The EC Reign Month by Month 1950-1956
The Final Issue: The Picto-Fiction Titles
The Third (and Fourth) Issues + The Wrap-Up
Rudy Nappi |
"Curiosity Killed"★★★
Story by Al Feldstein
Art by Reed Crandall
(from Tales from the Crypt #36)
"The Demon"★★1/2
Story by John Larner
Art by Graham Ingels
"Sin Doll"★★★
Story by Daniel Keyes
Art by Jack Kamen
"One Man's Meat"★★★1/2
Story by Jack Oleck
Art by George Evans
"Curiosity Killed" |
One of Feldstein's loonier ideas, "Curiosity Killed" originally appeared in shorter form in Tales From the Crypt. It's still fun, though a bit drawn out, and I think I'd enjoy anything drawn by Reed Crandall.
There's been a murder in the wax museum! A madman named Ellis cut the throat of another victim right in front of a wax figure of himself and escaped unseen! The police are nervous and, when a reporter named Hardy mocks them, they challenge him to demonstrate his courage by spending a night in the waxworks alone. He agrees and the night is a horror, since the wax dummy of Ellis comes to life and holds a knife to Hardy's throat. In the morning, the police find him dead of fright, with nary a mark on him; Ellis had been caught the evening before, uptown.
"The Demon" |
Laura awakens after another night spent with a strange man and sobs to her rag doll, Lorelei. She receives an unexpected visit from her former beau, Fred, who is distraught at having been dumped. He shoots her and then himself, but his suicidal aim is better than his homicidal one, and she is barely injured. Laura has a breakdown but is quickly cured by a stay in a hospital; when she gets out, she picks up a sailor and beds him. Disgusted with her own behavior, she begins psychoanalysis and discovers that her disorder stems from a reaction to her emotionally abusive father. Now that the mental floodgates are open, the former "Sin Doll" looks forward to a cure.
"Sin Doll" |
Paul is a milquetoast whose wife, Myra, treats him with scorn. He finds out that she's cheating on him with a man named Marsh, but when he begs her to give up her lover she is unmoved. Things were so much better when Paul and Myra spent their honeymoon at the lake! After Myra stays away for two weeks, she comes home and it becomes clear that Marsh has stopped returning her calls. Paul takes her back to the lake to try to recapture the old magic and makes her a nice dinner but, when she scorns him, he reveals that the meat that made up the main course was cut from her lover's body.
The ending of "One Man's Meat" took me completely by surprise! I fully expected Paul to snap and murder Myra. Instead, we get a reminder of the great, ghoulish EC style of yore, albeit without the gore. Evans's art is superb throughout.-Jack
"One Man's Meat" |
"Sin Doll" is a sleazy (without being fun sleazy) dip into subtle nymphomania and endless psychobabble that runs on at least ten pages too long and gets us absolutely nowhere when it finishes up. By this time, my moaning and groaning about Jack Kamen's stencils is probably getting as old as I am after reading this crap, but I'll just say this and leave well enough alone: I thought for sure this story was going down a different alley when Laura saw Fred (the guy who had recently eaten his gun) in a sailor's suit on the bus. Of course, that was a misunderstanding on my part due to the fact that all of Kamen's characters look exactly alike!
"One Man's Meat" (oh, is that title a double entendre or what?) is the kind of story EC historians should stumble over themselves to call "groundbreaking" or "daring" or "hell razing," but that I would call "tawdry" or "cheap" or (once again) "sleazy." It might be historic if Jack Oleck had told it like it is, daring to address the issue without masking it in an apron or an aversion to dusting ("Not that Paul was that type"). It's a wonder we don't see our poor, put-upon protagonist dancing in his living room, clad only in Myra's panties and a feather boa, singing show tunes. If Paul is such a dandy, how the heck did he get the upper hand on Marsh? Oh, and if Jack didn't mention it already, that final panel is a rip-off of Roald Dahl's "Lamb to the Slaughter."
