By Wallace Wood, Al Feldstein, Harry Harrison, Gardner Fox & various (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-546-4
Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Sheer, seductive dark pictorial poetry in emotion… 10/10
EC began in 1944 when comicbook pioneer Max Gaines sold the successful superhero properties of his All-American Comics company – including Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern and Hawkman – to half-sister National/DC, retaining only Picture Stories from the Bible. His plan was to produce a line of Educational Comics with schools and church groups as the major target market. He then augmented his core title with three more in similar vein: Picture Stories from American History, Science and World History. The worthwhile but unsustainable project was already struggling when he died in a boating accident in 1947.
His son William was eventually convinced to assume control of the family business and, with much support and encouragement from unsung hero Sol Cohen and multi-talented associate Al Feldstein, transformed the ailing enterprise into Entertaining Comics, consequently triggering the greatest qualitative leap forward in comicbook history…
After a few tentative false starts and abortive experiments, Gaines settled into a bold and impressive publishing strategy, utilising the most gifted illustrators in the field to tell a “New Trend†of stories aimed at an older, more discriminating audience.
From 1950 to 1954 EC was the most innovative and influential publisher in America, dominating the genres of science fiction, war, horror and crime. The company even added a new type of title and another genre with the creation of parody magazine Mad …
This second volume of the Fantagraphics EC Library compiles a magical and groundbreaking omnibus of horrific tales and human dramas featuring the astounding artistic expertise of Wallace Allan Wood: one of the greatest draughtsmen our art form has ever produced.
Wood was actually a master of every aspect of the business. He began his career lettering Will Eisner’s Spirit strip, quickly moved into pencilling and inking and, latterly, publishing. After years working all over the comics and syndicated strip industries, as well as in legitimate illustration, package-design and other areas of commercial art, he devised the legendary T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents franchise and even created one of the first adult independent comics with Witzend in the late 1960s.
The troubled genius carried the seeds of his own destruction, however. Woody’s life was one of addiction (booze and cigarettes), traumatic relationships, tantalisingly close but always frustrated financial security, illness and eventually suicide. It was as if all the joy and beauty in his existence stayed on the pages and there was none left for real life.
Although during his time with EC Wood became the acknowledged and undisputed Master of Science Fiction art in America, he was equally adept, driven and accomplished in the production of all genres.
This powerfully effective collection concentrates on some of his best early horror, crime and suspense tales and includes all the evocative, emotionally-charged, controversial “Preachies†which Feldstein and Bill Gaines had devised to address hot-button issues and challenge the smugly hierarchical social status quo of post-war, triumphalist America.
These strident and still truly shocking morality plays viciously jabbed at the nation’s dark underbelly; attacking prejudice, police corruption, drug abuse, sexual attitudes, racism, institutionalised intolerance and all manners of hypocrisy. It’s no stretch to consider that these tales, more than any other childhood influence, probably shaped the resurgent liberal attitudes which blossomed as the future “Flower Power†generation reached their majority a decade later…
As with the previous Kurtzman volume, the stories are re-presented here in a lavish monochrome hardcover edition, with supplementary interviews, features and dissertations, beginning with ‘Come the Stories’ by Bill Mason, which appraises the yarns included with forensic discipline. Then the pictorial parade kicks off with a rather pedestrian scam caper which sees an innocent man convinced that he’s a ravening monster in ‘The Werewolf Legend’ scripted by the prolific and ubiquitous Gardner Fox, one of Gaines senior’s greatest assets and discovery.
The illustration is by Harry Harrison & inked by Wood from Vault of Horror #12 (April/May 1950). Although Harrison found his greatest fame as a prose author in later years, he was a major player in the comics biz during the 1950s and had worked with Wood as a jobbing production team since they’d met at the Cartoonists and Illustrators school in 1948.
For Haunt of Fear #15 the trio concocted a tale of lethal legerdemain in ‘The Mad Magician’, whilst the anonymously-authored enigma of ‘The Living Corpse’ (Crypt of Terror #18) moved closer to truly supernatural shenanigans as another illusionist took things too far in pursuit of his craft.
