The EC Reign Month by Month 1950-1956
36: July 1953
Elder |
"Outer Sanctum!" ★★★★
Story by Harvey Kurtzman
Art by Bill Elder
"Black and Blue Hawks!" ★ 1/2
Story by Harvey Kurtzman
Art by Wally Wood
"Miltie of the Mounties!" ★ 1/2
Story by Harvey Kurtzman
Art by John Severin
"Kane Keen! Private Eye" ★★ 1/2
Story by Harvey Kurtzman
Art by Jack Davis
Within the tomb lies the "Outer Sanctum!," and within that Sanctum dwells Ramon, our host. Tonight Ramon is nice enough to offer up the story of the "Professor," a brilliant but bumbling scientist who lives deep in the Okeefenokeefenokee swamp. Combining waste scraps and sea lions, mountain goats and bird cages, the Professor hopes to create life in a witch's cauldron but when the stench becomes too much, the Prof dumps the
From its first panel, detailing the fabulously goofy Sanctum waiting room to its climax, with HEAP! delivering its vengeance upon Ramon, this is Mad's first bonafide classic. Everything about this parody works: the little notes here and there (check out the "Circus Maximus Sword Swallower" posters on the Sanctum door!), the background detail (the skeleton rowing through the swamp, the chick peeking out of the Professor's cracked skull, etc.), Harvey's simultaneous skewering of Hillman's Heap character and radio's Inner Sanctum, as well as biting the hand that feeds him (a "frightening, horrible, awful book" known as "Crypt of Terror Comic Book Issue Number 7, Jul-Aug" -- I love that Harvey noted it was the Jul-Aug issue!). Time to 'fess up: "Outer Sanctum!" was my first exposure to Mad Magazine, care of a beat-up copy of The Bedside Mad, one of those old Mad paperback collections that Signet pumped out in the 1950s and '60s. I was probably six or seven but "Outer Sanctum!" made me laugh harder than anything I'd ever seen at school. So . . . it was with trepidation I lit into a rereading but I'm happy to report that, nostalgia be damned, this one made me laugh just as loudly as it did fifty years ago. Maybe this is where Mad became Mad. Not enough can be said about Elder's art here; it's a wonder to behold. I would love to see Kurtzman's script; just how detailed was it?
Jack Seabrook is not amused by this dismantling of a DC legend. ("Black and Blue Hawks!") |
"Miltie of the Mounties!" |
"Kane Keen" |
Jack: Peter, I'm right there with you on "Outer Sanctum!" One of my favorite early Mad stories, it is funny from start to finish and every panel has some little joke worth a look. I disagree with you on "Black and Blue Hawks!," which I love; it's a superb Kurtzman/Wood satire and the panel where the Blackhawks fight over who gets to question the femme fatale cracked me up. I suspect the artists were the ones who made the stories work because, though Severin's art on "Miltie of the Mounties!" is technically perfect, the story is just not funny and a chore to read, even though it is only six pages long. Jack Davis makes "Kane Keen!" marginally better, especially the repetition of women chasing Keen around and around, but for the most part it isn't funny and just ends at the bottom of the last page. You did not mention the hilarious "Publisher of the Issue" feature on the inside front cover, where a fictional biography of Bill Gaines seems targeted at the growing public furor over comic books.
Feldstein |
"The October Game" ★★★★
Story by Ray Bradbury
Adaptation by Al Feldstein
Art by Jack Kamen
"Came the Dawn!" ★★★ 1/2
Story by Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein
Art by Wally Wood
"The Meddlers!" ★★
Story by Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein
Art by Joe Orlando
"Carrion Death!" ★★★★
Story by Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein
Art by Reed Crandall
The children in the neighborhood love Halloween but for Mitch, it signals the coming of a long, dark time of year. Miserable since his wife Louise gave birth to a little girl instead of a boy, Mitch plans revenge and acts on his plan by playing a horrible version of "The October Game" during a Halloween party at his home. He takes the kiddies down to the cellar, turns out the lights, and passes around body parts. One wise lad thinks they're just the usual fakes, but when Mitch's daughter Marion can't be found, someone turns on the lights and everyone sees that Mitch was not lying about what he was handing out.
"The October Game" |
"Came the Dawn!" |
Can someone please point me in the direction of this remote, wooded area, where beautiful young Wally Wood-drawn blondes frolic? I read this story and knew what was going to happen, since it mirrors the plot of more than one episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, though with more sex. Being pretty sure of the twist ending didn't dim my enjoyment one bit.
