EC Comics
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Entertaining Comics was headed by William Gaines but is better known by its publishing name of EC Comics. It was a publisher of comic books specializing in crime, horror, humor, war and science-fiction from the 1940s through the 1950s until censorship pressures eventually prompted it to concentrate on the seminal humor magazine, Mad.
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[edit] Educational Comics
The firm, first known as Educational Comics, was owned by Max Gaines, who published Picture Stories from the Bible and biographies of important figures from science and history in comic book form. A decade earlier, Max Gaines had been one of the pioneers of the comic book form by repackaging and distributing comic strips in 64-page pamphlets.
[edit] Entertaining Comics
When Max Gaines died in 1947 in a boating accident, his son William inherited the comics company. After four years (1942-46) in the Army Air Corps, Gaines returned home to finish school at New York University, planning to work as a chemistry teacher. He never taught but instead took over the family business. In 1949 and 1950, he began to change titles in order to introduce stories with a focus on horror, suspense, science fiction, war and crime. At the same time, Gaines and his editors, Al Feldstein and Harvey Kurtzman, gave assignments to the best freelance artists working in the field.
The firm had success with its fresh approach and pioneered in forming relationships with its readers through its letters to the editor and its fan organization, the National EC Fan-Addict Club. While the stories were sensational, the art was highly regarded.
EC Comics was unique in a number of ways. They promoted their stable of illustrators, allowing each to sign their art, encouraging them to develop idiosyncratic styles, and by printing one-page biographies of them in the comic books. This was in stark contrast to the industry's common practice, in which credits were often missing and generic "house styles" were the norm. As an example, Donald Duck writer-cartoonist Carl Barks was known for years as the "Good Artist" because his stories stood out from the pack, but readers had no other way of identifying his work. In EC stories, readers could easily identify the signed work of such artists as Graham Ingels, Wally Wood, Jack Davis, Johnny Craig, Bernard Krigstein, Will Elder, Harvey Kurtzman, Al Feldstein, Jack Kamen, George Evans, Joe Orlando, John Severin and Al Williamson. Other artists of note who worked for EC included Frank Frazetta, Basil Wolverton and Reed Crandall. The comics were generally written by Kurtzman, Feldstein and Craig with assistance from Gaines. Later other writers like Carl Wessler, Jack Oleck and Otto Binder were brought on board.
EC published distinct lines of titles under its Entertaining Comics umbrella. Most notorious were their horror books, Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror and The Haunt of Fear. These titles reveled in a gruesome joie de vivre, with grimly ironic fates meted out to many of the stories' protagonists. The company's war comics Frontline Combat and Two-Fisted Tales often featured weary-eyed, unheroic stories that were out of step with the jingoistic times. Many EC tales wrapped up with twist endings, but Crime SuspenStories and Shock SuspenStories positively reveled in them, and they became the comics' hallmark; several of the SuspenStories therein tackled weightier issues such as racism, sex, drug use and the American way of life. EC always claimed to be "proudest of our science fiction titles," and Weird Science and Weird Fantasy were certainly a step up from the standard space opera tales found in Planet Comics.
Superior illustrations of stories with surprise punch endings became EC's trademark. However, the sheer volume of material required for Feldstein's titles -- four to five stories per week -- occasionally resulted in a formulaic approach. Gaines would generally stay up late each night during the week and read large amounts of material. The next day he would present a number of ideas he came up with from his readings to Feldstein. Known as 'springboards', Gaines would go through them one by one until Feldstein found one that he thought he could use as a story. Each story was written with the artist in mind. Hence artists like Davis and Ingels were given the more gruesome, supernatural themed stories that fit their style while artists like Kamen and Evans were given tamer material. Kurtzman was a slower, more meticulous editor, which is why his comics are more highly regarded than Feldstein's and why he handled fewer titles. At EC's peak Feldstein edited seven titles while Kurtzman handled at most three.
With hundreds of stories written, common themes became apparent. Some of EC's more well-known themes:
- EC's most common house plot was to take an ordinary situation and turn it on its head in gruesome fashion, often as poetic justice for a character doing something wrong. The story Collection Completed features a man who takes up the hobby of taxidermy to bug his wife. When he kills and stuffs her beloved cat, the wife snaps and kills him, stuffing and mounting his body as he did to so many animals before. In Revulsion a spaceship pilot is bothered by insects due to a past experience when he found a bug in his food. By the end of the story a giant alien insect screams in horror when he finds the dead pilot in his salad. This type of theme appeared in dozens of stories and covered all sorts of situations imaginable. Dissection, the broiling of lobsters, Mexican jumping beans, fur coats, and fishing are just a small sample of the kind of situations employing such ironic twists.
