Lurid Little Nightmare Makers #8 - preview edition

FAN-ADDICT SUSPENSTORIES Jolting Tales Of Fandom In The EC Tradition!

by the Usual Gang of Idiots!

©2017 Boardman Books FAN-ADDICT SUSPENSTORIES: Jolting Tales Of Fandom In The EC Tradition! (Lurid Little Nightmare Makers #8 Preview) is published by Boardman Books. Edited and prepared for publication by Matthew H. Gore. All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address Boardman Books, 8062 Jills Creek Drive, Bartlett, Tennessee, 38133. Articles ©2017 by their individual writers unless unspecified in which case they are ©2017 by Thommy Burns. All other textual content, layout, cover design, and incidentals ©2017 Boardman Books. Special thanks to Nancy Jones Burns and Thommy Burns for the photo used on the cover and title page.

First Edition: July 2017 (limited to no more then fifty copies) Look for the full edition of Lurid Little Nightmare Makers #8 in September 2017.

Limited Signed Edition!

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EC at SDCC!

By Josh “Heap” Burns

Fortunately, Heap was part of a group that had been hosting multiple panels at Comic Con for well over a decade. Heap and Skiz drew up a proposal and gave it to Pastor Ralph Miley of the Christian Comic Arts

Heh heh heh! Welcome, kiddies! Come in to the Family Room of Iniquity! (What? You got a better name?)

Come pull up a toadstool while I tell you a tale of murder, madness and mayhem! Or, by that I mean a tale of no murder, some silliness, and Comic Con! It was early 2016 when the idiot admins of the Facebook EC Fan-Addict Club, Thommy “Skizziks” Burns and his brother Heap (also known sometimes as “Josh”) decided it was time to take the club to new level, and what better level than a panel at the ever lovin’ San Diego Comic Con? Oh, joy! Oh, rapture! Oh, wait . . . you have to submit and get approved for that sort of thing, don’t you? The silvery clangers of exultation would have to wait for the red tape of, you know, less exultation.

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Society, who happily submitted their panel proposal along with his own. A pastor submitting an EC panel to Comic Con? Take that, Werthams of the world!

As they waited to hear whether they had been approved or not, the brothers drew up a list of potential panelists.

The list included a who’s who of EC fandom from all walks of life, but their number one choice was EC’s number one fan (so dubbed by Papa Bill Gaines himself), Larry Stark! Skizziks had been to visit Larry at his home in Boston, and was in good contact with him, so the invitation was made . . . and readily accepted!

Accepted, except . . . the brothers could not afford to buy Larry a plane ticket to San Diego, and neither could Larry afford one for himself. What to do, what to do?

Enter Dame Fortune! Larry told a friend in Boston about the opportunity to speak on the EC panel, and Larry’s good friend observed that Larry was an integral part of EC history and a founder of comic fandom who had never before spoken on an EC panel, and this opportunity simply could not be missed. And, like that, Larry had a benefactor and a plane ticket! At the same time, the brothers Burns heard that the panel was officially approved (in a plum Saturday night spot, no less)! Cue those silvery clangers and cup a rum of took!

And so it was that on Saturday, July 23, 2016, at 8pm (Pacific Standard Time, natch), there convened in Room 4 a mighty group of EC Fan-Addicts that included not only the brothers Burns as moderators and the venerable Larry Stark, but also: Grant Geissman (author of Feldstein! The MAD Life and Fantastic Art of Al Feldstein), Bill Leach (publisher/editor of Horror from the Crypt of Fear), J. David Spurlock (biographer of Wallace “Wally” Wood), Ben Dickow (founder of 4

Captured Aural Phantasy Theater, the only group authorized by the Gaines Estate to perform dramatic readings of EC stories live), and Jon Gothold (second generation EC Fan-Addict and one of the swellest guys you’d wanna meet)! Did the brothers pack too many people into one panel? Yes! But who could blame them? What a crowd! What a panel! What a night!

What a wonderful world (I think to myself)!

The only way to follow such a momentous occasion was, of course, to do it all again in 2017. So, welcome one and all to the second annual (we hope annual, HOOHAH!) EC Fan-Addict panel at SDCC! Spa Fon and Potrzebie to all!!!

My First EC. . .

By the Fan-Addicts period, he gave me a huge stack of MADs...as I recall his mom telling me, Billy was getting more interested in Playboy at the time. The earliest issue in the stack was number 70, the newest was number 91. I was laughing so hard at those first issues that I got that my grannie felt they must be bad for me and actually confiscated them. She wanted to destroy them, but my father intervened and told her it was OK for me to have them. This was not the first time that my father played a key role in my love of EC comics, as we shall see.

Jon Gothold My first full color EC comic book was MAD number nine.

OK, this is a saga, but a happy one, so I hope you will enjoy it.

I was born in February 1956, the same year and month that the final EC color comic book (Incredible Science Fiction #33) was published, so I'm not old enough to have bought an original EC color comic off the stands.

Like many of my generation, my introduction to EC was through MAD magazine, which I started reading in 1965 when I was 9. One of my grannie's friends had a son that was a few years older than I was, and one time when I was staying with my grannie for an extended

I devoured those MADs, and started then and there to avidly collect them. The first issue I bought off the stands with my own money was number 101, and by the end of 1966 I had a subscription. I haunted the second hand bookstores in Whittier, and was able to find quite a few of them for about a quarter a piece, sometimes 50 cents if they were from the 1950's. As my collection grew and grew, my dad told me one day that he used to read MAD when he was in college, back when it was a 10 cent, full color comic book. “A WHAT?!??” A color comic book???? My mind was completely blown, I had no idea MAD had ever been printed in FULL COLOR, and images of Spy vs Spy and Don Martin in color filled my head. Dad told me, no, it was a lot different back then, not like it is now. He told me about a story he had read then that had stuck with him all these years, which was an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's “The Raven”, with the original, unchanged manuscript, but with really, really funny artwork. I used to have dreams about what that might look like, and about what a 10cent comic book MAD might look like. I had never seen one, or a picture of one, and that kind of information just wasn't out there yet, so my mind just reeled.

