The EC Reign Month by Month 1950-1956
32: March 1953
32: March 1953
Davis |
"Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall!" ★★ 1/2
Story by Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein
Art by Jack Davis
"Oil's Well That Ends Well!" ★★★
Story by Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein
Art by George Evans
"Attacks of Horror!" ★★
Story by Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein
Art by Jack Kamen
"There Was an Old Woman!" ★★ 1/2
Story by Ray Bradbury
Adaptation by Al Feldstein
Art by Graham Ingels
Another hottie from the pen of Jack Davis. ("Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall!") |
You are randomly selected to summarize another tired take on the Frankenstein story. You enjoy the Jack Davis art but you notice he still can't draw a pretty girl very well. You wonder why the story is written in the second person. You move on to the next story, unimpressed and wondering just what caused the monster's death.
Smoking kills. ("Oil's Well That Ends Well!") |
"Oil's Well That Ends Well!" in a good crime story, one that would fit right into a noir pulp, and George Evans continues to impress me with his clean, sharp art.
A tax on the nerves! ("Attacks of Horror!") |
Maybe this is funny to someone, but it was lost on me. Even the gruesome moment, when the king orders the thumbs of his subjects lopped off for failure to pay the Thumb Tax, is done off-panel, as is usual with the Kamen stories. The puns don't work for me.
And you should see what I can do with ping pong balls, too! ("There Was an Old Woman!") |
Peter: "There Was An Old Woman!" seems a very strange story to adapt for a funny book; it's multi-layered and doesn't exactly put the message out in front for all to see. The only feedback on Bradbury's tale, in the letters page of #36, was a positive letter and a less-than-positive missive from Ed Redling of New Jersey, who got straight to the point with "Ray Bradbury's story . . . stunk!" I can imagine most pre-teen moptops shaking their head and wondering what that was all about. It's a well-done adaptation and a definite departure for the company. "Attacks of Horror!" is far from a departure, with its greedy king and jovial "art" from Jack Kamen, but what it is is very funny. You can just imagine Al and Bill, behind the scenes, giggling as they cleverly come up with examples for more taxes: "I've got it! Sails Tax!" The best Grim so far.
Universal's lawyers were napping . . . ("Mirror, Mirror . . .") |
Jose: A fairly bland issue from the Crypt. Gaines and Feldstein might have “freely lifted” plots from the old masters, but Feldstein lifts from his own resume with “Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall…”, a basic carbon copy of his earlier and more effective “Reflection of Death” from TFTC 23. Al would actually go on to use the conceit again in the final issue of TFTC with “Upon Reflection”, another Jack Davis monster-fest that puts the gimmick to more cunning use. I remember thinking “Oil’s Well That Ends Well…” was a really lame story to put in a horror book back when I initially read these, and although I still think that holds true my opinion doesn’t mar the fact that the actual yarn is pretty solid and includes a neat Chekhov’s gun-styled retribution for our oily shysters.
Huh?? ("Attacks of Horror!") |
Hel-lo, nurse! ("There Was an Old Woman!") |
Craig |
"When the Cat's Away . . ." ★★
Story and Art by Johnny Craig
"The Screaming Woman!" ★★
Story by Ray Bradbury
Adaptation by Al Feldstein
Art by Jack Kamen
"Water, Water, Everywhere . . ." ★★★
". . . And Not a Drop to Drink!"
Story by Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein
Art by George Evans
"Hail and Heart-y!" ★ 1/2
Story by Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein
Art by Graham Ingels
You leave my Dick out of this! ("While the Cat's Away...") |
He's going for the touchdown, folks! ("While the Cat's Away...") |
What we in the biz refer to as "not-so-subtle foundation." ("The Screaming Woman") |
"And, for my next ditty, a little something I haven't sung in decades!" ("The Screaming Woman") |
I hope you brought enough ocean for the *rest* of the class! ("Water, Water, Everywhere...") |
"Ben's Being Useful" Lyrics by Helen Nesbitt ("Hail and Heart-y!") |
Peter, contemplating the reading of another Grim Fairy Tale. ("Water, Water, Everywhere...") |
Jack: Overall, this is a strong issue of Crime SuspenStories. I thought the Craig story was superb, a great story of revenge without an annoying final twist. The Bradbury adaptation was my favorite so far and is a perfect vehicle for Kamen's art. The two Quickies are better than average, as well, with strong Evans art and--at least in the first part--an unexpected conclusion. I guess that in the 1950s, jeep radiators ran on potable water. The Ingels story is, as so many of his stories are, kind of blah until the great finish; one of the more surprising things I've discovered as we read our way through every EC comic is that Ingels is not as reliably good as I remembered.
