Impact (EC Comics)

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Page four of "Master Race," illustrated by Bernard Krigstein, which appeared in the first issue of Impact.

Impact was a short-lived comic book series published by EC Comics in 1955 as part of its New Direction line. The bi-monthly comic, published by Bill Gaines and edited by Al Feldstein, began with an issue cover-dated March-April, 1955. It ran for five issues, ending with the November-December, 1955 issue. The subtitle "Tales Designed to Carry an" ran above the title Impact. The book was dedicated to stories with shock endings, and was seen as a toned down, Comics Code Era version of EC's earlier Shock SuspenStories. Front covers were by Jack Davis, and the stories were illustrated by Davis, George Evans, Jack Kamen, Graham Ingels, Joe Orlando, Reed Crandall and Bernard Krigstein.

The other New Direction titles were Aces High, Extra!, M.D., Psychoanalysis and Valor. The entire New Direction line was reprinted by publisher Russ Cochran in 1988 in slipcased hardbacks with all pages shot from the original art.

[edit] Master Race

In the debut issue, Krigstein illustrated "Master Race," regarded as one of the more significant stories ever published in a comic book. It still resonates today. In his article "Master Race and the Holocaust" Martin Jukovsky analyzed how the story was an "exceptional undertaking," conspicuous at a time when a few books had been written about the Holocaust:

When EC published "Master Race" in 1955, there was little in the mass media about the murder by the Nazis of millions of Jews, Gypsies, political oppositionists and homosexuals. The images of crowded gas chambers, mountains of corpses piled like cordwood, and smoke from the burning bodies continuously spewing out of tall chimneys had not yet established themselves in the public consciousness. The material was there, however. You just had to look for it. Margaret Bourke-White's Life magazine photograph of almost-dead staring faces behind barbed wire -- shot at the evacuation of a concentration camp) at the end of World War II -- was sometimes reprinted. This now-familiar photo is echoed in page four, panel five of "Master Race," as well as in Art Spiegelman's 1972 version of Maus (in his book Breakdowns). Five Chimneys: The Story of Auschwitz, a harrowing account by Olga Lenyel, a death camp survivor, was published in 1947. Eugen Kogon's Theory and Practice of Hell, detailing the horrible workings of the German death camps, was published in 1950. The facts began to surface about the incredible numbers murdered and the cold-blooded, single-minded efficiency with which it was done. Many Americans began to discuss the unspeakable crimes of the Holocaust, but most just found it all too hard to believe. Krigstein's "Master Race" was therefore an exceptional undertaking. As their contribution to the anti-German propaganda effort, wartime movies and comic books had shown concentration camps and Nazi brutality. But never had they shown the death camps (as distinct from concentration camps) and the unique atrocities such as "medical" experimentation on living people... Krigstein's piece didn't spare the sensibility and complacency of the postwar reader. On page four, panel seven, ordinary citizens cover their noses with handkerchiefs against "the stinking odor of human flesh burning in the ovens... men's... women's... children's..." Book burnings, mass live burials, a quiet clinical scene of an operation on a human guinea pig -- "Master Race" starkly depicts the madness of the Nazi period in Germany as well as the burning vengeance inspired by these unspeakable crimes.

[edit] Issue Guide