The EC Comics Artists Library by Fantagraphics

When the famed artist Wallace Wood teamed up with legendary writer/editor Harvey Kurtzman to create stories about men in combat, the result was some of the best war stories ever put to paper. Together, Wood and Kurtzman delivered outstanding, deeply human battle tales from the Civil War to World War I to World War II to Korea. From the Army to the Navy to the Air Force to the Marines. From aviators to soldiers to sailors. Wood and Kurtzman pulled no punches in depicting the utter folly, madness, and horror of war — especially in the title story, which depicts the bombing of Nagasaki from the viewpoint of the victims on the ground — a shockingly controversial point of view in 1953!

Twenty-two crime, horror, and science fiction stories by master comics artist Reed Crandall. Plus: eight crime and horror stories by fellow EC artist George Roussos.

"John Severin takes control. When John Severin became editor of Two-Fisted Tales, he expanded the scope of its stories beyond its traditional war stories to head off to far-flung times and places, searching for adventure. This volume collects all those stories --the EC stories that Severin had the most control over. Severin wrote and drew the title story, about an old-fashioned Southern "gentleman" who sees grievance at every turn and regularly challenges those who are less skilled than he is to pistol duels. Is it murder when a man is defending his honor? The other tales range from action and intrigue in the Old West to exploring for a lost city in the jungles of Peru, to facing danger in the Khyber Pass, to a Cold War chiller about the "ultimate weapon," to EC's only Vietnam story, "Dien Bien Phu!" Plus --the complete run of Severin's stories of globe-trotting two-fisted news photographer Steve Rampart, from the pages of Extra!. Severin was a master of detail, emotion, and reaction thanks to his precise, detailed line; it brought such realism to the page, it seems as if he is reporting from the scene. BONUS: This volume also delves into the EC Pre-Trend era with a sampling of the work of lesser-known EC artists Lee J. Ames, Stan Ash, Ann Brewster, H.C. Kiefer, and Ed Waldman. Code of Honor And Other Stories, like its companion volumes, features extensive story notes and a Severin biography"--

This collection features all of the stories Feldstein created for both of EC Comics' crime and horror titles, including the very first appearances of The Crypt-Keeper and the Vault-Keeper! This volume collects stories Feldstein wrote and drew about "The Machine-Gun Mad Mobsters" and "The Case of the Floating Corpse," as well such horror gems as "The Mummy’s Curse," "The Thing in the Swamp!" and our title story, "Terror Train." Plus: the most unlikely origin story of them all ― the tongue-in-cheek origin of EC Comics itself, in "Horror Beneath the Streets!" There are more than 30 stories in all, with essays and commentary by EC experts.

The science fiction genre owes a debt, especially visually, to EC Comics, and this highly anticipated Wallace Wood collection shows why. It features over two dozen comics stories drawn in Wood's meticulously detailed brushwork (his "lived in" spaceship interiors helped inspire Star Wars' Millennium Falcon). And with titles like “Spawn of Mars,” “The Dark Side of the Moon,” “A Trip to a Star,” “The Invaders,” “The Secret of Saturn’s Ring,” and “The Two-Century Journey,” how can you go wrong?

Reed Crandall's mastery of fine line detail and expertly nuanced pen-and-ink texture is a perfect fit for EC Comics. This collection of 21 Crandall favorites, delineated in his classically illustrative style, includes “The Silent Towns,” a Ray Bradbury story about the last man and woman on Mars; “Carrion Death,” a stark horror story about a man struggling through the desert with a corpse handcuffed to his wrist as the vultures circle closer; “Sweetie-Pie,” the grisly story of a ghoul who sets up a roadside hazard to procure, um, fresh meat; “The Kidnapper,” about a man who decides to kidnap a baby to replace the baby that had been stolen from him and his wife; “Space Suitors,” a science fiction love triangle that leads to jealously, betrayal, and murder, and “The High Cost of Dying,” the title story, in which a man must make an awful choice between burying his wife and feeding his children.

Even in an era of explicit horror films, “Ghastly” Graham Ingels still delivers a shock to readers with his grisly depictions of the stomach-churning fates of the evil men (and women) in these stories―leavened only by a sly wink to the reader and a generous dose of dreadful puns. Ingels’s brushwork oozes ominously across every panel, perfectly setting the mood for the shudder-inducing fates of such corrupt characters as the sadistic asylum director, the political candidate who murders his opponent, the ventriloquist with the homicidal “dummy,” the millionaire who persecutes an aged junkman, and the medieval duke who runs over a young boy with his carriage then taxes the peasants to pay for cleaning up his victim’s blood.

