Within three years of his father’s death, Gaines had transformed the newly-christened “Entertaining Comics” – EC, for short – into something altogether different, not to mention exponentially more successful. He inherited the company (then called Educational Comics) from his father, who had published a range of wholesome, but utterly bland, comic books, including Picture Stories from the Bible. Gaines was more than just an idea man he was also a shrewd businessman. The history of EC Comics is so intertwined with the actual content of its comic books that it’s worth dwelling on, at least for a moment more.

This first volume in Gemstone’s series of Tales from the Crypt archives collects the comic’s first six issues, which contain some of the greatest and most influential horror stories ever conceived. With what was surely the most talented stable of artists working in the comics industry, and with almost every story written by Feldstein (with Gaines’s frequent input), EC’s bimonthly horror anthology Tales From the Crypt quickly became one of the best and most consistently beautiful-looking comics being published at the time.

That time was the first half of the 1950s, when EC Comics publisher Bill Gaines and his top editor, Al Feldstein, set out to create a completely different kind of comic. Hard as it may be to believe today, there was a time in comic book history when horror reigned supreme. Published: Gemstone Publishing, 2006 $49.95 Artists: Al Feldstein, Johnny Craig, Graham Ingels, Harvey Kurtzman, Wally Wood, Jack Kamen, and George RoussosĬollects: The Crypt of Terror #17-19 and Tales From the Crypt #20-22 (EC Comics, 1950-51)

Tales from the crypt the ec archives