“THE WOMEN WHO LOVED LIFE“ A COLUMN ABOUT EC COMICS, PART 9

The times they were a-changin“. So were the landscapes. And the women. And this woman in particular, she was clearly in the wrong place at the wrong time. She was dressed for the city in her expensive coat and her thin slip-dress and her stockings and high heels. The leaning trees of the woods with their thick, misshapen branches were bad enough, but there was a blanket of snow, well above two feet high. Each step she made was pure torture and the cold was biting into her ankles and moving up her shapely legs. She was an attractive, blonde woman in her twenties who“d never had a problem with getting what she wanted, whatever she desired. Until she had played her games once too often. Her light, elegant attire, pitifully insufficient for the outdoors in winter, betrayed the haste with which she“d left the little town a mere three hours earlier. After the first hour, her car had gotten stuck. She had left the one road that led out of the city and to freedom. They had been following her, and since she was now on foot as she made her way through the forest and across the mountain top, she had hoped they would abandon the hunt. But they were now on foot as well, and now they were bearing torches. “She cursed the narrow-minded, sanctimonious townspeople who hounded her.”“ She was reminded of an old movie she“d seen on television once. Villagers running after the beast that was a man made from parts of other men. She had felt sorry for the poor creature who these ignorant men with their pitchforks and their fire wanted to kill. She knew, her hunters wanted to kill her as well. She was certain of it. That was why she“d gotten off the mountain road that despite being covered with snow offered her a sense of orientation. By now, she no longer had any idea where she was going. On the mountain road they“d catch up to her quickly, she figured, as she was “falling and stumbling.”“ With another brief glance over one of her shoulders she rushed further and further, her heart beating in her chest, her breath short, her made-up face stinging from the crisp, cold air and the fiercely-biting wind, “she clambered desperately through the drifts. She knew this was only a small mountain and that there was the safety of another town on the other side. With a little luck she could make it.”“ Another town meant a new beginning. She could vanish for a time, blend in among the other folks, do a bit of pretend play, play it sweet. She knew how to do that. As she fantasized about the life she would lead that was as fresh and clean as the snow, with a new name and a naïve, innocent guy who was unattached, she knew she needed a rest, to catch her breath and to still her heart which was beating like crazy by now. “As her eyes scanned the valley below, she saw the trail of torches heading back toward town. The townspeople had given up the chase.”“ She realized that they thought that she wasn“t even worth their time. Soon, they would be back in their small houses, huddled around the warmth of a fireplace and their loved ones, free to carry on with their silly little lives like she had never come to town to show some of the men things they had not dared to dream of, or lacked the imagination to do so. And though her breath was still short, and her voice was raspy from the cold, she cursed them out, all of them: “Bunch of lousy do-gooders! I“ll teach you to run me out of town! I“ll get even if it“s the last thing I ever do!”“ Then she was resting again. Despite the cold it felt so good. She was aware that this was a fake calm, like nature herself was playing a game with her, and she knew all about games. If she stayed too long, she“d be freezing to her death. What a riot that would be if months later, once the balmy spring had settled in, a few of the guys came up here to hunt for deer with their double-barrel shotguns, only to find her lifeless body. They“d be carrying her down the mountain and into the valley like they did with their other prey. And once in the town, they“d be putting her on display. Maybe her head would end up as an ornament on the mantle of some guy“s fireplace. But her instincts were still keen, the same intuitions that had guided her in life to the right kind of men she could be bad with. She knew that she had to move on, and that was what she did. With the quietness of the woods around her and the thick blanket of snow that absorbed her footsteps, time itself began to feel less real. Every second felt like an hour, but then she saw the log cabin which set on a little peak which was just a little further ahead. She made it, she made through a door which was miraculously opened to her, but barely. She collapsed on the wooden floor and everything went black. When she came to, her first thought was that she had rested too long in the cold and that she had died and gone to heaven. Now wouldn“t that have been hysterical? But this young man who hovered above her, and who told her that she had been out of it for fourteen hours, was as real as the fire in his fireplace that felt like a furnace. He was young, indeed, and his features were fine and soft, almost effete. A college kid most likely, and from the way he looked at her, she immediately knew that he didn“t know his way around women, which served her fine. Another sucker she could play like an instrument that made the right kind of music, the one which sounded oh so sweet to her. Luke needn“t tell her that he lived by himself. And when Luke told her that he was into the black magic, she had a good laugh. When he showed off his book collection, she laughed even harder. He was a nerd. She even called him “Buster”“, the name reserved for all those losers she“d met, this one in particular, who did not watch when she put her shoes on, but instead fondled his books. Men liked to observe when she got dressed or undressed, but he had his back turned to her. She surely had her work cut out for her, but it shouldn“t prove too difficult to seduce another gullible rube. All men fell for her. And the other women hated her for it, and the men, once she was done with them, the men especially, they hated her bad, as badly as they wanted her, but she was the one who called the shots.

But her mood and the atmosphere in the small cabin changed at the moment he told her about his gift. Fine-featured, fair-haired Luke had powers he claimed, and it was true. She could sense them like they were a loaded gun in his hand, and in her hand. Luke told her that he could “bend a man“s will to mine in a matter of moments.”“ She knew how to do that herself, but not as quickly, and it needed effort and it came with a price tag. Here was her ticket to do what she desired more than another warm body next to her, though he couldn“t have guessed it since she called him “handsome”“ and “honey”“ now. Through Luke and his connection to the occult, she could get her revenge on those who had done her wrong. As she moved closer and she almost put her chin on his nude shoulders, she told him that he might be able to help her. His response was the same as it was in any man she came across. He was surely glad if there was something, he could do for her. He was very lonely, and with those guys her charms always worked best. But then again, weren“t all men, even those who were married? The loneliness was also the angle to sell him the retribution she wanted to see run havoc on the townsfolk as mutually beneficial. Hadn“t those ignorant idiots made Luke stay all by himself in a cabin in the mountains? She could surely work with that. “I know, honey,”“ she assured Luke, pretending to care. “The people in that town ought to be horsewhipped”¦ making you stay up here! But what can we do about it?”“ This was a most delicate phase of the dance. She knew that men liked to take the initiative, that they liked it when they could come up with the plan. She left them this illusion, as she did with Luke. The wheels inside his head had begun to spin. Finally, after some consideration she expected from a boy who was into old books, he suggested: “Oh, we could do something! It“s simple! All we need is the mayor.”“ Now, that didn“t sound that awfully simple, but she was wise to how fragile a man“s ego was, and she allowed him to explain his wild idea: “Of course! You get the mayor to come here and I can make him do anything you want!”“ That sounded about right to her, especially the “you”“ in the second part of the sentence. But when he proposed that she would need to do it since he didn“t have any clothes, she hesitated. She couldn“t go back into town, clothes or no clothes. That was when Luke showed her the revolver. She would have powers, too. It is strange, how such a small item can make such a big difference. She made it down the peak and back to her car which after some time had passed, had its tires find some traction on the loose snow again. She slipped back into town and waited for the mayor“s car in the driveway of his house. Of course, the ugly, old hick with aspirations for sophistication and class, who“d been running the town for an eternity, was surprised to see her again. He recovered quickly, though, and he called her by derogatory slur reserved in his world for women like her. But she was all will now, and there was no need for pretense. That time was over once the gun was in her hand with the barrel right up to his fat face: “Be quiet, you puritanical old fool! If you want to live, turn this car around and drive exactly where I say!”“ Naturally, the old mayor, who was used to calling the shots relented when a gun was pushed into his face. They drove in his car on the same way she“d taken on the day before when she had fled and they had hunted her, the mayor perhaps not with the posse of self-righteous zealots in body, but in spirit, and his car stalled at the same snow drift that had stopped her car which she had left in town on her return trip. She nudged the man forward with the revolver Luke had given her, as they trudged across the snow-covered landscape, until they made it safely to his little cabin. Once there, the student put his hand on the forehead of the mayor and gripped his silver hair forcefully. The eyes of the old fool immediately went blank. With glee, which was borderline sadistic, she watched as he performed his ritual. Now they could live together in his big mansion and run the whole city. That was until she tired of Luke. She was elated. Luke“s plan had come together surprisingly well, and she began to suspect that fate had a hand in it. But as she looked at her new lover, the blonde youth shook his head ever so slightly. This was not the goal he had envisioned. A surprised look fell over her face when she realized that he“d called her a stupid girl. The remark needed to register before it stung. As the look on her face betrayed how poorly she had been prepared for this unexpected change in his demeanor, which came as suddenly as a snowstorm on a perfectly clear day, he began to rant like men were wont to, but his words did not come as empty threats, the state the old hick was in was proof of that. “Stupid, I say! Blind and stupid! Do you think I want to possess this empty shell of a man so I can live in his house? Do you think I care about politics or wealth or even fame? You thought to use me as a tool to gain your revenge, but you misjudged me!… I don“t care a fig for you or your revenge! It was I who made use of you! Foolish girl! The only way I could ever leave this cabin was to have someone whose body I could enter, whose mind I could control, and you have brought me that someone!”“ She had heard enough to know that this relationship was going nowhere. Quickly she pulled the revolver he“d handed her from her expensive coat. She fired, but he only laughed at her. Instead he grabbed her wrist until it hurt, and she let go of the reassuring weapon. His face was no longer smooth or fine-featured, but it showed harsh lines of anger and age. And then, as he lifted her up over his head with ease like she was one of the dolls the other girls had played with when her lips had already found those of some of the boys who were a bit older, she saw that he now sported two horns. Like a man at a barbeque grill would do with a piece of meat, he threw her into the fireplace. “Her shrieking screams were lost in the roar of flames. There was no floor to the fireplace, and she fell down”¦ ever deeper into the fires of hades, her tortured flesh searing with the agony of oblivion, her ears ringing with Lucifer“s triumphant maniacal laughter”¦”“ And right on cue, there was the host who ostensibly had narrated this tale and told you that he wouldn“t make a pun, only to make a bad pun, of course: “Heh! Hot stuff, huh, gang? I“m not going to make any puns about how burned up our little gal was”¦ she“ll be remembered as a real hot number! The devil, you say?”“ And this was how Jay Taycee“s second yarn for Warren ended.