Reed Crandall |
(Cover-dated June 1956 but never released)
"Deadline" ★★★
Story by Al Feldstein
Art by Reed Crandall
(From Shock SuspenStories #12)
"Repeat Performance" ★★
Story by Jack Oleck
Art by Wally Wood
"Wanted for Murder" ★★★ 1/2
Story by John Larner
Art by Al Williamson
"Booby Trap" ★1/2
Story by Al Feldstein
Art by Charles Sultan
"Out of My Mind" ★ 1/2
Story by Al Feldstein
Art by Jack Kamen
(From Crime SuspenStories #6)
"Deadline" |
"Plain" Margaret in "Repeat Performance" |
Handsome George and his plain wife Margaret rent a great apartment at a low price and don't mind that it was the scene of a murder three months before, when David King poisoned his wife, Ruth. Soon, Margaret meets beautiful Lisa Dayton, who lives downstairs with her husband. Lisa cozies up to her new neighbor, George, and before you know it they are lovers. George confesses to Martha and gives her a bitter-tasting drink. Yet when the cops take a dead woman out of the building it isn't Martha, it's Lisa, whose husband poisoned her. He finally got tired of her philandering, since she had also been the other woman in the prior murder.
Assigning Wally Wood to draw a story like "Repeat Performance," with a main character who is described as a plain female, is doomed to failure, and this story has one bad twist after another. The final surprise--Lisa is dead, not Margaret--is poorly executed.
"Wanted for Murder" |
A taut and suspenseful story, "Wanted for Murder" benefits immensely from Al Williamson's art, especially his depiction of Susan, a real knockout.
"Booby Trap" |
Little more than warmed-over Double Indemnity, this story, illustrated by newcomer Sultan, falls apart when the murder occurs and the identity of the killer has to be hidden for the last couple of pages. It's clear there's a twist ending being set up and that can mean only one thing.
Betty Jane Andrews plans to murder her rich husband, Bert. She fakes an attempt on his life to show she's "Out of My Mind," then decides she will kill him for real later that night. Betty murders Bert in his bed with a meat cleaver and pleads insanity at trial, where she is sentenced to the insane asylum run by Bert's brother, Harvey. In the asylum, Betty does a good impression of a lunatic and receives treatments that begin to be a bit much, so she confesses to Harvey that she meant to kill Bert and is perfectly sane. He admits that he knew it all along and orders more treatments for her, since she'll be there a long time.
"Out of My Mind" |
Peter: I liked “Repeat Performance” and “Wanted for Murder” in both script and art department. It’s nice to get a few last glimpses at the work of Wally and Al and there are some comedic moments in “Repeat” that really shine (“George, she . . . she’s simply fascinating,” Margaret told George’s newspaper one day.). Like the best of the crime Pictos, these two stories call to mind Gold Medal crime novels. I was not so fond of “Booby Trap,” which has a climax very reminiscent of “Repeat Performance” and some lazy graphics by Charles Sultan. Roger Hill, in his detailed notes for Crime Illustrated in the Cochran box, remembers that EC fans were not at all happy with Sultan’s work, and it’s easy to see why. Sultan's style is a little too much like Joe Orlando’s and Sultan peppers his stuff with the same kind of swipes as Orlando (here he borrows Liz Taylor for some angles of Joyce). I will say that it’s fascinating that Oleck and Feldstein took advantage of the prose delivery and were able to conceal the similar switcheroos in “Booby” and “Repeat” right up to the last “panel.”
Reed Crandall |
(cover dated June 1956 but never released)
"Halloween"★★★★
Story by Al Feldstein
Art by Reed Crandall
(From Shock SuspenStories # 2)
"Keepsake"★★
Story by Jack Oleck
Art by Graham Ingels
"The Mother"★★1/2
Story by John Larner
Art by Jack Davis
"Kid Stuff"★★★
Story by Al Feldstein
Art by George Evans
"The Long Wait"★★★
Story by Al Feldstein
Art by Johnny Craig
(Originally appeared as "Dead Wait" in Vault of Horror # 23)
Ann Dennis takes a job minding the children at Briarwood Orphan Asylum, which is run by the penny-pinching Mr. Critchit. She supplements what little money she gets to buy food for the children by adding her own cash and goes door to door begging for used clothing. Critchit refuses even to buy a pumpkin so the kiddies can celebrate "Halloween" and, when Ann discovers that he's being paid well and keeping most of the money, she confronts him. He begins to strangle her but the children, dressed in their costumes, intervene and use his severed head as their jack o'lantern!
