Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Vintage Paper | Tagged: Fox Feature Syndicate, gil kane, John Forte
Gil Kane’s Gangland Air Raid in Murder Incorporated #1, at Auction
Gil Kane’s story “The Short Bloody Life of Charlie Birger” in Fox’s Murder Incorporated #1 includes a wild moment from Birger’s real life, as his hq is bombed by airplane.
Article Summary
- Murder Incorporated #1 features with Gil Kane’s Charlie Birger story, drawing on a real 1926 airplane raid on Shady Rest.
- The Murder Incorporated feature tracks Birger’s gang war, including the forged message tied to Mayor Joe Adams’s murder.
- The issue’s true-crime stories mix fact and fiction, with Birger’s execution date altered and names changed elsewhere.
- Murder Incorporated #1 survives in limited census numbers, adding collector interest to Fox’s popular pre-Code crime debut.
An airplane bombing a gangster’s roadhouse while the men below answer with machine-gun fire sounds like the sort of thing a pre-Code crime comic might invent, even in the true crime genre. But the attack depicted in Gil Kane‘s lead story of Murder Incorporated #1 had a real-life inspiration in Southern Illinois. Charlie Birger‘s Shady Rest was attacked from the air on November 12, 1926, and newspaper accounts of the matter published in its aftermath describe a scene very close to this comic book depiction over 20 years later. Fox’s true crime material usually took plenty of liberties even by the standards of the genre, but for this particular part, they were true to the spirit of it.
Gangland Warfare Above Shady Rest
The United Press report the next day described a plane circling the trees around Birger’s roadhouse before descending toward the building. One bomb exploded about 100 yards away. Birger’s men opened fire, the aircraft circled again, and two more bombs were dropped without exploding. The pilot escaped, and there were no casualties. Authorities suspected a member of the rival Shelton gang had arranged the attack. Birger, meanwhile, was reportedly considering an airplane and his own pilot in retaliation.
“The Short Bloody Life of Charlie Birger” depicts this bombing attack as part of a larger gang war involving armored cars, fortified hideouts, informers, and a mayor allied with Birger’s enemies. Joe Adams, the mayor of West City, IL, becomes a target, and a forged message supposedly from the Sheltons is used to bring him within reach of his killers. The Illinois Supreme Court’s 1928 opinion in People v. Birger describes testimony about the message used in his murder. The ending of this feature is quite a bit less true to the historical events. It dates Birger’s execution to October 26, 1927. The Illinois State Museum’s account of the gang war gives the actual date as April 19, 1928.
The story “Hate Blazes a Bloody Trail” in this issue acknowledges the historical liberties it takes at the outset, noting that names have been changed and events may be condensed. That story follows a Santa Maria truck driver, embittered by his separated wife, who kills another woman and is eventually caught at Lone Pine, California. The particulars of this story closely parallel the Thomas Hilton case described by the California Supreme Court in 1946.
The CGC census lists 40 Universal copies, with four at 6.5 and 11 higher. For Gil Kane’s depiction of Illinois gang warfare with a John Forte cover in the debut of a popular Fox pre-Code crime comic book, there’s a Murder Incorporated #1 (Fox, 1948) CGC FN+ 6.5 copy with cream to off-white pages up for auction at the September 24-26, 2026 Comic Books Signature Auction #7469.
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