He had a special ritual. He“d look at the black and white photography of his girlfriend before every battle and after. He stared at Toni“s picture on the ship that brought his brothers and him back from Germany. Like him, the other men in uniform gazed at the photos of their girlfriends. Some had been wounded in Germany or elsewhere in Europe, like he“d been, but for them, the war was over. It had been for a year. His greatest battle still lay ahead of him. He“d just turned twenty and he wanted to make it as an artist in the still young comic book industry. Of course, when the war was still going on, he“d done what you did once you turned eighteen. He“d put what little of a career he“d had up to this point on hold to enlist, first in the Merchant Marine and then the Army. But now, once he was back in the States and officially discharged, there were two things he wanted to do. First, he would propose to his girlfriend, a beautiful Italian girl named Antoinette Picciallo. Then, he would do some freelance work, but not like before. He had worked on his drawings while serving his country whenever there was a chance to do so. The other men liked the sketches of girls he did for them that were sometimes a bit provocative, or the humoristic doodles that made them laugh. He knew he was getting better, though he was not fast, not like his old mentor. In 1940, when he was fourteen, he had begun to work part-time for Harry Lampert, one of the creators of the superhero The Flash. For one dollar a week he did everything from ruling the pages to do some filling work and even go and pick up some sandwiches or the laundry from the old woman who did Harry“s shirts. But Harry had joined the Army later that year. Since most of the work Harry produced at his shop was for All-American Comics anyway, he“d inquired about work there. Editor Sheldon Mayer had looked at him funnily, but when he mentioned Harry“s name, Mayer stuck him into production. Co-owner Maxwell Charles Gaines, a legend in the industry whose birth name was Max Ginzberg, but who everybody simply called “M.C.”“ or “Max”“ or Mr. Gaines, was a hands-on guy. And sometimes his wiry, yet intimidating frame would darken the offices where he and his co-workers were sitting, a place which was packed and dark anyway. There they would ready the pages for the last editing step and for printing which was done by one of Harry Donenfeld“s many companies which also handled distribution. This was a time when you said “yes, sir”“ or “no, sir”“, especially when you were a child and in particular when you knew what kind of people you were dealing with. Mr. Donenfeld was the big boss, and he was of course Superman“s boss. He“d bought the rights to this new type of comic character from two wide-eyed boys for a nickel and he“d made him into the biggest sensation since Charles Lindbergh. Superman was on the radio. And his image was on the box of your cornflakes. Donenfeld, whose family was from Rumania, had started as a clothing salesman. With a loan from his father-in-law, he had opened a store while his head was filled with big dreams. The store went bust, but he was not ready to give up. Instead he joined his brothers who owned a small printing company. He worked as a salesman for the press and soon the company saw a vast influx of capital. Rumor had it, that Donenfeld had made a deal with gangster Frank Costello to move alcohol together with pulp paper into the States from Canada during the prohibition. With enough money to present their business as a success story and to buy more presses, they secured a hugely lucrative contract from media mogul William Randolph Hearst to print subscription leaflets for magazines like Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping. In 1926, Donenfeld, realizing a new trend in the market, formed a publishing joint called Irwin Publishing, named after his first son, who was born that year. Soon, Donenfeld put out numerous pulp magazines, evocatively titled Spicy-Adventure Stories or Spicy Detective, which showed scantily dressed young ladies in perilous scenarios on their covers, often with a racist bent, and stories that had borderline pornographic content. Then Max Gaines came along who had the idea to put comic books with original content onto the newsstand. While the pulps began to draw wide-spread criticism, here was the opportunity to steer into a more legitimate field all things considered. With his own distribution set-up, he soon established National Allied Publication for comic book printing and publishing. Meanwhile, as a small favor to an important client, Harry gave the man“s son a job in his fast-growing empire as his personal bookkeeper. And Jack Liebowitz, who would become his best friend and closest business associate, helped him with securing content and talent. Soon, they bought the rights to Superman and Batman, both massive hits. Donenfeld charged one of his pulp cover artists, Hugh J. Ward, who had been responsible for some of the raciest covers for his pulp publications, with painting a life-size portrayed of Superman, which Donenfeld displayed on the wall behind his desk as if he was flaunting the skin of some poor creature he had slain during a safari. One day, Max Gaines came by the office to propose that he“d help him set up his own comic book publishing company. Gaines clearly wanted a piece of the action he“d instigated. Donenfeld, who knew of Gaines“ reputation, heard him out and he agreed. But there“d be conditions placed on the deal, though. He“d retain a fifty percent ownership stake through one of his many holdings. And further, Max had to agree to take on Liebowitz as his partner. Some would later speculate that this was a shrewd move to keep Jack happy who knew the ins and outs of Donenfeld“s empire. Since he had a map to every buried body, Harry simply couldn“t risk Jack leaving to set up his own shingle sometime in the future. But the families were also close. Irwin, Harry“s firstborn, who would one day become a top executive and co-owner of DC/National, the entity under whose roof Harry eventually consolidated his publishing holdings, married Jack“s niece Carole. It was all in the family, including the firm that Donenfeld would help Gaines and Liebowitz to start-up, All-American Comics. Though Gaines didn“t have any direct ties to gangsters, as far as he knew, to provide him with the funds to create the company which would eventually birth the valuable character Wonder Woman, Max certainly knew little restraint. He was on his toes whenever Mr. Gaines showed up at his workstation, which was set desk-to-desk to those of his colleagues who were older than he. Gaines had a son who was only four years older than he was and people talked at the office. Max Gaines considered his son William one big disappointment and he had drilled into him that he was a loser, very often with the leather of his belt, beating him savagely while shouting: “You“ll never amount to anything!”“ He kept his head down and continued working and only exhaled once Max had swooped down the hallway and out of the door. But there was a lesson in this. On the day he“d finished with high school, he enrolled at the Art Students League to get some formal training. And this was what he did when he had moved into a small apartment with his new bride after obtaining his discharge from the Army. He worked for Victor Fox, Martin Goodman“s Magazine Management Enterprises and most importantly, for Lev Gleason, the company behind such popular titles like Crime Does Not Pay. But in ”˜46, some of these publishers were flying by the seat of their pants. After the war, superheroes had lost their appeal almost overnight, and nobody was sure if the industry would survive the sudden downturn. If he wanted to make it as a comic book artist, his safest bet lay with All-American Comics and its mighty backers. Still, when he made the trip to 225 Lafayette Street and to the offices of All-American, he couldn“t quite shake this image from his mind. He saw Mr. Gaines with the belt between his hand, pulling the black leather taut. Once he got out of the elevator, he needed to rub his eyes. All-American Comics was gone. It said Educational Comics on the door. It was like he had stepped from the elevation into an alternative world. He held his breath.

It was when he got the phone call near the end of 1965, that realized right away that his past had finally caught up with him. Even before he picked up the receiver, he knew it. He“d been careless and they had found him. His past wasn“t done with him, and neither were the women in his past. He knew that soon he“d have to pay the price for his carelessness. In some way, he“d become a brother to the protagonist of “Out of the Past”“. Like Robert Mitchum“s movie character, he“d gotten out of the racket. Not the one a licensed private investigator operated in. But like Mitchum“s Jeff Markham in this crime drama, which was widely considered a masterclass in the film noir genre, and to such a degree of perfection, that the movie would eventually find its way into The Library of Congress, he“d witnessed his share of the nasty side of his former line of work. His cover for issue No. 20 of a comic title called Crime SuspenStories was reprinted without his consent in a book called “Seduction of the Innocent”“, a book by a psychiatrist who purported that he“d identified the source for the alarming increase in juvenile delinquency: crime and horror comics. And the cover he“d created for issue No. 22 of the same publication was discussed during the televised hearings of the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency in 1954, by a U.S. Senator no less while he questioned his former employer. The cover showed a man holding an axe and the head of a blonde woman. There was no blood and the neck of the clearly decapitated woman was not shown. But this was not how he“d originally drawn the cover. In his first version, the image was moved up a bit and you could see the severed neck and the blood dripping from it. That was the atmosphere back then. His boss had told him to change it, to make it less gory. A severed neck was obviously not the hill he“d chosen to die on. But in the end, it didn“t matter much. And he could never quite forget the stories he“d heard about Max using his leather belt on his son William, nor could he forget Max breathing down his neck, not figuratively, but literally. Of course, to him he had always been Mr. Gaines. But like Mitchum“s character, he had taken on a new career. Like Markham in the movie, he“d been manning the pumps of a gas station in his own way for a while now. As such, he ensured that an endless stream of slick product came down the pipeline. When his former employer had closed down his comic book business in 1956, he found it difficult to get steady assignments as freelancer. He“d do a few things all over the place, also for Martin Goodman“s new line called Atlas Comics. Goodman had also started in the pulps business. It was lucrative as long as it lasted. But when it came to the covers, the stories and his success, Goodman was a beginner when compared to Mr. Donenfeld. And by the end of the 1950s, he“d called it quits. He and his wife Toni had two sons together, John, Jr. and Steven, and he needed to put food on the table. That was expected from a man back then. He took up work with an advertising agency in Pennsylvania. While his sons grew into respectable young men, he“d risen in the agency, and he was now overseeing the work of copy writers and artists that were only a bit older than his two boys. For what reason ever, maybe to get a second car for Toni or to pay towards college tuition for John and Steven, he had taken on a side gig for a small publisher called American Comics Group to do some work on Unknown Worlds. This was clean family fun. The title came with the Comics Code and featured art by Kurt Schaffenberger, one of the artists on Superboy, for crying out loud. But not sooner had issue No. 36 seen print, with his and writer Richard Hughes“ story “The People vs. Hendricks”“, they had phoned him at his gas station as they had done with Mitchum in “Out of the Past”“, only Mitchum“s former private eye Jeff Markham had taken on a new name. His name was on the first page. His real name. Heck, even the writer of the book on which the movie was based had used a pseudonym, also when he adapted his novel for the screen with assist from one of his favorite writers James M. Cain, whose works he and his colleague Al Feldstein knew inside out. The man who phoned him up and who identified himself as Archie Goodwin was deep in the racket. He was an editor and writer for a line of magazines from a shingle called Warren Publishing that had started with a sci-fi movie magazine called Famous Monsters of Filmland, edited by Forrest J. Ackerman, a ubiquitous super-fan turned literary agent, editor and writer. He did recall having seen the magazine on the shelves at the station when he took the train to work. After its successful launch, which was followed by another film magazine, publisher Jim Warren had begun to put out Harvey Kurtzman“s latest effort to replicate the success he had once had with creating MAD. He“d worked with Harvey on a few of his war titles back in the day. He was however surprised to learn from Goodwin that Jim Warren and Kurtzman had hired Gloria Steinem as their first employee for Help!, which had its debut in 1960, and which was about to be cancelled like Harvey“s projects ultimately usually were. By 1965, Steinem was much better known than Harvey would ever be, outside the circle of fandom. In 1963, as a reporter, she had worked as Playboy Bunny at the New York Playboy Club. The article which she published, with a photo of her in a tight, satin Playboy Bunny Uniform had caused a major uproar. Gloria was in her late twenties, and a year later she landed an interview with John Lennon while she kept on pushing feminism as her agenda. Now Goodwin wanted to hire him for work on the magazines they had launched in 1964 and 1965 which were called Creepy and Eerie. He said these were like the old comics from EC and they had signed up some of his former colleagues like Al Williamson, Joe Orlando, Reed Crandall and George Evans. Only these weren“t comics. He remembered those guys, and he recalled what George Evans had told him after their boss had called them into his office in 1956 on the day the announcement was made that they would be getting out of the comics business and keep only MAD around. The talented artist, one of the last to join, had pulled him aside to let him know that he thought that it was all a con game, like the ones they pulled in the old film noirs: “EC wasn“t forced [out of business] though it“s what they would have everyone believe.”“ He pointed to the sales numbers for the New Direction titles and Picto-Fiction books, and the faithful fan support as evidence that it was a stunt the publisher pulled, since the numbers for MAD had increased dramatically once it had been converted into a magazine. And this was ultimately the trick Jim Warren used, as Goodwin now told him, as if this idea was completely new. But as the story went, according to Goodwin, Jim had said: “We are not a comic book; we are a magazine. Creepy is magazine-sized and will be sold on magazine racks, not comic book racks.”“ Creepy, and Eerie, their second title in a similar vein, were marketed to an older audience, Goodwin went on to explain. It would be a good chance for him to continue where he had left off. As far as the content was concerned, he was very flexible. He mostly let the talent do the kind of stories they wanted to do which was a win-win for everybody including the fans. Some did gothic horror which showed off their classic approach, like with Crandall, others were into modern stuff with social commentary. But if Evans wanted to do a story about aviators during the First World War, that was fine with him as well. There needed to some sort of supernatural element to it, and all the stories would be narrated by the horror hosts, just like in the old EC Comics days. And like EC, they had no house style. He could do a sort of pastiche story of the stuff he“d done in the past in The Vault of Horror, Goodwin suggested. He could write his own material like he“d always done and not like with Unknown Worlds. It did sound tempting. Then the conversation just hung there in the air. He could sense that Goodwin was an experienced editor because he had not led with the money. Goodwin knew he wasn“t some up-and-comer who was hungry for his first job. He was also well aware that he wasn“t some freelancer who needed the money and who didn“t care what the assignment was. Instead, he offered him something more valuable: he could use a made-up name.