"The Meddlers!" |
After the two stories that preceded it, it is not surprising that this is a letdown. The third story in an EC comic (at least as of July 1953) is usually the weakest and the shortest, at six pages. This one is no exception.
Holding up a bank for $30,000 and killing a guard is hardly the way to get in good with the police, and as the bank robber drives down a desert highway he is pursued by a motorcycle cop. The robber slams on his brakes but ends up crashing his own car; when he wakes up, he is handcuffed to the cop, who calls in his location to the police station. The robber strangles the cop but finds himself with an unwanted burden when he realizes there is no key to the handcuffs. He trudges through the desert, carrying the policeman's corpse, until finally he has to give in, as vultures descend on the corpse next to him. The cop is not the only one to experience "Carrion Death!," however, as the robber soon realizes that he, too, is dead and is being eaten by the birds.
"Carrion Death!" |
Peter: They don't get much grimmer than "Carrion Death!," do they? A perfect (and I do mean perfect) match of strong, unnerving script and no-holds-barred, gruesome art. You can almost hear the wizards behind the curtain whispering, "How far do you think they'll let us go?" and then pushing it just a little bit further every month. Welcome Mr. Reed Crandall, an immediate asset to the bullpen. Crandall had been working on various superhero and war strips since the early 1940s, including the original Blackhawk strip (years before it became a DC property) before testing the EC waters. His impact would be felt immediately, and we'll be lucky enough to drink in 49 more of Mr. Crandall's masterpieces. A decade later, he would become an equally important part of the Warren bullpen. But that's a story for another time . . .
"Came the Dawn!" and "The Meddlers!" suffer from weak finales; almost as though Al and Bill had no idea how to finish what they'd started. "The Meddlers!" has just about the most abrupt and silly climax we've seen in quite some time. The villagers are stock characters, hillbillies with nothin' upstairs in thare hayds, miles away from the crowd who beat the blind man to death in "The Patriots" (in SS #2). "Came the Dawn!" seems only an excuse to show what Wally could do with a woman's figure . . . not there's anything wrong with that!
"The October Game" |
Jose: “The October Game” was one of the four tales that I first read in Digby Diehl’s oft-mentioned coffee table book, Tales from the Crypt: The Official Archives. It was quite the stunner then and hasn’t lost any of its power since. As previously stated, there are some leaps and gaps in the storytelling—in addition to Mitch’s snap decision to resort to homicide, exactly when does the man get enough time to commit the foul deed before commencing the game in the cellar down below?—but the expert layout of Feldstein’s adaptation and Kamen’s art, here a harmonious match with the material, takes the reader so gracefully from one stage to the next that they hardly have a second to notice. “Came the Dawn” is a nice sultry potboiler that brings its extensive study of the female form to a screeching halt with a climax that will be familiar to viewers of Jacques Tourneur’s The Leopard Man (1943). (It was my familiarity with that film that led me to believe for some inane reason that the thing Cathy met on the other side of the door was a mountain lion Bob had tried to bag while hunting the day before rather than the escaped maniac. Stop laughing!) I think that final image of Cathy lying dead with a knife sticking out of her windpipe while the ghostly shape of the madwoman darts into the trees is pretty haunting.
“The Meddlers” is the joker in the pack of aces here, but even so it’s still not too bad. This one seemed to be gearing up to be another one of Al’s preachies (Southern rubes lashing out at a forward-thinking stranger) before taking a sharp left turn right into B-movie territory with the arrival of the flesh-eating amoeba (presumably a cousin of the mucky “Thing in the Swamp”, HOF 15). The ending peters out in random directions, with the fates of only two of the essentially nameless rubes described in a hasty finish that amps up the gore factor. Newcomer Reed Crandall really sticks the landing with “Carrion Death,” delivering artwork that feels as rugged, boiling, and dripping with desperation as its milieu deserves. Logically, I think the altered ending of the criminal breaking his spine and ending up paralyzed that was used in the TFTC HBO series makes a little more sense, but I’ve warmed up to the gradual shock reveal of Feldstein’s script. Our “poor” bank robber was so reduced and battered by the desert elements that he couldn’t even tell he had died until the buzzards had stripped his torso to the bone. Nice!