This volume of the New York Times’ bestselling series of superbly restored, classic crime and horror EC Comics re-presents the work of Jack Kamen, Al Feldstein, and Ray Bradbury. Grand Master crime novelist Max Allan Collins (Road to Perdition) introduces these tales, which include the infamous “The Orphan” one of the stories that got EC Comics into hot water during the U.S. Senate’s investigation into comic books. “The October Game” is adapted from the chilling classic short story by Ray Bradbury. A gruesome look at a malevolent Halloween party game perpetrated by a man who believes the child of his unfaithful wife is not his. In “Frozen Assets!,” a woman and her lover seal her still-living husband in a chest freezer. “Standing Room Only” ― a brother murders his twin sister and her husband, and disguises himself as her so he can inherit their estate. But then the estate lawyer makes a play for the “widow” ... “Three for the Money” ― A woman finds her husband dead ― with a knife in his back and a bullet in his head. The police arrest two suspects ― but to get a conviction, they must determine who acted first. Who actually committed the murder, and who stabbed or shot a man who was already dead?

The ultimate collection of Wallace Wood's finest science fiction stories. Includes Wood's "My World," adaptations of three classics by Ray Bradbury, a "lost" 3-D story -- and a story rejected by the Comics Code, restored and published here for the first time. This mouth-watering collection features the finest (and rarest!) science fiction stories Wallace Wood ever drew -- more than two dozen! Wood's meticulously detailed, genre-defining brushwork introduces you to breathtaking planetary vistas, terrifying aliens, and sleek rocket ships surging with the power to conquer the stars. Our title story is a rarity that never appeared in any EC comic. Written and drawn for a 3-D comic that was canceled before it could be printed, we present it here in easy-on-the-eyes 2-D. Then, Wood's most iconic story, "My World" is a stunning showcase of the preternatural talent and technique he brought to all his stories. Also included are his trilogy of Ray Bradbury adaptations -- "Home to Stay," "There Will Come Soft Rains..." and "Mars Is Heaven!" -- plus "He Walked Among Us," a "what if...?" variation on Bradbury's "The Man" from The Illustrated Man. But that's not all! An incredible science fiction bonus: Al Feldstein wrote many stories of people reaching from the beyond to right a wrong, but with this volume, in a twist worthy of the best of EC, he does the same himself! In 1955, the Comics Code rejected the second page of "You, Rocket" and forced EC to completely rewrite and redraw it. When the original art for that rejected page was rediscovered, one panel was missing. But Feldstein, in a middle-finger gesture to the Code and its heavy-handed censorship, wrote a new panel, restoring "You, Rocket" to what it was always meant to be. Sadly, he passed away before his final EC writing assignment was published. But here it is now, for the first time anywhere. Justice from beyond the grave. 26 stories in all, most scripted by EC legend Al Feldstein, plus in-depth commentary by EC experts Thommy Burns, Grant Geissman, and Jon Gothold. The Spawn Of Venus And Other Stories is the ultimate EC Wallace Wood science fiction collection.

Death Stand And Other Stories collects more than thirty stories ― all the combat tales Davis and Kurtzman did together for EC’s Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat. It also includes Davis’s adaptation of an excerpt from James Fenimore Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans.

When Jack Davis took up his pen for EC Comics, he made his innocent victims more eye-poppingly terrified, his ax-murderers more gleefully gruesome, and his vampires and werewolves more bloodthirsty and feral than any other artist. These horror and suspense tales -- from the pages of Vault of Horror, Haunt of Fear, Crime SuspenStories, and Shock SuspenStories -- offer everything a horror fan could ask for: re-animated bodies and body parts, a ghoul who stores bodies like a squirrel stores nuts, a vampire who moonlights at (where else?) a blood bank, greedy business partners, corrupt politicians, jealous lovers, revenge from beyond the grave, and a healthy complement of vampires, werewolves, and assorted grotesqueries. All leavened with the cackling, pun-laced humor of scripter Al Feldstein and illuminated as only the virtuoso brushwork of Jack Davis can present them. Black & white Illustrations throughout.

This book collects all of the legendary comics stories that Craig and EC great Al Feldstein collaborated on under the pseudonym F.C. Aljon. Of special interest to collectors, we present two stories for the first time since their initial publication more than 70 years ago. "Moon Girl," EC's first (and only) superhero and one of EC's earliest horror stories, and "Zombie Terror," both scanned from the original art. Plus "Edna Sunday," the story of a vicious woman murderer, restored for the first time ever with its original, never-before-printed shocking splash panel. Twenty-six stories in all, with essays and commentary by EC experts.