He hadn“t, for his work for American Comics Group. That was how they had found him. Bob Mitchum“s private eye character had gone from Jeff Markham to Jeff Bailey when he set out to build a new life for himself after he had been betrayed by woman. Instead he“d put his own name out there and that was how he got found by Goodwin who tried to pull him back in. Well, that had happened to Markham, too. Maybe it was like George Evans thought it was, and they had simply gotten sick and tired of it all. It was all a huge joke anyway. So why not make them laugh, those who got with the joke, with MAD that was. Maybe he was a bit sick and tired of it as well. Manning the pump day in and day out, looking at the art or the copy of kids half his age who had no idea of his past unless they read titles like Unknown Worlds. Or one of the paperbacks publisher Ballantine Books was currently putting out, digest editions of some of the old EC yarns with new painted covers by Frank Frazetta. Maybe it wasn“t the new car for Toni or John, Jr. or Steven“s tuition that had made him pick up a pencil again to see if he still had what it takes. He thought about it and then he thought about it some more. The times were changing. Back in the day at EC they“d been very careful not to write down to their readers, who were boys and girls around eight. When their younger siblings had reached that same age, they discovered superheroes once again, after the Comics Code was introduced and when television showed them that men travelling into the black void of space in their silver spacesuits was a real possibility. There was a new Flash around now, and he looked vastly different to Harry Lampert“s version. He was streamlined and modern. He looked as sleek as a hood ornament. The art for The Flash was handled by Carmine Infantino, and they had Gil Kane on a modern version of Green Lantern. The artwork was as clean as his own artwork, yet these new heroes were much more dynamic. He had to smile when he recalled stepping out of that elevator back in 1946. He“d thought for a second that All-American Comics had gone out of business. They hadn“t. Gaines had been asked to sell his share in the company to Donenfeld, and like with Whit Sterling, the character Kirk Douglas played in “Out of the Past”“, you did not say no to Harry. Not even a man like Gaines, especially not Max who felt strong when he held a leather belt in his hands. In a way, Max finally got pushed into a wall by Superman like The Man of Steel had done it with a man who was beating his wife in his premier issue. Clearly a power fantasy for his creators. Funny, how things worked. He thought about “Out of the Past”“ a bit more. Despite being given an A-movie budget, it was still shot in moody black and white. The limitation offered film directors and cinematographers some interesting stylistic choices. Goodwin had told him that the Warren magazines were also in black and white. Surely, filmmakers could use different tools, yet he knew how to take advantage of this approach. In fact, most of the films he“d watched back in his own past, whenever he was looking for inspiration for his yarns or for a visual angle he had yet to try, were in black and white. These came at a period of time when expressionism and psychology were two of the most frequent sources used for all kinds of genre films, elements he“d frequently made use of. “Out of the Past”“ was directed by the amazing Jacques Tourneur who was now relegated to directing episodes of The Barbara Stanwyck Show on television. Once the actress had been a major star in those black and white crime flicks that were less about gangster stuff and much more about spousal disputes, the double-crosses that were instigated by duplicitous women, femme fatales, who lured men into their web of intrigue. The Mitchum film was lensed by Nicholas Musuraca, in his opinion one of top directors of photography. Musuraca was also responsible for the images in his other favorite Mitchum film, the moody “Blood on the Moon”“, one of the last Westerns to be shot in black and white for the big screen. However, this served the film well. It was as much a psychological thriller as it was a Western. As such, it was more concerned with interior spaces than with the frontier. Musuraca had made his mark when he“d worked for producer Val Lewton on a string of psychological horror movies that were done by RKO the 1940s, the best of which were directed by Jacques Tourneur, like “Cat People”“, once again with Nick Musuraca behind the camera. And then “I Walked With A Zombie”“. He recalled that film vividly for its stark black and white photography and the images of women clad in white gowns walking through fields of sugar cane during the night. The movie was all about romance and voodoo. It all depended on your willingness to believe that Jessica, the sick wife of the owner of sugar cane plantation, was turned into a zombie by the wide-eyed natives, meaning a person without any free will. Naturally, there were a few twists and turns in the plot, which also involved her mother-in-law, a Doctor of Medicine, who had gone native, but it was a very effective thriller. Back in the EC days, he had done several stories involving the practice of voodoo religion. His own favorite came in The Vault of Horror No. 28 in 1952. In “Till Death”¦”“ he was indeed riffing on “I Walked With A Zombie”“, while also imitating the art style of Milton Caniff to some degree. And he provided one of his trademark covers that really scared you, at least it did if you were a child, a cover that harkened back to the old pulp covers which peddled the exotic as creepy and unknown. There was a blonde woman in her white wedding dress but tied to a pole. You could still tell that she must have been beautiful once, though her face was skeletal now. A bunch of dark-skinned men and one white guy danced around her, performing something that clearly looked like some ancient ritual which was arcane, dark and forbidden in nature and wouldn“t yield the desired results. It would not. “Till Death”¦”“ was the sad tale of Steve who had built up a sugar cane plantation on the Caribbean Islands and who had waited the whole time to have something respectable to offer to his girl at home. He needed to be a success before he wanted to bring Donna over from the States. Now that he was, he waited anxiously for the cruise ship to come into the harbor with her on board. On the plantation, the natives welcomed her like a long-lost daughter. And he and Donna were wed in a modest ceremony on his own land, with the natives banging their drums and dancing. He was clearly well liked. So was Donna who did not move from his side. But then she caught a bad fever. She died shortly afterwards. Back in those days the narration couldn“t have been melodramatic and overwrought enough, and he was laying it on thick: “The next day, you bury her! The long, chanting procession climbs to the top of the hill where the yawning grave waits! Through the trackless jungle, drums resound! The enchanted isle of romance has returned to its former evil self!”“ But this was a horror story in a comic. Death was just the beginning.

As so very often in tales around that time, the well-meaning natives took the words of the white man a bit too literally. When a grief-stricken Steve told his loyal servant Jebco that he“d “do anything to have her with me again! I“d never let her out my sigh, Jebco! I“d keep her”¦ and love her forever!”“, obviously the young plantation owner should“ve chosen his words more careful. Jebco stole Donna“s body and he and some of the natives danced around the corpse as they performed some voodoo magic. Donna came back to Steve in the white dress he“d buried her in only a short while ago, and everything was perfect. That was until she began to slowly rod away before his very eyes. And the smell! Donna, though mute now, was clingier than she“d ever been. She followed Steve everywhere, even to their bedroom, while her once lovely body was losing more and more of its decaying skin. He had to get rid of her, somehow. But even when he fired his pistol at her, this would not stop her from coming at him, to embrace him. He tried to hack her to pieces, but that only made things worse. And when Steve threw her from great heights out of his helicopter, she still came back to him. Finally, when he could no longer stand it, Steve poisoned himself. But yeah, there had to be some final twist for the horror host, The Vault-Keeper, to serve up as his closing pun. There was still Jebco, Steve“s loyal servant. He remembered his words well. Thus, the natives performed their dark voodoo ritual once more, only this time they brought Steve back so he could be with his bride till eternity, exactly like he“d told Jebco he wanted to be. This was indeed a fun little story, and it gave him the right kind of idea for a yarn he could spin for Warren. But this time in black and white, and with a more polished look to it. He took out some paper and made a few layouts and character sketches. He would start with funeral in the rain. A bereaved husband in a long overcoat and a hat. A young, elegant guy who was wealthy. He would make him look a bit like himself, only a bit younger. He didn“t want to have a huge gap between the husband and the deceased wife in age. He“d call the guy Gerry, or better still, Gerald. Sounded more credible. The woman would be Eve and she“d be a stunning beauty with long, dark hair. There needed to be a friend for Gerald, somebody to tell the readers about what had happened. Eve had fallen ill and there was nothing they could do for her. There was an idea. Gerald“s friend would be a medical doctor. This told you right away that Eva was dead and that there could be no mistake. Then she“d come back from the grave. He no idea how exactly, yet, but like in “Till Death”¦”“, it wouldn“t go well. She“d return as beautiful as ever and unlike Donna, Eve would be lucid and fully cognizant. This would make the horror much more palpable for both of them, husband and wife, instead of having her be just a vacant husk of her former self. But there“d be subtle indications that things were not alright. Instead of Gerald trying to get rid of her once he had realized that his wife was a zombie, Eve“s decay would come very slowly. He recalled that Joe Orlando had done a similar tale in which a woman slowly began to fall apart. This could be a metaphor for anything or nothing. He had no idea really, but he imagined the grand finale. He would build to it by using two symmetrical images. He took another sheet of paper and began to sketch a picture of Gerald and Eve in a tight embrace. She was in her white dress he had buried her in. This was like the reunion of Steve and Donna in his EC tale for The Haunt of Fear, but with a nice twist. Whereas Donna was just a body brought back by some dark voodoo magic, Eve was like she had always been. The full body shot showed her from behind. She was as perfect as she“d been. The way the shot was framed, you could see the expression on Gerald“s face. He was stunned, and happy that she“d come back to him. At the end of the story, he“d repeat the same image, but this time reversed, with Gerald“s back to the reader and the camera placed over his shoulder. There“d be a full-length mirror. And while Eve“s face still seemed normal and she tenderly kissed one of his cheeks, his eyes would catch the image of her back side as reflected in the mirror. And his eye would get wide with terror when he saw that her back was all rotten and the skin came off her bones. What a cool twist. Then Goodwin could have a panel for one of his horror hosts to make a clever closing remark. Goodwin phoned him up just a few days later to ask how far along he was and that they would love to have the story ready for their second issue of Eerie. He told him that he had done the layouts and that he had an overall idea for the plot. He told Goodwin what he“d come up with. The editor liked what he heard. He suggested that he“d focus on the artwork and let him do the script for his first tale with them. He said he could script it and dialogue it in like thirty minutes. That was surprising, but he agreed. One last thing, Archie asked before he got off the line. Had he thought of a name he wanted to use instead of his real name? He had, indeed. He“d written down his initials. Then he read them out loud. Jay Taycee.