Harrison probably scripted and certainly inked ‘The Curse of Harkley Heath’ from Vault of Horror #13, wherein a gothic triangle of greedy heirs came to unpleasant, untimely ends after a will was read, after which Wood began handling all the art chores with ‘Horror-Ahead!’ (Haunt of Fear #16, July/August 1950) when rival curio collectors’ jungle jaunt in search of shrunken skulls ended in the only way it possibly could…
The Noir-ish new era began when Al Feldstein began scripting for Woody. ‘Death’s Double-Cross’ from the sublimely mature Crime SuspenStories #1 (October/November 1951) offers the twisted tale of a woman cheating on her husband with his twin brother in a moody masterpiece reminiscent of James M. Cain. Naturally it quickly turned into a nightmare that couldn’t end pretty…
Fox offered one last hurrah in ‘The Man from the Grave’ from Haunt of Fear #4, which saw a dissolute artist commit gruesome murder for his art and lived to regret it in desperate luxury and a relentless, compulsive paroxysm of over-work, whilst Feldstein’s
‘Terror Ride!’ (Tales From the Crypt #21) found two young lovers who soon regretted being the last couple to ride the decrepit Amusement Park’s Old Mill boat attraction… Feldstein’s epic run of stories fill most of this tome and next appeared in Haunt of Fear #5, where Wood’s dark imagination and ability to render grotesques was expertly exploited in ‘Horror in the Freak Tent!’ wherein a cruel carnival owner who mercilessly mistreated his exotic employees eventually received a macabre measure of justice…
Crime SuspenStories #3 then provided a fearsome farrago of betrayal and vengeance when two fugitive bandits were ‘Faced With Horror!’ after picking the wrong plastic surgeon to sort out their public notoriety problems, whilst ‘So They Finally Pinned You Down!’ from Haunt of Fear #6 followed a troubled soul who couldn’t understand why he was always stumbling over dead women…
The macabre mayhem concluded with two tales from Tales From the Crypt #24 and 25, beginning with a classic philandering-murderer-gets-his-come-uppance tale in ‘Scared to Death!’ after which a baroque body-switching melodrama featuring a cunning crone and a lovely young thing forced a bewildered husband to conclude ‘Judy, You’re Not Yourself Today!’ …
The rest of this volume is comprised of those controversial polemical passion-plays and conscience-rending human dilemmas that Gaines dubbed Preachies, opening with ‘The Guilty!’ (from Shock SuspenStories #3, June/July 1952), which saw a typical small town enflamed by the murder of a young white girl. The Sheriff knew the black kid in his jail was guilty and was as keen as the mob to spare the state the cost of a trial. He took steps to ensure it too.
…And that’s when the girl’s white boyfriend confessed…
Although stridently moralising and perhaps heavy handed by contemporary standards, these stories are the very bedrock of EC’s well-deserved reputation as the crusading creators of America’s very first adult comics for mature readers. Moreover these ugly truths were gloriously draped in so very beautiful clothes, as Wood’s incredible illustration, inspired by the fiercely impassioned scripts, soared to unparallelled heights of sensitivity and gut-wrenching impact.
Shock SuspenStories #4 took the cultural campaign further in a sordid tale of the innocent witness relentlessly beaten into a ‘Confession’ by cops determined to capture a hit-and-run driver who’d killed their Lieutenant’s wife. So why then, was the grieving officer’s car all banged up and covered in blood…?