Al Feldstein is best known as the main writer/editor of the EC comics line during the first half of the 1950s―and then the editor of Mad Magazine for the first three decades of its existence. But what many don’t know or remember is that Feldstein was also an accomplished and distinctive cartoonist, whose comics (which he both wrote and drew, a relative rarity in those days) adorned the pages of many of those self same EC comics. His powerfully composed, meticulously inked pages, often featuring grotesque creatures or scenes of ghastly destruction (and some of the greatest stiffly handsome/beautiful specimens of 1950s humanity ever put to paper), were a vital part of the allure of these classic comics.

Twenty-seven horror stories by master comics artist Jack Kamen from the pages of Tales From the Crypt, Vault of Horror, and Haunt of Fear -- including all 13 of his classic "Grim Fairy Tales." Bonus: seven crime and horror stories by other EC artists.

Stories in this volume include "The Martian Monster," in which a 9-year-old boy befriends a Martian in the woods and asks him to kill his stepmother ― but the "Martian" convinces him that it’s really his father who he should target. There’s sharp social commentary in "…And Then There Were Two!" (highly intelligent robots unveil a plan for world peace, but political opportunists launch an anti-robot campaign to discredit them) and "Prediction of Disaster!" (an astronomer concludes that our sun is about to go nova and tries to warn the world).

The ultimate collection of Jack Davis EC stories!

This comics anthology includes Krigstein’s most famous story ― which broke both aesthetic and narrative boundaries ―plus material that’s never been reprinted since the 1950s. In addition to "Master Race,” this volume includes “The Flying Machine” (based on a story by Ray Bradbury). Other stories include: “Slave Ship,” an unpublished science fiction tale that was only discovered in the decades following EC’s demise, “The Monster From The Fourth Dimension,” a horror/science fiction shocker that has never been reprinted since its original appearance in 1954, and other Krigstein crime, horror, war, and science fiction stories covering the full gamut of EC titles, including Tales From the Crypt, Crime SuspenStories, Shock SuspenStories, Aces High, and Incredible Science Fiction.

Jack Kamen's precise, clean style was perfect subversion for EC Comics tales of seemingly normal men and women who cooly act on the rage, jealousy, and greed just below their glamorous façades. Kamen’s crime capers include “Forty Whacks” (Whatever became of that ax Lizzie Borden used?), “Contract for Death” (A suicidal man agrees to accept $5,000 for his fresh corpse, then changes his mind. But the contract fails to specify that the body has to be his…), “The Neat Job!” (Her “neat freak” husband drove her crazy, so when she chopped him up into little pieces…), “Just Desserts!” (A madman bent on revenge hosts a dinner for his victims … and the final course is a killer!) ― plus 20 more gripping tales of tension as only EC could do them!

Johnny Craig's crisp, elegant, contemporary graphic style set a mood and a surprisingly sophisticated approach to these thirty-one EC crime and horror comics stories, which include his top murder mystery and his best terror tale. Introduction by Grand Master crime novelist Max Allan Collins.

The team of Harvey Kurtzman and John Severin was one of the most fruitful collaborations in the history of comics. The work they did together brings the gritty realism and psychological truth of Stephen Crane and a verisimilitude to the page that it seems as if they are reporting from the scene. Together with inker and friend Will Elder, whose own obsession for detail perfectly complemented the impact they were all striving to achieve, they produced 34 emotionally draining ― and dramatically eloquent ― war stories in just under three years. This book collects them all.

EC artist Johnny Craig's graphic style is eerily crisp and contemporary. This collection of 25 Craig favorites includes such shockers as “Horror House!,” “Werewolf Concerto,” “Terror on the Moors,” and the title story, “Voodoo Vengeance” ― along with seven Craig crime classics, including Craig’s own personal favorite, “The Sewer!”

Collects short crime and horror pieces illustrated by Wood and published in several titles by EC comic in the early nineteen fifties.

In this collection of twisty EC tales, there are scheming spouses, vampires, voodoo, and an ancient mummy’s curse! Famed for his deft delineations of beautiful, scheming women, handsome jealous husbands, and not-so-innocent children, Kamen returns with a collection of classic EC horror tales from The Vault of Horror, Tales From the Crypt, and The Haunt of Fear. In the title tale, a cruel stepfather sends his stepdaughter to bed without her supper, but the old crone next door gives the hungry girl a candy figure made in the likeness of her father … In “What the Dog Dragged In” ― one of the EC’s earliest adaptations of a Ray Bradbury story ― a wheelchair-bound blind woman asks her faithful dog to go find her fiancé, unaware that he had been killed in an auto accident… In “Loved to Death,” a rejected suitor spends one dollar to buy a potion that makes a woman fall in love with him, but when it works too well he discovers the price of the antidote is more than he can afford … Plus over 20 more tales of madness and horror as only EC can do them!

