Comics Journal Library 10 : The EC Artists

No comics publisher has had a greater impact ― or generated more controversy ― than the immensely influential EC Comics. The second and concluding volume of conversations with the creators behind the EC war/horror/science fiction/suspense line brings The Comics Journal’s definitive interviews together with several never-before-published sessions, including a new interview with the legendary Jack Davis conducted by Gary Groth. It also includes:

• Publisher Bill Gaines on the origins of the company and his terrifying grilling before the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency.

• Editor/writer/artist Al Feldstein on introducing serious science fiction to comics and his interactions with Ray Bradbury.

• Harvey Kurtzman on bringing realism to war comics with Frontline Combat and subversive satire to humor comics with Mad.

• The master of chirascuro, Alex Toth, on the aesthetic values that guided him through a career that included drawing for EC and animating Jonny Quest.

• Colorist Marie Severin on the atmosphere of pranks and anarchy that dominated the EC bullpen.

Plus, career-spanning interviews with George Evans and Jack Kamen, rare Q&A sessions with formal experimenter Bernard Krigstein and EC writer Colin Dawkins, and a conversation between Jack Davis and award-winning alternative cartoonist Jim Woodring.

Before creating and writing the all-time greatest satirical comic, Harvey Kurtzman (1924-1993) had already been the only humor cartoonist given full editorial freedom by Stan Lee and created and wrote the first serious war comics in an age of heroic jingoism. After revamping MAD from a comic into the all-time greatest satirical magazine, he went on to create and write the most widely read adult comic strip (with “Little Annie Fanny” in Playboy) and write and draw one of the earliest graphic novels (with the 1959 The Jungle Book). He continued to work in magazine and book publishing his whole life, with an eye for talent that gave leading cartoonists of the 1960s undergrounds and the 1980s alternative comics movement their earliest opportunities. Since 1988, one of the two major awards programs in American comics has been given annually in his name.

William Maxwell "Bill" Gaines (b. 1922, d. 1992) inherited EC Comics in the 1950s. Under his stewardship, it shifted focus from "educational" to "entertaining." He began publishing and editing (and often, co-plotting the stories in) genre comic books, including Tales from the Crypt, Mad, and more. He hired creators such as Jack Davis, Harvey Kurtzman, Al Feldstein, Wallace Wood, and others; thanks to them, EC comics are considered one of the medium's high water marks. He testified infamously at the Senate Subcommittee for Juvenile Delinquency, which led to the Comics Code and the censorship of many of EC's titles. In response, Gaines turned Mad into a magazine, and published it for the next forty years. He was inducted into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame in 1993.

Albert B. Feldstein (1928–2014; Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame, 2003) was a triple-threat writer, artist, and editor, renowned for his work on such titles as Weird Science, Tales From the Crypt, and MAD magazine. He received the Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011.

Gary Groth is the co-founder of The Comics Journal and Fantagraphics Books. He lives in Seattle.

Michael Dean lives in Seattle, WA. He has been an editor at The Comics Journal since 1999.