"Halloween" |
A classic EC story, brilliantly illustrated by Crandall. Happily, the final panel doesn't shy away from showing us the head, though the lack of color tamps down the gore.
"Keepsake" |
No one draws old, sad folks quite like Ghastly, but "Keepsake," a rather blatant knockoff of Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily," is so slow-paced that the ending is hardly a shock.
An alcoholic named Krebs leads his wife and kids to shelter of a sort in an abandoned house where rats roam free. In a rage, Krebs strikes his wife and kills her; after he walls up her body, the kids are taken away and he is left alone with the vermin. Krebs begins to think one particular rat is the reincarnation of his wife, but his efforts to kill it backfire and lead to his own demise.
"The Mother" |
Playing in the local cemetery, brother and sister Joey and Melissa fall through a sinkhole and discover an underground cavern, where they find a coffin that houses a vampire! Mom doesn't want them playing near dead things and Dad works a long, hard day, so the kids are basically left to their own devices. Dead pets are one thing, but when a woman is found dead then Joey takes matters in hand and fashions a stake in the shape of a cross. He and Melissa destroy the vampire and go home to the realization that Dad won't ever be coming home.
Young Peter watches The Twilight Zone |
Buckley has spent years enduring "The Long Wait" before snatching the opportunity to murder Duval on a remote island and steal his valuable black pearl. He orders Kulu to row him back to civilization, but the native decides to harvest a treasure of his own: the red-haired head of the white man named Buckley!
Terror Illustrated ends with a retread of a decent story that allows Johnny Craig to demonstrate yet again why he was so good at comics and illustration.-Jack
"The Long Wait" |
Rudy Nappi |
(cover dated July 1956 but never released)
"High School Bride" ★★ 1/2
"Teen-Age Temptress" ★ 1/2
Stories by Daniel Keyes
Art by Jack Kamen
"Love Cheat" ★★
Story by Daniel Keyes
Art by Johnny Craig
"The Alcoholic" ★
Story by Daniel Keyes
Art by Jack Kamen
"Two Husbands" ★★
Story by Daniel Keyes
Art by Joe Orlando
"High School Bride" |
After a short time, she begins to miss Lee and all the great times they had (revisionist history at work), so she hops a train and heads home. While she's aboard, Cathy worries what Lee might say when she tells him she's been sharing the goodies, but a dizzy spell wipes all that from her mind and, suddenly, she has more to worry about than Lee. A woman knows her own body, but a trip to the family doctor confirms her suspicions... Cathy is about to have a little Lee! Uh oh. Suddenly, Cathy realizes she might not be having a little Lee but rather a little Bob. Suddenly, her husband's reaction is a big deal again ("What would he say when I told him that I was going to have a baby... and that I didn't know if it was his... or Bob's?") but, luckily, sweet strumpet Cathy lives in a 1956 EC world, where men forgive their wives' sins and love them forever, even if the kid looks like the guy who delivers the milk, and Cathy and Lee decide to give it one more go.
"Teen-Age Temptress" |
The unnamed narrator/protagonist of "Teen-Age Temptress" is one of Daniel Keyes's sleazier creations, a woman seemingly devoid of any morals or self-imposed stop signs. She beds her beau's pompous, bible-thumping father in order to prove he's just as salacious as she but then, after rubbing the infidelity in her boyfriend's face, she is shocked to find the old man hanging from the chandelier. Now sonny refuses to marry her. The disgraced harlot packs her bag and becomes the 34th Confessions Illustrated girl to leave town with her head hung low. I don't know enough about the author (and, in the same Picto-Fiction Cochran volume, John Benson raises doubts as to Keyes's authorship of these CI stories) to raise questions about Daniel Keyes's thoughts about 1950s' women in general, but maybe this was the kind of material he was told to write by Al Feldstein. The "Jezebel" of "Teen-Age Temptress" (and several other of Keyes's female characters) is deeply disturbed and immoral but is surrounded by moral and upstanding males. The one man who strays pays the ultimate price to "bury his dry lips in the soft hollow" of this girl's throat. She's willing to sacrifice her self-esteem just to hurt the boy she claims to love. Of all the Confessions Illustrated stories, this one is probably the nastiest.