Old-fashioned anti-Semitism fuelled the ‘Hate!’ of a quiet little town and led to the death of a family too stubborn to be warned. Imagine instigator John Smith’s surprise when his appalled mother told the entire town that he was adopted… and what his true origins were…
‘Under Cover!’ in Shock SuspenStories #6 combined a campaign of punishment-floggings for miscegenation by the local Klan chapter with the end of a crusading reporter who tried to expose the scandal but tragically forgot that there might be almost anybody under those pointy hoods, whilst ‘The Bribe’ in #7 revealed how even the most honest and dedicated of civil servants could be pushed into abandoning his principles – especially with a loving daughter, her upcoming wedding and crushing society pressure hitting him so hard…
By today’s standards ‘The Assault!’ is potentially the most contentious tale here, revealing how a small town girl with salacious appetites callously protected her reputation by framing an old man for her “rapeâ€. In typical tone for those times, her lie ultimately caused two deaths…
‘Came the Dawn!’ from Shock SuspenStories #9 is a marvellous example of Greek tragedy in modern dress, as a lonely backwoods hermit finds a beautiful naked woman in his cabin and, after a night of mutual passion with the girl of his dreams, discovers that an inmate has escaped from the nearby asylum. Only after he’s locked her out does he discover that she’s not the only mysterious blonde lost in the forest…
Far less emotionally loaded but equally devastating is the darkly introspective ‘…So Shall Ye Reap!’ (Shock SuspenStories #10) which finds a penitent, angry young man contemplating every hypocritical act of his pompously pious parents before reaching his own moment of judgement after which ‘In Gratitude’ launches a simply breathtaking attack on the nation’s double standards when a wounded soldier comes home to a hero’s welcome and turns on his friends and family when he finds out what they’ve done to the coloured man who saved his life…
More quirky crime-caper than social commentary, ‘Fall Guy’ (Shock SuspenStories #12) follows the doomed decade that saw decent guy Danny Jansen steal a fortune to please a greedy girl far out of his league and spend ten years in jail paying for it. Surprisingly she waited all that time for him, but wasn’t best pleased when he couldn’t remember how to retrieve his ill-gotten gains…
A campaign of hate to drive out a man who foolishly admitted to being part-Negro ended in suicide and a sense of smug satisfaction when the bigot-in-charge boasted of his success to the local doctor in ‘Blood-Brothers’ (Shock SuspenStories #13). Imagine the vile cross-burner’s surprise when the aged medic revealed the source of the transfusion which had long-ago saved the happy hate-monger’s life…
‘The Whipping’ (scripted by Feldstein or Jack Oleck from Shock SuspenStories #14) returned to scandal-mongering territory, when a dutiful daughter defied her racist father and started “dating†an Hispanic boy. The dad certainly didn’t call it that, and the outrageous steps he and his pure-white buddies took to end the affair horrifically backfired…
The last tale reprinted here is ‘The Confidant’ (Feldstein or Oleck again from Shock SuspenStories #15, June/July 1954) from a time when the public outcry against comics was just reaching its fevered peak. The story deals with mob-justice and sees an entire town baying for the blood of a newcomer who had murdered a young girl.
Then, when a dark stranger arrives searching for one of his children, the unofficial posse immediately jump to the wrong conclusion with tragic and irreparably consequences…
Please forgive any deliberate vagueness on my part here: the point is to make you want to read these still poignant and shocking stories and I don’t want to devalue their impact or spoil your otherwise assured enjoyment…
A detailed history of the flawed genius is then provided by historian S.C. Ringgenberg in the prose piece ‘Wallace Wood’ after which this truly beautiful book is closed by another set of ‘Behind the Panels: Creator Biographies’ by Arthur Lortie & and Bill Mason and Ted White’s ‘Crime, Horror, Terror, Gore, Depravity, Disrespect for Established Authority – and Science Fiction Too!: ‘The Ups and Downs of EC Comics: A Short History’ once more offers a comprehensive run-down of the entire EC phenomenon.
The short, sweet, cruelly limited EC back-catalogue has been revisited ad infinitum in the decades since its demise. Those amazing yarns changed not just comics but also infected the larger world through film and television to convert millions into dedicated devotees still addicted to New Trend tales.
Whether you are an aged EC Fan-Addict, just a nervous newbie, or simply a mere fan of brilliant stories and sublime art, Came the Dawn is a book no sane and sensible reader can afford to be without.
This edition © 2012 Fantagraphics Books, Inc. All comics stories © 2012 William M. Gaines Agent, Inc., reprinted with permission. All other material © 2012 the respective creators.