Jose: I prayed that all the homosexual subtext I felt like I was picking up in “While the Cat’s Away…” was only in my mind. So the back doors to Jay’s and Dick’s houses face each other and are frequently brought up in conversation… So what? Not to mention Jay waking up in the middle of the night and going to Dick’s bedroom with the idea that his best pal will be in the middle of getting dressed for work. “What of it?” I ask you. And then there’s of course the title, which some liberal deviant could easily posit has more to do with Jay’s hopes of leaving his wailing minx of a wife than Emma’s own desires to have a little alone time with her hubby’s BFF. In a measure of ultimate bad taste, this same deviant would probably propose that a better title for this piece would be “Everybody Loves Dick!” Thankfully, we here at bare*bones don’t take to this kind of low humor or the presence of abnormal sexuality in our funny books, so it’s nice to have Peter’s reassurance that this is nothing but wholesome, safe American entertainment.
Speaking of wholesome, there’s Jack Kamen! Were it not for the seeds of discontent that Bradbury sows in the soil of "The Screaming Woman", this could pass as just another one of ol’ Jack’s “widdle kid” tales. Dig that telling final line Margaret delivers about her Pops. “The last I saw of him.” Is that meant to imply that Dad hooked back up with Helen after rescuing her from a premature grave? Now that’s the story I wanna read! The EC Quickies manage to pack a brutal little punch this time out, their effect more pronounced and grim given that both short-shorts end with our two would-be “heroes” succumbing to madness and suicide respectively. Evans’ haunted-eyed cast allows us to feel the pain of the moment. “Hail and Heart-y” was one of the first ECs I ever read, tracked down to a far corner of the Internet in my desperate search for that GhouLunatic ghoulash. But whereas “Horror We…” and “Lower Berth” only proved their timelessness upon rereads in previous posts, “Hail…” showed signs of age and distress as clearly as Anna’s clapboard house. This feels like a rush job in spite of a number of nice turns of phrase that Feldstein sprinkles throughout, Ingels’ illustrations in particular reflecting the boredom the artist must have felt at receiving the assignment. You can’t go from gummy bayou cadavers to domestic power plays without feeling a little bit bummed about it!
Craig |
"The Mausoleum!" ★★★ 1/2
Story and Art by Johnny Craig
"Let's Play Poison!" ★★★
Story by Ray Bradbury
Adaptation by Al Feldstein
Art by Jack Davis
"A Sock for Christmas" ★★★ 1/2
Story by Al Feldstein and Bill Gaines
Art by Jack Kamen
"Pickled Pints!" ★★ 1/2
Story by Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein
Art by Graham Ingels
Evinced by his doddering old uncle’s steadfast refusal to accept the offer of a wealthy American eccentric to buy up the familial English castle and transfer it to the States for a hefty price, ne’er-do-well nephew Nathan promptly shows his disapproval by giving the old boy the ax—right down the middle of his skull. Nathan passes off Uncle’s death as a disappearance and then passes off the house keys to the American, Howard Martin, but the murderer insists that the family mausoleum be left intact on the moor grounds. (After all, that’s where Uncle’s hanging out now.) But what neither man counted on were the host of crumbly ghouls who live in the mausoleum to tear the structure asunder and conveniently rebuild it in the garden of Martin’s estate. Martin is thrilled to see that his place is genuinely haunted, but Nathan is less than thrilled when he travels to America to give Martin a piece of his mind but ends up losing all peace of mind when the ghouls snatch him up and nail him into a coffin to be interred alongside Uncle’s ferreted corpse. In the nights to come, Martin delights in unsettling his dinner guests with the ghastly, ghostly wails that emanate from his garden mausoleum.