"Love Cheat" |
"The Alcoholic" |
"Two Husbands" |
Jack: I agree with your assessment of this issue for the most part, Peter. In "High-School Bride," we learn that a married woman is not punished for sleeping with another man. In "Teen-Age Temptress," the woman is not married, so she must be punished for sleeping with her boyfriend's father. Two Kamen stories in a row is too much Kamen. I loved the line: "the sweet roundness of me was temptingly near" her male target. Seeing Johnny Craig's art on "Love Cheat" was a welcome break from the Kamen onslaught and, once again, a married woman is forgiven for straying. It's back to Kamen in "The Alcoholic," a story I had to force myself to finish reading. It lacks the melodramatic charm of the best Confessions and is dull and preachy. "Two Husbands" is almost as dull but only half as long. It seems like these Picto-Fiction mags ran out of steam by the last issue.
Rudy Nappi |
(Cover dated July 1956 but never released)
"Headwork"★★
Story Uncredited
Art by Jack Kamen
"Came the Dawn"★★★★
Story by Al Feldstein
Art by Frank Frazetta
(from Shock SuspenStories #9)
"The Survivor"★★1/2
Story Uncredited
Art by George Evans
"Another Man's Poison"★★
Story by Al Feldstein
Art by Jack Kamen
(Originally appeared as "Medicine" in
Crime SuspenStories #9)
"Alter Ego"★★1/2
Story Uncredited
Art by Graham Ingels
"Headwork" |
Shock #4 is off to a shaky start with "Headwork," yet another variation on a story we saw just last issue! Kamen's work is back to normal, which is not a good thing, and Burton's wife is hideous.
"Comes the Dawn" |
It's fascinating to see Frazetta's work in progress here and I almost like it better than what the finished product might have looked like, since my imagination fills in the rest.
The Survivor" |
Some sharp Evans art is wasted in "The Survivor" which, at 10 pages, seems way too long. I figured out that the surprise ending would have the cat as the only one to make it; getting there was really just turning pages.
Nora Haines is consumed by jealousy because she thinks her husband, Luther, a brain surgeon, is cheating on her with his nurse. She spikes his four o'clock dose of medicine with cyanide and promptly gets in a car crash that leaves her needing--you guessed it--brain surgery. Too bad Luther's nurse remembers to give him his medicine right before he heads to the OR.
"Another Man's Poison" |
George Perry is an unimportant man who notices another man on the bus who reminds him of himself. George decides he must kill the other man, so he befriends him. George invites the man, whose name is Walter, to dinner, planning to murder him, but George gets a surprise when he reads Walter's diary and discovers that his double has identical plans for him.
Ghastly doesn't have much to do in "Alter Ego," a rather predictable little tale, and by the end I thought it was about time to close the books on EC. -Jack
"Alter Ego" |
THE WRAP
Peter: From the very beginning of this massive project, I took extensive (some would say anally-extensive) notes and rated every single one of the 1167 stories we read and commented on. Those who don't find lists or numbers interesting, feel free to skip this section. One note before the outraged start sending death threats: the percentage represents the stories given a ★★1/2 or higher, so if a title is given a 50% rating, that means I found half of the stories at least "good." It's pretty tough to hit a homer every time at the plate (Ty Cobb ended up with a record .366 lifetime batting average, which means more than six times out of ten he didn't connect).
TITLE ISSUES STORIES ★★1/2 + ★★★★ PERCENTAGE
Frontline Combat 15 60 49 5 82%
Piracy 7 28 21 5 75%
Valor 5 20 14 1 70%
Two-Fisted Tales 24 96 62 8 65%
Aces High 5 20 13 2 65%
Shock SuspenStories 18 72 44 10 61%
Weird Fantasy 22 88 53 10 60%
WSF/Incredible SF 11 41 23 1 56%
Haunt of Fear 28 111 56 5 50%
Mad 23 80 36 10 45%
Weird Science 22 88 40 8 45%
Crime SuspenStories 27 107 44 1 41%
Tales from the Crypt 30 120 46 6 38%
Vault of Horror 29 116 29 5 34%
Impact 5 20 5 1 25%
MD 5 20 3 0 15%
Panic 12 48 6 0 13%
Extra 5 20 2 0 10%
Psychoanalysis 4 12 0 0 0%
TOTALS 297 1167 546 79 47%
Our Twenty Favorite EC Stories of All Time!
