E.C. Comics Horror

	By Renfield The dawn of the 1950’s, long before giant ants and gillmen terrified movie audiences, was a washout for horror film fans. The golden age of Universal Studios horror pretty much ended with the last monster fest Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein in 1948. After that, Universal and the other studios seemed to shun horror. It wasn’t until the mid-Fifties, when audience reception to sci-fi films and the showing of the Universal horror classics on television revived the fantastic and frightening in cinema. So, what was a horror fan to do in the first few years of the Fifties? Aside from revivals of the old horror films, there was a substitute, a potent substitute—horror comics…especially E.C. horror comics. Despite the more innocent time they were spawned, horror comics in the late Forties and early Fifties weren’t namby-pamby monster fables…they were full-blooded, explicit, even gory picture-stories of terror. Indeed, so strong were horror comics (along with crime comics that were steeped in brutality and carnage) that they convinced a sizable part of the US population that they were bad for kids and a source of juvenile delinquency! Certainly, as a kid back in those times might have put it, horror comics weren’t for sissies! And the best (or the worst if you were a parent) were E.C., or, Entertaining Comics. E.C. Comics were originally Educational Comics, ironically exactly the kind of worthwhile, high-minded comics any teacher or school principal would approve. The line of comics were created an helmed by M. C. Gaines. Who was M.C. Gaines? You should know him, boils and ghouls…he created the comic book as we know it today. Originally, in the early Thirties, comics books were only reprints of the color Sunday newspaper supplements…repeats, in other words, of what folks had already read at home on the Sabbath. But they also sold like cold lemonade in August. Gaines was one of the Sunday funnies reprinters, making a buck or two, but worrying about the fact that the supply of Sunday newspaper comics was limited…too much reprinting of the same material could cause a huge drop in sales when the same antics of Mutt and Jeff and Barney Google palled for the comic-reading public. Then Gaines received a draft of an original comic strip, one submitted for comic book publication. The strip, crudely drawn by two teenaged boys named Jerry Schuster and Jerome Siegel, wasn’t really up the quality of the Sunday funnies. But it had a kind of raw, compelling fascination, and at least it was original. So, M.C. Gaines printed the comic. It’s title: Superman. This was the creation of the original-material comic book, and Gaines prospered when Superman and other comic book creations (like Batman) went up…up…and away in sales. But Gaines eventually sold his interests in these hot properties and settled down to make comic books with authentic historical themes, comics mirroring classic literature--in other words, comic books that were good for kids—Educational Comics, or E.C. It’s a ghoulish twist of fate that E.C. comics, which printed titles such as Stories From The Bible and Picture Stories From American History would eventually turn out terrori-fic titles like Tales From The Crypt and The Vault Of Horror. It happened when M. C. Gaines was killed in a boating accident, leaving his son, William, the E.C. comics empire. Frankly, it wasn’t much of an empire; kids and young adults disdained the goody-two-shoes content of E.C. comics, and the business was headed for bankruptcy. William Gaines, who didn’t want to get in the comic book business, was nevertheless stuck with it. It was obvious that Stories From The Bible wasn’t going to pay the rent. So, what kind of stuff would the comic book-reading public buy? Simple. Not Bible, but blood…lots of blood. And bullets. And bogeymen. Gaines threw out the "quality" comic titles and embarked on a new kind of E.C. comics—Entertaining Comics. He hired cutting-edge comic artists, and published tough, explicit, and gory comic fare—Crime SuspenseStories, with criminals at their cruelest, Frontline Combat, with war at its bloodiest, Weird Science, with sci-fi at its craziest, and The Haunt Of Fear, with ghouls at their…well, ghouliest. Of course, it was the E.C. horror comics that made the biggest splash amongst early Fifties comic book readers. Gaines hired a talented editor, Al Feldstein, who, in turn, brought in a group of talented—and twisted—comic artists, such as Wally Wood, Jack Davis, and Graham "Ghastly" Ingels. Turned loose, these artists took the sick, yet slick, scary, yet literary, plots of Gaines and Feldstein and rendered them into true horror comic art. Gaines and Feldstein loved twist endings to horror stories, and this caused E.C. comic tales to deliver a real jolt to the reader. This, in turn, made E.C. horror special and earned the company a huge readership. Rotting zombies rising from the grave to extract a bloody revenge…maddened spouses getting their own back with meat cleavers…practical jokers learning their last joke was, literally, their last joke…this was the stuff of E.C. comics, and it was grand, ghoulish stuff, indeed. The Crypt-Keeper, The Vault-Keeper, and The Old Witch were the hosts, and their horrifying jokes and terrible puns kept readers in stitches. In a time when horror themes and monsters were scarce on the silver screen, fans of the genre could at least get their fright fix by reading E.C. comics...and the copycats, if they were that desperate. Of course, all "ghoul" things must come to an end. The wild and woolly days of comic books in the late Forties and early Fifties, a time without censorship or much editorial restraint, came to a crashing end. A crusading psychiatrist. Dr. Frederic Wertham, published Seduction Of The Innocent, which accused comic books of corrupting youth and provoking juvenile delinquency. The book, and the public furor it generated, put civic groups, parent-teacher organizations, and the government hot on the trail of comics books, particularly crime and horror titles. William Gaines himself volunteered to testify before a US Senate subcommittee about his horror comics. It was a mistake. When confronted with one of his comic coves that showed a man with an ax holding a woman’s severed head, Gaines argued that such a cover would be in bad taste if, for example, the severed head was held higher and blood was shown dripping from it. This went over with the senators like Dracula at a Red Cross blood drive. It led to the establishment of the Comics Code. E.C. comics were too visceral for the Code, and without the Code distributors wouldn’t carry E.C. comics…as a result, the Vault Of Horror was sealed forever. At about this time, a new wave of horror and sci-fi films were appearing on movie screens and filling movie theaters with thrill-hungry movie audiences…just in time, with the demise of the true horror comics—in the E.C. tradition. By the way, although E.C. comics were buried by the bluenoses, William Gaines survived—and even thrived. Once again, seeing his company floundering, he took a flyer on a new kind of satirical magazine, one that wasn’t a comic book and thus didn’t have to bow to the Code. It’s title: Mad magazine.