- The "Grim Fairy Tale" featured gruesome twists on such common fairy tales as Hansel and Gretel, Sleeping Beauty and Little Red Riding Hood.
- Adaptations of Ray Bradbury's stories appeared in two dozen EC comics starting in 1952. The never-ending need for material led to an incident where Feldstein and Gaines combined two of Bradbury's stories into a single tale for one of their science fiction comics. Learning of the story, Bradbury sent a note praising them, while remarking that he had "inadvertently" not yet received his payment for their use. Charmed and relieved, EC happily sent a check and negotiated a productive series of Bradbury adaptations.
- Stories with a political message became common in EC's science fiction and suspense comics. Issues including racism, lynching, anti-semitism, police corruption were just a small sample of those featured.
EC's most lasting legacy came with Mad, which started as a side project for Kurtzman before buoying the company's fortunes and becoming a remarkably significant humor publication. A sister publication, Panic, was also produced when humor magazines were the industry rage in 1954.
The three horror titles featured stories introduced by a trio of horror hosts. The Crypt Keeper introduced Tales from the Crypt, the Vault Keeper welcomed readers to The Vault of Horror, and the Old Witch cackled over The Haunt of Fear. Besides gleefully recounting the unpleasant details of the stories, the characters squabbled at one another, unleashed an arsenal of puns and even insulted and taunted the readers: "Greetings, boils and ghouls..." This irreverent mockery of the audience also became the trademark attitude of Mad. Such glib, snarky give-and-take was later mimicked by many, including Stan Lee in his Marvel Comics.
[edit] Backlash and industry conspiracy
Beginning in the late 1940s, the comic book industry became the target of mounting public criticism for the content of comic books and their potentially harmful effects on children. The problem came to a head in 1948 with the publication by Dr. Fredric Wertham of two articles: "Horror in the Nursery" (Collier's Weekly) and “The Psychopathology of Comic Books” (American Journal of Psychotherapy). As a result, the Association of Comics Magazine Publishers was formed in 1948. Although EC was part of the association, it had little effect and comic books got more and more gruesome throughout the early 1950's. EC withdrew from the ACMP around the end of 1951, hastening its dissolution.
In 1954, the publication of Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent and a highly publicized Congressional hearing on juvenile delinquency cast comic books in an especially poor light. At the same time, a federal investigation led to a shakeup in the distribution companies that delivered comic books and pulp magazines across America. Sales plummeted, and several companies went out of business.
Gaines called a meeting of his fellow publishers and suggested that the comic book industry gather together to fight outside censorship. They formed an association known as the Comics Magazine Association of America with its censorship wing, the Comics Code Authority. The CCA code expanded on the ACMP's restrictions. Unlike its predecessor, the CCA code was rigorously enforced, with all comics requiring code approval prior to their publication. This not being what Gaines intended, he immediately withdrew from the association.
Among the Code's new rules were that no comic book title could use the words "horror" or "terror" or "weird" on its cover; it was seen as no coincidence that many of EC's top-selling comics included these words in their titles. Gaines at first refused to submit his comics to the code, but when distributors then refused to handle many of his comics, Gaines had no choice but to voluntarily kill his five most popular comics - the three horror and the two Suspenstory comics.
Facing unending conflict, EC shifted its focus to a line of more realistic comic book titles, including M.D. and Psychoanalysis (known as the New Direction line). It also watered down and renamed its remaining science fiction comic. With these changes put in place, Gaines reluctantly started submitting his comics to the Comics Code. This attempted revamp was a speedy failure. Some believe that EC's publishing woes in 1955 and 1956 were largely thanks to an unspoken blackballing of EC titles by the industry and its distributors.
Gaines waged a number of battles with the Comics Code Authority in an attempt to keep his magazines free of censorship during the later days of EC. One notable incident involved his threatening the members of the Comics Code Authority board with a lawsuit after being ordered to alter the climactic scene of the science fiction story "Judgment Day!", so that one of the characters-- a Black astronaut-- would not be seen sweating. Gaines and others felt that the real issue was the depiction of a Black man as the lead pilot of a U.S. spacecraft. This aggravation, when combined with the declining sales of his remaining titles, were the leading causes for Gaines's decision to leave the comic book industry entirely.