Jack
1. "Poetic Justice" (Haunt of Fear #12)
2. "Big 'If'" (Frontline Combat #5)
3. "Halloween" (Shock SuspenStories #2)
4. "A Little Stranger" (Haunt of Fear #14)
5. 'Taint the Meat ... It's the Humanity!" (Tales from the Crypt #32)
6. "Horror We? How's Bayou?" (Haunt of Fear #17)
7. "Mars is Heaven!" (Weird Science #18)
8. "Shadow!" (Mad #4)
9. "Foul Play!" (Haunt of Fear #19)
10. "Outer Sanctum!" (Mad #5)
11. "Carrion Death" (Shock SuspenStories #9)
12. "Strop! You're Killing Me!" (Tales from the Crypt #37)
13. "Whirlpool!" (Vault of Horror #32)
14. "Squeeze Play" (Shock SuspenStories #13)
15. "...And All Through the House..." (Vault of Horror #35)
16. "Shoe-Button Eyes!" (Vault of Horror #35)
17. "Flesh Garden!" (Mad #11)
18. "Starchie!" (Mad #12)
19. "Blind Alleys" (Tales from the Crypt #46)
20. "Master Race" (Impact #1)
Jose
1. “Old Soldiers Never Die” (Two-Fisted Tales #23)
2. “Squeeze Play”
3. “A Little Stranger”
4. “Ping Pong” (Mad #6)
5. “The Handler” (Tales from the Crypt #36)
6. “Enemy Assault” (Frontline Combat #1)
7. “In Gratitude…” (Shock SuspenStories #11)
8. “Surprise Party” (Vault of Horror #37)
9. “Whupped” (Frontline Combat #14)
10. “The People’s Choice” (Weird Science #16)
11. “A Kind of Justice” (Shock SuspenStories #16)
12. “Gasoline Valley” (Mad #15)
13. “Wolf Bait” (Haunt of Fear #13)
14. “Judgment Day” (Weird Fantasy #18)
15. “…so shall ye reap” (Shock SuspenStories #10)
16. “The Aliens” (Weird Fantasy #17)
17. “Mopping Up” (Frontline Combat #7)
18. “Which Witch’s Which” (Vault of Horror #36)
19. “Star Light, Star Bright” (Vault of Horror #34)
20. “A Rottin’ Trick” (Tales from the Crypt #29)
1. "Master Race"
2. "The People's Choice" (Weird Science #16)
3. "Poetic Justice"
4. "The Patriots" (Shock SuspenStories #2)
5. "Starchie"
6. "Home to Stay" (Weird Fantasy #13)
7. "Wolf Bait" (Haunt of Fear #13)
8. "More Blessed to Give" (Crime SuspenStories #24)
9. "In the Bag" (Shock SuspenStories #18)
10. "The Aliens" (Weird Fantasy #17)
11. "Squeeze Play"
12. "Wish You Were Here" (Haunt of Fear #22)
13. "The Million Year Picnic" (Weird Fantasy #21)
14. "...And All Through the House..."
15. "Carrion Death"
16. "Pipe Dream" (Vault of Horror #36)
17. "Prairie Schooner" (Tales from the Crypt #40)
18. "The Radioactive Child" (Weird Science #15)
19. "There Shall Come Soft Rains" (Weird Fantasy #17)
20. "Jivaro Death!" (Two-Fisted Tales #19)
Next Week... Will love come to the Losers? |
And, Finally! In Two Weeks... A New Era Begins! |
So I completely agree with you that Keepsake is a rather obviously taken from "A Rose for Emily", but the way I had interpreted the ending was not that our protagonist was going to put her corpse next to her husband, but rather he was gonna do just what she did, take her corpse and put it in his own bed to sleep with.
ReplyDeleteThanks again for covering all these EC stories, it has been quite the ride! It will be a little sad knowing that there won't be a new EC post every other Monday anymore, but I am anxiously awaiting for your coverage of Warren!
As one final comment for me on EC, here are my top stories, I've gone with my top 5, in order, for most of the core titles. The titles I was never as into (the comedic and war titles) I simply can't easily pull out a top 5, but I've listed a few honorable mentions.
