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E.C. Publications, Inc., (trade name EC Comics) is an American comic book publisher. It specialized in horror fiction, crime fiction, satire, war novel, dark fantasy, and science fiction from the 1940s through the mid-1950s, notably the Tales from the Crypt series. Initially, EC was founded as Educational Comics by Maxwell Gaines and specialized in educational and child-oriented stories. After Max Gaines died in a boating accident in 1947, his son William Gaines took over the company and renamed it Entertaining Comics. He printed more mature stories, delving into horror, war, fantasy, science-fiction, adventure, and other genres. Noted for their high quality and shock endings, these stories were also unique in their socially conscious, progressive themes (including racial equality, anti-war advocacy, nuclear disarmament, and environmentalism) that anticipated the Civil Rights Movement and the dawn of the 1960s counterculture. In 1954–55, censorship pressures prompted it to concentrate on the humor magazine Mad, leading to the company's greatest and most enduring success. Consequently, by 1956, the company ceased publishing all its comic lines except Mad.
EC succeeded with its fresh approach and pioneered forming relationships with its readers through its letters to the editor and fan organization, the National EC Fan-Addict Club. EC Comics promoted its stable of illustrators, allowing each to sign his art and encouraging them to develop distinctive styles; the company published one-page biographies of them in comic books. This was in contrast to the industry's common practice, in which credits were often missing, although some artists at other companies, such as the Jack Kirby – Joe Simon team, Jack Cole and Bob Kane had been prominently promoted.
EC published distinct lines of titles under its Entertaining Comics umbrella. Most notorious were its horror books, Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, and The Haunt of Fear. These titles reveled in a gruesome joie de vivre, with grimly ironic fates meted out to many of the stories' protagonists. The company's war comics, Frontline Combat and Two-Fisted Tales, often featured weary-eyed, unheroic stories out of step with the jingoistic times. Shock SuspenStories tackled weighty political and social issues such as racism, sex, drug use, and the American way of life. EC always claimed to be "proudest of our science fiction titles", with Weird Science and Weird Fantasy publishing stories unlike the space opera found in such titles as Fiction House's Planet Comics. Crime SuspenStories had many parallels with film noir. As noted by Max Allan Collins in his story annotations for Russ Cochran's 1983 hardcover reprint of Crime SuspenStories, Johnny Craig had developed a " film noir-ish bag of effects" in his visuals, while characters and themes found in the crime stories often showed the strong influence of writers associated with film noir, notably James M. Cain. Craig excelled in drawing stories of domestic scheming and conflict, leading David Hajdu to observe:
Superior illustrations of stories with surprise endings became EC's trademark. Gaines would generally stay up late and read large amounts of material while seeking "springboards" for story concepts. The next day he would present each premise until Feldstein found one that he thought he could develop into a story. At EC's peak, Feldstein edited seven titles while Kurtzman handled three. Artists were assigned stories specific to their styles; for example, Davis and Ingels often drew gruesome, supernatural-themed stories, while Kamen and Evans did tamer material.
With hundreds of stories written, common themes surfaced. Some of EC's more well-known themes include:
The three horror titles featured stories introduced by a trio of horror hosts: The Crypt Keeper introduced Tales from the Crypt; The Vault-Keeper welcomed readers to The Vault of Horror; and the Old Witch cackled over The Haunt of Fear. Besides gleefully recounting the unpleasant details of the stories, the characters squabbled with one another, unleashed an arsenal of puns, and even insulted and taunted the readers: "Greetings, boils and ghouls..." This irreverent mockery of the audience also became the trademark attitude of Mad, and such glib give-and-take was later mimicked by many, including Stan Lee at Marvel Comics.
EC's most enduring legacy came with Mad, which started as a side project for Kurtzman before buoying the company's fortunes and becoming one of the country's most notable and long-running humor publications. When satire became an industry rage in 1954, and other publishers created imitations of Mad, EC introduced a sister title, Panic, edited by Al Feldstein and using the regular Mad artists plus Joe Orlando.
Gaines switched focus to EC's Picto-Fiction titles, a line of typeset black-and-white magazines with heavily illustrated stories. Fiction was formatted to alternate illustrations with blocks of typeset text, and some of the contents were rewrites of stories previously published in EC's comic books. This experimental line lost money from the start and only lasted two issues per title. When EC's national distributor went bankrupt, Gaines dropped all of his titles except Mad.
Gaines sold the company in the 1960s as E.C. Publications, Inc., and was eventually absorbed into the same corporation that later purchased National Periodical Publications (later known as DC Comics).