Though much more gruesome in appearance than the typical Craig fare that would regulate the oozy monsters to a few brief glimpses, “The Mausoleum” is shot through with enough droll wit and winking humor to leaven the nasty sight of the zombie construction workers with a light air. The two elements are really at perfect balance in this tale, similar to how Craig experimented with horror and humor in earlier tales such as “Horror House” (VOH 15). Glancing back at that tale and studying the layout of “The Mausoleum” is just as good a testimony as any of how far Craig had advanced as an artist in those few short years. Along with the specific shots that Jack mentions below, the opening splash of the prototypically Gothic mise en scène displays a wonderful use of scale and architectural detail that captures your attention just as brilliantly as any putrid cadaver.
Kids Do the Darnedest Things! ("Let's Play Poison!") |
I enjoyed this Bradbury adaptation more than I thought I would (“There Was an Old Woman” had left me a little leery), and Jack Davis shows that he was just as crafty wielding a pen to depict the macabre merry-go-round lives of children and the miserable teachers who loathe them in this quietly insidious yarn that is oh-so-softly infused with some autumnal tidings.
Kamen gets the lead out! ("A Sock for Christmas!") |
Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals! Yet another entry from the Grim Fairy Tale line, “A Sock for Christmas” scores big by not only going for the laughs but for being built around a fairly original and intelligent premise: what happens to the boy who takes all the real jerk’s punishments when the holidays come around to reward only the good children? We could probably poke fun at Jack Kamen’s stencils for the whole marathon (and let’s face it, we probably will), but stories like “A Sock for Christmas” clearly illustrate (har-har!) what a consummate professional and draughtsman he could be at times. I found myself staring at the finely-wrought details of certain panels a number of times with this one. And talk about surprises: how ‘bout that ending folks? Yee-haw! I’m sure most children probably wouldn’t be comforted by the fact that Ol’ St. Nick would happily smite their enemies like an avenging guardian angel in fur, but this 26-year-old degenerate couldn’t think of a more heart-warming end to this Yuletide tale. God bless us, everyone!
Warren and Cal are operating a pretty sweet racket: by offering bums and hobos a cool ten dollars to donate blood to their derelict loft clinic, the two shysters then turn around and sell each pint to a legitimate blood bank for thirty bucks a pop. It’s a set-up that can’t lose, except when the bowery bums start repeatedly returning to Warren and Cal’s place to give blood so that they can buy their next bottle of rotgut. The literal final nail in the coffin comes when one of the bums kicks the bucket, effectively scaring off any willing donors from the premises. So Warren and Cal take up their cudgels and take to the streets to rustle up some blood, but the con men get the scare of their lives when they nab a napping derelict from the loft basement only to discover that the box the gentleman was snoozing in was actually a coffin and that come sunset the drifter has plans to make a considerable withdrawal from Warren and Cal’s personal blood banks.
Yow! ("Pickled Pints!") |
Yow! Pt. 2 ("Pickled Pints!") |
Jack: "The Mausoleum!" is four stars all the way. Craig can do so much with a wordless panel at the right moment, and that moment comes with the axe attack in this story. Mr. Martin is a man after our own hearts, grinning as he watches corpses assemble the mausoleum by moonlight. Like the rest of the Bradbury adaptations, "Poison" features higher quality writing than we're used to and it's interesting that we're seeing so many adaptations of Ray's horror tales when he was best known for science fiction, at least at this point in his career. The Christmas story is terrible and having St. Nick kill and dismember the king shows misguided revenge, if you ask me--the little brat was the one who deserved it! The best thing I can say about the Ingels story is that he really excels in drawing the Old Witch and sometimes seems more inspired to draw her panels of narration than he does to depict the characters in the main story.
Feldstein |
"Beauty and the Beach!" ★★★
Story by Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein
Art by Jack Kamen
"The Bribe!" ★★★ 1/2
Story by Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein
Art by Wally Wood
"Infiltration!" ★★ 1/2
Story by Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein
Art by Joe Orlando
"The Small Assassin!" ★★ 1/2
Story by Ray Bradbury
Adaptation by Al Feldstein
Art by George Evans
Two couples sit on the beach in the hot summer sun: John and Mary Milton and Percy and Ginger Fullman. The women love to display their beautiful bodies in bikinis and soak up the sun; the men aren't so keen on the subject. Mary is approached to enter a beauty pageant and Ginger is invited to be spokesmodel for a tanning oil; both women jump at the chance, despite the protestations of their men. When the gals get too wrapped up in their work, the men are forced to act: John encases Mary forever in plastic so she can show off her body for all time, while Percy subjects Ginger to a bank of heat lamps and burns her to a crisp.