Christmas, 1968, shortly before my 12th birthday. I remember getting up very early that morning and checking out my stocking. Rolled up and peeking out of the top of the stocking I could see this bright yellow, bold masthead that said “Mad”. And there it was-Mad number 9, the very copy in this scan, with “The Raven” illustrated by Will Elder. “Little Orphan Melvin” by Wood, “Hah! Noon!” by Davis, and “Bop Jokes” by Severin. And then, I recognized one of the stories from my MAD paperbacks like The MAD Reader and MAD Strikes Back and all of a sudden I knew that these 5

paperback book stories must have been originally printed in color in the comic book issues of MAD and it all came clear like a great big bell ringing in my head.

Meanwhile my dad is watching me smiling, and I’m nearly hysterical with excitement and questions and joy at this incredibly ancient, ancient MAD comic book in my hands. “Dad, where on earth did you get this thing???? This is so crazy rare, how did you ever find it??? I’ve never seen a MAD anywhere near this old!!!”

And that’s when dad told me that he had been going into Los Angeles and Hollywood, searching out second hand bookstores that carried old comic books looking for this issue of MAD for me. Somebody had told him about the Cherokee Bookstore on Hollywood Boulevard, and that they had a whole room of nothing but old comics upstairs. He told me it was pretty expensive-he had paid FOUR DOLLARS for it. I had never paid that much for an old comic book before, but I told dad that this was so worth it, he made the best decision of his life, thank you thank you thank you and would he be willing to take me there after Christmas???????

And he did. And that’s when the REAL trouble started.

Thank you dad for the best Christmas present EVER.

Tony Thomas The first original EC I ever owned: In the summer of 1981 right after I graduated from high school I was working as a gas station attendant. As I was pumping someone’s gas I noticed that he had an Overstreet price guide laying on his car seat and I asked him if he collected comic books. He told me that he was actually a dealer and we ended up talking for quite a while.

(Business was VERY slow at this particular establishment.)

Turns out he was in town to visit his mother and had about 5 long boxes of comics at her house. He returned to the station at closing time with the 5 boxes of comics, and I looked through all of them and picked out a few I wanted to buy. At that point in my life I had never even seen an original EC comic book, I had only drooled over the photos of them in the price guide. I purchased Weird Science #21, and when I got it home I read it from cover to cover and then just stared at it for hours. It seemed like such an exotic thing of beauty to me, something that existed only in myths up to that point.

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For that reason Weird Science #21 will always remain my all-time favorite EC.

Matthew Gore In the early 1970s, my family moved from South Dakota to the seeming metropolis of Fargo, North Dakota. Fargo did not yet have a comic book store, that was still several years away, but it did have an active comic fandom. In South Dakota I had been aware that other people collected comics but they didn’t seem to collect them anywhere near me. In Fargo, I actually knew other comic fans.

It was in Fargo that I discovered EC. I’m somewhat embarrassed that I don’t remember the exact order of events but it went something like this.

Ernie Campbell, owner of the Dakota Book Exchange, got in a stack of copies of RBCC which he sold for 25¢ each; it seemed a lot at the time. I’d never seen a

Feldstein’s amazing dinosaur-looking alien on the cover was my first EC, purchased that day from Tom Tepley for a whopping $25. Sadly, I sold that copy in 1977 when got too old for comics. I bought another copy in the early-1980s when began collecting EC in earnest. Now have several copies of the American edition, one Canadian copy, and every comic that has reprinted the issue or even the cover. It will always be special to me.

Thommy Burns Tales From the Crypt #41, purchased in September of 1981 at a comic convention on the lower level of an Arlington Virginia, hotel. Our first con, my parents took me and little bro Josh Burns. I had saved up allowances and went specifically to get AN ORIGINAL EC. This one caught my eye (can you blame me?) and it was between this and Haunt of Fear #23—this won (but I got the Haunt of Fear the next month)…and we never stopped collecting ECs!

fanzine before and the Rocket’s Blast were just great.

Some of them had a column called “The EC Artist Collector” and it was from that column that I became aware EC existed. Still, I’d never seen one.

About this time both the East Coast Comix EC Classic Reprint series and the Nostalgia Press Horror Comics of the 1950's appeared. Even as a teen, the superfluous apostrophe in the latter title bugged me, but I digress.

Whichever it was, I saw my first color EC story and I had to have one for my very own.

While Fargo did not yet have a comic shop it did have a comic dealer. Tom Tepley was a student at North Dakota State University and he dealt comics out of his apartment. I Reasoned Tom would have an EC so I set off on my bike one Saturday morning armed with my life savings, which think was $40, and with the determination to own an EC. Tom was home. I think actually woke him up. Yes, he did have some ECs. He had around twenty of them. As I recall, and although I flipped through every one, there was really only one for me. Weird Fantasy #15 with Al 7

Thomas Martin

Steven Ringgenberg

My first EC bought back in 1987 at thirteen was Vault of Horror #26! I never looked back! I started out with a great issue as well! After reading this I felt I had finally arrived home in the world of comics! I got this at “Book Do Furnish A Room” in Durham NC and it’s still open after all these years!

My first two original ECs were two issues of Panic.

They were among the only ECs at the old Shirley’s comics shop on Congress street in Tucson. I really wanted some of the SF and war stuff, but I was thrilled to have anything by Wally Wood.