This special collection features more than 30 EC classics from the pages of Tales From the Crypt, The Haunt of Fear, The Vault of Horror, Shock SuspenStories, Impact, and Crime SuspenStories. Of special note is Orlando’s “The Monkey,” the classic realistic EC story about drug addiction, considered to be one of the most cautionary of “the preachies,” and Orlando’s adaptation of Bradbury’s eerily haunting “The Lake,” about a childhood tragedy. This volume also includes the title story “The Thing From the Grave,” a special Orlando frightfest originally printed in 3-D that hasn’t been seen since its original publication more than 60 years ago (and is presented here for the first time in easy-on-the-eyes 2-D). Plus all of Orlando’s Panic stories, including parodies of Mother Goose, TV commercials, and soap operas. Like every book in the Fantagraphics EC Artists’ Library, The Thing From the Grave And Other Stories also features essays and notes by EC experts on these superbly crafted, classic American comics.

This volume collects short horror comics stories from Tales From the Crypt, Vault of Horror, Haunt of Fear, Crime SuspenStories, and Impact ― including a rare EC gem that hasn’t been seen since its original publication more than 65 years ago! These stories, which "Ghastly" Graham Ingels drew while he was at the pinnacle of his powers, include tales such as "Accidents and Old Lace." Three sweet, little old ladies weave tapestries depicting the gruesome deaths of real people, but when an art dealer commits murder to get a tapestry of his own, he discovers just how closely art imitates … death. In "Marriage Vow," a woman returns from the grave to fulfill her wifely duty to her murderous husband, until death does them … together; and in "The Sliceman Cometh," an executioner during the French Revolution can’t escape the severed head of an innocent man.

The first collection to ever showcase the chronological run of Johnny Craig’s crisp, elegantly drawn Crime SuspenStories adds noir to the EC Comics library.

Joe Orlando partnered early with Wallace Wood on a variety of science fiction comics, including several for EC Comics. But he quickly made a name for himself and struck out on his own, carving out a long and distinguished career in American comics. Orlando became a mainstay at EC, especially on science fiction, and The Planetoid And Other Stories collects his first two dozen. All of them, scripted by editor/writer Al Feldstein, serve up classic O. Henry-style shock endings, including a mind-bending time-travel twister in which a man visits the past and (unknowingly) romances his own mother (think about it), a gender-switching look at a future where women are the breadwinners and men are the homemakers, another future where marriages are limited by law to three-year contracts, a good old-fashioned "planets collide" shocker, an animal rights parable, plus lots of rollicking space opera, aliens, and, of course, interplanetary monsters (some of them human). This volume also includes a complete reproduction of EC's special issue devoted to its own 32-page "illustrated, factual flying saucer report," with art by Orlando, Wallace Wood, George Evans, and Reed Crandall. Plus, a heartfelt foreword by former DC publisher Paul Levitz, who began his career in comics when Orlando hired him as an assistant, an introduction by Thommy Burns, and featured essays and commentary by EC experts.

George Evans was a master of the aviation war story. This collection includes all of his highly-acclaimed stories for Aces High, EC’s famous air war title. As a bonus, we present a rarity: Evans’ never-before-reprinted 3-D story of World War I ace Frank Luke (in regular, easy-on-the-eyes 2-D). This volume also includes numerous Evans crime and shock stories, including “As Ye Sow…,” “…My Brother’s Keeper,” and “Cadillac Fever.” Other war stories, many done in collaboration with Harvey Kurtzman, include “Napoleon!” and “Flaming Coffins” (which Evans wrote, about the inherent perils of WW I aircraft). Like all books in the Fantagraphics EC line, Aces High features essays and notes by EC experts on these superbly crafted, classic comic book masterpieces.

This collection includes all 15 of Elder’s humorous Panic stories (The Night Before Christmas” got the first issue banned in the entire state of Massachusetts); all seven of his science fiction tales from the pages of Weird Science and Weird Fantasy (including two Ray Bradbury adaptations, "The King of the Grey Spaces!” and “The Million-Year Picnic"); and a special horror story that hasn’t been seen since its original publication more than 60 years ago.

