The EC Reign Month by Month 1950-1956
43: February/March 1954
Ingels |
"Creep Course" ★★★
Story by Al Feldstein and Bill Gaines
Art by Graham Ingels
"No Silver Atoll!" ★★
Story by Al Feldstein and Bill Gaines
Art by George Evans
"Hansel and Gretel!" ★
Story by Al Feldstein and Bill Gaines
Art by Jack Kamen
"Country Clubbing!" ★★
Story and Art by Jack Davis
Dumb blonde co-ed Stella has a foolproof plan to get an "A" in what she considers a "Creep Course" of Ancient Civilization: bat her eyelashes at the old professor! She works at it all semester and finally wangles an invitation for dinner at his house, but when she arrives he tosses her in the cellar with other students who had gone missing and they all get fed to bloodthirsty beasts as he reenacts Nero's Colosseum antics. But wait! It's only a dream! When Stella really goes to see the old professor, he instead whips off his robe to reveal that he's dressed like an Ancient Egyptian and plans to mummify her!
"Creep Course" |
On a long plane trip across the Pacific, Ruth falls in love with Clark, another passenger. The plane crash lands in the ocean and the passengers and crew manage to guide their rafts toward a nearby island, but it turns out to be "No Silver Atoll!" when first all of the peoples' silver starts to disappear and second a werewolf starts killing them off by the light of the full moon! Ruth deduces that Clark is the creature and, when he tries to kill her, she stabs him with a hypodermic needle she found in a medical kit and injects him with a fatal dose of silver nitrate.
Mickey Spillane! Ha ha ha ha! ("Hansel and Gretel") |
"Hansel and Gretel!" are eating their parents out of house and home, so the parents ditch them in the woods. The hungry brats find an old woman's house and when she shows them her treasure chest they kill her and head home with the cash, telling their parents the story we've heard all these years instead of the truth.
So help me, if I have to read one more of these Godawful Grim Fairy Tales I'll tear up my EC Fan Addict card! If Mad were this bad it never would've gotten off the ground.
Goosebumps, anyone? ("Country Clubbing") |
Jack Davis's approach to this story shows that it's supposed to be funny rather than scary, and I guess it is, though I figured out what was happening fairly quickly and the perils that the convict encounters are all played for laughs. This was a disappointing issue of Haunt of Fear.--Jack
Handy guy to crash-land with! ("No Silver Atoll") |
Craig |
"Mother's Day" ★★★
Story by Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein
Art by Reed Crandall
"Understudies!" ★★ 1/2
Story and Art by Johnny Craig
"In the Groove" ★
Story by Al Feldstein
Art by Jack Kamen
Story by Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein
Art by George Evans
Years ago, Donna Kingsley's husband ran off on her, leaving her with a son who looked like his no-good father and a baby not yet born. When the second boy was born and resembled Donna, she poured out all of her love on him and gave short shrift to her elder boy. Fred, the older son, tried to win his mother's love but she lavished it all on Harold, the older son. When they grew up, Harold became a criminal but Fred took the rap and went to the slammer for five years. Donna found a gun in Harold's room and he hit her in the head with it; the no-goodnik was killed two years later. When Harold finally gets out, he visits Mom and pleads with her to love him and to understand that he was the good boy all along. When she refuses to acknowledge him, he shoots and kills himself next to her bed, not knowing that the blow to her head had left her paralyzed and unable to respond to his entreaties.
Sap! ("Mother's Day") |
Jim and his wife Myrtle fight all the time, just like Gail and her husband. Jim and Gail walk out one evening and run into each other in a bar. It turns out they used to be lovers and they're sorry they ever split up and landed in unhappy marriages. Jim proposes that they both do away with their spouses and head for Europe together, which they do in short order. They take fuzzy photos and send them home to friends and family to keep anyone from becoming suspicious, but soon they decide they need to resemble each other's dead spouses more closely to make the photos better. With a change in looks comes a change in attitude, and before you know it they're fighting and thinking about murder.
Hey Kids! Comics! ("Understudies") |
A rare miss for Johnny Craig, "Understudies!" starts with a thin premise and heads toward an inevitable conclusion. His ability to tell a story in words and picture is not diminished, but this just isn't one of his better ones.
Garry Green, a famous radio DJ, has fallen for a new gal and devises a clever plan to kill his wife. He will record a five-minute intro to a platter and a five-minute afterword, then stack three discs to play automatically while he runs home and bashes his wife's head in with a fireplace poker. His listening audience will think he's live in the studio and provide him with a perfect alibi. Unfortunately, he didn't plan for the record to start to skip.