Tom Vincent

Tom Stein

The first original EC comic I bought: Haunt of Fear #18. I think this is Ingels’ best cover for EC, and one of the best EC covers period. At the time, all I had was the East Coast Comix reprints. A friend of mine had the Nostalgia Press book and Cochran’s Weird Science and Tales From the Crypt. So that was it for ECs, anything new was a landmark. Purchased this around 1983 for $25, I had to put it on lay-away, $5 a week!

My first EC was Two-Fisted Tales #33, which included Wood’s classic, “Atomic Bomb.” The war books didn’t use Leroy lettering, weren’t written by Al Feldstein, and the stories were based on fact, not fiction.

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Rob Pistella

Alan Hutchinson

It was November 1972, and I had the Monster Times EC issue. I collected Marvel and DC silver age comics off the stands and a few by mail order, but it was time to get a real EC in my hands. I paid $3.50 for Vault Of Horror #30, which was the equivalent of 15 newsstand comics or so. I can home from school later and it was already dark out. My Mom gives me the unopened package and says “more comics?” Yes Mom! I open it, and EC horror in its full glory is in my trembling hands.

The comic is larger than modern comics. Mom says, “can I see?” Umm, sure, here it is… “I’m not sure I like that,” says Mom…I, on the other hand, know my life will never be the same again. It’s glorious. It was in fair condition, stapled, and frail…I got some Amway show gloss in a can we had and sprayed the comic to give it a shine and to strengthen it. (I haven’t done that again!)

I read it dozens of times, and I was so thrilled to have an ORIGINAL 1950s forbidden EC horror comic.

Nothing has changed in the last 40 years!

After poring over page after page of spiral notebook paper (you DID ask, Thommy!), I’ve found a few milestones. First EC purchased was MAD #19 around 1963-64 at a used bookstore. First mainstream ECs were Tales from the Crypt #33, Haunt of Fear #24 and Weird Science-Fantasy #25 from a friend in 1967.

Spent the 1970s and ‘80s getting the comics thru The Buyer’s Guide and the occasional convention. I picked up my Shock Illustrated #3 in 1984. I got my Crime Patrol #15 & 16 and War Against Crime #11 in 1992 at Ravenswood Comics in Utica, NY (anyone know if that store still exists?) but it took me until 2007 to find a nice War Against Crime #10. The last SF book was Weird Science #14 (2), also in 1992. By 1997, the purchase of 3-Dimensional Tales From the Crypt #2 had completed the horror sets except for Crypt of Terror #18. I didn’t find a nice copy of that until 2006.

For years, I thought I had all the war books until I was going thru them in 2006 and found that I was missing Two-Fisted Tales #34. (It may be the fact that East Coast had reprinted that issue that led me to think I had it already.) The last non-reprint EC I got was Land of the Lost #7 in 2009 and the last EC I got was a TwoFisted Annual earlier this year. Of course, over all these years I’ve replaced many books with better copies.

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THE COMPLETE EC LIBRARY A BRIEF HISTORY

By Thommy Burns In 1953 young Russell Cochran of Missouri became EC Fan-Addict Club Member #181. He also became president of EC Fan-Addict Club Chapter #3 - one of the first chapters in a National Club which eventually boasted more than 23,000 members. Unlike the overwhelming majority of these EC Comics enthusiasts, Russ never lost his passion for the line. He amassed a nearly complete collection of EC’s, which he upgraded to a mint set that he had bound by title in the 1960s.

During this time he also began a friendly correspondence with EC (and MAD Magazine) publisher Bill Gaines - one that would eventually prove fruitful for Russ, and for EC Fan-Addicts of many generations.

Russ made several visits to New York City on business, and made a point of stopping to see Bill whenever he could.

On one such visit Russ lamented to Bill that he had a nearly complete collection of ECs with the notable exception of Shock Illustrated #3 (the last to be published of the ill-fated EC Picto Fiction line, with only 100-200 copies known to exist). Bill told Russ that when he had everything but that issue to let him know. Russ did, and Bill sent him a mint copy from his files. On another visit, Russ mentioned that he would love to have an original piece of EC art. Bill asked which one and Russ answered with the Frazetta cover for Weird Science Fantasy #29. Bill laughed - it was the one EC cover he didn’t own; Frazetta had kept it. Russ’s second choice was “Ghastly” Graham Ingels’ Old Witch cover for Haunt Of Fear #18. And Bill gave it to him! The original art!

Russ was the first EC fan (besides Bill, who was publisher AND fan!) to own a piece of original art.

Seeing the art at it’s breathtaking original size, and the jaw-dropping detail that was lost in the comic printings, gave Russ an idea. He, with Bill’s blessing, produced a poster print of the HOF #18 cover in 1970 which was very enthusiastically received by EC and comic art fans.

Russ then approached Bill about photographing select pieces of original art, covers and stories, for a large format portfolio. EC Portfolio One was produced in 1971, again to widespread acclaim and enthusiasm. Russ dipped into the rich well of the EC vault several more times to issue a total of 6 EC Portfolios between 1971-77. Russ found that there were many Fan-Addicts like him who relished seeing the finely detailed line work of the EC artists in all it’s black and white glory. He was ready to approach Bill with a grand idea he had been mulling over: an ambitious dream of reprinting the complete EC line, shot from the original art, one title at a time. Collectively it would be known as The EC Library.