Peter does not approve. ("Beauty and the Beach!") |
Bill Gaines must have decided he'd forced Jack Kamen to draw enough bratty kids and Grim Fairy Tales, so it was time to let the man run wild with his greatest talent--drawing beautiful gals posing with very few clothes on. "Beauty and the Beach!" is the Cheesecake Factory, circa 1953! The plot is entertaining, too, if one even notices that there is one.
Peter finds this scandalous. ("The Bribe!") |
A bracing story of corruption and misunderstanding, "The Bribe!" is elevated by tremendous art by Wally Wood, who can draw serious men thinking serious thoughts in one panel and then a gorgeous babe like Jeannie in another. It's a shame he came to the same end as Frank.
"Unacceptable," says Peter. ("Infiltration") |
I had a sneaky suspicion Miss Curtiss was a Martian but I did not suspect Col. Shaw, so they got me. Like Peter and Jose, I am enjoying Joe Orlando's growing place as a regular artist in the EC stable.
Since before her baby was born, Alice thought the little guy was trying to kill her. Dr. Jeffers explains to her husband David that she's just emotionally upset, but while David is away on a business trip Alice contracts pneumonia. He comes home and slips on one of the baby's toys, nearly falling down the stairs. Alice has the same accident and he finds her dead. The baby soon does away with Daddy as well by leaving on the gas at the stove. Dr. Jeffers finds David's body and, convinced that the infant is "The Small Assassin!," advances on the child with a scalpel.
"Sexist and exploitative," warns Peter. ("The Small Assassin!") |
Peter: The more work I see by George Evans on this journey, the higher his name climbs on my list of favorite EC artists. "The Small Assassin!" benefits not only from an eerie, noir-ish visual style but also from the source material, a tale with a very bold climax for its time (it would be bold for our times as well). Bradbury builds his fable around the common fears a woman has post-childbirth and magnifies those fears a thousand-fold. We all think our kids are trying to kill us at one time or another. The other standout this issue, "The Bribe!," fools us into thinking we've guessed what the twist will be but then Bill and Al smile and say, "Oh, we're not done yet, kiddies!" The Wally Wood/Shock story is fast becoming the "Sure Thing" of the month. "Infiltration" sees no such double-trickery in its climax; it's utterly predictable and that reveal has already been used by Al in the past. "Beauty and the Beach!" could very well be the nastiest and most vile story we've seen yet (well, okay, second place behind "Cutting Cards"), a tale that exists only to display torture (and to two women who didn't even commit adultery) and misogyny. A forerunner of today's so-called "torture porn" films like Hostel and Saw.
Jose: Damn, that climax to “Beauty and the Beach” is rough, isn’t it? With its buxom babes drawing lascivious glances and the over-the-top savagery of its final kills, one could easily be fooled into thinking they’ve stumbled across a lost Herschell Gordon Lewis film. That being said, I did enjoy Feldstein’s ping-pong narrative that has events and dialogue occurring with one couple resurfacing with the other, a mirroring method that shows that there’s always somebody else out there who has the same problems as you do, even if they may prefer vats of bubbling plastic to human toast. “The Bribe” has all the best qualities of a top tier “Shock SuspenStory”: stark, uncompromising, and haunting. Frank could’ve easily been broadly drawn as a bull-headed nasty or an upstanding Samaritan, but instead Feldstein presents him as a believably conflicted man with varying shades of light and darkness within him, thus making his conflict and grief over the outcome of his crime all the more palpable. You get the impression that he’s a good guy and a loving father who just made one bad mistake, so his suicide comes across as legitimately tragic, and then Gaines and Feldstein grind their heels into our hearts a little deeper by revealing that not only were Jeannie and her betrothed not at the immolated club but that they left to elope, thus rendering the bribe Frank took completely meaningless. “Infiltration” pierces these dark clouds with an OK scifi yawn (sorry, yarn) that would’ve been dead in the water had anybody but Joe Orlando drawn it. I’m not sure exactly where I stand with “The Small Assassin.” (Hopefully not anywhere near that staircase!) Chilling, creepy story and tense, uncomfortably realistic artwork by Evans, and yet… Like Jack said, it might be that this one just suffered in translation. I can understand the urge to leave in as much of Bradbury’s text as possible, but here it makes the journey from one panel to the next feel more arduous than it should.
