October is Spookey Month: How EC ruined America's pasttime in Haunt of Fear #19 (May-June 1953)

No, they didn't ruin baseball.  That's just me trying to have a little fun and shake things up a bit.  If anything, they made baseball better!  But EC did get itself into hot water with the government over "Foul Play," a story appearing in Haunt of Fear #19 (May-June 1953).  Dr. Frederic Wertham used it as an example of horror comic nastiness in his book Seduction of the Innocent and then did it again during his afternoon session testimony to the 1954 Senate Subcommittee Hearing on Juvenile Delinquency. 

The story is about Central City's Herb Satten, an unscrupulous pitcher who wants to help his team win the pennant by murdering the Bayville's star second baseman, Jerry Deegan.  After all, this Deegan slugger led the league in home runs all season and he's up the next inning in a tight game.  It stretches credulity a bit.  Satten kills Deegan by poisoning his spikes, then allowing himself to get hit with an inside pitch so he can get on first, attempt a steal then slide spikes-high and slash his victim.  He's thrown out and it looks like a bonehead play, but it all works out. Satten kills his man and Central City wins.  This leads to the pitcher's grisly comeuppance the night before the next season's opening day.

And one of the all-time great gross-out scenes in horror comics history.  The murdered man's teammates literally rip Satten apart late one night and use his body parts to play a moonlit intrasquad game.  Complete with a complicit umpire.  That also stretches believability, but not so far as the poor pitcher's intestines, which serve as foul lines up the first and third base paths.  The grisliest detail is the catcher's using the Satten's chest as his own chest protector.  You wanna wear part of a human body even if he is a sorry murdering cheat?  What is this, the Ed Gein League?

They also incriminate themselves by burying him under the pitcher's mound and inscribing the rubber there with "Herbert Satten.  Pitcher.  Murderer.  R.I.P."

Rest in pieces, baby.  Rest in pieces.

Writer:  Al Feldstein/Artist: Jack Davis

Well, they were angry ballplayers and probably didn't think through the consequences.  The ironic thing about "Foul Play" is, it may have been notorious at the time but the guy who drew it is one of the nicest, most gentlemanly people you'll ever have the privilege of meeting.  If you're so lucky.  I had a chance to phone interview him way back in 1996 for a class project and I came away in such a good mood because he was so jolly and generous.  He answered even my stupidest questions with patience and good cheer.

Writer:  Al Feldstein/Artist: Jack Davis

I'm talking Jack Davis, the dean of American caricaturists.  This story is right in his wheelhouse, so to speak.  Davis is a master of sports cartooning, able to twist his loose-limbed figures into whatever pose necessary to show the physicality of sports.  Baseball, basketball, football, late night murder, these are things Davis visualizes so well.  Obviously made a huge impact on Dr. Wertham and the guys up on Capitol Hill, huh?

Writer:  Al Feldstein/Artist: Jack Davis

I loved Davis' work before I ever read this story (although I'd heard rumors of it for years and they always chilled me to the bone).  He drew magazine covers, movie posters.  His art came into our house on television in the form of character designs for the Jackson 5ive Saturday morning cartoon.  As a University of Georgia graduate, I've seen dozens, if not hundreds, of Davis-drawn Bulldog athletes in motion, with his characteristic lanky body language and large, articulated hands.  Gorgeously rendered in loose, appealing brushstrokes and then watercolored to pop from the page of whatever book, calendar or postcard they adorn.  His 1950s horror work benefits from the Davis approach, one that exaggerates reality for comic effect.  So when you see a Davis severed head, it's not grotesque no matter how decayed it might be.  It's sick... but in a tasteful way.

Writer:  Al Feldstein/Artist: Jack Davis

The Senate Subcommittee Hearing people must not have felt that way, although I believe William Gaines explained it quite well in his testimony.  This is gore in just the right amount.  There's nothing gratuitous about it, but it has to have impact.  If you'll notice, too, colorist Marie Severin gives those panels a blue-yellow complementary color scheme rather than one that emphasizes its fleshy or bloody qualities.  This makes it explicit without going over the top.  Not for the squeamish, certainly.  But it's right in my wheelhouse, too.  Jack Davis is an American treasure, baby.  And so is Marie Severin.  No doubt about that. 