There was initially some skepticism that such an undertaking would have enough appeal to warrant completion, and, along with the hopefulness, a healthy dose of pessimism among the EC faithful that it would actually happen. But in 1978 the Complete Weird Science saw the light of day. All 22 issues were reprinted in four handsome hardbound volumes, available as a set in a gorgeous slip case. They were presented in a larger 11

9x12" format than the original comics, and the black and white art, shot from the original pages, revealed detail never imaginable in the original pulpy comic books. Collectors were astonished at the quality not only of the original work, but of the Weird Science Library itself. Russ had spared no expense in any aspect of the production. The books were Smyth-sewn, the quality of the reproduction was superb, the pages were archival quality—Russ’s intention was a durable, top quality collection of EC Comics that would hold up to repeated re-readings, and The Complete Weird Science showed every sign of realizing this promise.

Russ announced his intention to eventually reprint virtually the entire EC line—an unprecedented undertaking.

The Complete Crypt followed in 1979, presenting all 30 issues of The Crypt Of Terror and Tales From The Crypt. The Complete Two Fisted Tales was announced in this collection, and hope ran high that the project would see completion. Charter subscribers signed up, and paid, for the whole line—an inspiring show of support and loyalty for a project that had no set time frame and would surely take years to complete. The sets continued at an encouraging pace - Weird Fantasy, Shock SuspenStories, Vault Of Horror, Crime SuspenStories, Weird Science-Fantasy/Incredible Science Fiction, and Frontline Combat appeared in fairly rapid succession in the early 1980s. The Complete Panic appeared in 1984, and in 1985 The Complete Haunt Of Fear completed the horror titles; completed in fact the “New Trend” titles as a whole, with one notable exception: MAD. And here’s where the momentum slowed - stalled even!

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Anticipation for The Complete MAD ran exceedingly high - this was a title that would have mass, even crossover, appeal. Though The EC Library had been presented in black and white (along with covers colored by original EC colorist Marie Severin), MAD would be presented in color. Black and White volumes, in a reduced print run, were made available exclusively to current EC Library subscribers who wanted their sets to match, but Russ reasoned that the humor format lent itself to color—not to mention that buyers interested only in the MAD collection would probably prefer them this way. Color added all new wrinkles to the production of the books and for the first time a title was released one book at a time. Ultimately The Complete MAD took almost two years to produce, and the lag time between volumes one and two had many a Fan-Addict in a state of high anxiety. Needless to say MAD was worth the trouble and EC’s New Trend had been reprinted in full.

Not content to rest, Russ went ahead with his original vision as announced early on: he would now tackle the New Direction titles, the ECs produced under the dreaded and despised Comics Code Authority’s early reign. Piracy (actually the last of the New Trend titles), Impact, M.D., Extra, Psychoanalysis, Aces High, and Valor were presented in seven volumes split between two slipcases in 1988. The early 90s saw the Pre Trend Crime titles reprinted (War Against Crime/Crime Patrol) and by the late 90s the Pre Trend Romance (Modern Love/A Moon...A Girl...Romace/Saddle Romances) and Western (Saddle Justice/Gunfighter) titles joined the line. At this time Russ announced that there were no plans to reprint the

1940's “funny animal” or educational ECs—so this was the end of the line…almost.

The Complete 3-D EC and Complete PictoFiction sets were announced very early on as being intended EC Library additions. There was an exciting development in the mid 90s: while scouring the Gaines vault EC superfans Jerry Weist and Roger Hill came across some art they were completely unfamiliar with.

This was unthinkable, because they knew EC’s output by heart. Unless...and they were!

Unpublished EC Picto Fiction stories - buried when the line went under in 1956. The texts and the cover art were missing however, to be discovered in the early 2000s. In 2006 The EC Library came to full fruition, almost 30 years after The Complete Weird Science, with the release of The Complete Picto Fiction.

The inclusion of four unpublished issues, nineteen new EC stories, was an ecstatic bonus for the rabid EC faithful!

The EC Library remains one of the most ambitious, audacious projects in publishing history: virtually the entire output of one comic book company was reprinted, in an heirloom quality durable format. Though the EC line has been subsequently reprinted by Russ in original color (The single issue reprints of the 90s and their squarebound paperback Annuals) and digital re-coloring (The EC Archives, an ongoing series), the EC Library is arguably definitive - a large format, in black and white with every flourish and detail of the original fine line work un-obscured and pristine. Since the EC art has long-since been sold off and is scattered all over the world, The EC Library will forever remain the only COMPLETE collection produced from negatives made from the original source material. Well...almost complete. That 3-D EC set? It never came out! Heh heh heh...

RUSS COCHRAN on the EC LIBRARY: “First off, all printings of the books in the EC LIBRARY are done using the same negatives. These are the negatives that were shot in New York City of each individual piece of EC art. With me standing right there watching them be shot, page by page.

For the record, here was the process: Bill Gaines and I would go (sometimes Jerry DeFuccio too) to the Vault on Second Street where Bill stored the art. We opened the Vault and there in that vault was over 300 packages wrapped in brown butcher paper. Each package was a complete issue...that would be 28 story pages and one cover...so when we pulled the art for WEIRD SCIENCE, we pulled six packages for those six issues.

These six packages were taken to Bill’s office at MAD. Then I would take one package down to the print shop where the line negatives were made. When one package was finished I took it back to Bill’s office and got another one. When all six packages had been com-

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pletely finished, we took the six packages back to the Vault.

Even though the commentary...the notes...changed from edition to edition, all the art pages were from those original one-generation negatives, including the ones that Gemstone reprinted.