The thin man in the gray, two-button suit who stood at the panorama window of his new office looked at the leather sofa in the corner and then at his new desk which came with a glass table-top. It was April 1966. His name was John Thomas Alexis Craig and he was born in Pleasantville, New York on this day in 1926. He was forty years of age today, an age that the young generation considered old. Three weeks ago, he got his promotion. He had been moved up from Art Director to Vice President. Still he wondered on how many desks in the country you would find a stack of comic books and larger sized comic books that were ostensibly called magazines. One of those was Eerie No. 2 which featured the tale “Eye of the Beholder”“ that he had drawn, and Archie Goodwin had scripted. While he had put the finishing touches to the story which was a bit simplistic, he had gone to a few stores to get some comic books. He wanted to find out what the kids were reading these days and if it all was as clean as the material from ACG and DC/National. He was surprised to discover that Atlas Comics, Martin Goodman“s comic book line, had upped their game considerably. They were called Marvel Comics now and though their art looked a bit crude and roughly hewn; they were on to something. They had converted their lackluster science fiction and horror line into superhero books since this was the new big trend right now. Though they were still an also-run player, a role they“d been relegated to after their success with superheroes in 1940s, Marvel seemed to play the superhero game a bit differently. To him at least, their titles felt like the comics kids wanted to read who were a bit older and who no longer trusted those clean-cut heroes DC was peddling and who were ready to look deeper, at what lay beneath those bright, optimistic costumes and the big smiles and the bravado. EC Comics had trained them well or they had learned it from their older siblings. What caught his eye was a back-up strip in a series called Strange Tales. Issue No. 115 from three years ago lay on his new desk and it was opened to the scene in which the protagonist, a former surgeon who had lost some of the motoric skills in his fine-tuned hands, was not taking no for an answer on his quest for someone who could restore his surgical abilities. He was spending his money fast and was willing to listen to any quack and charlatan around the world who promised him a cure. That was until he“d heard of a man who could. This scene was similar to the sequence in which Gerald, after his wife“s premature demise, travels the world to find someone, anyone really, who could bring her back to him, that was till he did. When he still had been unable to figure out how, in the story, he wanted to bring Eve back, the editor had told him that having a bunch of wide-eyed, dancing natives do it with some voodoo mumbo-jumbo wouldn“t cut it, that they couldn“t do this stuff anymore, he“d been a bit surprised. And he felt a bit out of touch. And old. Archie was eleven years younger than he. That was when he“d gone to a few stores that sold new comics and which had a storeroom with some back issues. Then, once he had seen their finished story and he“d looked at some of those comics, a few from Marvel, he realized that Archie must have gotten some inspiration from that other story, which was by an extremely talented artist by the name of Steve Ditko, who also worked freelance for Warren, Goodwin told him. Clearly, some things hadn“t changed. Like in the days of EC Comics, creators were still getting their “inspiration”“ from other published material rather than from real life. Likewise, the first few issues of their Creepy and Eerie felt like a very surface level imitation of the material EC Comics had published throughout the early 1950s. Then there were the two hosts who were clearly modeled after the three original EC GhouLunatics. The yarns the rail-thin Uncle Creepy and the lumbering Cousin Eerie were spinning, and which they usually closed with a horribly bad pun, must have felt comfortably familiar to older readers and new fans, who were just discovering the classic tales via digest size paperback reprints. Which was not a bad thing, but the Warren tales were treading too much on old ground to create any excitement beyond the nostalgia. Chances were, readers experienced this content as a vicarious rehash. Nothing felt urgent or authentic. There were no stakes if all you wanted to do was to plug a few member berries. Like Jim Warren wasn“t the first guy to discover that the magazine format was a clever Comics Code workaround, there“d been another horror comic book magazine before. Maybe Archie didn“t know about this, or he thought that he didn“t know, but beyond the Picto-Fiction magazines Gaines had tried, a little fly by night publisher named Pastime Publications had put out a comic magazine in the style of EC in 1959. Weird Mysteries looked like an EC horror comic, but like Creepy, it was a black and white magazine that came with a nice hand-painted cover (by George Tuska) and like with Warren, it came with its own horror host, one who looked similar to The Vault-Keeper. After an advertisement that promised to “add 3 inches of steel-like muscles to your arm”¦”“, with a picture of a body builder who looked like Frank Frazetta, readers got to meet “Morgue“n, your monster of ceremoanies!”“ There were more stories in this issue than in your standard EC comics, the same as with the Warren titles, but these were much shorter, ranging from a one-pager to three or four pages. The art throughout was well above average, with some veterans like Carl Burgos and Paul Reinman, and newcomers like Tuska and Angelo Torres covering this front. Almost every story was written by Carl Wessler, who“d come to EC at a time when Al Feldstein, who was writing one eight-pager per week, needed help. He“d worked with Wessler as well. As for Weird Mysteries, one of the stories was about brothers who hated each other. But sadly, for them, they were conjoined twins. Most likely the writer hadn“t told his artist (again George Tuska), or the publisher, that he“d lifted exactly the same premise from “”¦My Brother“s Keeper”“, a story he“d done for EC five years earlier when George Evans brought the first version of it to life with his incredible vérité art style. However, Weird Mysteries had only seen its premier issue come out, since perhaps their imitation game hewed a bit too close to home, which had made this pastiche of the early 50s EC Comics seem very outdated in 1959. One could argue that this was equally true for how “Eye of the Beholder”“ had turned out, with Goodwin scripting. But then again, not even the Eerie name was new. That was the title for horror one-shot Avon had put out in 1947. And surprisingly, American Comics Group, the comic book shingle for which he“d done the tale that in turn had prompted Warren“s editor to place an unsolicited phone call to him, was the second publisher out of the gate to venture into the horrific. Adventures Into The Unknown began in 1948, and it was still running in 1966. As he“d seen when he got the back issues of Creepy, there was a subversive bent to the material Warren was putting out. Warren and its editor were good at creating a vibe of the forbidden, but still they were going for the low-hanging fruit. Horror themes were completely banished from regular comics when the Comics Code was established in 1954. Now, Warren brought back all the vampires and werewolves you could shake a stick at, but it felt like a continuation of what EC had started or American Comics Group for that matter, but without the subtext that had made EC such a stand-out. Feldstein was wont to use exaggerations as his weapon of choice, and he himself had emulated the film noirs with their gritty urban, big town, bright lights cityscapes of success and abysmal failure living right next to each other. And those femme fatales, who“d seen a rise to prominence in the days of the Second World War and during the first days after V-Day. Consequently, their tales moved away from the police procedurals that had made Lev Gleason“s Crime Does Not Pay so popular with readers. Surely, when Al Feldstein and he began working together, they“d shamelessly mimicked the moralizing tenor that those books ostensibly peddled, but even with EC in its infancy, they had allowed a subversiveness to slip into their stories for War Against Crime! and Crime Patrol, which slowly began to erode the original mission statement of these books, which soon featured tales about cops and crooks in name only. Since they“d been unable to compete with the slick production values of their competitor, they“d had stumbled into something much more exciting: stories that came with an edge and a realness and characters who were often conflicted and multifaceted. So, for his second story for Warren, which was for Creepy No. 8, he“d insisted on writing this one himself, he“d wanted to shake things up a bit like in the old EC days. Like Bill Gaines, Archie was game. The way to do it, did not lie with looking back, like with “Eye of the Beholder”“, but looking at what was going on around you. That was what Al Feldstein and he had done in the 1950s.