Kinda like the red hand-- ("In the Groove") |
Alex pays a surprise visit to his brother Frederick at the latter's beach house but secretly plans to kill him with an axe he brought in his suitcase. Alex figures he's Frederick's only family and will inherit all his money. He slaughters his brother on the beach with an axe but the deed is such a bloody mess that he dives into the ocean to wash the blood off of his own body. The swirling blood attracts a shark and it's the end of Alex.
What a sad excuse for an issue of Crime SuspenStories, and what a waste of the talents of three terrific artists. Feldstein and Gaines were just pumping out stale plots at this point from the looks of things, and "Blood Brothers" is no exception. Alex even sets up an alibi based on timing, just as DJ Garry did in the previous story, but it's pointless because it doesn't affect the outcome. Crandall's work is quite good, though.--Jack
The axe was the first clue . . . ("Blood Brothers") |
Feldstein |
"My Gun is the Jury!" ★★★ 1/2
Story by Al Feldstein
Art by Jack Davis
"This is Your Strife" ★★★
Story by Al Feldstein
Art by Joe Orlando
"Little Red Riding Hood" ★★ 1/2
Story by Al Feldstein
Art by Jack Kamen
"The Night Before Christmas" ★★★ 1/2
Story by Charles Clement Moore
Art by Bill Elder
When some unknown fiend shoots down a kid that had once polished his car, private eye Mike Hammerschlammer takes on the case to bring the criminal to justice… HIS justice, which entails enacting the same fate upon the killer following Mike’s rigid “eye for an eye” mentality. With homicide captain Chamber Pot lagging miles behind him in the “race” for the killer, goons trying to stab his head, and a bevy of beautiful women throwing themselves at Mike’s “lithe,” graceful frame, the dick has his work cut out for him in getting anything done. But they aren't any problems that a gun can’t fix, and Mike proceeds to erase every last one of them with shots of hot lead. Miraculously, after slaughtering his way through an entire cast of supporting players and cozying up with a vixen named Stella who wants to bed the detective in the worst way, Mike manages to piece everything together and figures Stella herself for the killer, delivering the fatal blast “a little below the belly button.” But Mike is stunned to discover that Stella… was actually a man! And that’s horrible news because Mike… is actually a woman!
"My Gun is the Jury" |
On that perennial, tear-jerking favorite program of television, “This is Your Strife,” star of stage and screen Melvin Melville is “randomly” selected from the audience to act as the guest of honor. Emcee Ed Ralphwards grinningly introduces members of Melvin’s previous life in Pig Sty, Utah, from pharmacist R. X. Pillstuffer who sold Melvin a bottle of arsenic the day his wife disappeared to C. Smallprint, the agent who sold Melvin a $35,000 life insurance policy for his wife Emma Lou. As the yokels and God-fearing villagers are trotted out onto the stage, Sam Sucker is introduced as the man Melvin sold his old dog to, a vicious mongrel that hasn’t been good for anything except digging up a whole boxful of bones from the property. On closer examination, dentist Harry Yankum recognizes the upper plate he gave Emma Lou, as does Doc Hacker for the mended thigh bone. The pieces all come together, and soon Melvin is being escorted offstage by Pig Sty’s own district attorney.
Peter and Jack lambast Jose for getting his reviews in at the last minute. ("This is Your Strife") |
Foxy, red velvet-clad Gwendolyn walks the streets of her fairy tale village hearing the cat calls and wolfish jeers of sexually-starved rubes every day of her life, but she gives everyone a turn when she decides to step out one evening with none other than local doofus Melvin. As she explains it, her admiration for the simpleton stems from a traumatic incident from her childhood when, after receiving her famous scarlet cape from her parents, she traveled to her sickly grandmother’s house with a basketful of jet fuselage and tommy guns only to be waylaid by a ravenous wolf that was quickly gunned down (on the second shot) by an intervening woodsman. So Gwendolyn’s romantic appetites have tended towards the meeker shade of male, but nose-picker Melvin soon discovers that it goes much deeper than that. The woodsman, you see, actually killed Gwendolyn’s grandmother, and now as a matured young woman preening under the glow of the full moon herself, Red Riding Hood assumes her true shape and grabs herself a nice (chewy) piece of ass.