Al Feldstein, who headed Mad magazine, dies at 88

Al Feldstein, who headed Mad magazine, dies at 88

These EC/Mad guys did almost as much to shape my worldview as my parents did.  I have to admit I don't know a whole lot about them because I'm not a big biography person.  The work and the sensibilities inherent in it, those are the things I pick up on.  The EC horror, science fiction and humor books certainly had a sensibility.  They weren't just toss-away stories.  They had a tongue-in-cheek quality, an overall identity and when you read them, you feel simpatico with the creators in a way you get from more personal works rather than the big corporate stuff.

Well, I do, anyway.  I've always felt a meshing of mindsets with the EC crowd, something akin to friendship with their work.  Al Feldstein's slickly-lined, somewhat stiff and sometimes even lurid covers were my gateway to a world I understood at once. How could I resist such cleanly-rendered horrors?  And Feldstein didn't just draw those covers.  He edited the books and wrote stories in them, too.  Then he went on to take over Mad after Harvey Kurtzman left and run that book for about a million successful years.

I mean, holy cats, Mad magazine!  Jack Davis, Mort Drucker, Angelo Torres, Don Martin!

Anyway, what I don't know about Al Feldstein would fill several libraries of books.  I wish I'd been more knowledgeable when I spoke to Jack Davis (the only EC/Mad creator I've ever had any kind of contact with, and it's a memory I'll treasure from a pretty bad year) so I could have asked about Feldstein.  But he's encoded in my DNA now.

Everything old is new again or ten things I'm excited about in 2014!

1.  Barbarella.  Humanoids, Inc. will publish a brand-new English language version of Jean-Claude Forest's sexy 1960s space adventure featuring the coolest 1960s space adventurer with updated and modernized whatchamallits by Kelly Sue DeConnick.  Dialogue?  Worldview?  I don't care.  Her adventures have been out of print in English for some time now, which is kind of ridiculous when you consider her pop culture significance.  There wouldn't be a Vampirella without Barbarella, and possibly not even a Red Sonja series.  As a character, Barbarella kicks much ass.  Despite her reputation as a sex kitten, in today's terms, she has what you would call "agency."  Therefore, she's a sextacularly retro space ace for today's on the go post-modern libertine!  Or something like that.

2.  Teen Titans.  With the publication of the long-awaited volume two in the Teen Titans DC archives hardcover series, it's just a matter of time before individual issues pop up on Comixology.  And this means more Wonder Girl with art by Nick Cardy.

3.  Pepper.  Last week I bought an Archie Comics digital exclusive containing 100 pages of gorgeous Dan DeCarlo-drawn pre-"ears for hats" She's Josie comics, which led me to discover the star's witty erstwhile best pal Pepper.  Pepper didn't make the transition to rock stardom with Josie and Melody, and that's a real shame because she's super cool with her cynical attitude and wild cat-framed glasses.  Those would have been so appropriate for the band.  Don't get me wrong-- Valerie is great.  But why couldn't the Pussycats perform as a quartet?  You know, Pepper on bass?  She could have been their Kim Deal, for crying out loud!  Anyway, 2014 is the year I bore you to tears celebrating Pepper.

4. X-Men.  Marvel has been dropping John Byrne-drawn issues on Comixology like they're on fire (that cliché worries me-- is this a good quality or a bad quality for something to have?), which means we're about one or two away from having a complete run available stretching from the initial Dave Cockrum issues (glorious) all the way to the celebrated "Days of Future Past" storyline that's being adapted into the latest film in the X-Men movie franchise (as my wife says, "I don't give a shit about that," but you might, so there!).  They'll probably get to the second Dave Cockrum run, which suffers from lackluster scripting but looms large in the early days of my initial fandom because those were the ones I bought in convenience stores and newsstands as Marvel published them.  I subscribed during the Paul Smith days, which saw Chris Claremont return to form.  Those should be on Comixology this year, too.

5. Fantastic Four #51.  Marvel and Comixology have every issue of Jack Kirby's legendary company-building stint on Fantastic Four through #50, which is the overall narrative's natural climax.  But it's in its anti-climax Kirby and Stan Lee produced the humanistic "This Man, This Monster," which is as close to superhero comic perfection as you are ever likely to find.  Kirby and Lee turned out a few solid stories and even some classics after this, but this is Marvel's 1960s apogee.