The American middle class hadn“t killed each other in their new model homes like Feldstein had deluded himself into believing they very much would. But things were falling apart more than ever. The center wouldn“t hold, and anarchy was loosed upon the world. He saw it when he drove into the city everyday for work. Young men who were only a few years older than his two sons began to wear their hair almost shoulder-length. Fifteen year old girls in mini-skirts and go-go-boots detested their mothers they“d seen become housewives, unhappily trapped in their homes filled with the materialism of their shiny kitchen appliances and a better life through chemistry. And amidst this generation gap, everything seemed to have a harder edge to it. This was not the cynicism of Feldstein“s homicidal suburban soap operas, and it wasn“t the broken romanticism of the film noir detective who had forfeit his one true shot at real love and redemption when he“d allowed a femme fatale to get in-between him and the only girl who sensed his capacity for being a good man. Barbara Stanwyck was the establishment now. Bob Mitchum would see a resurgence to meaningfulness when a baby boomer screenwriter re-designed the noir detective into a lone samurai warrior who took on the Japanese mafia. That was still ways off into the future. But he“d looked at what Hollywood currently was doing. As usually, what was being put on the silver screen reflected what was happening in society, and society wanted a different type of hero. Men like himself, who were in their forties and who had made something out of themselves, were sick and tired of those long-haired know-it-alls who disrespected their dads, leftists and troublemakers who loudly protested at U.C. Berkeley against their country“s military involvement in South Asia. Silent men who had watched the changing demographic and ethnic make-up of the cities, and even the suburbs, give rise to conflicts that often ended in streets riots like those in Los Angeles in 1964. It was no coincidence that incumbent Pat Brown, who“d beaten Dwight D. Eisenhower“s erstwhile sidekick Richard Nixon soundly, to secure a second term for himself, was now in a statistical dead heat to win the California Gubernatorial Election this year. A long-time shoo-in to win re-election in ”˜66, Brown not only saw the decline of his popularity, but a sheriff had come into town who waged an all-out war against his politics of responsible liberalism. Tough-talking, charismatic actor Ronald Reagan, who up until recently had appeared in supporting roles in motion pictures, was more than ready to put an end to civil disorder and the antics of the crazed left in support of the men like him. His campaign team was selling Reagan to the voters as a citizen politician and the voice of reason like the ads of his agency were helping their clients to push their detergent and their cars. And at the movies, men like him now had actor Lee Marvin as their machismo wish fulfillment fantasy. Marvin“s characters knew how to put the drinks away, and still their aim was true. Any woman who dared a double-cross or who attempted to con them out of their money, the silver-haired Marvin had them figured from the start or he“d serve them their comeuppance. Men who thought themselves intellectuals and well-above Lee“s caveman manners or who knew they lacked his street-smarts, could identify with the devilishly attractive John Cassavetes, who was no push-over either. In the late 1950s, the actor had played a private eye, but with a hipster bent. He was a cool-cat jazz pianist as well, thanks to the skills of composer Elmer Bernstein. Cassavetes possessed the wiry, high-strung nervousness that many fathers who had mortgage bills to pay, on-top of their kids tuition fees, could relate to, men, who came home from their work in the big city to their model home in neighborhoods that once had looked very different. Reagan, Marvin and Cassavetes had appeared in Don Siegel“s film “The Killers”“, based in name only on Hemingway“s short story. Instead, it was a variation on the femme fatale theme of “Out of the Past”“, but with a modern woman in form of actress Angie Dickinson. Her character was front and center on the movie poster and alluringly so. The tagline told you exactly where this was going: “There is more than one way to kill a man”¦”“ The poster warned “Not suitable for children”“, which meant that naturally every self-respecting ten-year-old kid was dying to see the film. And what they saw, and what the men his age saw, was the guy who had a good chance to win the election for Governor of California in November, smack Dickenson“s character brutally right across the face. Naturally, it was all a ruse. In reality, her character had re-made Cassavetes“s race car driver into a get-away driver and into a fall guy whom she wanted to see dead. But as it was with this new-wave cynicism, in the end she got shot dead by Lee Marvin“s character. This was what the present held for any duplicitous woman in this era“s male fantasy world. For his second story for Goodwin and James Warren, which was called “The Mountain”“, he“d taken the basic premise of an episode from the television show The Twilight Zone. In “The Howling Man”“, a somewhat ignorant American, who travels Europe in the wake of the First World War, got lost during a storm. He is admitted into a hermitage where he discovers a prisoner. He is told that this man was the devil himself. A member of the religious orders further explains to him, that mankind“s greatest weakness has always been its inability to see through the devil“s disguises. Convinced that these hermits must have gone mad in their castle high up in the mountains, the American tourist releases their captive from his cell, to disastrous results, of course. He“d then combined this idea with a female character who had manipulated men once too often, much like Angie Dickinson“s character Sheila had. She would be in every panel. At the beginning of the story she was seen running away from a group of self-proclaimed upstanding and moralistic citizens, not content with simply banning the temptress to the city limits like a sheriff would in a western tale with undesirable characters. While she cursed them out, she made her way across a thick blanket of snow, which very much was a symbol of the innocent lives she“d destroyed. When she comes across a young man who tells her he cannot leave the cabin he is in, she does not ask any further questions, because he quickly promises her a means by which she can get her revenge. She is the one who gets punished in the end, because the young student is the devil himself, and as he takes on his real form, like the howling man, after he“d been set free by the tourist, she is thrown ever deeper into hell. Visually, his second Warren story was much better in how he utilized the stark black and white format and the opportunity for inks wash effects. Though he“d made use of elements from various other materials again, he“d felt that it much better reflected the world he experienced on a daily basis. There were some women out there who did not fight for gender equality, but who wanted to be in charge of it all, like how now they were in control of their bodies. The Birth Control Pill had been approved by the FDA less than six years ago, and it had dramatically changed the sexual landscape. Now women wanted revenge on the patriarchy that had held them back. They wanted to get even with the judgmental men who were telling them how they were allowed to live their lives. In a way he had predicted this. Back in the days at EC Comics, Al Feldstein had conceded editorship of The Haunt of Fear to him for what turned out to be the last six issues. In the last four issues he“d featured his only recurring character, an addition to the GhouLunatics, the freakish hosts that tethered every story in their horror books. Only in this case, she was a woman. Ostensibly introduced by The Vault-Keeper as a new hostess, her appearances were limited to the lead-in story which he wrote and drew himself, and she never spoke a word. Without any further explanation, Drusilla was just there and looked pretty and a bit pissed. Clad in a long black dress, which generously showed off her ample cleavage, she was like a sulking little girl in the body of a young, sultry woman with some nice goth chic. Being a bit arrogant, Drusilla“s face and body language supplied more information than the over wordy Vault-Keeper. Without saying anything, gorgeous, raven-haired Drusilla revealed The Vault-Keeper for the buffoonish bumbler he was. Any eight-year-old reader, boys and girls alike, knew who the boss was. Like the women that were in his past, women who all loved life.

The end was not the end, not really. In the November-December 1954 issues of the comic books they“d been working on for four years now, Gaines ran a full-page announcement. He“d shut down five series which combined made up EC“s entire output except for the war and humor books and the science fiction title that was left after the earlier merger of Weird Science and Weird Fantasy. With this move, all books with horror and crime content were effectively cancelled. Since comics came with a cover date that was dated ahead and these were bi-monthly books, Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror and their sister publications would stay on the spinner racks of your local store a few months into the new year, but the show was over. Gaines and Feldstein explained the move to readers: “As a result of hysterical, injudicious, and unfounded charges leveled at crime and horror comics, many retailers and wholesalers throughout the country have been intimidated into refusing to handle this type of magazine. Although we at EC still believe, as we have in the past, that the charges against horror and crime comics are utter nonsense, there“s no point in going into a defense of this kind of literature at the present time.”“ But it wasn“t like the publisher was calling it quits altogether. In the same letter, EC promised five new, yet to be announced comic books: “They won“t be horror magazines”¦ they won“t be crime magazines! They“ll be utterly new and different, but in the old reliable EC tradition!”“ Surely, this sounded exciting, but was it? Arguably, what had made EC survive in the first place was the line of books Gaines and Feldstein had just pulled the plug on. He knew that, and everybody else knew it. He recalled the day he had stepped from the elevator in 1946. All-American Comics wasn“t gone as it turned out, put after Max Gaines had been asked to sell his stake, they had moved. M.C. Gaines was quick to set up a new company from the money he“d made in the sale. But Educational Comics floundered right out of the gate. And if you took into account how he“d treated his own kid, choosing this name came with some irony. However, Gaines knew the business inside out and he quickly devised another imprint called Entertaining Comics. When he knocked on their door, he was surprised to see what a small outfit both lines were. All-American had a huge staff, Gaines now had a handful of people working on all kinds of titles that ranged from Picture Stories from the Bible and Blackstone the Magician Detective Fights Crime (surely a mouthful). Gaines, who still scared the living daylights out of him, and his office manager Sol Cohen looked at him and then they looked at his art portfolio from his work right after the war. Artist Sheldon Moldoff was still there from the All-American days, and Gaines told him to mentor him until he was ready to do some interior work. Moldoff was working on a special project at the time, to recreate the magic of Wonder Woman. While Moldoff did the artwork for the first issue of Moon Girl and the Prince, he was allowed to do the cover, and he did the covers for some other books as well. But then, Max Gaines was killed in a boating accident, and his wife Jessie convinced their son Bill to take over, the same boy Max had beaten black and blue when he was a kid. Her friends had told Jessie that there was still money to be made with the funny books, and nobody really understood why Max had sold his stake in All-American, but then, they didn“t know Harry Donenfeld or Jack Liebowitz for that matter. Initially though, Cohen ran the show. It took Bill some effort to come into the offices of the outfit that had belonged to his father it seemed. He just came in to sign the checks. Sol Cohen cancelled the Educational line and the kiddie comics, and he began to put out western and crime comics because these were selling decent numbers. When he asked if he could do some interior art, Cohen said he might as well do some stuff for Moon Girl because they were cancelling that one as well pretty soon. He did a crime story and for a later issue, he did a horror story since publisher Avon had done an entire issue devoted to horror. Then two things happened. Sol Cohen who was not interested in going down with the sinking ship, quit EC Comics. And Moldoff talked to Bill about doing a horror comic. The younger Gaines who by now took things a bit more seriously but who was distracted by all kinds of business matters without Cohen, said why not. Moldoff put a lot of work into the first issue of a series he named Tales of the Supernatural. While he kept a close watch on what the older artist was doing, he was working on the western series that he been established under Cohen and Gaines, books like Saddle Justice and Gunfighter, on which they also had a new artist working whose name was Graham Ingels and who was even a couple of years older than Moldoff, but he wasn“t as good. And he did covers for the two crime books, which was progress since he liked the genre. Gaines canned Moldoff“s horror title, since his mind was now on romance books and teen romance in particular which seemed to be the new hot trend. Early in 1949 he hired an artist away from Victor Fox, a fellow with the name Al Feldstein who was great for that sort of material. Right around that time, Moldoff left for greener pastures. Perhaps because Gaines had shot-down his idea for a horror comic after he and some of his colleagues had put in the work, or because he sensed that Gaines“ latest hire was to become his golden boy, something that was apparent by the ridiculously rich contract Bill Gaines had offered Al Feldstein for a book he was to create, a contract that offered the artist profit participation on this series. However, there was once again no follow-through on Gaines“ part, since he had gotten word that teen romance books were no longer selling. With Feldstein around, he now had to compete for assignments. Al Feldstein wasn“t a mentor like Sheldon had been, but a competitor and soon his boss. This point was driven home to him quickly. By now, he was writing his material as well as drawing it, and he was doing interior work on the crime titles. Then something strange happened between issues No. 5 and 6 of War Against Crime, which both came out early in 1949. In No. 5 he did a story about a gangster moll who he featured on the splash page with a full body shot. This was the tale of Betty, a counter girl at a drugstore who got into a life of crime by manipulating a racketeer. In the drawing, Betty Swenley, in her new role as Miss Mob Marker, was supposed to look alluring, a young woman who would find it easy to wrap all men around her little finger. The crude illustration he managed of her was anything, but. Not even little boys would look at that picture and say that she looked better than their older sisters who were still in high school. There was nothing attractive about Betty and his image of her, especially not in comparison to the way Feldstein drew women. However, in the next issue he remade this story, only better. There was also a gangster who got manipulated by a girl, but Midge Calhoun needed no meal ticket and most certainly, she needed no gun for hire. She was quite capable herself, even better than the men. But to pull off her break-ins and her heists, she was not above getting some insider intel from her husband, a mere patrol cop who couldn“t provide her with the rich lifestyle she felt was owed to her. In a way, this was a clear break with the tradition of the crime comic. Midge was a regular citizen from a lower middle class background, a young housewife who was married to an upstanding, somewhat naïve cop. And she made sure to have his lunch and dinner ready for him. Whereas he“d failed with depicting Betty Swenley as anything but a stick figure, Midge was the opposite. Men certainly turned their heads when they saw Mrs. Calhoun walk by in her tight sweaters that happened to accentuate her firm, round breasts to the point that one had to fear for the structural integrity of her garments. As for the moral integrity of “The Woman Who Loved Life”“, she had none. Once she“d embarked upon a life of crime, she was even willing to lure her husband into an ambush when he grew suspicious of her activities. Arguably, Midge Calhoun, who looked a lot like Barbara Stanwyck, was the first femme fatale in comics who wasn“t the girlfriend of some gangster boss. He continued this trend in the next issue. In “The Scavenger Siren”“, it is a mere coincidence which lures pretty waitress Toni onto the wrong path. At first the raw excitement of being close to gangster Mike Malott is reward enough, but then the adrenaline rush wears off, and Toni pulls a double-cross on Mike and his men when she robs them in disguise after their latest heist. She pulls a gun quite easily on them. When Mike, who is entirely clueless in regard to Toni“s duplicity, and she need to skip town, the gangster boss has long since become the duo“s weak link. It“s Toni who pulls a gun on a shady casino owner who has cleaned them out. Now hunted by the cops and the criminal underworld alike, when Mike loses his cool completely, the raven-haired woman puts her beau out of his misery by revealing her true nature and shooting him dead. With just a few issues, he had redefined crime comics. Of all the three women in these three tales, Toni was the most gorgeous. He“d named her after his wife.