"Little Red Riding Hood" |
Capping this bone-tickling premiere is a reinterpretation of Clement C. Moore’s (or is it Henry Livingston Jr.’s?) famous Yuletide poem, “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” or, as it is more commonly known to us heathens, “The Night Before Christmas.” From its slaughterhouse opening depicting no creatures stirring—but plenty of them strung up as sides of meat—to the fateful visit of the “little old elf” himself cursing to his team of flying football players, Elder revels in sight gags and general inanity almost to the point of gratuitousness. Like the retelling of “Casey at the Bat” from Mad, the humor of “The Night Before Christmas” lies mainly in the visuals while the rhyming captions play it straight, but Elder uses the lines as a jumping-off point for some overly-literal imaginings of just what Moore (or Livingston) meant by his fanciful descriptions. Santa, for instance, is depicted with flowers sprouting from his “rosy cheeks” while the “sugarplums” that the tots dream about in their nailbed cots range from Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell to a free lifetime subscription to EC Comics, natch. It all ends with a winning final panel in which the merry salutation of the season is voiced by none other than William M. Gaines himself as Santa Claus, the whole stable of self-drawn EC artists bursting from his sack of goodies. If that doesn’t put you in the Christmas spirit, then nothing will! --Jose
"The Night Before Christmas" |
Jack: I thought the Spillane parody was very funny and that Jack Davis was the perfect choice to draw it. I love Mike's increasingly obscure motives for killing dames and the finish plays off a later Hammer novel in a surprising way. This story was funnier than many of the stories in Mad. After that, the issue goes quickly downhill. "This is Your Strife" is a corny takeoff that is slightly improved by the gradual buildup to the revelation of the murder, while "Little Red Riding Hood" is a shade better than "Hansel and Gretel!" until the stock ending sinks it. "The Night Before Christmas" takes the familiar poem and makes it pointless--there's no need to read the captions when you can watch Bill Elder go wild with sight gags. As Peter noted, the last panel--a full-page--is a keeper and it's great to see all of the EC staff in one place.
Kamen |
"Only Skin-Deep" ★ 1/2
Story by Al Feldstein
Art by Jack Kamen
"Blood-Brothers" ★★ 1/2
Story by Al Feldstein
Art by Wally Wood
"Upon Reflection" ★ 1/2
Story by Al Feldstein, Bill Gaines & Jack Oleck
Art by Reed Crandall
"Squeeze Play" ★★★★
Story by Al Feldstein
Art by Frank Frazetta & Al Williamson
A man, his face covered in bandages, awakens in a hospital room to the heavenly sight of a smoking blonde standing before him who claims to be his lover. (Not a bad way to wake up!) She is Gloria Anders and he is Robert Sickles, but their connection was not so innocent: according to Gloria, she and Robert were entangled in an extramarital affair that ended with the death of Gloria’s husband Charles at Robert’s hands, a feigned automobile “accident” that led to the scarring of Robert’s face. Thankfully plastic surgeons were able to restore Robert’s face to its former glory, and the befuddled but thankful gentleman is discharged into the arms of his paramour. Booking a quick wedding ceremony and a cozy cabin for their honeymoon, the two settle in as they begin their new lives together. That is until Robert takes a tumble onto the floor that night, jogging a particularly nasty memory from his amnesiac brain. So nasty in fact that he strangles his newlywed wife on the spot as she gasps in shock. As “Robert” explains to the police later, he is in actuality Charles Anders, the cuckolded husband who eavesdropped on the lover’s plot before getting the drop on Robert and stowing *his* unconscious body behind the wheel of the car. An exploded gas tank damaged his face and Charles, having switched clothes and ID with Robert, was given the face of his romantic rival when it was assumed that Robert had been the survivor of the “accident.”
Feldstein: Give me three of the goofiest, most unnatural poses you can think of. Kamen: I'm on it! ("Only Skin-Deep") |
I hope you got all that because there’s going to be a quiz following this review. “Only Skin-Deep” is pretty much Dullsville the whole way through, a story where I hoped that my prediction of the twist ending was going to be proven wrong but was unfortunately confirmed. Seems a bit of a stretch, doesn’t it? Like Peter says below, was there literally nothing else to correctly identify Charles? Just because he had Robert’s ID, it instantly meant that he must be Robert? Kamen’s art looks even more tired as usual. In an interview contained in the B&W reprint volumes, Bill Gaines mentions that at this point in the company’s history the books were mostly operating on house plots; Gaines and Feldstein were just about tapped for any original ideas and would soon resort to bringing outside writers into the fold to spice things up. “Only Skin-Deep” is proof of just how badly they were needed.