My first printing of all the EC LIBRARY books was 5000 copies, except for the color MAD which was 10,000 copies. Some titles were never reprinted in a second printing: TWO-FISTED, FRONTLINE, and others, meaning for these titles only a max of 5000 sets are in existence. The horror titles and Sci Fi titles were reprinted more than once, but in most cases the second printings were LESS than the initial printing of 5000

copies. I would guess that the set with the most copies printed is CRYPT and the total of all printings would be 12,000 to 15,000.�

(NOTES: The first edition of Weird Science in 1978 contained noted by Russ himself that he quickly had second thoughts about. A second edition was produced in 1980 with detailed notes by EC scholars Bill Spicer, John Benson, Mark Evanier, and Doug Menville. Loose notes were sent to subscribers already possessing the first edition. The Complete Crypt retains notes by Russ and did not have any revisions. Two Fisted Tales and all subsequent titles include exclusive essays, interviews, photos, and extras - for a full listing please consult Grant Geissman and Fred von Bernewitz’s Tales Of Terror!

The Haunt Of Fear set is commonly found without the slipcase - for whatever reason they were underproduced and sets were advertised as early as 1988 without them. The five volumes were normally shipped shrinkwrapped together, making the slipcased set a sought after item among collectors.

One of the delays with the MAD set involved a printing error on the covers of volume two. The backs of the covers (i.e. the house ads and indicia) did not match the fronts and Russ ordered them reprinted. The misprinted covers were sent as sets to the patient subscribers. MAD Volume one also had an incorrect copyright credit, prompting Bill Gaines to alert Russ. Stickers were printed and sent out to subscribers with instruction to paste them over the incorrect credit. Available evidence suggests that 1000 black and white and 10,000 color MAD sets were produced. No other title was offered in color.

In 1982 when The Vault Of Horror set came out, EC purists were alarmed to see radically different coloring on the covers. Apparently Marie Severin had gotten bored of copying her original color guides and asked Russ if she could deviate from them. Having done so she was surprised by the negative response and went back to more closely mimicking the original cover coloring for the rest of the sets. In retrospect what could Russ say? If Marie Severin asked any of us the same question, we would probably say yes too!)

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initial issue of ELFQUEST, HIDDEN YEARS, and the 8th issue of fRiNgE. These comics might never exist if it weren’t for Bill Gaines; nor, I think, would THE SANDMAN, which I have been reading or re-reading in the slipcase trilogy given to me by Bhob Stewart.

Without Bill, I’m sure comic books would be the same irrelevant throw-away trash they were before 1950, when Bill’s father died.

The Gaines family is tremendously important in the history of comics. His dad, M.C., invented comics and published both Superman and Batman, characters which between them defined the genre for years. But, since kids would spend their dimes for anything printed in four-color process, often that’s all they got. I’m not saying there weren’t flashes of brilliance buried in the haystack, but no one cared very much when Mom decided that those stacks of colored newsprint would be of better service to the world recycled in a paper-drive rather than re-readable in your bedroom closets.

Bill Gaines: An Appreciation by Larry Stark

By Thommy Burns on Saturday, November 23, 2013 at 4:01am

But when Bill reluctantly took over the business, he did something terribly un-businesslike. He published comic books filled with the kinds of things he, personally, liked to read: good shock-ending stories in fantasy, science-fiction, and horror genres, drawn by the best artists available at the time. He hired Albert B. Feldstein and later Harvey Kurtzman, both of whom could write, and paid top-dollar to a staff of regular artists whose talents the writers could exploit by what they wrote. Bill reserved for himself the fun of helping Al think up the story-per- day they wrote, and gave Harvey his head with his two war-books, and later with that funnybook called MAD.

(This moving tribute was written in June 1992 on the day Bill Gaines died. It appears with Larry’s permission and I am honored to share it here.—Thommy)

For the five years E.C. led the field, competing companies followed. Bill might have said—as Picasso said of his friends and fellow-Cubists Gris and Bracque, “They are the lice that live off my head.” But he was a little busy at the time, and having a little too much fun.

I don’t think it’s odd that I had just finished reading Todd McFarlane’s SPAWN #1 when NPR told me Bill Gaines died today, at seventy. I was feeling myself lucky and somewhat smug that I had bought four very good comics today, and still had two of them to read this evening. In addition to SPAWN, I’d read #158 of the CEREBUS saga, and could look forward to the

When the Comics Code Authority made a free-wheeling E.C. impossible, Bill tried to turn all the genres he published into illustrated books called PictoFiction. Nothing sold except the funnybook.

Now—as the NPR obituary did—people think of Bill Gaines as the publisher of MAD Magazine, and that would be enough fame for any man.

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But what Bill did with E.C., merely by publishing the sorts of things he himself liked to read, really changed comics forever. The people who read and also liked them, saved them. The people who read some of them made an effort to buy and read more. For the first time in the history of the genre, people collected, kept, traded and speculated in comics, instead of throwing them away. They talked to other people about them, compiled checklists of all the titles and issues, wrote articles and published them in little mimeographed fanzines, and even bought old E.C. comics for TWO AND A HALF TIMES the cover-price, expecting that they could be re-sold at a profit later.

And they were right.

Bill Gaines wasn’t a writer, but he had good taste and gusto in the things he liked, and it always showed in what he published. I think in his work as well as in his play, Bill Gaines had more fun making money and then spending it than any man alive.

The last time I saw Bill, he had invited me down for dinner, took me to SPARKS’ STEAK HOUSE, ordered for me the best steak I have ever tasted, and the wines we would drink with it, let me eat one of his dozen “appetizer” oysters, and would have ordered a dozen for me if I thought I wanted them. I think my enjoyment of his excellent taste pleased him as it certainly did me.

We talked about his life, his fascination with zeppelins, his dad and some of the details of his E.C. days that I had never known. Bill had become a huge, broad haystack of a man, proud of his never-trimmed long (now white) hair and beard, proud of the fact that he’d never have set foot in Sparks’ if either of us had to wear a tie. He was, at the time, a shrunken haystack, admitting he’d always gone up and down, admitting that while I was staring 60 in the face, he was contemplating 70. He willingly and maybe eagerly broke his religious Pritikin Diet to share my good dinner, as he always did when jaunting to new countries with his MAD crew.