6. Samurai Executioner Omnibus.  Dark Horse is putting out a single book containing 798 pages of ultra-violent samurai slashing action from masters Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima.  A guy named Frank Miller would mine their stuff for his own reputation in the 1980s, but this is the 1972-76 original from a couple of legitimate geniuses.  Their Lone Wolf and Cub is essential, but Samurai Executioner is pretty darn close to necessary, with plenty of cinematic, evocative storytelling at its finest.  Oh, and it's only $19.99 for something that provides a meatier reading experience (as in the meat that Yamada Asaemon carves from his foes) than its equivalent in monetary (if not aesthetic)value-- about 5 flimsy 32-page issues of any given new monthly from Marvel or DC that will take you about 5 minutes to read and forget.  Okay, I admit I'm being unfair.  But even the best current series from either of the Big Two cannot hope to measure up to this work and you're paying less per page for it.  This should be the Event Comic of the Year.  Trust me-- you will never forget Yamada Asaemon.

7.  Lone Wolf and Cub Omnibus Volume 4.  Speaking of... here it is.  As I wrote above, these are essential.  Everything I gushed about with Samurai Executioner goes double for these.  This one is 696 pages for $19.99 and it's simply one of the greatest comics ever published.  I will be purchasing all of these in 2014.

8. The EC Archives:  Vault of Horror Volume 3.  Dark Horse does it again!  This is a very pricey book, but it's the continuation of Dark Horse's deluxe reprints of EC classics.  The Archives series started at Gemstone (I own several of them as well), but hit a rough patch.  Dark Horse re-launched the series in October 2013 with Tales from the Crypt Volume 4.  Fantagraphics is putting out books spotlighting individual artists (and those are beautiful), but here's your chance to see their work in context, with colors recreated from Marie Severin's originals.  Volume 1 of their Weird Fantasy reprints follows in April.  I'm more of a horror and Weird Science freak when it comes to EC, but any of these archives would be a welcome addition to my library.  And yours.

9. Warren horror.  Yeah, I know I'm going to sound like a Dark Horse shill, but they consistently put out products I love!  They're not only giving us EC and influential manga, but they're also continuing their long-running Creepy and Eerie Archives series this year.  I received Creepy Archives 10 for Christmas, and I'm certain 2014 will see me adding to my collection.

10. New discoveries of amazingly cool old stuff.  Like Pepper up there.  A couple of weeks ago, I had no inkling she even existed.  My knowledge of comics doesn't extend much farther than the ones I read when they were new and the artists and writers I grew up admiring, so I'm discovering wonders almost daily.  Certainly there are Jack Kirby stories out there and more I haven't read that I'm looking forward to uncovering and sharing with you, the reader of this blog!

Note:  Oh yeah, there are some new comics coming out this year that I'm also looking forward to.  Fantagraphics has Love and Rockets books coming out and their reprinting of Takako Shimura's heartbreaking Wandering Son.  Plus a whole lot more from Dark Horse, Image and even Marvel and DC I'll be checking out.  And there's a slight chance for some more Nana-related artwork from Ai Yazawa.  She revisited "Junko's Place" last year and apparently produced a Christmas card for Cookie magazine.  And even if we don't see new Nana, my big wish for Ms. Yazawa in 2014 (and in the future) is recovery, health and happiness.

October is Spookey Month: Johnny Craig's "... And All Through the House..."

A few weeks ago we took a hard-hitting look at the 1972 Amicus Productions horror anthology flick Tales from the Crypt, specifically the segment starring Joan Collins, "... And All Through the House...."  It's a piece for which I won several journalism awards and received an offer to pen the film re-adaptation of the Dell Comics adaptation of the classic Andy Griffith service comedy No Time for Sergeants, which itself was an adaption of a stage play drawn from a novel.  Unfortunately, my dedication to this blog forced me to turn down that guaranteed six-figure paycheck in favor of fulfilling a threat-- er--- promise I made to you, my loyal reader.

So to that end, let's revisit Johnny Craig's original story from The Vault of Horror #35 (EC Comics, March 1954).  And here... we... goooo!