Davis |
"Fare Tonight, Followed by Increasing Clottyness . . ." ★★★ 1/2
Story by Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein
Art by Jack Davis
"Curiosity Killed . . ." ★★
Story by Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein
Art by George Evans
"How Green Was My Alley" ★
Story by Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein
Art by Jack Kamen
"The Handler" ★★★★
Story by Ray Bradbury
Adaptation by Al Feldstein
Art by Graham Ingels
You are a nameless taxi cab driver on a lousy night beat, just another faceless schlub in the rainy urban landscape. You’re despairing of the soggy weather and vast indifference of the nocturnal commuters when a blazing headline from the nearby newsstand grabs your attention: another murder has struck the streets, the bloodless corpse spurring the theories of noted mythologist Egbert Muller that a vampire is on the loose. You barely have time for your hackles to rise before a dark brooding figure enters the cab and commands you to drive to a run-down, desolate neighborhood. You’re easily spooked and soon you’re jumping at shadows, but then you’re really goosed when the brooding stranger returns from his errand and chases you into a decaying tenement. You fall down into the stairless cellar and gaze upon the dozens of coffins in horror. They unleash a horde of ravenous bloodsuckers thirsty for your veins! And then you wake up! Turns out reading that newspaper gave you some funny ideas. So that’s why when the dark stranger really *does* enter your cab, you drive him out to the neighborhood from your dreams to take care of him. You recognized the initials on his medical bag; you know that doctors like him are a threat to your kind. You bear your fangs and make a quick mid-bite snack out of him before throwing the body down into the stairless cellar with all the others. Musing on what a screwy night you had, you open up the taxi cab’s trunk lined with earth and head in to sleep the day away.
Wet dreams gone wrong. ("Fare Tonight, Followed by Increasing Clottyness") |
Masterful detail from Evans' splash. ("Curiosity Killed...") |
An intriguing albeit convoluted gimmick helps to spice up the tired spousal-murder plot, but “Curiosity Killed…” is just too low-key in the final analysis to warrant much attention or entertainment. Feldstein does a nice job of messing with reader expectations by beginning the tale with Henrietta frantically writing down her testimony of the events as a man lurks just outside the door; come the final panels we discover that the attacker is not Wally but Henrietta’s own beloved, henpecked hubby closing in with a knife. But the interesting bookends have a whole lot of ho-hum action packed in between, with the usually reliable and inventive George Evans barely able to breathe under the weight of the plot.
Robert Smith has the world on a string: a traveling salesman, he uses his frequent “road trips” as a handy excuse to ditch one of his two wives before heading off and getting cozy with the other one. Both ladies have taken up athletics to keep them busy while their bigamist husband is away: lithe, dark-haired Amy is a natural on the golfing course, while muscular, blonde Jean tests her might at the bowling alley. Things get a little too close for comfort when the ladies end up at the same hotel for their respective tournaments… and in the same room, no less! Amy and Jean trade notes and swap stories before a pair of identical photographs and a set of mismatched gifts (bowling shoes for Amy, golfing cleats for Jean) seals the connection. The two wives intercept Robert on his arrival, and the next day horrified onlookers witness raving Amy putting away at Bob’s peepers and babbling Jean tossing the corpse’s severed head down the alley.
Literally the only two panels worth reproducing, and that's saying something. ("How Green was My Alley!") |
Daddy's home. ("The Handler") |
Thanks for setting me on the chase, Grandpa! ("The Handler") |
Peter: I can't remember the last time that I had so little to say about an entire issue. None of the four tales here are very good, one ("How Green . . .") is among the worst EC horror stories we've yet encountered. Even the Bradbury tale seems lazy and uninspired (the original appeared in the January 1947 issue of Weird Tales), with a unspectacular Ghastly job to accompany it. "How Green . . ." recycles the "body parts as sports equipment" used only a couple months before in "Foul Play!"
Jack: "Curiosity Killed . . ." shows just how good George Evans was at domestic suspense and pre-dates the somewhat similar Rear Window. I have to hand it to Wally for having the patience to dispose of his body in so many tiny pieces! "The Handler" has decent art but is disgusting throughout, until the ending, which is oddly subtle when it should have been gruesome. "Fare Tonight" has Davis evoking night in the city nicely but goes on too long and has one too many twists, and "Alley" suffers from the Kamen art and his inability to sell the ending visually.
