I am starting to become fascinated and enamor3ed the stories by and of the artists of E.C. Comics. I imagine for several of you, the name E.C. Comics means nothing. E.C. published such titles as Tales from the Crypt and Weird Science, and the only surviving E.C. title today is MAD Magazine. The horror stories E.C. published have influenced countless imitators and fans alike, not the least of which being Stephen King.
At last week's Expo I bought a book about the artists of E.C. Comics and for the past week I have been enthralled by their stories. Again, I don't just mean the stories they made. Certainly, those are wonderful even today. There is a reason why they were so successfully adapted into a TV show. They have their corniness, sure, but man oh man they can still pack a whallop. Much of that goes for the artists themselves as much as the writing.
But what really affects me is the lives of these individual writers, artists, and editors producing horror and crime and science fiction comics during the McCarthy Era. None of them were wealthy men by any stretch of the imagination, not even Bill Gaines, the editor and son of the former president of DC Comics. Some were artists with dreams of making a living producing "legitimate" art who went to E.C. for a steady paycheck, always important but maybe even more so to these children of the depression. Others just loved the art form of comics as much as eating or breathing. Some even more so.
Al Feldstein, co-editor of E.C. alongside Gaines, encouraged each and every artist to explore their individual style, rather than try to fit into a company "house style" like so many comic compaies did. I'm trying now to describe to you the work of such men as Harvey Kurtzman, Johnny Craig, Jack Davis, and Wally Wood, but that's the trouble with art. Like music, what makes it work just can't be put into words.
I can still quote artist Bernie Krigstein: "The panel has to exist by itself, otherwise the integrity of the art is in jeopardy. Until the artist arrives at the point where he realizes that by drawing a single panel he has a single work of art that exists by itself as a single statement which can live by itself, only then can all the panels live together. And then you reach a totality that is completely out of the realm of the infantile kind of page continuities that comics are filled with."
Anyone who knows about E.C. knows what happened to them. Dr. Fredrick Wertham published his book Seduction of the Innocent, wherein he blamed juvinile deliquency squarely at comic books. Superman encouraged children to jump out of buildings, Batman and Robin promoted the homosexual lifestyle, etc. And E.C. comics, their their graphic horror and crime stories, took the worst of the blame. Of course, with him being a real doctor and all, PTA groups everywhere started getting up in arms about the problem of comic books, all this leading up to Senate Subcommittee hearings headed by Senator Kefauver.
Gaines' testimony, much like Oscar Wilde's at his own trial, was eloquent, powerful, and completely back-fired. In Gaines' case, his testimony gave a name and face to the enemy. And it wasn't like any of the other companies were going to do anything to help their competetor. Walt Disney himself said, "It does seem a bizarre case of guilt by association that because a minority publishes trash, the whole comics field should be condemned. The biggest magazines in the field are wholesome magazines, built around perfectly wholesome characters. No one can convince me that Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck are monsters."
The major companies came up with a self-imposed committee to "approve" material in comics, creating the Comics Code Authority. The idea was by this they could avoid outright censorship and still sell books; if you're a retailer, you can trust the safety and approval of the Comics Code stamp! And what was not allowed according to the Code's guidelines? Among other things, the words "horror," "vampire," "zombie," and "werewolf." And gee, I wonder who would have been affected by this? The other comic companies fed a major competitor to the wolves to save their own hides.
After that, E.C. kept getting their comics returned to them, sometimes still in the bundles they were sent, because people refused to buy them. Not even abandoning the horror comics in favor of "new direction" titles could save them. All but MAD was subsequently cancelled, and only MAD survived by changing to magazine format.
Many of these artists had difficulty finding work at other companies; some because of their association to E.C., some because their styles weren't quite what the superhero publishers were looking for. Some like Jack Davis stayed on with MAD. MAD creator Harvey Kurtzman left his own magazine after an unsuccessful power play and formed a strong partnership with Hugh Hefner, and along with E.C. artist Bill Elder, Kurtzman produced "Little Annie Fanny" for Playboy. John Severn became the main artist for CRACKED, the most successful of the MAD imitators. Others managed to make money selling original art and classic cover recreations to a loving fan base of aging geeks. One particular artist, Jack Kamen, is the father of the inventor of the Segway, among other things, and as such is living very comfortably today.
There are currently so many levels to the story of E.C. Comics, from the people to the very comics they made, that I am sorely tempted to write a whole book about them. I'd love to do a fictionalized account of these people. I'm not sure what point I exactly had with this post other than to share with you a mini-history of something I just find so fascinating. I hope I'm not the only one.
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