Al Feldstein

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.

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.

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).

This volume features Ingels's earliest EC crime and horror work. Highlights include Ingels's very first EC story, a clever twist on "The Cask of Amontillado" that you won't see coming, and more.

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 Other stories include: "Slave Ship," an unpublished science fiction tale that was only discovered in the decades following EC's demise, "The Monster From The Fourth Dimension," a horror/science fiction shocker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.

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 fianc , 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

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 "

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 ofVault 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."

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 ...

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 facades. 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 Like every book in the Fantagraphics EC Artists Library, Forty Whacks And Other Stories also features essays and notes by EC experts on these superbly crafted, classic masterpieces."

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. Like every book in the Fantagraphics EC line, Grave Business And Other Stories superbly showcases these classic comic book masterpieces and enhances the reader s experience with commentary and historical and biographical detail from EC experts."

Featuring: Johnny Craig s complete crime and horror stories from Crime SuspenStories and The Vault of Horror, twenty-five legendary horror stories from Ghastly Graham Ingels, Al Feldstein s solo science fiction from Weird Science and Weird Fantasy, and twentytwo EC science-fiction gems illustrated by Jack Kamen. Plus essays and notes by EC experts A great gift for Father s Day or for the genre-fiction fan in your life."

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? Like every book in the Fantagraphics EC line, Spawn of Mars and Other Stories features essays and notes by EC experts on these superbly crafted, classic comic book masterpieces."

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."

Joe Orlando was a mainstay at EC, especially on science fiction, and this collects 23 of his best sf stories. All of them, most scripted by Al Feldstein, serve up classic O. Henry-style endings, such as oeI, Robot,  and oeFallen Idol.  The title story is one of EC (TM)s most famous, with its blunt anti-racism message. When it was printed during the era of the Comics Code, publisher Bill Gaines and Feldstein had to fight to keep the story (TM)s final panel oereveal  (and thus its whole point) intact. It was a Pyrrhic victory, however, as oeJudgment Day  became the last story in the last comic book EC published. This volume also features two of Orlando (TM)s outstanding adaptations of classic Ray Bradbury science fiction stories: oeThe Long Year  and oeOutcast of the Stars.  Also included are all of EC (TM)s oeAdam Link  adaptations, a series which was later also adapted for The Outer Limits TV show and featured Leonard Nimoy.

Even 60 years after their original release, in an era of explicit horror, EC Comics superstar Graham "Ghastly" Ingels's grisly pages retain the power to shock. His loving depictions of the endless corruption of flesh and nature made him the go-to guy for stories involving swamps, maniacs, and dismemberment -- and all three combined to best effect in one of the standouts of this collection of his stories: "Horror We? How's Bayou?" -- considered the single most spectacularly drawn of all of EC's horror stories, with a climax that would give body-horror king David Cronenberg nightmares. Ingels specialized in depicting the unimaginable. If you ever wondered what the vengeful, decaying corpse of an elephant stomping a woman to death would look like, it's in here ("Squash... Anyone?"). Or living rats sewn into the bodies of a tyrannical king and queen ("A Grim Fairy Tale")... or the results of injecting a "poison-pen" letter writer with literal poison and reducing him to, in the words of Al Feldstein's script, a "foul-smelling, oozing pool of putrescence" ("Notes to You "). One of the two Ray Bradbury adaptations in the book, "There Was an Old Woman" (about a deceased crone who simply refuses to stay dead) provides the closest thing to a note of sweetness that you'll find here -- perhaps with the exception of the genuinely romantic "A Little Stranger " and its loving marriage between a dead vampire and a dead werewolf. Sucker Bait And Other Stories features 25 classic stories from Tales From the Crypt, Shock Suspen-Stories, Vault of Horror, and Ingels and his "Old Witch" character's special showcase Haunt of Fear -- plus the usual fascinating historical, critical, and biographical material.

With his wholesome approach, Jack Kamen stood out amongst the grandguignol grunge, gritty realism, or futuristic dazzle of his fellow EC cartoonists -- but his brilliant editor/writer Al Feldstein found a way to exploit the surface innocence of his style with seemingly nice stories of romance gone horribly wrong, or future fantasies with an unexpectedly brutal twist. And nowhere did Kamen's clean-but-lush graphics work better than in the stories he created for EC's science-fiction comics. The title story, "Zero Hour" (one of three in this book adapted from works by Ray Bradbury), set in a Spielbergian suburban idyll, is particularly well served by Kamen's surface innocence; "A Lesson in Anatomy" works similar magic, with its Mayberry-esque setting veering into alien-invasion terror. If there was any devil in Kamen, it came out in his loving depiction of the female face and form, and you could see why his hapless heroes were often fatally entranced with them -- as in "Punishment Without Crime" (Bradbury again), "He Who Waits " (a scientist finds an extreme way of rejoining his eight-inch-tall inamorata), and "Miscalculation " (the lucky recipient of a package from the future literally brews his own harem); even the supercomputer in "Only Human " proves vulnerable to a beautiful woman's charms. Zero Hour And Other Stories contains 22 classic EC yarns -- plus the usual all-new biographical, historical, and critical essays that have made Fantagraphics' EC Library series the ultimate version of these classics.

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. Feldstein's contributions to the first year and a half of EC's two SF titles, Weird Science and Weird Fantasy--comprising 16 classic O. Henry-style shock-ending stories with such evocative, vintage title as "'Things' From Outer Space." "The Flying Saucer Invasion," "Spawn of Venus," "Destruction of the Earth," and "Am I Man or Machine?"--will be collected in their integrity in this volume, which will also boast a new interview with Feldstein about his years at EC, focusing in particular in his work on these science fiction titles that were the company's pride and joy (and were killed a few years later by the Comics Code).