Good thing these are all outdated beliefs. ("Blood-Brothers") |
If it weren’t for the going-out-of-its-way twist ending, “Blood-Brothers” just might have made the grade as an all-around excellent yarn, but for my money it would still have had a tough time distinguishing itself from past stories that tilled similar territory (and to much better effect) like “Judgment Day” and “In Gratitude…”, or its fellow loathe-thy-neighbor SuspenStory, “Hate!” Though he was (and is) more lauded for his fanciful SF illustrations, Wally Wood demonstrates most ably here why he was such a great fit for this particular EC title: his art carries a sense of weight, gravitas, and moral complexity that just about no other artist in the EC stable could touch for all their excellent draughtsmanship. You feel like you might have passed his characters on the street once, or in this case lived next to one.
I think I've been reading too many comic books, Doc! ("Upon Reflection") |
“Upon Reflection” is not only a doofy story but a strange one to find within the pages of the post-“EC Sampler” days of Shock SuspenStories. If it weren’t for Crandall’s art, I could be easily convinced that this was something from one of EC's competitors. Which is not to say that everything EC’s competitors did was bad, but this story just feels so entirely bereft of the the company's usual pizzazz that it could be mistaken for the work of someone else. Crandall himself doesn’t seem to have been too thrilled by the assignment. His artwork feels like a six-page yawn.
Chilling. ("Squeeze Play") |
The horrifying death of Cora. ("Squeeze Play") |
I had heard mention made of “Squeeze Play” over my years of EC fandom starting back in middle school, but I had always assumed that the notoriety was over the fact that it was the only story in the bulk of EC titles that boasted artwork entirely rendered by the legendary Frank Frazetta. Having now finally read the piece, I can certainly see why this might be seen as cause for reverent allusions, as the artwork here is fantastic (Frazetta’s characterization of Harry as a bonafide psychopath with James Dean looks is truly blood-chilling), but the story itself is an absolute knockout to boot. Thank the heavens above that the contents of this issue didn’t follow through on the threat made by the front cover and have Jack Kamen taking the reins of “Squeeze Play,” because Frazetta’s sole solo-work is a masterpiece and one that I would easily place in any volume compiling the “Essentials of EC.” (Anybody interested in publishing this? Bueller? Bueller?) In addition to Frazetta’s contributions, Feldstein’s script feels especially vicious and razor-sharp. The fitting justice that befalls Harry feels so natural and innocent as to be perfect. Feldstein should have been proud of this one. --Jose
Peter: Even sixty years on, "Squeeze Play" is still dynamic and risque material, with Frank Frazetta breaking away from the shadows of Krenkel and Williamson and striking out on his own with spectacular results. Harry is clearly modeled after the artist himself, striking manly poses throughout. The idea of pre-marital sex and (for shame) unwed mothers in a funny book must have given Wertham kidney stones. Even Al gets the whole package right by not selling out and having Cora's broken corpse weighing Harry down in the watery finale. Fantastic stuff. But for the maudlin final panel ("Oh God, what have I done," says the bigot in a moment of phony clarity when he realizes he's part-Negro as well), "Blood-Brothers" is just as powerful now as it was then (and just as relevant I hasten to add) and its jaw-dropping Wally art only seems to get better. The other two tales are a different story altogether, both containing dumb twists (and, in the case of "Only Skin-Deep" some blah art). Even before CSI, couldn't the cops tell the difference between one guy and another (fingerprints, anyone?)? "Upon Reflection" features nice Crandall art but even Reed can't save me from the eye-rolling madness that is the moronic reveal.
Jack: Peter, I agree with you on all counts. Another reprint from my fondly-remembered EC Horror Library of the 1950's, "Squeeze Play" is a stunning classic of illustrated crime fiction. "Blood-Brothers" is a powerful tale with fabulous art by Wood, but the forced surprise ending is unnecessary. "Upon Reflection" features uninspired art by Crandall and a weak twist ending that may be the work of Jack Oleck. Worst of all--as usual--is the Kamen entry which, for some strange reason, was chosen to open the book. An obvious twist is dragged out for eight tedious pages. Too bad Frazetta wasn't able to draw the cover to go along with his story!