When I left I did my best to hug this mountain of a man who had always meant so much in my life. I hope he knew I loved him, though I suppose I never really told him.

The previous time I saw Bill was at an E.C. day at a comics-con in New York, where in our brief time he said two trenchant things to me. He said that in our 16

previous meetings he had thought I had a hell of a lot of “growing-up” to do. I promised him I’d get at it one of these days. He also told me he had found the original typescript of “Elegy”, the piece I had written about the death of E.C. in 1955, and asked did I want it. I said the words not the paper were important to me, and he could keep it if I could have a xerox to see what I’d said. “I hope it’s important to you,” he said, “because it’s important to me.” It’s important to me, Bill; it’s STILL important to me!

The first time I saw Bill, he was a crew-cut, three-piece & tie smiling entity in the old Lafayette Street office of E.C., where I watched him and Al read (actually proof-read) the final art for a horror-story Jack Davis had drawn around the already-lettered story Al had written. I had thought I’d come to talk to Harvey Kurtzman, but he was busy working on a story with Jerry Dee. He’d sent Jerry to take six dives on a submarine as research for a story, and they were hooting and wheekling at each other in order to write into the panels what the sirens sounded like before a dive.

Actually, I spent much of the day talking to Marie Severin, the colorist, who kept telling me things I hadn’t noticed about E.C. comics. She showed me a TWO-FISTED TALES(?) story also drawn by Jack Davis, in which a Navy medic on an invasion beach was trying to stanch a wound spurting blood two feet in the air. “I don’t know what we’re going to do here,” she said, “because at E.C. we’ve never colored blood red.”

I’d never noticed, but after all she was the colorist and ought to know.

That afternoon, as everyone else left, Bill and I talked and talked—about what I have no idea. He had stopped being a high school teacher when M.C. died, and though in my 20s, I was very, very young. I had sent a story to Harvey I thought he might like, and he wrote back that it was fine but “we’re doing all writing in-house these days.” He had rejected what I never even thought might be a comic-script! Soon I was writing a letter of criticism to every issue in the E.C. armoire, and soon Bill gave me a free lifetime subscription to everything he published. I went home that evening with a plaque, lettered by Marie specifically to hang on the wall during my visit that said “God help us to write stories that will please Larry Stark!”

The next time I was in the office, E.C. had undergone upheavals, everything was going sour, and my arrogantly angry criticisms of the new stuff had already elicited a postcard from Bill saying “Have a heart, Larry; we’re TIRED!” But I needed all that growing-up, and merely met it with invective and high-dudgeon.

I’m sure Bill forgave me my lingering youth and stupidity. I know that he kept all those letters, even those I would think hateful and self-important today.

Someone broke into the office and stole the contents of Bill’s desk—why nobody knew—or he’d have them still. He admitted, when he called to invite me to our Damn It last dinner, that he’d have called but never had my phone-number.

There are still some things I never told Bill that he’ll never hear. There are still some parts of the world he had never visited, still some foods he hadn’t sampled, still some jokes he hadn’t laughed at, still some talents he hadn’t employed, developed, encouraged, and enjoyed. I think Bill Gaines knew, as few people ever have, how to enjoy making and spending money. His working and his playing lives ought to be a model for us all.

But my world, and yours, are diminished by his going.

Just as my world, and yours, were so incredibly enlarged by the life he shared so generously with us all.

I loved you Bill. And if I never got a chance to say it, I hope you knew it anyway.

Larry Stark

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EC ARTIST COLLABORATIONS

By Thommy Burns If there's already a list out there I haven't seen it, so I compiled this one. Here are the NEW TREND/NEW DIRECTION artist collaborations: WOOD & HARRISON: “The Werewolf Legend” (VOH 12) “Dream Of Doom” (WS 12 (1)) “The Mad Magician” (HOF 15 (1)) “Only Time Will Tell” (WF 13 (1)) “The Curse Of Harkley Heath (VOH 13) “The Meteor Monster” (WS 13 (2)) “The Black Arts” (WF 14 (2))

TOTH & KURTZMAN: “Dying City!” (TFT 22)

CRAIG & DAVIS: “The Vamp!” (HOF 10)

SEVERIN & ELDER: “War Story!” (TFT 19) “Massacred!” (TFT 20) “Pigs Of The Roman Empire” (TFT 21) “Chicken!” (TFT 22) “Dog Fight!” (TFT 23) “Weak Link!” (TFT 24) “Buzz Bomb!” (TFT 25) “Link Up!” (TFT 26) “Luck!” (TFT 27) “Checkers” (TFT 28) “Washington!” (TFT 29) “Campaign!” (TFT 31) “Outpost!” (TFT 33) “Dangerous Man!” (TFT 36) “Zero Hour!” (FC 2) “How They Die!” (FC 3) “Bomb Run!” (FC 4) “442nd Combat Team” (FC 5) “A Platoon!” (FC 6) “Night Patrol!” (FC 8) “First Shot!” (FC 9) “Geronimo!” (FC 10) “Bird Dogs!” (FC 11) “Counter-Clockwise” (WF 18) “King Of The Grey Spaces!” (WF 19) “…For Us The Living!” (WF 20) “The Million Year Picnic” (WF 21)

KAMEN & ELDER: “Corker!” (HOF 21) KAMEN & CRAIG: “Hear No Evil!” (CSS 13) KAMEN & EVANS: “This Trick'll Kill You” (TFTC 33) WILLIAMSON & FRAZETTA: “Mad Journey!” (WF 14) “Fired!” (CSS 17) “I, Rocket” (WF 20) “Two's Company” (WS 21) “A New Beginning” (WS 22) WILLIAMSON & TORRES: “A Sound Of Thunder” (WSF 25) “Harpooned” (PIRACY 1) “The Shell Game” (PIRACY 2) “The Arena” (VALOR 1) “A Question Of Time” (SI 2) WILLIAMSON & EVANS: “Day Of Reckoning” (VALOR 5) WILLIAMSON & KRENKEL: “Food For Thought” (ISF 32)

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SEVERIN & COLAN: “The Secret!” (TFT 39) SEVERIN & KURTZMAN: “Marines Retreat!” (FC 1)

Angelo Torres and a small selection of his early MAD comics, which he picked up from the E.C. offices at 225 Lafayette St., as he was beginning his comic career.