With the failure of his New Direction comics, Gaines focused on EC's Picto-Fiction magazines, black and white magazines where the artist would generally draw one to four panels per page and the text was overlaid onto the artwork. These also lost money from the start, and only lasted two issues per title. When EC's national distributor went bankrupt, Gaines dropped his comic book line.
[edit] Mad and later years
Luckily, EC had found a large audience embracing Mad and Panic. Mad always sold well throughout the company's troubles, and Gaines focused exclusively on publishing Mad in magazine form. This move was done to placate its editor Harvey Kurtzman, who had received an offer to join the magazine Pageant but preferred to remain in charge of his own magazine. More crucially, the switch had the happy result of removing Mad from the auspices of the Comics Code. While no EC comic book lasted six years, Mad has been published without interruption for over 50 years.
Though Kurtzman did not last long with Mad after this point (leaving when Gaines wouldn't give him 51% control of the magazine), Gaines brought back Al Feldstein as his replacement. The magazine enjoyed unrivalled success for decades afterwards.
The Tales from the Crypt title was licensed for a movie in 1972, and more successfully for a TV series in the 1980s, itself spawning films in the 1990s.
[edit] Reprint history
Although the last non-MAD EC publication came out in 1956, EC comics have remained popular for half a century, thanks much in part of the reprints that have kept them in the public eye. Some of the many EC reprints include the following:
[edit] Ballantine Books
Ballantine Books published five paperback books between 1964 and 1966 featuring reprints of EC stories. Two, Tales From the Crypt and The Vault of Horror featured reprints from the horror comics. Tales of the Incredible features reprints from the science fictio comics. The last two books were reprints of some of the many Ray Bradbury adaptions that appeared in EC. The Autumn People featured reprints from the horror and crime comics. Tomorrow Midnight featured science fiction reprints.
[edit] The EC Horror Library
The EC Horror Library, published by Nostalgia Press in 1971, featured reprints of approximately 20 EC stories, various artist biographies and an essay by Larry Stark. Despite its title, the book also included some non-horror stories as well, like Bernard Krigstein's famous "Master Race" story from Impact. This book also marked the first ever printing of "An Eye For An Eye," a story that originally slated for the final issue of Incredible Science Fiction but rejected by the Comics Code.
[edit] EC Portfolios
The EC Portfolios consisted of a half dozen oversized issues between 1971 and 1977. Published by Russ Cochran, these featured some of EC's most famous stories and covers across various genres.
[edit] East Coast Comix
East Coast Comix reprinted in comic form a number of EC's New Trend comics between 1973 and 1975. The first reprint was the final issue of Tales From the Crypt, with the title revised to state The Crypt of Terror. This issue was originally meant to be the first issue of a fourth horror comic which was changed to the final issue of Tales From the Crypt at the last minute when the horror comics were cancelled in 1954. A dozen issues ended up being reprinted.
[edit] The Complete EC Library
The Complete EC Library, a project of Russ Cochran's that started in 1978, reprinted every EC comic in hardbound volumes. Unlike the original comics these were done in black and white, except for Mad, which had both a black and white and a color version. These volumes included annotations and commentary by various comics historians, including John Benson, Max Allan Collins, Bill Mason, Bill Spicer and Bhob Stewart. The Complete EC Library eventually reprinted every New Trend and New Direction comic and many of the Pre-Trend comics. The most recent addition, the Picto-Fiction set (2006), included four issues that had never been previously published.
[edit] EC Classics
This group of magazine-sized reprints from Russ Cochran appeared between 1985 and 1989. The first 6 issues featured various stories for each specific comic. Starting with issue 7, each reprint featured two specific issues. A total of 12 issues were released.
[edit] Additional reprints
Throughout the 1990s and into the next decade, almost EC's entire line of comics were reprinted in comic form. The first group of reprints came from Gladstone Publishing in 1990, which reprinted various issues of the three horror comics, the sci-fi comics and Crime SuspenStories in 64-page issues. A total of 18 issues were published. The second group of reprints, known as the "RCP(Russ Cochran Publisher) Reprints" appeared the next year and also reprinted various issues from the horror, sci-fi and crime comics. Starting in 1992, the comics were reprinted in chronological order in a 32-page form. This line eventually reprinted every New Trend and New Direction comic except for Mad, and many Pre-Trend comics as well. In 2006, Russ Cochran announced the beginning of a new project: a series of hardcover color reprint sets called EC Archives.