During the 1960s, Gaines granted Bob Barrett, Roger Hill, and Jerry Norton Weist (1949–2011), the co-founder of Million Year Picnic, permission to produce a EC Comics fanzine "Squa Tront"
/ref> In June 1967, Kinney National Company (it formed on August 12, 1966, after Kinney Parking/National Cleaning merge) bought National Periodical and E.C., then it purchased Warner Bros.-Seven Arts in early 1969. Due to a financial scandal involving price fixing in its parking operations, Kinney Services spun off its non-entertainment assets as National Kinney Corporation in September 1971, and it changed names to Warner Communications on February 10, 1972.
The Tales from the Crypt title was licensed for a movie of that name in 1972. This was followed by another film, The Vault of Horror, in 1973. The omnibus movies Creepshow (1982) and Creepshow 2, while using original scripts written by Stephen King and George A. Romero, were inspired by EC's horror comics. Creepshow 2 included animated interstitial material between vignettes, featuring a young protagonist who goes to great length to acquire and keep possession of an issue of the comic book Creepshow.
In 1989, Tales from the Crypt began airing on the U.S. cable TV HBO. The series ran through 1996, comprising 93 episodes and seven seasons. Tales from the Crypt spawned two children's television series on broadcast TV, Tales from the Cryptkeeper and Secrets of the Cryptkeeper's Haunted House. It also spawned three "Tales from the Crypt"-branded movies, Demon Knight, Bordello of Blood, and Ritual. In 1997, HBO followed the TV series with the similar Perversions of Science (comprising 10 episodes), the episodes of which were based on stories from EC's Weird Science.
The EC Horror Library (Nostalgia Press, 1971) featured 23 EC stories selected by Bhob Stewart and Bill Gaines, with an introduction by Stewart and an essay by theater critic Larry Stark. One of the first books to reprint comic book stories in color throughout, it followed the original color guides by Marie Severin. In addition to the stories from EC's horror titles, the book also included Bernard Krigstein's famous "Master Race" story from Impact and the first publication of Angelo Torres' "An Eye for an Eye", originally slated for the final issue of Incredible Science Fiction but rejected by the Comics Code.
East Coast Comix reprinted several of EC's New Trend comics in comic form between 1973 and 1975. The first reprint was the final issue of Tales from the Crypt, with the title revised to state The Crypt of Terror. This issue was originally meant to be the first issue of a fourth horror comic which was changed to the final issue of Tales from the Crypt at the last minute when the horror comics were cancelled in 1954. A dozen issues ended up being reprinted.
Russ Cochran reprints include EC Portfolios, The Complete EC Library, EC Classics, RCP Reprints (Russ Cochran), EC Annuals, and EC Archives (hardcover books). The EC full-color hardcovers were under the Gemstone imprint. Dark Horse continued this series in the same format.
In February 2010, IDW Publishing began publishing a series of Artist's Editions books in 15" × 22" format, which consist of scans of the original inked comic book art, including pasted lettering and other editorial artifacts that remain on the original pages. Subsequent EC books in the series included a collection of Wally Wood's EC comic stories, a collection of stories from Mad, and books collecting the work of Jack Davis and Graham Ingels.
In 2012, Fantagraphics Books began a reprint series called The EC Artists' Library featuring the comics published by EC, releasing each book by artist. This collection is printed in black and white.
In 2013, Dark Horse Comics began reprinting the EC Archives in hardcover volumes, picking up where Gemstone left off, and using the same hardcover full-color format. The first volume to be reprinted was Tales from the Crypt: Volume 4, with an essay by Cochran.
The Gaines family licenses the titles.
In 1954, the publication of Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent and a highly publicized Congressional hearing on juvenile delinquency cast comic books in an especially poor light. At the same time, a federal investigation led to a shakeup in the distribution companies that delivered comic books and across America. Sales plummeted, and several companies went out of business.
Gaines called a meeting of his fellow publishers and suggested that the comic book industry gather to fight outside censorship and help repair the industry's damaged reputation. They formed the Comics Magazine Association of America and its Comics Code Authority. The CCA code expanded on the ACMP's restrictions. Unlike its predecessor, the CCA code was rigorously enforced, with all comics requiring code approval before their publication. This not being what Gaines intended, he refused to join the association. Among the Code's new rules were that no comic book title could use the words "horror" or "terror" on its cover. When distributors refused to handle many of his comics, Gaines ended publication of his three horror and the two SuspenStory titles on September 14, 1954.
The story depicted a human astronaut, a representative of the Galactic Republic, visiting the planet Cybrinia, inhabited by robots. He finds the robots divided into functionally identical orange and blue races, with one having fewer rights and privileges than the other. The astronaut determines that due to the robots' bigotry, the Galactic Republic should not admit the planet until these problems are resolved. In the final panel, he removes his helmet, revealing he is a Black man. Murphy demanded, without any authority in the Code, that the Black astronaut had to be removed.
As Diehl recounted in Tales from the Crypt: The Official Archives:
Feldstein, interviewed for the book Tales of Terror: The EC Companion, reiterated his recollection of Murphy making the request:
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