Crypt:
The Switch (Crypt 45)
Blind Alleys (Crypt 46)
The Ventriloquist's Dummy! (Crypt 28)
A Rottin' Trick (Crypt 29)
Tattered Up (Crypt 46)
Vault:
Till Death... (Vault 28)
And All Through the House (Vault 35)
A Grim Fairy Tale! (Vault 27)
A Slight Case of Murder! (Vault 33)
Any Sport in a Storm (Vault 38)
Also special mention to Silver Threads Among the Mold! (Vault 27), My first ever EC story and to this day I still would argue perhaps the most horrifying final image for an EC story.
Haunt:
Poetic Justice (Haunt 12)
Pipe Down! (Haunt 18)
About Face (Haunt 27)
A Little Stranger! (Haunt 14)
Pot-Shot! (Haunt 18)
Crime:
Understudies! (Crime 21)
Touch and Go! (Crime 17)
From Here to Insanity (Crime 18)
The Execution (Crime 12)
The Killer (Crime 19)
Shock:
Carrion Death (Shock 9)
Squeeze Play (Shock 13)
Sugar 'N Spice 'N... (Shock 6)
...My Brother's Keeper (Shock 16)
The Big Stand-Up! (Shock 3)
Weird Science:
The People's Choice (WS 16)
The Loathsome (WS 20)
Plucked! (WS 17)
Bum Steer! (WS 15)
Chewed Out! (WS 12)
Weird Fantasy:
Home to Stay! (WF 13)
Mad Journey! (WF 14)
Judgment Day (WF 18)
By George! (WF 15)
The Automaton (WF 20)
Weird S-F:
A Sound of Thunder (WSF 25)
The Pioneer (WSF 24)
The Children (WSF 23)
Fish Story (WSF 23)
Lost in Space (WSF 28)
Honorable mentions from other titles (in no particular order):
Fulfillment (ISF 31)
Chancellorsville! (2F 35)
Big 'If'! (FC 5)
Master Race (Impact 1)
My Brother's Keeper (Shock Illustrated 2)
Thanks for sharing your "Best Of" list! We really enjoy and look forward to your comments. I think my first exposure to EC was the big book back in the early/mid'70s--Horror Comics of the 1950s. After reading all of the comics in order I have to say that that book really succeeded in culling much of the best.
ReplyDeleteI do think lists and numbers are interesting, so I think Peter's chart is great. It's very interesting to me that four of your six highest rated titles are my four favorite comic books of all-time: Frontline, TFT, Valor, and Shock. I really loved this EC series you did; thanks again for doing it. I'll chip in a top ten list as a parting comment:
ReplyDelete1. Marster Race (I 1)
2. Carrion Death (SS 9)
3. The Big IF (FC 5)
4. The Flying Machine (WSF 23)
5. Atom Bomb (TFT 33)
6. Starchie (M 12)
7. Squeeze Play (SS 13)
8. There Will Come Soft Rains (WF 17)
9. Pipe Dream (VOH 36)
10.Came the Dawn (SS 9)
Best,
Jim
Jim, I was hoping you'd chime in! Thanks for your nice comment. Your list is a good one and I see you are a big Krigstein fan!
ReplyDeleteThis is going to be a tough one to let go of. Quiddity and Jim, thanks so much for your comments and lists. I know I can speak for Jack and Jose when I say 99% of the thrill of doing these blogs in the reception. Warren is going to be an interesting nut to crack. Lots of ups and downs but we'll try to get through those valleys and look forward to the peaks.
ReplyDeleteWere the '60s Dell horror comics ever consistently impressive?
ReplyDeleteTodd-
ReplyDeleteI haven't gotten to the Dells yet but my fading memory tells me no. I'm working on a piece on Ace's Baffling Mysteries title and it's pretty tame stuff, even for an early to mid-50s title.
Just checking in to say that I wish I could've stayed for the whole ride, but I'm thankful to master gentlemen Peter and Jack for having me along for (most of) the antics. And to Quiddity and Jim, Peter is right: the trip is fun, but it's always better with passengers!
ReplyDeleteCheers to all of you!
Jose! Hope all is well with your "little stranger"!
ReplyDelete