Craig |
"Easel Kill Ya!" ★★★ 1/2
Story and Art by Johnny Craig
"A Peach of a Plot!" ★ 1/2
Story by Al Feldstein
Art by Jack Davis
"The Lake" ★★ 1/2
Story by Ray Bradbury
Adaptation by Al Feldstein
Art by Joe Orlando
"One Good Turn . . ." ★★ 1/2
Story by Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein
Art by Graham Ingels
A nameless artist trudges through the rainy night cursing the bad hand that has been dealt him when fate passes him a macabre ace: a car, swerving to avoid the artist, crashes headlong into a concrete wall, killing the driver and leaving the passenger screaming and bloodied as she crawls from the wreck. Suddenly seized by a diseased burst of creativity, the artist rushes back to his hovel and slashes a masterpiece across his canvas. Only a perverted old dealer is willing to buy the piece, but the money from the purchase is enough to get the artist some fresh clothes and hot food. When the Muse later alludes his calls, the artist heads out into the streets to scare up some mayhem himself. Sickened by his deeds and the pleasure he has derived from them, the artist is dealt another winning card when a beautiful neighbor walks into his life and straight into his heart. Unburdening his heavy soul of his crimes later in their courtship, the artist is relieved to find that his new lady friend still swears to love him, and the two agree to marry. But then fate rears its ugly head again: struck down by a car, the artist’s betrothed is rushed to the hospital, her condition critical. Only one visiting surgeon has the medical prowess to save her, but his price is steep. The artist quickly reverts to the old practice, butchering a man in the street and foisting the painting onto the old dealer before taking off with all the old man’s money. Alas, it doesn’t matter anymore: as the hospital MD tells the artist, the surgeon who could have saved his fiancee’s life was horribly killed earlier that night…
Puberty, in a nutshell. ("Easel Kill Ya") |
Michael Lane is no-good-nik with a great plan: if he can convince casual and close witnesses that he married his wife Sarah solely for her familial riches—which he did—and then spurred her on to pack her things and leave following a big fight, then he will have created a fireproof story that fully explains Sarah’s sudden “disappearance” a.k.a. her murder. Too bad Mike didn’t count on a couple of things. One, that his plan actually sucks and wouldn’t fool a weasel let alone the police. Two, that Sarah was eating a peach right at the time that Mike pounded her skull in with a fireplace poker and that, the pit having been swallowed, would lead to a young peach tree growing out of Sarah’s grave in the estate garden. When our “dogged” pillar of justice Lieutenant Phil “I’ll Only Accept Clues as They Come to Me” Dolan spots the tree, he figures something fishy is going on since Michael has been out of the country for seven years. Playing things cool, Michael casually plucks a peach off the tree and bites into it—before spitting out a gout of Sarah’s decaying blood, branding him as the killer.
April Fool's Day at the bare*bones office. ("A Peach of a Plot") |
In the adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s “The Lake,” our hero is haunted by painful memories of his closest childhood friend, Tally, a pigtailed lass who stole his heart and meant the world to him until one sad day in September when she disappeared at the lake that the two adolescents frequented so often. No trace is ever found of the girl, but our hero manages to carry on with his life, going to law school and marrying an agreeable woman named Margaret. The couple returns to our hero’s hometown for their honeymoon, but a stop at the deserted lake brings about a startling surprise: the aged lifeguard has just retrieved a body from the water. Though in advanced stages of rot, our hero recognizes it as that of his long-lost friend. He spots a trail of child-sized footprints leading from the lake to a half-finished sand castle, and he keeps the promise he made all those years ago by the completing the castle before it succumbs to the lake’s hungry waves.
When you think about it, aren't we all just sandcastles on a beach somewhere? ("The Lake") |
Old Jennie just loves helping the unfortunates of the world. Nothing warms her heart more than being able to bring someone true happiness. She giddily tells her invalid husband Edwin all about her good deeds after a fulfilling day in town. She lovingly reminisces about Bertrum the hobo, who she helped by stabbing him to death at his seaside shack. Then there was Grace from weeks before, a poor broken-hearted young woman who finally cracked a contented smile after Jennie cracked her head open with a rock. And what about poor little Sidney, the boy who ran away from home but found comfort in the strangling grasp of his “Aunt Jennie”? But that’s not even covering the blind man Jennie led out in front of a speeding bus, or the depressed crone waiting for her son on the pier who Jennie drowned. Poor souls all, finally finding bliss through Jennie’s murderous ministrations. Just as Jennie is cozying up in bed with Edwin, a surprise visit from two detectives reveals Jennie’s first true act of charity: Edwin’s rotting corpse lying in bed, killed by hot chocolate laced with cyanide.