But his elation would last only this long. Feldstein, who was now the de facto editor of all the EC books, called him into his office to tell him that in his mind, he wasn“t putting out his assignments fast enough. As a corrective measure, they would share art duties, and Feldstein would do the scripting as well. That came as a shock to him and he surely didn“t want to put his name to it, since he might soon go back to working for some of the other publishers like he“d done when he got his discharge. Of course, he didn“t tell Feldstein that. The editor agreed on using a moniker. They combined their names and thus artist F. C. Aljon was born whose work began to appear in a western story, and then in the crime story “I Fight Crime”“, which was painfully dull, and with artwork suspiciously looking like the stuff Al Feldstein did on his own. In fact, Feldstein“s inks had completely overpowered his pencils. With that experience, another disappointment was right around the corner. Feldstein had written a story called “Hate!”“ which was his version of the reformatory school tales you sometimes saw in movies from the ”˜30s. The twist was, that the life of a young person with antisocial tendencies that was shown was that of a girl. And she wasn“t born bad, but men had always treated her poorly until she began to develop a hatred for all men. When her boss confronted her about a minor mistake, she about had it. Edna Sunday hit him with a sculpture which conveniently was lying around the office. Once he threatened that he“d report her to the police, this was his end. Edna strangulated him to his death with a rope. And she didn“t stop there. More men had to die in the same way, since men had always hated her. That was until Edna met Johnny who asked her out nicely and whom she began to date. Johnny even proposed to her and they got engaged. Though Edna was a killer, unbeknownst to her beau, Johnny“s love had completely transformed the bitter young woman: “You“re wonderful, Johnny. You“ve changed my ideas about men.”“ But things were not the way Edna had hoped: “However, through the long winter and into the early spring, Edna Sunday kept asking the same question, when are we going to be married?”“ Then, late in summer, Edna“s fiancé revealed to her that he“d strung her along. He was seeing somebody else and he intended to marry her instead. She was enraged, clearly, and they broke up, not in the least because Edna took the news very hard and she began to scare him. Edna, who“d burned her rope, followed her former fiancé on his date with the other woman, with a knife in her hand. In the end, she tripped on the engagement ring she“d put into one of the pockets of her coat from which it had slipped during the scuffle with Johnny when she confronted him on the street after his date. Edna fell onto her own knife. This was a depressing story, with art that wasn“t this attractive either. What it showed, though, was Feldstein“s cynicism. To make matters worse, the opening panel of “Hate!”“ featured a close-up shot of a man being garroted with a rope by an unseen assailant, a depiction that ultimately was deemed too shocking prior to publication. It was replaced by an image that showed a close-up of Eda“s scowling face next to a blurb that informed readers that this was “A true crime story from police files”“, which of course it wasn“t. And the story was now called “Edna Sunday”“ instead of “Hate!”“. All in all, the collaboration with Feldstein did not last long. Feldstein“s style overwhelmed his own artwork, and though the editor would later claim he“d suggested this method to make sure he got more pages done and had more money, it was not an enjoyable experience. Feldstein was off to a new thing anyway. He suggested to Gaines that they should try horror comics. Bill treated Feldstein“s idea like it was some kind of revelation. Maybe he simply didn“t recall that Moldoff had come to him with the same proposal. The artist hadn“t forgotten, though. When he got word that EC Comics was getting into the horror game, Moldoff briefly considered suing his former employer. Still after two try-out stories, both done by Feldstein, Gaines went full steam ahead this time. In short order, he turned three existing titles into horror books. This brought the rather dull western, romance and crime books to an end. But there would be a new crime comic in the mix as well, Crime SuspenStories, and with him now writing and drawing a story in one of the horror books, The Vault of Horror, he also took on one of the tales in the new anthology title, since both books were on a bi-monthly schedule. Whereas Feldstein liked to tell crime stories that took place in the suburbs, which had seen a population increase after the war, he still had the opportunity to shape this new crime series with his predilection for urban settings and a film noir flavor, while he was also still experimenting with his art style. Though “The Woman Who Loved Life”“ and “The Scavenger Siren”“ had showed him a direction into which he wanted to go, initially, he wanted to play it a bit more safe, especially in light of the admonishment from Feldstein who virtually controlled all the books except for the niche writer-artist Harvey Kurtzman had managed to carve out for himself. Harvey was now editing the war title he“d suggested to Bill, Two-Fisted Tales. For the crime books, he looked at the artwork of one of his idols, Will Eisner. “Dead-Ringer”“ and “Backlash”“, the two stories which saw print in Crime SuspenStories No. 2 and No. 4 (1951) respectively, were deliberately done with an Eisner template in mind, as evidenced right from the splash pages. “Dead-Ringer”“ opened with a strikingly unusual page when compared to what had come before in this type of books. Here was the sky at night, and except for the story title, which just hung in the air, a few tiny stars and four small characters at the bottom, the entire page was black. The latter story had a slight humoristic bent. Both yarns offered a look at the fate of an ordinary joe who“d made a bad decision, an approach Eisner took occasionally with some of The Spirit newspaper strip stories. “Backlash”“ ended with a panel that offered a tight shot of a gloved hand holding a gun which was a very Eisner influenced image. In issue No. 5, he combined this formula with a decidedly film-noir-esque visual style which was the perfect showcase for the progress he“d made, not only as an artist, but as a writer and storyteller. “The Sewer”“ was the story of Harry Marks, a guy in his forties who was trapped underground. Once again, there was a splash page that was unique for a comic book crime story, but had Eisner“s fingerprints all over it: just the entrance to the city“s sewer system, with the manhole cover shoved to one side and the steel stairs visible which led from the open shaft into the bowls of this metropolis while the street, the curb and the gutters were still filled with the water from a most recent downpour. Harry looked pretty wasted in the first images readers got to see of him. He was almost completely submerged underground, with only his head and one hand sticking out from the foul wastewater. This was when Harry recalled the party he“d attended. Harry was the business manager of matinee idol John Golden. The handsome, blonde actor was a drunk and a womanizer, which was unfortunate for his wife Irene with whom Harry was secretly in love. With his client once again on his worst behavior, Harry had seized the opportunity to throw his hat into the ring to see if she had feelings for him as well, after he“d ingratiated himself to her with his attentiveness and his well-placed digs at John. And indeed, as he“d had hoped, Irene reciprocated his feelings for her. Irene hated John as much as he hated him, but she hoped that the actor would agree to a divorce. But he quickly disabused her of such a foolish notion. With his many affairs, her wayward spouse would so much as put a huge target on his back for any woman if he made himself available again. Every ingenue and every debutante would be eager to land such a prize. There was only one way. They had to kill him.

With Irene“s blessing and backing, Harry makes sure that John is more drunk than is his wont. Then they lure him into his bathroom. With everyone else is gone now, there wouldn“t be any witnesses. The wiry manager lays a nasty haymaker right on his unsuspecting, severely inebriated client“s face. There is the same kinetic energy to this powerful punch that you saw whenever Will Eisner“s Spirit cleaned the clock of some thug. But John does not die from being violently struck down, but he rather drowns in his own bathtub which Harry has filled with water. We, the readers, experience this in the reaction of the couple which is shown in a profile shot. Harry is tall and in a dominant position as he gloats while John slowly dies. Standing next to Harry, Irene is smaller, as if she has shrunken. Her eyes are wide while one of her hands covers her mouth. She has regressed into a state of shock though Harry doesn“t even notice. At his moment of triumph, he might not care in the slightest for her. Now, what to do with the body? Harry places the wet corpse in the trunk of his car and Irene and he go for a ride. He had planned to kill John, but there was no plan beyond that. While he tries to figure out what they should do, his visage is bathed in sweat. So is Irene“s very pale face. With her eyes fixed into a blank stare, she is disoriented. Then he has an idea. They could throw John into the city“s sewer system. Once Harry had spotted a manhole, he quickly removed the cover and dragged the body of his client to the opening. This was when two things happened at the same time. It began to rain. And Irene“s face, her soft skin damp with perspiration and from the rain, turns into a mask of terror as it dawns on her that John is really dead. She screams at the top of her lungs like Antigone when she was sealed into a cave alive, the sentence for violating the laws of her king, Creon of Thebes, who was also her uncle. Defiantly, she“d given her slain brother Polynices a proper burial by cremating his remains. In her mind, Polynices wasn“t evil, but just weak-spirited, like John Golden, the golden idol of many movies and of his adoring fans. And Polynices, like John, was killed by someone very familiar to him. Polynices by his own brother Eteocles, John by his manager who had pretended to be his friend and the friend of his wife Irene. But he was neither, and in the moment when he denies John his dignity even in death, as he pulls his rigid corpse callously closer towards the opening in the pavement and he is about to have what lies at the end of the dark shaft be his final resting place, like John was a half-discarded item Harry no longer had any need for, like John was human refuse, Irene is now gripped by a demonic madness. Irene experiences a black night of her soul that Harry Marks has brought about, like the dark clouds and the rain, the savage torrents that will wash the entire city away it seems, to paraphrase a line from Sophocles“ tragedy. Like King Creon, who“d ordered Polynices“ body to be laid-out in the open, unprotected from scavengers and carrion birds, it is he who is truly mad. He calls Irene “a little idiot”“ while he fails to understand what is ailing her mind. Irene runs away from him. Instead of feeling the warmth of her body heat next to him, he is left alone with a cold, very wet corpse. Once his mission to get rid of John is completed, he drives across town in the heavy rain to find the girl he told himself he is in love with. But not to comfort her or to protect her from her madness, but simply to make sure that she won“t talk to the police. It“s hours later, when the morning paper arrives, that he learns that she“s gone to the police. To his relief, though, he finds out that the officers think her mad as well. Irene was now a sister to Lady Macbeth. She“d taken part in their devious deed, albeit in a passive role, and it had driven her insane. Harry doesn“t fear Irene“s madness, but the calmness which followed her state of shock. Once she had her wits about her again, she would likely make a renewed attempt at telling her story, to cleanse herself of the foulness of murder. With her lucidity restored, the cops would be more open to listening to her account of what had happened. Like he“d done it with the Goldens, he tried to wheedle his way into the confidence of the cops like the smarmy operator he was, with feigning concern about her well-being. But no dice. Since Irene is under twenty-four-hour guard with no visitors allowed, Harry is asked to leave the police station, and when he still refuses and keeps arguing, a clean-cut officer shows him the door. Frustrated and anxious that Irene might talk soon, Harry drives through the torrents of rain once more. When he returns, he finds police detectives waiting for him at his house. Fearing for the worst, he“s sure that Irene must have talked, and the men have been sent to arrest him. He makes a daring escape only to discover that the police seem to be everywhere: “They are after me, all right! The whole neighborhood“s full of them! They“re everywhere, looking for me! Last time I“ll ever trust a woman!”“ As he tries to evade his pursuers, he runs into an alley, but it“s a dead end. There“s just one way left for him. Harry climbs into the sewer system, only to discover that the further he makes his way underground, the higher the waters gets. The system is overflowing from the downpour above. He can barely keep his head and upper body out from the cold, stinking wastewater, while his matches are the only light he has down there. Harry, who isn“t as handsome as John was, is a bit of a peacock. He“s a guy who dresses to impress and to call rank. Before he saw the police earlier about Irene, he“d put on an especially nicely tailored suit and he“d posed vainly in front of his bedroom mirror. Now, down in his own personal wet Hades, his expensive overcoat, his nice suit and his dress shirt are dirty and torn from the pipes and valves that make the narrow underground tunnels even smaller. Suddenly, he senses that something is brushing against his legs which are below the water level. It“s John“s corpse that the water has transported to this access point to the sewer system. What is worse, the body of his client is being drawn by the current of the water into the outlet pipe. Desperately, Harry tries to force the man whom he has murdered from the opening of the pipe, but to no avail. John, even in death, has thwarted him. With the water rising higher and without a way to recede, Harry drowns in a sea of green sewage water. However, with the wastewater lifting his body up to the ceiling where there“s no air left, Harry for once was above John. Fittingly, the penultimate panel belong to Irene who was accosted by two cops. She“d escaped from the hospital“s psychiatric ward where she“d made threats on Harry“s life. As it turned out, the two detectives Harry had run from earlier, had come to warn him about her escape. Irene was now back in custody, but she was broken in spirit. As the plainclothes detectives slowly walked away from a manhole cover and into the night, they were sure, Irene would no longer pose any threat to Harry“s life.

