About E.C. Comics
Greetings, boils and ghouls! This is your old pal, the Crypt Keeper, bringing you a terrifying node on EC Comics. EC (short for “Entertaining Comics”) was a publisher of lurid and violent comic books in the 1940s and 1950s. They’re still best known for their groundbreaking horror comics, like “Tales from the Crypt”, “The Haunt of Fear”, and “The Vault of Horror”, though they also produced science fiction, fantasy, war, and (eww!) romance comics.
The company was driven out of business by an anti-comics frenzy, spurred on by Dr. Fredric Wertham, a psychiatrist who claimed that horror and crime comics caused juvenile delinquency. You can still find them available in reprints–ask at your local comic shop.
EC Comics were not just gory and gruesome–they are considered some of the best-produced comics ever, with rock-solid artwork and stories that always delivered a fatal shock. They’ve been cited as an important influence by modern horror authors like Stephen King, and many of the stories have been brought to a larger audience, thanks to HBO’s “Tales from the Crypt” anthology series.
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.
Well, that’s all the time we have today, fear fans. Until next time, pleasant screams, kiddies!