Davis |
"Food for Thought" ★ 1/2
Story by Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein
Art by Jack Davis
"Pearly to Dead" ★★
Story by Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein
Art by George Evans
"Prairie Schooner" ★★★★
Story by Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein
Art by Bernie Krigstein
"Half-Baked!" ★ 1/2
Story by Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein
Art by Graham Ingels
"Food for Thought", indeed! |
"Food for Thought" |
"Pearly to Dead" |
"Half-Baked" |
"Half-Baked" |
Our first glimpse of "Prairie Schooner." |
Retired school teacher Millie Jackson leads a comfortable life until her ex-sailor brother, Ezra, comes to live with her. Ezra is a bit tetched, if ya know what I mean, and imagines the house as his ship, but Millie hasn't the heart to put him in a home so she swabs the kitchen floor and rises at 2 a.m. for the "night watch" without raising much of a fuss. The real trouble begins when Ezra gets a glance at the basement, where Millie does the laundry, and decides it's the perfect place for a recreation of his ship. Millie withdraws her life savings and has workers transform the basement into a Captain's quarters, complete with mahogany-paneled walls and port holes! Her savings tapped, Millie must take in laundry to make ends meet and, one day while doing the wash in the upstairs tub, Millie has a heart attack and dies. The water flows down into the basement, where Ezra does his best to salvage his sinking ship but, before too long, the ex-Captain is sent to Davy Jones' locker.
"Prairie Schooner" |
Jack: Krigstein brings an exciting, new visual style to EC comics, but I was not as blown away by the story of "Prairie Schooner" as you were. At the end, I just kept thinking about how it was not possible for there to be that much water in the well, much less that much hot water in the hot-water heater! I know we have to suspend disbelief, but when a story is as realistic as this one I have a problem when the conclusion depends on something that couldn't happen. Perhaps Feldstein, a New Yorker, thought water came from an inexhaustible source! I was just as impressed with the art of George Evans in "Pearly to Dead," which seems, for much of its length, like the template for countless stories we've read in the DC War Comics. Sometimes Al Feldstein's over-writing and constant piling on of adjectives can get to be a little much for me to wade through. "Half-Baked!" wastes good art by Ghastly and swings and misses at the finale, where I was really hoping for a giant lobster, while "Food for Thought" takes one twist too many. My favorite moment in this story is when the caption says that "Marta slips on a robe" but Davis draws her in a see-through nightgown.
Wood |
"The Children" ★★★
Story by Al Feldstein
Art by Wally Wood
"Fish Story" ★★ 1/2
Story by Al Feldstein
Art by Al Williamson and Roy Krenkel
"The Flying Machine" ★★★★
Story by Ray Bradbury
Adapted by Al Feldstein
Art by Bernard Krigstein
"Fair Trade" ★ 1/2
Story by Al Feldstein
Art by Joe Orlando
On an unnamed alien planet, Ellen and David are overjoyed to be the first of the new human colonists to give birth to a child, but the happiness is torn right from them when the hospital, lorded over by Doctor Garden, who is apparently *not* a fugitive villain escaped from a futuristic 80s music video, immediately takes Ellen’s baby boy into their care. Garden says that new parents aren’t emotionally or mentally equipped to take on the burden of rearing a child and that a team of psychologists are best suited to raise babies properly. He promises Ellen that she may reclaim her son in two years’ time. But on the scheduled date, Garden shakes his head and tells Ellen that it’ll be another five years before her boy can be reunited with his family. David seems less perturbed than Ellen, entrusting his faith in science and logic whereas Ellen believes that love is the one thing that every child needs. When Ellen arrives at the hospital to claim her son on the seventh year, Garden tells her she’ll have to wait five more years. Finally incensed into action, Ellen rallies the other parents of the colony to storm the nursery. Garden is waiting for them, and before he lets the mob through he asks them one vital question: Are they sure they really want their children back? The planet, according to Garden, had a terrible effect on all the human offspring, mutating them into abnormal freaks. But when Garden opens the doors to the room full of dwarfed, tentacled, and misshapen kids, the parents rush forward in unabashed love to reunite with their children.
One Big Happy. ("The Children") |
The mutant child trope had certainly been no stranger to EC, having cropped up in close to a dozen other yarns in the SF titles, if not more. But whereas the child’s otherness was the primary focus before, it’s kept a secret until the final reveal of “The Children.” The effect here is completely different to just about anything else we’ve seen before though. When the mutant child was revealed in past stories, it was usually to inform us that our rugged heroes had just unknowingly slaughtered their offspring. Here the idea is turned on its ear when the long con of Doctor Garden’s reverse psychology ploy pays off in spades, each parent blind to the deformities that mark their children and seeing only the baby boys and girls they’ve longed for all these years. Wood sells this moment superbly in a grand splash on the final page, marred only slightly by the humorous epilogue that shows Ellen and David’s boy shuffling from his bed on a set of noodly tentacles to fetch himself a glass of water.