THE MADMAN AND THE MADDICT: A FAN-ADDICT INTERVIEW WITH ANGELO TORRES

By Ian Scott McGregor Angelo Torres is not only one of the most successful comic artists in history, but one of the most quietly revered. Having won the National Cartoonist Society’s prestigious Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016, Angelo’s work spans the full comic panoply of genres and publishing houses - from William M. Gaines’ E.C. Comics, as one of the members of the storied “Fleagle Gang,” to Atlas (eventually Stan Lee’s Marvel Comics), Jim Warren’s Creepy and Eerie Magazines to D.C., including a near 50-year stint at MAD Magazine, as one of MAD’s most beloved Usual Gang of Idiots.

trip to visit the MAD offices in New York City. Ange happened to be in the office that day, dropping off his latest job, and was kind enough to pose for a picture on my disposable camera, pretending to be working on his art. 25 years later, living in Brooklyn, I found out we were neighbors and paid him a visit. He quickly became one of my closest friends, and I try to visit with him once a week to drink wine and listen to his astoundingly well-curated collection of classic vinyl records.

I first met Angelo as a 13-year- old on a cross-country

Angelo Torres (AT): Hey, Ian! Just fine. How are you

Ian Scott McGregor (ISM): Ange! How ya doin’, my friend?

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guys doing?

ISM: Can’t complain! Did you get the questions I sent over?

well, especially after we became friends and I got to see so much of his original artwork.

AT: I’ve got them right here. Shall we?

ISM: When did you first visit 225 Lafayette St.? What do you remember about the hallowed and haunted halls of the E.C. offices?

ISM: Alright then, off we go! To start, who would you say were the artists that most influenced your drawing style?

AT: It was Nick Meglin, my art school buddy at the Cartoonists and Illustrators School, and future editor at MAD, that initiated the trips to 225.

AT: When I began to get serious about drawing in junior high school, it was Milton Caniff.

ISM: You used to call Meglin “the kid,” right?

ISM: And you won the Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement award last year! That was a great night!

AT: Yes, he was the youngest of us! But I didn’t get to the E.C. offices until I’d met Al Williamson and went to deliver some work with him. Later, we started showing up in bunches: Williamson, Roy Krenkel, George Woodbridge, Meglin, and myself - the notorious “Fleagles.” What I mostly remember about those visits was Bill Gaines always being friendly and welcoming, Marie Severin’s laughter in the back room and Harvey Kurtzman shutting his door to keep us out.

If we were lucky, we would catch one of the artists that happened to be there that day. We once got John Severin and Johnny Craig together in one day!

ISM: How often did you hang out with Williamson, Frazetta and the rest of the Fleagles? How much of that time was spent playing baseball, versus working on art?

AT: I spent a lot of time with Al, working with him, hanging out, going to movies, and listening to music.

With Frank, it was Saturday and Sunday soft ball from mid-morning until night fall. Nick was part of that crew and we would often show up for those games together.

ISM: So, for the record, who was the best ball player in the group?

AT: Without a doubt, Frank Frazetta. He’d played baseball in high school and earned recognition for his play. He even considered turning pro. It was our good fortune that he decided to stick with his art work!

AT: I did! I had grown up a fan of his Terry and the Pirates and when Steve Canyon came out in 1947, it knocked me over. In art school, much later, I gravitated toward Hal Foster’s Tarzan and Prince Valiant. I also learned a lot in the years I worked with Al Williamson.

And Frank Frazetta had a big impact on my work as 20

ISM: Did you guys see movies together? What were your favorites?

AT: Al and I were the big movie nuts - it was one of the things that solidified our friendship. That, and the fact that we both spoke fluent Spanish. We had both grown up watching the serials and adventure movies going

back to the 30's and 40's and we were forever searching for them in the movie theaters and on TV. Gunga Din was our all-time favorite, along with the Errol Flynn swashbucklers and the ones starring Stewart Granger that came later - Scaramouche being one of Al’s favorites. The Flash Gordon serial starring Buster Crabbe was also a big favorite of Williamson’s.

wasn’t until the MAD years later that I got to know some of them better. We once dropped in on Wally Wood when he was working on Prince Violent for MAD. We laughed our heads off coming up with gags to put in the job. Wally just roared.

ISM: I know you’re proud of your record collection, as well you should be - it’s quite impressive. Did you guys all listen to music together? What were some of the gang’s favorite acts?

AT: I have many favorites, especially the sci-fi stories Williamson drew, although the story that stands out in my mind is “The Arena” in Valor #1.

Working with Al and Roy on that one was great fun.

ISM: Do you have any particular favorite E.C. stories?

AT: We were all big Frank Sinatra fans, collecting all his LPs. Frazetta’s collection even went back to the 10-inch 78rpms that had come out earlier.

Williamson had a huge library of big band Jazz that we listened to while we worked Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Count Basie. And we were all v e r y m u c h i nt o Classical music.

ISM: Lastly, can you tell me what Bill Gaines was like? I’m sad I never got to meet him.

AT: Bill was not only a great publisher, he was also a great friend.