The film's version is a very close adaptation (they even kept the daughter's name the same, and the dialogue in scenes with her is almost word-for-word from the comic), but the Craig's story is pretty taut and doesn't lend itself to a lot of padding.  Sure, a few differences crop up here and there.  For example, the comic story is red white and blue in its all-American look at Christmas-related murder.  The movie transplants the story to the UK, where it gains Collins, with Sir Ralph Richardson as the Crypt-Keeper.  In the comic, the protagonist is a blond, while Collins is famously a brunette, a quality that would serve her and her stunt double well on ABC's night time soap opera Dynasty during the infamous Krystle-Alexis fight.  In the movie, the Santa-suit wearing madman throttles the Collins character for a violent comeuppance.  It's a movie and movies rely on action. Otherwise, they might just as well be photographs.  And instead of photographs, drawings.  Which brings us right back to comic books again, where it's just as effective to have un-jolly old St. Nick simply stand there in the final panel.  The reader's imagination supplies the killing.  Or, if you're of a less sanguinary persuasion, the murmured discussion followed by a night of gentle love-making.

Since there's not a lot to say about the story I haven't already written about at great length while blathering on in my usual sub-moronic way about the film, here are some choice moments from the comic.  Get ready to enjoy a little bit of Johnny Craig-style holiday cheer...

"...And All Through the House:" Joan Collins visits the Cryptkeeper for a merry li'l Christmas murder

You know what's fun?  Practically anything to do with EC Comics.  Beautifully drawn morality tales with twist endings, black humor and oozing with loads of gore-- EC Comics are pure joy for twisted kids of any age.  This company and its books were the stuff of legends when I was a child.  Comics so freaky and scary the government itself had to step in and shut them down.  I just assumed they were all destroyed or collected and locked away in some case-hardened, nuclear bomb-proof silo in the desert Southwest, a site guarded by unmarried, family-less soldiers near retirement age, a place forever cursed and haunted.  Actually, they mutated into Creepy and Eerie, then migrated across the Atlantic where British Amicus Productions adapted five classics for the 1972 anthology fear-ture (heehee!) Tales from the Crypt.

The sign you're in for some real fun.

My first experience with this movie came at the library an easy bike ride from my house.  The reference section contained these massive volumes on horror movies with photos from flicks like Freaks and London at Midnight.  One of them presented Tales complete with a brief run-down of its origins in those infamous old horror comics and a huge picture of some poor jerk about to make his painful way down a corridor lined with razor blades.  This must have been in the late 1970s, the beginning of my lifelong interest in and love for EC.

"Dare you enter the Crypt-Keeper's Crypt?"

Strangely, the segment I like best among the stories that make the movie's cut (heh heh heh) comes not from any issue of Tales but from Vault of Horror #35 (February-March, 1954).  You know, Vault was the Vault-Keeper's hang-out, and boy was he pissed at that glory-hogging Crypt-Keeper.  Not only does the Crypt-Keeper have the honor of being portrayed by BAFTA-winning, Academy Award- and Tony-nominated Shakespearean actor Sir Ralph Richardson (the Old Witch would have picked Arnold Stang), while the Vault-Keeper only managed to appear on the Saturday-morning cartoon Tales from the Cryptkeeper...  but Crypty also gets to tell Vaulty's prized story.  The Vault-Keeper doesn't even have an origin, just a ratty hooded cloak.  Which Sir Ralph steals for this movie, rather than wear a wig to match the Crypt-Keeper's flowing locks.

"The fu-- ?!"

Yes, you guessed it.  It's "...And All Through the House."  None other than Johnny Craig wrote and illustrated the comic story.  Craig was a sharp plotter-- check out the stories he wrote and drew for Warren a decade later-- and a genius at creating cinematic suspense in two-dimensions, a four-color Hitchcock.  Each panel in this short, fast-paced tale is a masterpiece of lighting effects and rising tension before its inexorable ironic finale.