I also brush his teeth every night before bed. ("One Good Turn...") |
Peter kindly asks Jose to begin his EC reading. ("The Lake") |
Craig |
"Touch and Go!" ★★ 1/2
Story by Ray Bradbury
Adaptation by Johnny Craig
Art by Johnny Craig
"One for the Money . . ." ★
Story by Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein
Art by Jack Kamen
"Fired!" ★★★
Story by Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein
Art by Al Williamson and Frank Frazetta
"...Two for the Show!" ★★★ 1/2
Story by Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein
Art by Bill Elder (with Jack Kamen)
Peter, after reading the comments from Jose and Jack. ("Touch and Go") |
About as graphic as Kamen graphics ever got. ("One for the Money...") |
"Fired!" |
Know your brand! ("Fired!") |
A typical night in. ("...Two for the Show!") |
Never one to give up, Harry heads into the baggage car and switches tags with a similar trunk. When the train arrives and Sarah doesn't materialize, Harry is arrested and he and his trunk are shipped to the local precinct where the trunk is opened. Much to Harry's surprise, the contents reveal . . . lots of bloody bits. Unknown to cop and murderer, the trunk belonged to Harriet and Eric (the nuts from "One for the Money . . .!") and contained what was left of con-girl, Anita! A wonderfully complex little drama, ". . . Two for the Show!" benefits from great art by Elder and an almost snail's pace. Harry's plan is a bit wonky (wouldn't that cellar start to stink pretty bad after a while and . . . hey, who would want to cleave the skull of a looker like Sarah anyway?!) but the execution (pun intended) is fabulous to watch; Harry's serenity after the deed is short-lived once his plan starts to crumble. The final panel, of Harriet, grinning maniacally, soothing Eric and convincing him that Anita's "remains" are safely away (rendered by Kamen), is genius. Since the title of this one is the second half of the old adage begun by the Kamen story, I assumed we'd have a cross-over, but when it came it was a complete surprise! Oh, and one more round of applause for that stunning cover, right? --Peter
Jack Kamen gets the final laugh. (". . . Two for the Show!") |
Jose: I did like “Touch and Go” fine enough, but I think the text overwhelmed some of the visuals in spots, as inventive as a good number of them were. Even so, Acton’s madness is one that I can highly sympathize with. As a bit of a neat freak, I know all too well that hamster wheel-mentality of wanting—no, needing—to wipe and erase and polish every last spot in the house, even those you haven’t been anywhere near. Sometimes especially those. “One for the Money…” is clearly just going through the motions in its first third; the whole vamp-and-sugar-daddy patter feels recycled from secondhand materials. And has anybody noticed how incredibly impulsive some of these EC characters are? I realize that the suicides in this and past stories have been justified in the sense that we can understand why these characters would want to kill themselves, but their reactions are so hastened that it almost borders on the comical. This must be the fifth person we’ve seen who has literally left the room to either blow their brains out or go jump out a window. Gotta keep those stories concise, huh, Al? If there’s been another story that utilized the specific motif of a psychotic, jilted spouse being provided with ex-wife/husband surrogates to unleash their murderous lusts upon, then I don’t recall it, as Peter posits, but I *do* know that we’ve encountered the plotline of a blood relation-enabler feeding shanghaied victims to their kin before in “Horror We? How’s Bayou?” (HOF 17).
“Fired” is primo hardboiled romance, with a blazing capper that sears itself into your memory. There’s a lovely smokiness to the artwork of Williamson and Frazetta here, like cigarette fog from a nightclub taking human form. It lends the build-up to the wild finale the visual flair that it needs. “…Two for the Show” is a surprise in more ways than one, especially regarding the presence of Bill Elder in the first of his only two contributions to Crime. I would’ve never thought that I’d see that goofy son-of-a-gun show up here, particularly in a tale with so much (granted offstage) grue. (Then again, this is the guy who was a stable of the war titles.) “…Two for the Show” is also one of Feldstein’s more elaborately and pleasantly plotted crime yarns, full of obstacles and obstructions that ratchet up the tension as our little murderer tries to elude the grasp of John Law. And surprise of surprises, we have a little narrative double-dipping to round out the bloody package with Ma Harriet and her dribblin’ boy Eric making a Special Guest Appearance at the end of the tale. Are these the first few rumblings of Bill and Al establishing an ECU (EC Comics Universe)? My heart shudders in delight at the thought!