In Our 105th Issue of Star Spangled DC War Stories... Oh Goody! More Canine War Heroes! |
I think this is the first issue of Tales from the Crypt I ever read? "Mirror Mirror on the Wall" is essentially a redone version of "Reflection of Death" from Crypt #23 as you've said; Crypt 46's "Upon Reflection" uses the mirror for the ending but at least is a considerably different story. "Oil's Well that Ends Well" is a pretty good story (overcomplicated too much in the TV series adaption unfortunately), and a type of story that would fit just as well in Crime or Shock. "Attacks of Horror" seems like a joke taken too far and to too much of an extreme at times, but is at least better than some other recent Grim Fairy Tales like "A Likely Story" from Haunt 17. I'd agree that overall "There Was an Old Woman" is hard to understand, not one of their better Bradbury adaptions story-wise (the art is fine). Most of the Bradbury adaptions were good, but there were a few like this that just don't fit the comics medium that well (thinking "The One Who Waits" and "You Rocket" from upcoming stories in Weird Science & Weird Fantasy).
ReplyDeleteIncidentally enough, I think this month's issue of Crime was in the same reprint issue as Crypt #34, and was also the first issue of Crime SuspenStories I ever read (although missing Craig's excellent cover). Our first story is quite the rarity, no shock ending! "The Screaming Woman", while not the best story overall is at least a considerably better story to use than "There Was an Old Woman". Our best pair of EC quickies for Crime at least? I kinda think so (I'm also partial to the hilarious pair from Weird Fantasy #14). I have a better overall opinion of the issue's finale, maybe based on nostalgia. It is also, incidentally enough, Ingels' final "horror" story for Crime SuspenStories as we get Orlando instead the next issue and the feature is then dropped.
This month's issue of Vault of Horror is one of my all time favorite Craig covers, with the absolute perfect mix of horror and hilariousness with just how ridiculous the scenario our poor protagonist is in! Yikes, yet another Bradbury adaption this month, and another one I don't particularly care for. "A Sock for Christmas" is a fairly strong Grim Fairy Tale and the issue wraps up with some great art from Ingels in a more supernatural story than what else we got from him for this month.
A very effective cover for Shock SuspenStories (one that took me a while to figure out what was going on). "Beauty and the Beach" is the perfect type of story for Jack Kamen. Although I'd agree that I don't think the women of the story really deserve their fate. Great art by Wood in "The Bribe" and suitably tragic ending, yet... what was so difficult about that club that they couldn't have gotten their club in compliance with the fire code? Wouldn't putting in more exits be cheaper than all the bribes? Even more bizarre aliens from Orlando in "Infiltration" which otherwise is a rather average story. Wrapping up with our final Bradbury adaption in a month stuffed with them, "The Small Assassin" is the best of the bunch.
If I have the months right, your next EC entry features my absolute favorite issue of Haunt and Weird Science, can't wait!
It's funny how we remember the earliest comics we read. As Peter and I work through the DC War comics in our other series, I see covers from 68, 69 & 70 that bring back the strangest feelings of longing from childhood. Thanks for reading and for your comment. We love comments.
ReplyDeleteHa, good point re: "The Bribe", Quiddity! I hadn't even thought of that. Thanks for taking the time to comment, and so thoroughly too! You're like the special feature to these posts. :)
ReplyDeleteI only know "Poison" as an episode of RAY BRADBURY THEATRE, where Mr. Howard was played by Richard Benjamin of all people. He was surprising believable as a kid-hating teacher!
ReplyDeleteI guess it's my age, but I always think of him in Quark!
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