for fun, and maybe a gold bracelet. Instead, she’s upgraded herself to a diamond ring with no extra effort. When George receives the blackmail, he mistakenly believes Bea was blackmailing him on purpose, not by accident. To be fair, it’s pretty difficult to explain to someone that you’ve gotten into a zany Three’s Company blackmail misunderstanding.

Luckily, Bea is a stenographer, and she manages to get a recording of Nick saying he tricked her into his blackmail scheme. George is overjoyed to learn that his girlfriend picked him up to win a bet and not specifically to blackmail him, because in this story George is the one with unbelievably low self-esteem. That’s still bad, George! You were still a pawn in her game, and she still won a gold bracelet for dating you. For some reason, George doesn’t care about that shit at all.

Was no one hurt in this story? There’s a woman whose engagement was broken, and a man who’s pretty good at tricking naive women into blackmail schemes who’s still on the loose. Do crime stories usually end with a kiss? What lesson am I supposed to be learning, because all I’m getting is do crime, get kisses. This is the messaging baby boomers received, and their behavior in Congress is starting to make more sense to me.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: AnAndy, who is currently three misdemeanors into a committed relationship.

You can read this article and every other one on the much better in every way 1900HOTDOG.COM

Comments

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Do Crime Get Kisses is coincidentally the opening words of the Mountain Monsters mission statement.

sissyneck

yes i knew jeff still throbbed for faith and was only abusing her to impress his friends the way he threw his newspaper down when he saw her all jessica rabbited up in the door like that thats like the old timey equivalents of throwin a switch 2 to the ground

Brian Seiler

You're a more disciplined reader than me, Ms Bugg. I'm still stick on "plenty of seamen" being at the docks to take advantage of. Usually a sign Jeff wouldn't be right for her. I'm an adult with a career.

Mike Metzler

I don’t get that last story. Doesn’t the first panel show that the photo already ran in the paper? How does it help to destroy the negative after that?

the_rurik

It's weird we don't see any of the other women in the stories, especially the maligned fiancée, but I get it because men can only empathize with women who have done a bit of crime or built a bit of gun

Paul

I suddenly realize I was never clear on what “reform school” was.

Skebotron

"You're too old to know what it's like to go for a guy like Jeff Nason, who only ever wears a green sweater with the letter 'P' on it!"

Goat Face

Is she meant to be a child? I guess it was the 50s and society still ran on Anime rules.

Quicksilver

God, it’s amazing to know that “stodgy old busy body who doubles as a greek chorus” was a thing not only in bad 50s movies but bad 50s comics. How much of society did they make up?!

Jeff Orasky

So far, Deathjeff is the only Jeff worth knowing. We suck.

Amber Marshall

I have never met one Jeff in my life who was worth this much trouble, even though every Jeff I've met has pretty much been just like this.

Amber Marshall

And before the Jeffs in the comments get all huffy-puffy: I haven't met any of you.

Talking Alpaca

You've heard of Jeff the Killer (maybe), but here's Jeff the Kisser!

FancyShark

Faith could have beaten that record faster if someone hadn't shot her

Kevin Hanlon

Ironic...more precisely, considering a gunshot wound was the contributing factor, leadic.

Kevin Hanlon

Regarding the pre-clickbait image on the cover: The body suggests Mamie van Doren, but the head is strictly Ed Wood.

drake godzilla

Remember the moral of the story is that crime pays in love not money!...Anyone want to guess what crime the writers did to learn that?

Thad Boyd

The Cryptkeeper cleans up nice.

Mister Sinistar

Hard to believe folks might believe these kinds of stories were more "realistic" than the ones with the dudes who fill up their magic rings with crime-fighting power

Daphne Lawless

I think the chain of causality goes: the negative is destroyed, allowing George to break off his engagement politely, then it doesn't matter?

Kevin Lynch

Hey! Where’s Wendy O Williams, Sybil Danning, and of course; Pat AST?

Sebben

No Jeff has ever been worth all this bullshit

D.J. Trindle

In that panel where Faith's bragging about her wizardly gun assembly skills, she has the same sneer as Debbie casting the mind bondage spell on her father to let her play D&D.

Ace Hendrix

Do Crime, Get Kisses needs to be a shirt.