The movie adaptation follows the story note-for-note if not visual-for-visual.  As such, it's virtually a one-woman show starring Joan Collins in kind of role she was seemingly born to play-- a cold-hearted murderer.  She brains her husband with an iron poker on Christmas Eve, just after he's put her gift under the tree and settled in to read the newspaper and listen to some seasonal music on the radio.  He goes down on the rug spilling blood and brains, his eyes bulging grotesquely and his tongue sticking out.  Collins is wearing a party hat is a touch of the morbid humor that ran through each and every EC horror title.

"Hmmm?"

Why does she do kill him?  Well, to collect on is assurance policy (that's insurance to you and me, Russ), but it's probably not that important.  What matters is, it sets up the onrushing situation.  Because it's just her bad luck Collins chooses the one Christmas where an escaped madman in a stolen Santa Claus outfit is part of the the holiday festivities (by order of the town council).

And he's right outside the house!  Out of all the houses he could have picked, he's drawn to the one where the future star of a movie delightfully titled The Bitch and hate-queen of the TV show Dynasty has offed her spouse!  How very coincidental!  How convenient!  How lucky for us!  Now Joan has to dispose of a body and secure the homestead against an unwelcome holiday guest.  The poor woman goes through hell, only to have her innocent daughter let the seasonally-costumed killer right inside where he...

"And down I go..."

Well, it's an EC story.  They don't get giddy on eggnog then kiss under the mistletoe, I assure you.  When he finally appears, the Santa killer is more dopey than deranged, kind of like an alcoholic bell-ringer in need of a shower instead of a maniacal menace.  A visual disappointment.

Director Freddie Francis, a horror veteran who would later provide cinematography for David Lynch and Martin Scorsese, camera-stalks poor Collins... all through the house (boo hoo hoo).  She makes the most of her screen time.  From her satisfied reaction to having committed murder-- with a sneering inflection to her post-poker "Merry Christmas," Collins coolly conveys this in such a way you believe it's been building for a while-- to her growing hysteria as she shutters the windows and locks the doors and tries to figure out what to do about her husband's carcass, it's a performance of perfect pitch.  She makes you loathe yet feel strangely sympathetic to this woman when essentially you're watching a scenario that pits a calculating murderer against one of those old school nutzoids.  He can't help himself.  What's her excuse?  No matter; Francis and Collins have done their work well.

"Merry Christmas..."

So well, in fact, Robert Zemeckis directed another adaptation of this story for an early episode of the TV show, rubbing salt in the Vault-Keeper's wounds by once again letting the Crypt-Keeper-- rather than an august theatrical personage, now a desiccated, nose-less creature with John Kassir's high-pitched voice and memorably maniacal cackle-- introduce one of his best.  Zemeckis tapped Larry Drake (TV's adorable Benny from L.A. Law) to play the killer.  Not the woman; the Santa guy.  Drake puts his hulking, naturally sinister looks to good use, aided and abetted by some effective make-up.  He more closely resembles the Craig's crazy, too, than the dirty old bum from the movie version.

"Blast!  Speed dial won't be invented for years!"

To compare the two a bit, the movie is largely sincere while the HBO series plays the material more for outright laughs, a bit of cheese if you please.  This is a fine approach, one just as close in spirit to EC as Francis's more sober take. EC didn't rely on comedic relief simply so readers could breathe between shocks.  It's all over the comics, from the sometimes startlingly gruesome covers to the letters pages to the house ads, all part of the same gleeful embrace of horror for horror's sake.  A dance held in a drafty tomb, a moonlit frolic among the headstones.   The TV series turns this up a notch for a more jaded audience, but the movie still has a smidge of camp, some cheeky little moments.  Mainly, though, it busts its celluloid buns to gross people out and scare them into wetting their undies along with the winking and the smirking.

"Grandpa!  You're Santa?"

You know, I don't think the Vault-Keeper has ever gotten over this betrayal.  If you should find yourself in a cemetery some cloudy, moonless night, and he beckons you into his vault for a story-telling session, I advise you not to mention "...And All Through the House."  Or if you do, certainly don't let him know I told you all this.

Later we're going to take a look at Craig's original and drool over it like deranged Santa Claus.

Kinging Off Our Second Annual Spookey Month: Here's Looking at You, Creepshow!

