TOPS #2 (SEPTEMBER 1949)

An interesting title from Lev Gleeson, presenting "The Adult Magazine of Dramatic Picture Stories."  Over 600 Illustrations!  All Color!  All Real!

I'm sold.

Especially with that damsel in distress cover wih the beautiful girl thinking, "Someone is following me!  Could it be that menace?  If it is, he'll kill me!  I KNOW he will -- Heaven help me!"  And who is that young beauty stalked by the menacing stranger?  "This is Peggy -- of the novel length illustory, Hatcheck 21.  Peggy had a reason for being afraid of the free-spending customer from Baltimore."  Although Peggy is being stalked, she gets little help from officialdom with her plight.  Can Plainclothesman Danny Johnson get there in time to save Peggy?  Story by Charles Biro; art by Reed Crandall.

They like to use the word "illustory" a lot.

Also in this ish:

• Actor/director Mervyn Douglas gives his opinion on "How You Would Live Under a World Government."  According to Douglas, the alternative could be a devastating atomic war that would blight the world.  Our best chance for the future lies with the United Nations.   This opinion piece was adapted as an "illustory" by Bob Brent.
• Claude Moore presents the case history of a fraudulent lonely hearts club and how it affected one innocent and lonely girl in "Marriage Swap Shop.".
• Test your wits with "Who Dunnit?" and solve The Case of the Unlucky Gambler.  "The facts in this case have been so constructed that you can guess who the killer is -- if you are sharp enough to spot the clues!"  Adapted to illustory by Peter Stuart; art by Ralph Marshall.
• Romance is in the air when Marie get a job as a "Summer Waitress" and meets handsome, not-quite-engaged Don King (not the wrestling promoter) who has just inherited $12 million.  Adapted by Virginia Hubble from a story by Chuck Benedict; art by Fred Kida.
• "A Comedy of Terrors" is a text story by Maurice De Kobra [sic].  "Maurice Dekobra" was a pen name for author Ernst-Maurice Tessier, the best-selling French author who penned Madonna of the Sleeping Cars, among many other works.
• The 1927 biography Anthony Comstock, Fanatical Reformer by Heywood Broun and Margaret Leech gets the illustory adaptation by George Hansen, with art by Lee Ames.  Comstock's morality campaigns labeled George Bernard Shaw an "Irish Smut Dealer," the painting September Morn as "Immoral," the Nick Carter detective stories as ones that "Should be Burned," Hootchy Kootchy dancers as "Soul-Contaminating," and publisher and physical culture advocate Bernarr MacFadden as one who "Degrades Youth."
• Each month. the comic book's "consulting analyst," Anton Nikola (I have no idea if this dude is real or not), opens up his case files to tackle a problem of human behavior.  What about a man who marries and divorces, marries and divorces over and over again?  "Helping the World Go Round" was illustrated by Bob Lubbers.
• "Escape," adapted to illustory by Bill Koford. tells the story of Prussian Baron Ludwig von Trenck. one of the bodyguards of King Frederick the Great in 1760, and of "the strangest prisnm break of all time," one that "won for him the vengeance of his captors and the secret admiration of all Prussians."
• Any many, many fillers...

Enjoy.

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=85165&comicpage=&b=i