Fish-people have problems too. ("Fish Story") |
“Fish Story” is not exactly a whopper but just serviceable enough to pass the time with, featuring some great close-ups of the catfish-faced villains mucking around courtesy of Al Williamson and Roy Krenkel. Like “The Children” before it, the power of “Fish Story” comes from its ending, here delivered in characteristically wry EC fashion with the delivery of the professor’s autopsy report of the aliens.
EC's new look? ("The Flying Machine") |
Told in the graceful fashion of an ancient fable, “The Flying Machine” remains one of Bradbury’s most understated and heartfelt stories, an entire world away from the type of Rockwellian science fiction that he’s become so well known for. The artistic contributions of Bernard Krigstein, whose singular style of thin, wavering lines reminiscent of 60s cartoons has started to grow on me since my salad days, complement the proceedings perfectly, bringing gentleness and beauty to a story that contains in its wistful demeanor dark allusions to Man’s reach far exceeding his grasp and the terrible destruction that typically comes about with each of his innovations. Like Peter states below, “The Flying Machine” may very well have pointed to the “New Direction” EC was hoping to take its publications, so it’s a pity if the PR nightmare that was the Senate hearings took the juice out of that effort in its mission to staunch all the blood and viscera from the company’s other books.
The leader of a tribe of cavepeople recalls how he came to the desolate ruins across the river that his aged father had warned him about. Despite the old man’s prophecies, the tribe leader does not instantly die from heavenly fire following his forbidden tour of the ruins as had his grandfather before him, so after Dad kicks the bucket and leaves the Keys to the City to Junior, the tribe leader takes the gang across the river to populate the spacious and cave-friendly ruins. But when the primitive clan spots the brilliant descent of a rocket ship upon their home, the gang thinks their punishment has finally arrived. But from out of the ship comes a gaggle of suited astronauts who claim to come in peace, waving a generous offer of beads and blankets in payment for ownership of the land the ruins rest upon. The cave-people, in a mixture of bewilderment and relief, accept the tokens and hightail it out of there. The astronauts, meanwhile, have bigger plans of expansion and hope to wipe out the native savages completely. The land of the ruins, named “Manhattan Island” by the savages, will just be the start.
Next stop: Disneyland! ("Fair Trade") |
Hmm. Alright then. “Fair Trade” is too unfocused and cryptic to generate anything close to interest during the first two-thirds of the story; we have a pretty good feeling that this is going to end in some post-apocalyptic, they-were-on-Earth-the-whole-time reveal, and even though we’re not sure *how* it’s going to be revealed that still doesn’t make us care any more than we already didn’t. The lazy allusions to the wholesale slaughter of the Native Americans feel like an afterthought and a wasted opportunity for a meatier parable. Orlando’s art is strictly by-the-numbers and unfortunately bereft of his usual loony aesthetic. --Jose
Peter tells Jose another bedtime story. ("Fair Trade") |
Astronaut 1: "Pretty stupid, selling a hunk of land that size for a handful of beads and some old blankets . . ."
Astronaut 2: "At least we gained their confidence! That's a start . . ."
Astronaut 1: "Later, we'll just drive them off the land . . . even kill them for it . . ."
The silliest thing about the deal the "savage chief" made is not how royally he got fleeced but how quickly he gave up the land after making such a big deal about getting there!
Jack explains the medical benefits package to a new bare*bones staffer. ("The Children") |
Kurtzman |
"Little Orphan Melvin!" ★★★
Story by Harvey Kurtzman
Art by Wally Wood
"The Raven" ★★★
Poem by Edgar Allan Poe
Adapted by Harvey Kurtzman
Art by Bill Elder
"Bop Jokes!" ★ 1/2
Story by Harvey Kurtzman
Art by John Severin
"Hah! Noon!" ★★★
Story by Harvey Kurtzman
Art by Jack Davis
"Little Orphan Melvin!" is a poor, redheaded girl who wanders the streets of the city during the Great Depression talking to her dog, Gravel. Crooks grab her and shoot her out of a cannon but she is rescued at the last minute (sort of) by her protector, Daddy Peacebucks, who enlists the aid of his helpers, The Gasp and Punjoke. After a few exciting rescues, Melvin is revealed to be a stunning, fully-grown redhead, giving new meaning to the term "Daddy."
