Check out the awesome comic books in the Goldin Pop Culture Elite Auction March 2024!

Goldin Comic Book Hall of Fame 2023 Inductee: Crime SuspenStories 22
Classic Decapitation Cover

Crime SuspenStories #22 is the ninth induction into the Goldin Comic Book Hall of Fame

Click to see the next Goldin Comic Book Hall of Famer!

Why Crime SuspenStories 22 is in the
Goldin Comic Book Hall of Fame

No freedom of speech or expression. Book burnings. Censorship. Aren't you lucky you live in the land of the free?

Except... this was 1950s America.

Frederick Wertham wrote a book called Seduction of the Innocent, blaming society's ills on... You guessed it... comic books.

For some reason, he concluded that images of buxom women in bondage, or severed heads and tongues, torture and murder were not good influences on American children.

Congress concurred. Not only was the Comics Code Authority created to, essentially, censor what publishers could say and show in comic books, but public book burnings were organized in towns across the country. (Continues below)

Public comic book burnings were organized across small-town America!

This organized destruction has led to books like Crime SuspenStories 22 becoming far rarer than you'd expect.

While it's definitely not the goriest or most controversial horror comic cover of the era, it is the most famous, and always on the want list of collectors of so-called Pre-Code horror.

Crime SuspenStories 22 is the ninth inductee into the Goldin Comic Book Hall of Fame.

Guide to Crime SuspenStories 22 Comic Book Values

It's rare to find this book for sale at all. Fans of pre-Code horror jealously guard the key issues from this exciting era once they add them to their collection.

Prices have more than doubled on this book in the past five years. The recent sale of a CGC 9.0 is a new record for this book.

There are four higher graded copies that have not changed hands yet. A 9.2, 9.4, 9.6 and 9.8 -- the 9.8 could be a half-million dollar book if it ever comes to market!