He loved his artists and writers and enjoyed being with them. The trips we took together and the parties we had were memorable and working for him and being around him was very special. He was E.C.!

ISM: When did you discover that Frazetta could sing just like Sinatra? Did he do it often?

AT: We only heard him doing it once, when he sang to Ellie at their wedding. He sounded like Sinatra, but then, as Roy Krenkel used to say, “Frank can do anything.”

ISM: Awesome, Ange!

Thanks for doing this!

I’m sure the fanaddicts are gonna get a real kick out of this.

AT: Oh good, I’m glad.

ISM: Do you have any stories of meeting the artists you didn’t hang out with as pals? Like Graham Ingels or Wally Wood?

AT: I was still in art school in 1954 when Williamson asked me to come to the E.C. Christmas party at 225 Lafayette. There I got to meet many of the guys but it

ISM: Thanks again. I’ll call you later this week and we can setup a time to visit. I’ll bring the wine if you bring the bratwurst. Have a good one Ange, I’ll be E.C.ing you!

AT: Take care, Ian! See ya!

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Aliens, Monsters and Madmen: the Art of EC Comics Opening reception May 13 and 14, 2016

Story and photos by Jon Gothold In May of 1972 I was a 16-year-old EC Fan Addict living in Southern California.

In 1972, I had just completed my collection of MAD, which was my introduction to EC. That had led me to the Ballantine horror and sci-fi reprints, which in turn led me to the rest of the EC line, which I was getting very active in collecting at that time.

1972, coincidently, was also a major year for EC fandom in general. The EC Horror Library of the 1950s had just been published, The “Tales From The Crypt� movie was released, Russ Cochran published EC Portfolio One and Two, and Ron Barlow and Bruce Hershenson released their uncensored posters of Crypt 38 and Vault 32. The Monster Times issue number 10 was published, a special EC issue, which covered all

this and more. But the biggest news that year was the first of what was supposed to be many national EC Fan Addict Conventions, held over Memorial Day weekend at the Hotel McAlpin in New York City. For an admission price of two dollars a day (or five dollars for all three days), you could come bump shoulders and listen to panel discussions with nearly every EC creator, all of whom were still alive and well in 1972. Perhaps the biggest news of all was that Bill Gaines was going to open up his fabled vault of EC original artwork, and for the first time, many pages of it were going to be displayed for the public to see.

As I sat in my bedroom at my parents house in Southern California reading about this convention, I dreamed about going, but being just barely old enough to drive, this was just too far away and too out of reach for me to 23

go. Plus, they said it was the First Annual, so that meant I could scrimp and save and try and figure a way to go next year. So I sent away for a copy of the souvenir program book, which you could do even if you were not going to attend, and figured I would bide my time until the next one happened.

The next one never happened.

Over the intervening years, a lot of EC related things did happen, both good and bad. I completed my New Trend, New Direction and PIcto Fiction collections, and got to meet many of the EC creators at various San Diego Cons, especially in 2000 at the 50th Anniversary of EC Tribute.

But on the down side, Bill Gaines sold off all the original EC artwork which scattered it to the four winds, most of the EC creators have since passed away, and there was never another major gathering of EC fandom and original EC artwork ever undertaken.

Until May of 2016, at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon, in a major exhibition titled “Aliens, Monsters and Madmen: The Art of EC Comics.�

Curator Ben Saunders managed to gather together 35 original EC covers, over 120 pages of story artwork, plus cover proofs, roughs, house ads and more. This is far more comprehensive than the amount of original art

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I think what has left an even greater lasting impression on me than seeing the artwork, was being surrounded by so many of my fellow Fan Addicts. There were first generation fans that had bought EC’s off the stands there that I met for the first time, like Mike Britt. And there were legendary EC authors like Roger Hill, Grant Geissman and Glenn Bray that I got to spend some real quality time with. I finally got to meet EC fans that actually attended the 1972 Convention, so I could ask them firsthand what it was like. And finally, there were the Fan Addicts from all over the country, many of whom I felt like I already knew from being active on the EC Fan Addicts Facebook page: Thommy Burns, Rob Reiner, Clint Morgan, Chris Boyko, Bryce Hill, Sean Law, Jeffrey Lindsay, Jesse Guiher, Norm Watson…the list goes on.

I am actually the most grateful for these friendships, sparked by that weekend in Oregon together, that will continue to build and grow over time. Who knows what collaborations and projects we might do, now that we have been through that mind-boggling show together?

This fanzine is one example, and I’m hoping it is just one in a long, long line of more EC things to come.

Bill displayed at the 1972 Fan Addict Convention, and given the fact that these were painstakingly tracked down from a wide variety of sources, the chances of this much EC art being available for public viewing again in one place are probably slim to none.

If getting older has taught me anything, it’s that life is fleeting and not at all permanent. If something that’s really important to you comes along that might require some effort to experience, you drop everything and go, no matter what it takes.

And boy, am I ever glad I did.

I’ll let the quality of the artwork speak for itself with some of the many photos I took that weekend that accompany this article. To say it was an overwhelming emotional experience to see all of that gorgeous, iconic art in person would be a gross understatement. I really knew that I was experiencing something that would be once in a lifetime for me, and it was almost hard to breathe being in the presence of it all.

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CENSORED COVERS!

Vault Of Horror #32 and Tales From The Crypt #38 are rare examples of EC self-censoring their art prior to publication (and before the Comics Code existed). Here we see Vault #32 in various formats, both censored and uncensored!

Hand colored silver-print, pre-censoring.

Original cover art by Johnny Craig.

Vault Of Horror #32 as published 27

1971 Graphic Masters poster, 1st uncensored publication.

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Uncensored and re-colored for the Russ Cochran VOH Library.