"Little Orphan Melvin!" |
A solitary man sits alone in his study one bleak December night when "The Raven!" flies in through an open window. Despite the man's pleas for the return of his beloved Lenore, the raven only responds with a single word: "nevermore."
I'm not really sure how best to appreciate these Mad/Panic stories where a classic poem is illustrated in a zany fashion. Am I supposed to slog through each caption of poetry and then be amused by the ironic picture below it? It's all a little much and it blunts my enjoyment of the Elder craziness.
"Bop Jokes!" |
As "Hah! Noon!" approaches in a dusty town in the Old West, Marshall Kane weighs the pros and cons of waiting for the train to arrive with a killer and the shootout that is certain to follow. Though he longs to take the earlier train out of town and avid the confrontation, he ends up facing down the villain, who is utterly confused by the train timetable.
I think this is a Mad classic! This issue shows that, along with Will Elder, Wally Wood and Jack Davis were able to master the parodic formula that really made for the best Mad stories. Kurtzman knows the movie backwards and forwards and his script is clever; Davis milks every last joke out of the situation.--Jack
"Hah! Noon!" |
Lenore as never before! ("The Raven") |
Craig |
". . . And All Through the House . . ." ★★★★
Story and Art by Johnny Craig
"Tombs-Day!" ★★
Story by Jack Oleck
Art by Jack Davis
"Beauty Rest" ★
Story by Jack Oleck
Art by Jack Kamen
"Shoe-Button Eyes!" ★★
Story by Johnny Craig
Art by Graham Ingels
"... And All Through the House ..." |
" ... And All Through the House ..." |
"Tombs-Day!" |
She had some stiff competition. ("Beauty Rest") |
Born blind, little Billy has always tried to "look" at the bright side of life, even when his father dies and his mother remarries a "not so nice" man who taunts and tortures the little tyke. Luckily, Billy has his teddy bear to keep his spirits up when the step-father is abusing mom. One night, the mean old man gets drunk and rips the "Shoe-Button Eyes!" from teddy and taunts the boy with the disfigurement. Billy's mother gets sick on Christmas Eve but, before she dies, she fixes teddy up with some new eyes and begs her husband to take care of Billy. The drunk smacks his stepson and the boy hits his head, blacking out. The next morning, after hearing terrible screams from the house, neighbors break in and find the man torn to pieces, his eyes replaced with shoe-buttons and the teddy bear soaked in blood. Billy finishes his story by letting us know he can see now and the view from "up here" is pretty. Though the final panel has a reveal I didn't see coming (narrator Billy has been dead throughout his narrative), the bulk of the story is oozing with soap opera pathos and unrealistic characters (as I've said before, the more loathsome the villain, the more unrealistic that character becomes to me and the more uninvolved I become). Dismiss the story and you've got hot and cold Ghastly; most of his talents here are wasted on talking heads and that final panel might elicit laughs rather than chills. The corpse on the splash, with candles stuffed in every orifice imaginable, sees Graham Ingels ignoring the sign that reads "Overkill" and speeding straight for the cliff. --Peter
Jack: Craig's opening tale is eight pages of sheer terror, and even though I remember the ending from the movie it's still great. I'm not sure what it says about me that I really like stories about homicidal maniacs who have escaped from the asylum--"The Dangerous People" is one of my favorite episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. I think "Shoe-Button Eyes!" is a classic, with a tight script by Craig and fine art by Ingels. Is this the only time the two have worked together? The other two stories are forgettable. While I love a good Egyptian tomb tale, Oleck and Davis don't wring much excitement out of this one. At least the Kamen story does not involve a fairy tale and allows him to draw pretty girls, his greatest strength.
Jacksphinx ("Tombs-Day!") |
From Panic #1 |
Sign us up! (from Tales From the Crypt #40)
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I lean toward Bhob Stewart's view on Krigstein in general and "The Flying Machine" in particular, but there are other Krigstein stories that I love even more than this one. -- "Master Race" and "Poetic Justice" from Valor, to name a couple. His work in Mad #12 and #17 is also ground-breaking, and the art in his two SS stories is almost as good as the art in "Master Race". I'm not that much of a fan of the science fiction titles, but WSF #23 is easily my favorite EC sci-if issue because of the combination of Krigstein's story and the likewise extraordinary "The Children." Like the early issues of TFT and FC that contain stories by both Wood and Kurtzman, the issues of 1954 and 1955 comics that contain stories by both Wood and Krigstein tend to stand out. The great, great Mad #12 and SS #14 are examples that come to mind.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your observation that Wood's consummate draftmanship in his SS stories and covers is a big part of what gave this title such unusual gravitas. By this stage of the run, SS was clicking on all cylinders. The stretch from 12 through 14 in particular is so good that, even though #13 contains the once-in-a-lifetime gem "Squeeze Play", I think it is the weakest issue of the three -- in part because the cover is so disappointing when compared with the corresponding panel in the story. I'm no expert on the horror titles, but for my money Frazetta's ground-eye view of the murder is the scariest panel in any EC comic.
