EC Comics relied a little too heavily on formula to suit me. The 'poetic justice' plot was way over-used; some awful person mistreats someone in a distinctive way, and that victim turns the tables and gets revenge in the same way they were abused. If a man bugged his wife by insisting his clothes were pressed perefectly, she'd go nuts and burn him to death with a giant flatiron, that sort of thing. Half the time, the victim died and came back as a lovingly described walking corpse to get revenge.

However, when EC was hitting on all cylinders, they turned out absolutely great stuff. Here, from THE VAULT OF HORROR# 32, Aug-Sep 1953, is "Whirlpool." This story was written and drawn by Johnny Craig, and it really has that nightmarish TWILIGHT ZONE feel to it.




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These pages are from PANIC# 6, way back in 1954. Despite the fact it had MAD artists like Wally Wood, Jack Davis and Will Elder, PANIC just was never half as funny as MAD was. This is because Al Feldstein wrote it instead of Harvey Kurtzman and the demented satirical Kurtzman viewpoint wasn't there. To be honest, I have a theory that those first color issues of MAD were a one-time synergism of talents coming together. It might not have lasted in any case, even if Bill Gaines hadn't turned MAD into a full-size black & white magazine. But be that as it may, PANIC did have its bright moments. These ad parodies strike me as hitting the right note. In fact, these echo my own reactions to the mendacious claims in advertisements.

That's Harvey Kurtzman, Will Elder and Jack Davis, of course. But my strong suspicion is that the young woman is just following policy and going along with them. She's a Playboy Bunny, a hostess skilled at making guests feel relaxed and welcome while serving drinks... sort of like American Geishas. And my bet is that after they left, she turned to the Bunny Mother and asked, "Which one was Groucho?"

Some very neat visual puns in this panel from PANIC. With all respect to Wally Wood, John Severin and the other artists of early MAD, Will Elder was the star. He could mimic other artists with deadly accuracy, and he was the master of jamming little gags into every panel so that the more you looked, the more you found. For example, I just noticed Santa is using a whip with fish hooks on it on his reindeer...!



This panel also has the distinction of causing an uproar by itself. It's that "Just Divorced" sign on the back of Santa's sleigh. 1953 was an incredibly uptight time in a lot of ways. If you're a young person today and were somehow sent back to that era, you would likely find it repressive and suffocating in ways you wouldn't expect from watching HAPPY DAYS reruns. Because of the blasphemous idea that Santa could be divorced, PANIC was banned in Massachusets and sales dropped everywhere else. (To be honest, PANIC was never half as good as MAD, even though it had the same artists. MAD was written by Harvey Kurtzman and PANIC by Al Feldstein, who just wasn't as funny.

"Plucked!" from WEIRD SCIENCE# 17, back in 1953. Don't let the cover blurb mislead you, this is not a Ray Bradbury adaptation but one of the gems pounded out by Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein.



Tarnation! I remember reading this when I was ten years old. I may have mentioned that one day our landlord gave me a shopping bag full of old comics from the 1940s and 1950s, since he knew I liked that crazy stuff. Of course, I devoured them and was lost to the world for a few days. This story just about electrocuted me, and yet... great as it is, "Plucked" has a flaw in it that brings disbelief into a brick wall, but let's save it* and just enjoy thw story (and that perfect Wally Wood art).




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EC Comics were before my time, but when I was starting out with Archie and Little Lulu and Superboy, I was suddenly thunderstruck. Our landlord left a box of old comics he was going to throw out and I dove into them like my life depended on it. They were from the 1940s and 1950s, before the Comics Code cleaned things up. I was used to polite, demure comics that never showed blood or strong emotion or corpses. Yet here were AIRBOY, PLASTIC MAN, CRIME DOES NOT PAY, THE BOY COMMANDOs, all full of extreme images (to me). And what was this one? TALES FROM THE CRYPT...?

Well, I survived somehow. And today, when I sometimes see an EC story, I get that pleasant jolt of remembering just enough of it to tantalize. "Maniac At Large" is from CRIME SUSPENSTORIES# 27, 1955, with art by underrated George Evans, a classic example of the twist ending.


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From WEIRD SCIENCE# 15, October 1952. Story by William Gaines and Al Feldstein, art by Jack Kamen. When I read this as a kid, it seemed like a funny little skit very much in the droll TWILIGHT ZONE style. But thinking about it later, something unsettled me.



I had figured these harem girls were some sort of artificial life, not human any more than a metal robot and programmed to respond to whoever activated them. But I don't see any mention of that. As far as I can tell, these are real flesh-and-blood women who were "dehydrated" in the future after being given powerful post-hypnotic commands. And Melvin here blithely murders one after another of them because he can't figure out how to properly resurrect them.

The only way to make this at least bearable (unless you take it as a dark comedy on the lines of ARSENIC AND OLD LACE where the old ladies poison a series of men) is to conclude that these women were actually killed when they were first dehydrated. I'd say that's a reasonable judgement (but then I also think the Star Trek transporters kill everyone in them and just creates a duplicate). In that case, Melvin is only animating a simulation of the original person, which may or may not have the original's memories. It's a bit ghoulish, he intends to have sex with what are essentially living zombies, but still not quite as bad.

This still doesn't answer why these women suffer this fate. We don't know anything about the future society, except that there is still a Wisconsin and the culture has taboos against minors or married men having sex with these revenants. There's nothing in the story to give clues. Maybe these women were condemned criminals given the death penalty and choosing this provides money for their families; maybe they were prisoners of war. Who knows, maybe there is a whole culure of freeze-dried servants, ranging from chaffeurs to bouncers to gardeners in the Wisconsin of 2952.

Amidst all the murderous couples and walking corpses and slimy aliens, EC managed every now and then to take a strong stance against prejudice. This was fairly rare in the early 1950s, especially in the lowly comic book, and it showed some courage on the part of Bill Gaines.

"Judgement Day" may be the best remembered and most discussed story ever published by EC. It first appeared in WEIRD FANTASY# 18 in 1953. After the Comics Code clamped down, Gaines had to retitle his comic to INCREDIBLE SCIENCE FICTION. When he reprinted "Judgement Day," the Code demanded that final panel be redrawn. Gaines blew up, refused and printed it anyway. Then, before he got either an ulcer or a stroke, he cancelled the EC line and made MAD into a black & white magazine so it would be free of the Code. A generation of kids reading MAD from the late 1950s may not have realized it started as a color comic spoofing other comics.

This offbeat story appeared in the final issue of WEIRD SCIENCE, number 22 (December 1953). Both WEIRD SCIENCE and WEIRD FANTASY both invariably lost money with each issue. Publisher Bill Gaines didn't care, he liked the stuff and kept the titles going anyway (you have to love a publisher willing to lose money rather than just spew out comics he knows will sell). I suppose "My World" was meant as a tribute to artist Wally Wood, who had given WEIRD SCIENCE its distinctive look (and which later influenced much sci-fi, including MARS ATTACKS!)

Looking over a huge stack of ECs, I regretfully say that much of it is just formula that doesn't appeal to me. The husband and wife scheming to murder each other, only to have one return as a rotting zombie... feh. You can't do that a dozen times and not get diminishing results. On the other hand, when EC was good, it produced some of the best comics ever to see print. On the occasions when Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein did a story attacking racial or ethnic prejudice, they were deadly serious but the rest of the time, they had a twisted sense of humor that came out in ironic endings and a barrage of sick puns.

Another example of the skewed attitude is shown in items like this odd little filler from WEIRD FANTASY# 14, in 1952. Imagine the surprise and delight at finding something this goofy among all the atomic war premonitions and planets full of slimy freakoids.

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