tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6672923492889685727.post152788054739864914..comments2024-03-27T05:54:38.797-07:00Comments on <i>bare</i>•bones e-zine: EC Comics! It's An Entertaining Comic Issue 46John Scolerihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14082147756474762000noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6672923492889685727.post-57236720972226151212017-12-07T14:19:46.936-08:002017-12-07T14:19:46.936-08:00Thanks Nequam, that had been bugging me.Thanks Nequam, that had been bugging me.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6672923492889685727.post-82197326930619585802017-12-06T18:48:09.815-08:002017-12-06T18:48:09.815-08:00I just read "If" and you are absolutely ...I just read "If" and you are absolutely right. It looks like Carl Wessler was writing for Marvel before he went to EC, so it would not surprise me if he's the uncredited author of "If" and then recycled his own script for EC. I prefer Fred Kida's art on "If" to Jack Kamen's art on "Out Cold."Jack Seabrookhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02216640325305820140noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6672923492889685727.post-1399116187350407762017-12-06T01:45:16.437-08:002017-12-06T01:45:16.437-08:00[Removed prior comment since I couldn't edit]
...[Removed prior comment since I couldn't edit]<br /><br />Interestingly, the comic the anonymous poster was thinking of is called "If!" and was from Suspense #27 (February 1953). The GCD lists this issue of Haunt of Fear as coming out May/June 1954... did EC actually steal/borrow from one of its competitors? You can read "If!" here at http://thehorrorsofitall.blogspot.com/2008/08/if.html and decide for yourself...Nequamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17225401111413524858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6672923492889685727.post-38685123907237464582017-12-05T15:46:16.972-08:002017-12-05T15:46:16.972-08:00Good points, Jim! I think Elder could have done mo...Good points, Jim! I think Elder could have done more horror had he been given the chance--"Strop! You're Killing Me!" is a one heck of a story. I love your comment that "Krigstein is as funny as death" and agree that his story pointed toward the direction MAD would later go. I'm a couple of years younger than you but I read a load of those MAD paperbacks growing up in the '70s and I liked them better than the magazine, which always seemed to have too much filler. My favorite artist was always Don Martin.<br /><br />As for another version of "Out Cold," that's more in Peter and Jose's wheelhouse than mine.Jack Seabrookhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02216640325305820140noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6672923492889685727.post-62649006396795359692017-12-05T00:10:22.653-08:002017-12-05T00:10:22.653-08:00I frequent the website The Horror of It All, which...I frequent the website The Horror of It All, which collects scans of horror comics. I remember coming across a knock-off (or similar) version of 'Out Cold'. Except in this version the threat was vampires and instead he got hit by a car.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6672923492889685727.post-10141225959361022382017-12-04T14:31:05.358-08:002017-12-04T14:31:05.358-08:00At the midpoint of the comic book's 23-issue r...At the midpoint of the comic book's 23-issue run, Mad #12 is the pinnacle of the title. "Starchie" is my favorite Elder story of all-time. "3-Dimensions" may be one of the best things Mad has ever done from the beginning of its comic book run through the seventy years of the magazine, and, yes, they did print a blank page. Why? Because they were funny enough to get away with it. The least memorable story is "Mark Trade", and it's great.<br /><br />And then there is "From Eternity Back to Here," in which Krigstein essentially begins the transformation of the Kurtzman comic book into the most successful humor magazine of all time. Kurtzman didn't start out doing movie parodies; this one was only the fourth to appear in Mad. Elder drew "Ping Pong" back in #6, and he made no effort at all to caricature any of the real actors from the movie; he simply drew funny Bill Elder characters and treated the source material exactly the way he treated Sherlock Holmes or comic books. In "Hah, Noon", Davis does a pretty good caricature of Gary Cooper, but he doesn't commit to the idea of matching the characters to the actors; virtually all of the people in the story are stock Davis characters doing funny stuff. In "Sane", Severin doesn't seem to make any attempt to parody the actors. His lead is a generic Severin hero who doesn't look at all like Alan Ladd, and his villain looks more like Charles Bronson than Jack Palance.<br /><br />Elder and Davis were funny artists. All of Elder's best work is in the humor field, and I think most people would say that their favorite Davis work is in the same genre. But Krigstein, of course, is as funny as death and can't put in the laugh-a-minute details in which Elder and Davis specialize. So he does something entirely different: he draws beautiful caricatures; his Lancaster, Sinatra, and Borgnine are great. And in his only solo performance, he begins the change in the style of the book.<br /><br />From 5th grade through 8th grade (1970 - 1974) I survived on a literary diet of Mad magazine, as did millions of other kids the same age throughout the 1960s and 1970s. And the cornerstone of each issue was the brilliant Mort Drucker movie parody with the spot on caricatures that Drucker and Angelo Torres did better than anyone else anywhere. That model starts with Krigstein's story in Mad #12, and then Kurtzman began to run with it. He assigned the next four movie parodies to Wood, who was, of course, as great at caricature as he was at everything else a comic book artist could try. Wood developed the model pretty much to perfection. By "Cane Mutiny" in Mad #19, all the elements of a Mort Drucker parody are in place: An opening in which a forever young caricature of doomed Robert Francis breaks the fourth wall to introduce the movie, perfect caricatures of Bogart, Jose Ferrer, and Fred MacMurray scamper around throughout the body of the story, and a couple of celebrities from another movie -- Charles Laughton and Clark Gable -- drop in at the end to pull the curtain. Thus, I consider this a transformational issue of Mad, as well as an incredibly funny one.<br /><br />--<br /><br />JimAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com