-- Jim
Thanks for your comments, Jim. You have now whet my appetite for Mad 12 and SS 14!
ReplyDeleteBig month! I forgot that they shifted around the rotation here, giving us basically every EC comic aside from Two-Fisted Tales for this month.
ReplyDeleteWell, on the bright side I think there's only 1 more Grim Fairy Tale left after this month, and I think its quite a ways off. I get why EC went with them (surely an easy day of writing for Feldstein at a time when they were running out of unique ideas), but by this point they're kinda just reduced to parodies of well known ones with Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Hansel & Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood all done in a short period of time. The rest of this issue is fairly strong though, including Davis' comedic horror story, I think his only writing credit for a horror story.
Yikes, I couldn't disagree more about "Understudies" which may be my favorite Craig Crime story. The interesting panel style, the slow transformations of the protagonists into what they hate, just a top notch story all around for me. Overall I'm quite happy with this issue of Crime, "Mothers Day" is quite strong too and the remaining 2 stories are decent as well. Val > Rita though!
I was never much of a fan of Panic (nor original Mad either), and don't have all that much to say about the stories themselves. Our one and only appearance of a Grim Fairy Tale outside of the horror comics. This issue brought up probably more controversies than any other EC story, with the first and last story in particular. The first story had lots of controversy over the panel where the main chararacter shoots a woman and the clothing of I think the same charcter in an earlier panel, enough so to get Lyle Stuart arrested for selling offensive material (which was promptly thrown out of court), and the Christmas story was considered blaphemous enough for Panic to be banned in my own state of Massachusetts!
Agreed on all counts with Squeeze Play a terrific story with even greater art by Frazetta in his sole EC solo story. Crandall's art in Upon Reflection is fairly good for a so-so story. I'd agree with you about how mediocre that opening story is. As for Blood Brothers, it is for all intents and purposes just a redo of the superior "Hate" from issue 5.
I'd lean more towards Jack's opinion on Prairie Schooner, an okay story, but not on the level of say "The Flying Machine" or the later "Master Race". Otherwise very enjoyable art throughout an issue with so-so stories. "Pearly to Dead"'s ending essentially gets redone (in a different setting) with Evans art again a bit later in Haunt 27.
An excellent issue of Weird Science-Fantasy, making up for the downward trend in the 2 sci-fi stories as they reached their end. First 3 stories are all great, while the last is rather so-so at best. The combination of the titles for at least a little while seems to have upped their quality which is good to see.
Absolutely classic story from Craig to start off this month's Vault of Horror, arguably Craig's best and most well known horror story, having been adapted not only for the movie, but the first episode of the Tales from the Crypt TV show too. Unlike the adaptions, Craig ends it at exactly the right moment, in line with his usual style of implying, but not actually showing the violence. "Shoe Button Eyes" is another Christmas themed classic, although I gotta admit I missed what the ending meant for many years. The question was asked if this was the only collaboration for Craig and Ingels, and unfortunately it was. This is Craig's first issue as editor for Vault of Horror and he'd have a short stint writing stories for other artists, doing so for Ingels this issue and both David and Krigstein in the next.
Thanks, Q99! We covered 2 months on this post, since only 1 comic has a February cover date. Thanks, as always, for your interesting comments!
ReplyDeleteInteresting reviews, and I agree with some of them, but HARD disagree with the critical review of "Shoe-Button Eyes." Both the art and the storytelling are disturbingly brilliant in that one, and it even rivals the classic "...And All Through the House" as the best story in that issue, although "...And All Through the House" is much more fun. And while "Beauty Rest" is the weakest story in the issue, I didn't find it a bad story for what it was. Also, while "Half-Baked" is only average as a story, the lovely Ingels art really brings out the main character's nastiness, and makes it a much better story than it would have normally been.
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by to leave a comment! After reading countless Warren comics, we may have to go back and give every EC story 4 stars.
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