EC Horror part 1 - Tales From the Crypt: the Official Archives

For my money, the best comic books ever produced were the horror, crime, and suspense comics produced by EC (aka Entertaining Comics) in the 1950s. The art is just about the best ever and the stories are for the most part, gripping, suspenseful, and just plain entertaining. These comics have withstood the tests of time for over 50 years, being continually reproduced in different formats since the 1970s. Most recently a new series of full color, hardcover sets called the "EC Archives" were being published by Gemstone Publishing. There have been many original art auctions, oversized and "library" reproductions, not to mention the HBO television series and a couple of movies. But let us start at the beginning...

And the beginning, amazingly enough, is the beginning of all comic books. In 1933, Max Gains was a salesman for Eastern Color Printing, whose state of the art color presses printed the Sunday funnies for most of the East Coast's newspapers. Max published a 32-page booklet of newspaper comic reprints called "Funnies on Parade". These were offered as a premium with Ginger Ale, and eventually Max started printing comics to be sold in newsstands. Years later, with Harry Donenfeld, Max Gains would go on to publish the comics of Superman, Wonder Woman, and other Golden Age heroes until Gains sold his half of the company in 1945. He would immediately found Educational Comics and published sedate titles like Picture Stories from the Bible and Animal Fables.

In 1947, Max Gains unexpectedly died in a boating accident and his 25-year-old, recently divorced, goofball son, William, reluctantly took control the failing comic company. Despite it being a business he loathed, William Gains stuck it out and in 1948 he hired a brilliant young artist (with a knack for drawing voluptuous girls) named Al Feldstein. With a name change to Entertaining Comics, and a new direction towards, at first, romance, and then suspense, crime, science fiction, military fiction, and horror, EC comics was an industry leader within a year. In 1950, the comic books the Crypt of Terror (aka Tales from the Crypt), the Vault of Horror, and the Haunt of Fear all debuted as part of EC's New Trend series.

Amazing artwork accompanied four illustrated horror or crime stories in every issue. Each gruesome tale was bookended by a wise-cracking host to the horror comic, giving continuity to the unrelated events in each book. Most of the stories were originals written by Gaines and Feldstein. Gains, it has been told, concieved most of the stories while reading horror and sci-fi stories during his diet-pill-amphetamine induced insomnia. With four stories in each book, and two or three books coming out every month, this break-neck pace continued for over 3 years.

But in 1954, the publishing of the anti-comics study Seduction of the Innocent by Dr. Frederic Wertham and the resulting congressional hearings on juvenile delinquency effectively shut-down operation on all horror, crime, and violent comics.

After attempting to continue with "New Direction" comics like Piracy, Valor, and Psychoanalysis, then with Picto-Fiction illustrated stories, Gains and EC published their last comic in late 1954 and focused all their energy on their last profitable enterprise... MAD Magazine.

In 1996, St. Martin's Press published Tales From the Crypt: the Official Archives, by Digby Diehl, which features more details on the amazing rise and tragic witch-hunt fall of EC Horror comics. With great photographs from the era, court documents, artist profiles, cover artwork from every EC horror title, and four complete tales reproduced in color, this coffee-table sized book is a must have for fans of the comics like me. The 2nd half of the book is dedicated to the resurrection of Tales with the big-named produced HBO television series starting in 1989 and running for 7 seasons. The book also features collectibles from the comic and television-era Crypts as well as a touching tribute to Bill Gains, who died in 1992. The book also presents a complete, never-before-published story and artwork from Shock-Illustrated #4 with art by Jack Davis.

Next blog I'll explore one of the crown jewels in my art book collection, the complete hardcover Vault of Horror library edition reprint, with slipcover. Until then, you can feast on these links:
Tales From the Crypt: From Comic Books to Television Documentary DVD
Time magazine article on the Rise and Fall of EC Horror (2004)
Russ Cochran's EC Comic Art Auctions (next on is January 15th, 2008!)
Tales From the Crypt DVDs