There was a distinct symmetry to this story but viewed in a dark mirror. Visually, there were many cues and callbacks to the style of Milton Caniff, with the look he“d given Irene, who was glamorous, at least at the outset of the story, and who still carried herself with the poise and grace of the upper class even while her mind slowly went blank. Irene was Lady Macbeth by way of Milt Caniff. Even more than that, he paid homage to Will Eisner and his most famous creation and to the city his character The Spirit lived in. The Spirit used to be Police Detective Denny Colt who“d seemingly met his premature demise when he confronted the deeply deranged Dr. Cobra in his underground lair, which was located under the city in the tunnels of sewer system of Central City. There was a rawness and swagger to the vivid images of this noir detective, something that was obviously derived from the superheroes which were all the rage around the time Eisner premiered his newspaper strip in conjunction with his publisher Everett Arnold. Nicknamed “Busy”“ for a reason, the entrepreneurial Arnold wanted to reverse-engineer the superhero as a syndicated newspaper serial. Siegel and Shuster, the teenagers from Cleveland who had come up with Superman, had originally intended him as feature in the cartoon section of a major newspaper. He was rejected though and instead he hadn“t only found his home with the young medium of comic books, but he transformed comics altogether which suddenly became ubiquitous. Sensing that now newspaper wanted a piece of the action so to speak, he contracted his “packager”“ Eisner (who with his collaborator Jerry Iger ran a studio whose artists provided much of the content for Arnold“s Quality Comics). Eisner, however had other ideas. Rather than to give Arnold simply what he asked for, he created a superhero in name only (he wore a mask, though), but in lieu of making him all powerful, he made him human. He was the perfect blend between the romantic noir detective, an everyman and a fantasy wish fulfillment. And he was geared towards a slightly older audience, thus kids and their parents could enjoy The Spirit. He was of course aware of what Eisner was doing and that he copied him. But as far as his own artistic development was concerned, if “The Woman Who Loved Life”“ presented the first time that he had been able to master his idea of the femme fatale (in the form of a lower middle class housewife no less), with “The Sewer”“ he“d derived at his own unique set of idiosyncratic, visually striking traits for his characters, and whole lexicon worth of motifs and recurring images to pull this off. Sure, he used the expressionistic shot compositions with their stark contrast between shadows and lights, especially when it came to the landscape of their cities that Eisner was using, and which they both lifted from film noirs and early silent movies from Germany, but with “The Sewer”“ he had the faces and bodies of Harry Marks and Irene tell the story of their state of mind. Harry and Irene, with their wide eyes and their overly tense bodies that were like compressed coils, ready to spring into hectic, misguided action at any moment, were his first characters that possessed an excitability and nervousness which was completely new to sequential art or to any other form of artistic expression for that matter. His characters were caught in the many traps their over-imaginative and feverish minds created for them long before they found themselves held by any physical constraints. And there was always a lot of sweat that bathed their heavily emoting visages while their eyes spoke of a defeat on a deeply humanistic level. These were men and women who were being crushed by their gods and the fates they“d carelessly tempted. The Spirit had found his death and rebirth in the tunnels of the sewer system of Central City, and Harry had died in the sewer, but this was also a birth in many ways, not in the least the birth of his own artistic voice. Only one other artist would use the same method of expression. He would put his own spin on it, though. Steve Ditko, the guy who did the Dr. Strange strip for Marvel Comics a few years later, and who brought this style to Warren, and before that, to Charlton Comics, with his rather creepy horror stories. As for his own stories, those fell into two categories quickly with the burgeoning success EC Comics had found once they“d entered into the horror game. He did horror tales and crime stories which he drew as well as wrote, something which was rather unusual since with the exception of Harvey Kurtzman, Al Feldstein wrote all the other stories (at least for the first couple of years). But every so often, his crime tales would feature supernatural or likewise unreal twist, and some of his horror tales were crime stories in disguise. “A Toast”¦ To Death!”“, which appeared in the next issue of Crime SuspenStories, was another story about a woman who loved life. And money. But she didn“t love her husband. One only needed to look at the splash page to get the idea. There was the aptly named Sherry in silhouette wearing a flimsy negligee and a near see-through house coat. And there was her gluttonous husband Alphonso, and with the way his round belly strained his shirt and him coasting a drink, you knew that he was neither an alpha male nor desirable. They had met when Sherry was just nineteen, and the much older vintner had impressed her with how he showed her a good time, meaning he was spending big time to woo her. But once they were married, they good times had ended. Alphonso was only interested in the wines he was growing. Had you spoken to young Sherry back then, the new lady of the house didn“t mind the absence of her much older spouse: “But it really wasn“t bad. I lolled around in the sun, and took life easy”¦”“ Still she craved fun. However, Alphonso had found a new love, a special “vine that grew just outside the house”¦ his special baby!”“ And the wine he made from that grape was most delicious, only their marriage had spoiled so badly by that time, she pretended it was the wine that had turned. She simply wouldn“t give him the satisfaction. By now she“d begun to imagine her life without her loser husband, but not sans the luxury his money afforded her. It seemed only logical that she would poison him. Sherry simply threw his body out the window and then she buried him beneath his beloved grapes. Her plan had worked. Since Alphonso was scheduled to go on a business trip, she feigned worry that she hadn“t heard from him, and she even hired an investigator who told her that it seemed that her husband had left her. But then she fell for one of the work men at the vineyard, a handsome blonde fellow she had hired to take care of Alphonso“s special vine. Once the grapes were harvested and Jack had made them into a fresh batch of wine, it was time to have a toast to the new life Sherry would be sharing with her new beau. He drank from the wine she didn“t need to taste, at least not more than once. Then disaster struck. Jack began to experience severe cramps which made him scream in pain and crumple on the floor. It is then that we realize that Sherry is telling us her story from death row (an idea he“d lifted from one of his favorite books, James M. Cain“s “The Postman Always Rings Twice”“, as well as the twist in which she got punished for an ironic accidental death). Jack had died from cyanide poisoning, you see. She had dosed Alphonso so heavily since he was a large guy, that the grapevine absorbed the poison through the soil once it leaked from his decomposing body. She couldn“t tell anyone this without admitting to the crime she“d committed. She“s found guilty of having poisoned her lover. The cyanide gas of the gas chamber awaited Sherry, another woman who loved life.