Ah, Creepshow.  Former EC artist Jack Kamen just kills on that cover, doesn't he?  I love it.  The under-lighting on the kid, the ghoulish personification of horror lurking just outside his window, the full moon through the trees.  His rendering style certainly did change over the years, and with this cover, he fixed the notion in my mind that EC had a staff of the best artists ever featured in American comic books, at any time, of any era.  One could make the same argument about those delightful Warren Publications magazines in the 1960s, but those artists were all EC alumni.

When the movie came out in 1982, I'd only heard rumors of EC Comics and I'd built them up into something so huge in my imagination I had recurring nightmares where I'd find myself reading the most realistically-drawn and vividly-colored horror comics, turning page after page, unable to stop myself.  Lurid illustrations of scaly lizard-creatures feasting on hapless victims, bright red splashes of gore, with worse yet to come-- and then I'd wake up, my heart still pounding and those images flickering in my mind.  By morning, in the sunlight, they'd be faded, stripped of power.  But awake in the darkness, I could still see them.

EC Comics were a fable. A legend.  A cautionary tale.  So dangerous and scary the government banned them?  The reason for that stupid Comics Code stamp that held no meaning for us and no one paid any attention to anyway?  EC possessed the lure of the forbidden... rumors... myth... a mystery.

Then George A. Romero and Stephen King teamed up to make their loving tribute to EC.  Well, the movie is mostly silly.  Too many of the characters were either harsh and unpleasant or else complete morons, so it's hard to care how many corpses kill them or cockroaches come out of their mouths.  But it's still cheesy good fun, with lots of gore and the requisite twist endings.  King himself with an embarrassingly amateurish turn as a dim-witted rube who becomes an alien plant-creature, Leslie Nielsen buried up to his neck in the sand, cackling about how he can hold his breath a lonnnnnng time as the tide rolls in.



Today we think of Nielsen as the deadpan comedian from Airplane and as the dimwitted Frank Drebin.  But with his steely hair and patriarchal good looks, he really had a handle on playing cold-hearted bastards.  There's a bit of the familiar Nielsen-esque tongue in cheek quality to his performance here, but enough straightly-played jerkishness he really sells it.  The perfect bastard.  My favorite segment, by far.  The always awesome Adrienne Barbeau sinks her teeth into a relatively minor role as the harridan to end all harridans-- just call her Billie.  I was going to take a little time to discuss the misogyny that runs through EC comics and, by extension, this film, but then I remembered there are practically no sympathetic characters in Creepshow.  Maybe the ill-fated Ted Danson and Gaylen Ross, but we only really get to know them as bloated corpses.  Why single out Barbeau's character, especially when Barbeau herself has earned a lifetime of goodwill?

Obviously, I couldn't see the movie at the theater at the time because it was rated R, but I could-- and did-- sneakily read the Bernie Wrightson-illustrated comic book adaptation in Waldenbooks when my mom and I went to the local mall for pizza and shopping on Friday night.  My hard-workin' dad was off driving the local high school teams to out of town games and there just wasn't much else to do in my hometown besides go to the mall.

And, baby, let me tell you-- peeping at Creepshow was always a mistake.  What was fine in Waldenbooks after playing a few quarters-worth of Tron and Space Race would come back to haunt me in my bedroom as I tried to sleep in the wee post-SCTV hours of the night.  A month or so later, and I'd do it again.  It impressed me so much, I dressed as the skeletal host one year for Halloween and handed out candy.  Made some kids cry, too.  Oops...  I even drew my own comic adaptation of "The Monkey's Paw" in a crude approximation of Wrightson's drawing style for my English class.  Two pages of full-color artwork, hand-lettered by me.  It took me all night; speed-demon Alfredo Alcala I'm not.  I even ripped off the "Here's looking at you, kiddies!  Heh heh heh!" ending from the Creepshow book.

Strangely enough, out of all the gruesome darkly-humored things contained within the book, the sequence that really made my heart pound was the one where Hal Holbrook, a henpecked college teacher, and this doofus janitor start messing around with an old crate sent to the university by an arctic expedition.  Well, let's let Wrightson show us what happens next:

Yikes!  And the janitor was one of the few relatively nice characters in any of the stories!  Although in deleted scenes, he probably beats his dog.

And now... rocking straight at you from "Music City," Hamamatsu, Japan... SPOOKEY!