From Shock SuspenStories 9 |
In Our 109th Issue... The Enemy Ace gains a mascot. Say It Ain't So, Joe! |
As a general rule, I'm a huge fan of the Kurtzman EC titles and less enthusiastic about the Feldstein books, but there's one major exception to that rule, and it's the run of Shock Suspenstories from #9 through #14. Number 9 is the best of the bunch: Reed Crandall's debut in "Carrion Death" is one of the best EC stories of all time, "Came the Dawn" is a perfect story for Wally Wood, and "The October Game" is my favorite Jack Kamen story in any title. While he may not have been as talented as the more extraordinary artists who drew for EC, I think some of the really horrible stories in Shock are really well suited to the less flashy artists; in this one, "The Orphan", and Evans's "Small Assassin", the fact that people who look like characters in a pedestrian Golden Age romance comic could do such terrible things is what really makes the stories work for me. Feldstein's spin on "Carrion Death" is one of his best covers, perhaps surpassed only by his issue #12 swan song. "The Meddlers" is . . . well, not as good as the rest of the issue.
ReplyDeleteReally strong month, especialy the Vault and Shock issues!
ReplyDeleteSo as usual I don't have much to say about Mad's stories, although this is the issue with the infamous Bill Gaines fake biography which caused major controversy. From what I've heard, Gaines and Feldstein put it together while Kurtzman was sick and he was quite mad upon discovering what they had done. More importantly though it majorly upset the wholesalers, as there were lines in the bio about how Gaines got his start in pornography or something to that extent, and it ended up that there were wholesalers in the comics business who did get their start that way and were really offended over it. So EC had to issue this big apology over it. In addition the seemingly harmless "Nice clean, fat errand boy" language that Elder had included on a door on the first page of "Outer Sanctum" also got the wholesalers all upset as they thought it was intended for sexual perversion. Crazy stuff!
Easily Shock's best issue to date; I even enjoy "The Meddlers" which seemed to be common consensus the weakest story of the issue. I remember coming across the story years ago and finding the Orlando artwork, especially the last page quite memorable, even if the story itself is so-so at best. It continues a theme of disdain for ignorant smalltown folk that's also seen in earlier Feldstein stories like "Chewed Out" (Weird Science 12). "The October Game" is arguably the most well known and memorable horror story Shock ever published, and like you mentioned, inspired at least another EC ending a bit later on. "Came the Dawn" has terrific Wood art although Reed Crandall's EC debut is the high point in what is a very memorable written story too. You mentioned him doing a lot of work for Warren; he was actually the EC artist who did the most work for them (although John Severin and Joe Orlando both come close). Although his art unfortunately does deteriorate quite a bit in the Warren books in the 70's, while always remaining high quality during the EC days.
Tales from the Crypt is average at best this month; I'd agree that the Kamen story is really weak and I don't find the Davis lead story that good either. "Curiosity Killed" is fairly decent; I recall it having a Tales from the Crypt TV episode that had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with it other than the title. "The Handler" is quite a highlight though and probably worth getting the issue for this story alone. One of the more entertaining Bradbury stories they used. In fact this is the second time they used it, the lead story from Haunt #6, "A Strange Undertaking" I believe it was called was EC's first unauthorized Bradbury adaption, a few years before the more well known "Home to Stay" story in Weird Fantasy. The Handler also features one of the more overt and arguably offensive sexual references in an EC comic regarding what the Mr. Benedict does to one of the corpses.
(continued)
ReplyDeleteOne of the Vault of Horror's best issues this month, with really only "Peach of a Plot" being a weak story. "Easel Kill Ya" is one of my favorite Craig leads; by this point I think he's really improving with both his artwork and writing and the story contains quite the sad ending! "The Lake" is notable for me as being quite a bit different than the typical EC fare. A much quieter, but more emotional story. Something I didn't care for the first time I read it but I've appreciated a lot more over time. "One Good Turn" also comes off as a more unique EC story than the usual fare with our elderly protagonist going on quite the murder spree. One of several scary old ladies we'll get from Ingels towards the end of EC's run.
Crime is also a strong issue, featuring Craig's only Bradbury adaption, as well as what is essentially full length EC quickies with "One for the Money" and "Two for the Show". "Fired is only so-so story-wise but some great Frazetta artwork on the women!
Thank you both for your detailed comments! I will be on the lookout for the apology regarding the Gaines bio. That's a funny story!
ReplyDelete