Tales From the Crypt was the quintessential American horror comic book, and Jack Davis the quintessential Tales From the Crypt artist: A brilliant virtuoso whose long-limbed, cartoony-but-hyperdetailed slapstick both cut against and amplified the weird and nauseating grotesqueries that spilled from the EC Comics writers’ fevered minds, including ― as seen in this volume ― “’Taint the Meat... It’s the Humanity,” an evil-butcher horror story that ends pretty much like you’d expect any evil-butcher horror story to end. Presenting the classic EC material in reader-friendly, artist-and-genre-centric packages for the first time, ’Taint the Meat collects every one of Davis’s 24 Crypt stories in one convenient, gore-drenched package. Mostly written by EC editor Al Feldstein, these stories run the gamut from pure supernatural horror (the werewolf story “Upon Reflection” and the vampire story “Fare Tonight, Followed by Increasing Clottyness…”) to science gone horribly wrong (“Bats in My Belfry!”), as well as the classic “disbeliever gets his comeuppance” story (“Grounds… For Horror!”) to EC’s bread and butter, the ridiculously grisly revenge-of-the-abused tale (“The Trophy!” and “Well-Cooked Hams!”)… seasoned with buckets of blood and some of the most godawful punning titles ever committed to newsprint. Tales From the Crypt was the inspiration for the no-holds-barred pop-culture horror revolution of the 1970s and later, be it Stephen King, Tobe (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) Hooper, zombiemeister George A. Romero, or the current generation of extreme-horror practitioners like Eli (Hostel) Roth. Yet try as they may, no one has been able to capture the combination of technical virtuosity, tongue-in-cheek grisliness, and sheer naughty desire to provoke and appall that these classics managed to pull off again and again. ’Taint the Meat… will also include extensive story notes by EC experts from around the world.

This volume collects all of George Evans' EC horror. It features "Blind Alleys," one of the most chilling and famous EC stories (adapted for the 1972 movie Tales From the Crypt). A man who abused residents of a home for the blind winds up in an impossibly narrow corridor lined with razor blades as a ravenous dog closes in. "In Gorilla My Dreams," an innocent man's brain is transplanted into a gorilla ... who is then blamed for the death of his former self and hunted down. And in our titular tale, "A Slight Case of Murder," four pretty young women are each gruesomely murdered inside locked rooms with no way for the killer to get in or out. But one man thinks he knows who's behind it. In addition, A Slight Case of Murder and Other Stories also includes Evans's unforgettable adaptation of the Ray Bradbury story "The Small Assassin!" This book superbly showcases these classic comic book stories and enhances the reader's experience with commentary and historical and biographical detail by EC experts.

EC reprint series kicks off with war-story masterpieces from the legendary Harvey Kurtzman. The creation of MAD would have been enough to cement Harvey Kurtzman’s reputation as one of the titans of American comics, but Kurtzman also created two other comics landmarks: the scrupulously-researched and superbly-crafted war comics Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat. Here were finally war comics without heroic, cigar-chomping sergeants, wisecracking privates from Brooklyn, or cartoon Nazis and “Japs” to be mowed down by the Yank heroes, but an unflinching look at the horror and madness of combat throughout history.

A special companion to our New York Times best-selling classic reprint series, this collection features all the Ray Bradbury stories adapted by EC Comics (including the unauthorized ones!) for the first time in one volume. During a golden moment in the early 1950s, EC Comics lovingly adapted 25 classic Ray Bradbury stories into comics form, scripted by Al Feldstein and brilliantly interpreted and illuminated by all of EC's top artists: Johnny Craig, Reed Crandall, Jack Davis, Will Elder, George Evans, Frank Frazetta, Graham Ingels, Jack Kamen, Roy Krenkel, Bernard Krigstein, Joe Orlando, John Severin, Angelo Torres, Al Williamson, and Wallace Wood. This special companion collection to our EC Comics Library series features all 25 official adaptations plus an additional ten related stories with stunning art reproduced in generously oversized coffee table dimensions! Highlights in this singular volume include: "Home to Stay"-- a clever combination of two Bradbury science fiction stories that Bradbury himself proclaimed topped his originals (available in no other form or medium), masterfully woven together by Al Feldstein and Wallace Wood. "A Sound of Thunder" -- the classic time-travel-gone-wrong story brilliantly illustrated by Al Williamson and Angelo Torres. "Touch and Go" -- an obsessive psychological thriller tautly executed by Johnny Craig. And many more, including "The Million Year Picnic" (Elder), "I, Rocket" (Williamson and Frazetta), "Zero Hour" (Kamen), "Mars Is Heaven" (Wood), and "There Will Come Soft Rains..." (Wood). Plus a cornucopia of bonus features, including introductions and commentary by Greg Bear, Ted White, Dr. Benjamin Saunders, Bill Mason, and Thommy Burns; a wry reminiscence by Ray himself; and two full-color paintings by Frank Frazetta. A superb, sumptuous showcase for these classic comic book masterpieces that have never before been collected together in one volume.