“A Toast”¦ To Death!”“ was a tale that was told as much through Sherry“s face and her reaction to those events as it was told through her narration. This was something he“d only improve on over time, like in “Touch and Go!”“, which appeared in Crime SuspenStories No. 17 (1953), his only adaptation of a story by Ray Bradbury. A deceivingly simply tale on its surface, it was a story about compulsive behavior that was brought about by post-traumatic stress (in this case the killer“s) and thus it fit perfectly into his own wheelhouse. William Acton had murdered a man name Arthur Huxley with his bare hands at his estate. Now he had to make sure that he scrubbed his fingerprints off each and every item he“d touched during their brief conversation. Acton put on gloves and set about to clean every surface that may retain what was his, the traces of his presence which might tie him to the crime. At first, he starts systematically, as he realizes that he must have touched several things throughout the house. His prints were everywhere. Armed with a polishing handkerchief, he begins with the body. The floor is next. And then the walls. All the objects on the table need to be wiped as well. Even the fruit in the bowl on the table. Though he“d started off quite reasonably, wanting to make sure there wasn“t any sign of his having ever been to the house of the wealthy man he“d murdered, his attempts at making sure he would not miss a single item he might have touched became increasingly erratic. His mind was racing back to his meeting as he now wrecked his brain to recall yet another object he might have touched. Frantically, Acton even began to use the magnifying glass Huxley had sometimes used for reading. Acton“s fixation with removing every trace of his in the whole house has almost become a fetish to him. William Acton is like an animal caught in a trap that grew smaller in size while his task is ever expanding in scope. What about the chandelier on the ceiling? He couldn“t possibly have touched that one? But the silverware and the dishes? He now recalled that Huxley had bragged about a knife made of real silver. Naturally, Acton would need to clean the plates and the cutlery and the expensive ceramics, like the bowl Huxley had insisted he“d touch. He was sweating profusely, and his eyes were wide with terror and awe at his insurmountable task: “Three o“clock! There were twelve rooms downstairs and eight above. One hundred chairs, six sofas, twenty-seven tables, six radios… He yanked furniture out away from walls, and, sobbing, wiped them clean of years-old dust, handling, erasing, rubbing, polishing, and now it was four o“clock.”“ Acton simply cannot stop for fear of missing one spot. He was in the attic when the police found him. Acton had cleaned the entire house. He was now polishing old trunks and other furniture that hadn“t been touched in so many years. An issue earlier, in Crime SuspenStories No. 16 (1953), he told a story about how any regular guy could get caught up in a small crime and then in murder. “Rendezvous!”“ introduced readers to a fellow named Joe. He was like any other businessman you saw on the street, not particularly handsome or an ugly man, just an average, rather ordinary joe who worked a nine to five job, trying to make ends meet. In fact, he drove an old car since he couldn“t afford a better ride on his bookkeeper“s salary, though he was the head of his department at his company. He did have a nice office and a lovely secretary, but it was all for show since they were in Las Vegas. It was his boss, the head of the branch office, old Holmes who made all the money. But Joe was no fool, not like his other colleagues who bought up a part of the insurance airlines offered, which paid out a tidy sum if you died when a plane of theirs had an accident, like they were doing when Charlie, the office joker, went on a business trip. Yes, Joe drove an old heap of a car, but once he got home, it was a different tale. After he“d changed into a much nicer suit, he got the red convertible sports car from his private garage. Quickly he drove over to the apartment he“d set up for Nickie, a gorgeous blonde who looked like a movie star. He was crazy for Nickie. Though the thing was, that she“d loved nothing more than to spend his money. Like Sherry in “A Toast”¦ To Death!”“, she expected her man to take her out, best of all to one of the casinos: “It was fun losing all that money and not having to worry about it!”“ But that was the issue, Joe didn“t have that kind of cash, but he“d figured out a way to get it. From his company, naturally, by cooking the books. But then Holmes came into his office to tell him that he“d noticed some irregularities. Mr. Holmes was certain somebody was skimming the company and it had to be a guy from Joe“s department. There would be an audit, but first his boss was scheduled to go on a business trip. This offered some opportunities. With the bet going on just for fun at the office anyway, he convinced Holmes to let him buy in on his travel insurance. Enough money to make up for would he“d taken if Holmes died during the flight. He would, and the beauty was, Holmes would even carry the time bomb onto the plane himself. Through a ruse, Joe had seen to it. Now he still needed to make sure that Holmes was dead and there would be no evidence left. He“d timed the bomb to go off when the plane was right over a certain spot in the desert. And there he waited, right next to his old car. Though the cold night had fallen over the Mojave Desert, Joe was sweating as he anxiously kept looking into the dark sky and he listened for the drone of the plane“s engines. There it was. In what seemed like a slow crawl it made its way towards where Joe was standing on the ground. What if he“d made a mistake, what if Holmes had not taken the suitcase aboard? The one he“d given him under false pretenses. Suddenly, a thunderous explosion seemed to rip the sky apart itself. The plane began to fall towards the ground, this huge plane which was like a wounded giant bird now. It was too close. Joe got into his car, but the darn, rusty thing just wouldn“t start. The plane was now everywhere. Its lights were blinding Joe who jumped from the vehicle which was right in the plane“s path. He tried to run, yet where to, exactly? And soon he was caught up in those bright headlights that seemed to transfix him until he couldn“t move. There would be no evidence left. Not of the suitcase, the bomb, or of a guy named Joe.

His other creative outlet during the time EC published its so-called The New Trend titles, was The Vault of Terror. He told many horror yarns with a passion, and fans quickly associated him with this anthology series for which he did the lead-in stories and many memorable covers. And he even edited the last six issues. But his horror work was not limited to this one horror title. He did yarns for Tales from the Crypt and The Haunt of Fear as well. There were the Voodoo tales, which were spread across all three horror titles, “Voodoo Death!”“, “Voodoo Vengeance”“ and of course “Till Death”¦”“ from The Vault of Horror No. 28 (1952), the best of the bunch. And while his colleague Graham Ingels had a knack for giving his main characters very often a grisly, ugly appearance, earning him the nickname “Ghastly”“, his leading women were always beautiful and glamorous, and his men were dashingly handsome. When Ingels told a story about a vampire woman and a hermit who lived in some faraway place of a fairy tale land in The Haunt of Fear No. 14 (1952), the couples beauty radiated from the inside. His creepy pairing of a vampire girl and a ghoul, which came a month later in The Vault of Horror No. 26 and in the story “Two of a Kind!”“, presented a gorgeous power couple that loved going to fancy nightclubs and ski resorts. Whereas Ingels was always ready to spring some nauseating monstrosity on the unsuspecting readers, he would create characters that were only one bad day (or one poor decision) away from total madness like Irene or the unnamed heroine in his tale “Whirlpool”“, from The Vault of Horror No. 32 (1953), which was ambiguous enough to make you think that perhaps she wasn“t that crazy after all. Ingels offered the most gruesome horrors most people couldn“t even imagine, let only draw as expertly as “Ghastly”“ managed to do with ease it seemed. His terrors were often frighteningly realistic. The treatments his female main character in “Whirlpool”“ is exposed to once she“s been committed to a psychiatric hospital, methods which clearly are designed to “shock her back into reality”“, were indeed real which made them seem more barbaric. In the world his characters were living in, the nuclear family, who“d taken up residence in a suburb that wasn“t that different from your own neighborhood, might face many threats from within and from the outside, or from both directions at the same time. In a way, his story “”¦ And All Through The House”¦”“, which appeared in The Vault of Horror No. 35 (1954), was him riffing on the kind of stories Al Feldstein was writing, but with a twist. You met a perfect family, a husband, the gorgeous blonde housewife and the handsome couple“s equally beautiful little daughter. And this being Christmas Eve, everyone was in a happy, festive mood. Except, this was how this horror yarn began: “Her husband was dead, and it was the best Christmas present she“d ever had! She stood over the lifeless body sprawled at her feet”¦ and smiled”¦”“ Yes, the glamorous housewife had murdered her husband. The problem was, though, that at this moment the radio told her that there was a crazy, homicidal lunatic on the loose who had escaped from the state hospital for the insane. The high-pitched voice of the program“s very dramatic announcer let their listeners know, that the deranged killer was believed to be wearing a Santa Claus costume the maniac had taken from a man in a village that was located right next to the suburb where she lived. She still needed to get rid of Joseph“s body quickly, and she was willing to risk leaving her daughter Carol all by herself for a while, since this human monster targeted women exclusively, not little children. But as she was putting on her coat, she sensed his presence outside the house. There he was alright, and she couldn“t phone the police since there wasn“t any time to hide Joseph“s body now, with the killer rattling the knob of the front door. When his footsteps told her that he was going around the house, she raced to the backdoor and made sure it was locked as well. Still there were the windows. Locking these might not be sufficient. She got some pieces of lumber from the basement and boarded up the windows but good, though she was painfully aware that there was no time to put Joseph“s body into a closet. By now her face was bathed in sweat from her being physical exhausted as much as from the dread. Her eyes became small and the wide again as she began to imagine the faces of police officers if they found her with a dead body in her living room. She raced to the attic to check the windows, then to Carol“s room, but her daughter wasn“t there. As it turned out, Carol had found Santa Claus and she had let him inside the house, and now he was staring at the blonde woman with a crooked smile and saliva dripping from his lips. The murdered husband trope could also be played to a romantic effect, though, as he had done so in an earlier story which also used elements of “A Toast”¦ To Death!”“ In “Seeds of Death!”“, The Haunt of Fear No. 5 (1951), a yarn he“d actually created a some months before the one about Cherry and her unfortunate hubby, we are introduced to Basil and Connie Woods who operated a farm, though he had started the tale with a typical Will Eisner opening set in the big city. There were the men who collected the garbage in their trash compactor vehicle, and a derelict looking for something useable in the rubble the guys might have missed. Indeed, there was ring with jewel, the problem, it was still attached to the finger and the hand, but the hand was no linger attached to a wrist or an arm or a body. The story then switched to the little farm as we are introduced to the Woods. And with one panel you“ll learn all about Basil there is to know. He slaps his young wife right across the face. But like in a novel by James M. Cain, there is a third player, a handsome farm hand named Cliff who worked for the rough, unshaven farmer. Cliff, whose shoulders were there for Connie to lean on while she was crying. But unbeknownst to them, Basil was wise to the blossoming romance between these two. But he bided his time. When it was Cliff“s day off and he was going into the town, Connie asked him to bring her some gardenia seeds. He made it back late at night, and there was Basil awaiting his return. While Cliff was busy with showing him the seeds he“d bought for the man“s wife, Basil whacked him over the head from behind but good. He was dead and Basil would bury him on the spot, “His body“ll make fine fertilizer for the field!”“ But when the young farm hand didn“t make it back, Connie got worried for him, naturally. But she didn“t suspect that Basil had any involvement in his disappearance. She“d forget Cliff soon, Basil figured. She didn“t. A few days later he found a note from his wife when he returned from his work in the fields. She“d gone into the city to look for Cliff, without his permission, mind you. Naturally, Basil got very angry: “I“ll teach her to run off like this! I“ll go to the city and drag her back by the hair of her head!”“ He found her in an alley and things got very heated. But Connie managed to get hold of a metal rod somebody had thrown into one of the garbage bins. It was time for the garbage collectors, and Connie couldn“t do much more than to put Basil“s body into the bin. Then you got a funny sequence with the garbage men, which came right from Eisner. The guys never even noticed that together with the garbage they loaded Basil“s body into their car which was designed to chomp down with its metal teeth on discarded items, human skin and bones alike. Still the men took their time to check out Connie“s ample derriere as she forced herself to walk past the men in a calm manner. And they never noticed that Basil“s left hand had fallen out of the vehicle. Still Connie searched the city for Cliff. When she went home, the gardenias were in full bloom.

As with all the women who loved life, there was much beauty next to the ugliness which had permeated their lives. There had to be. He made sure of it, even when he wasn“t doing the writing, which had rarely happened since his earlier collaboration with Feldstein. Yet one his of most beautifully illustrated stories came from script by Carl Wessler. Though “Deadly Beloved!”“ was Southern Gothic Romance, it still felt like one of his stories. Not in the least since this was a tale about a lonely young woman who no longer wanted to be alone, a trait she shared with most of his female characters who were missing something. The story, from in The Vault of Horror No. 39 (1954), the third and penultimate issue that featured the additional horror host he“d created, the silent Drusilla, opens with a guy named Edward Leeds who was having car trouble in the heat of rural Louisiana. Though there was a storm brewing overhead, the car“s engine is overheated. He“s a reporter who“s been sent on an adventure trip disguised as assignment. In his editor“s mind, the young man needs some change in his life with him being depressed and lacking a romantic partner. What is intended as a puff piece, to get material on some of those old mansions that are still around and have long since been abandoned, leads him to a house that isn“t far away from the spot where his car has broken down. Of course, the place is deserted and once he enters, he finds that most of its interior has been burned out. Suddenly there is a gorgeous young girl with long blonde hair who is wearing a long, white dress. Her name is Eloise Fontagne. Eloise owns this place which once was called Willows Plantation. Ten years ago, there“d been a fire that had whipped out her entire family in one night. She“s all that is left, and clearly, Eloise was as lonely as Edward“s editor thought he was. Then the storm was catching up with them as the world outside turns dark. Also, inside the mansion but for the candle the lovely woman lights as she offers him a tour of the house. Eloise points to a door, but as he steps over the threshold, there is no longer a floor to the next room. He barely manages to grab hold of the door frame to pull himself back to safety. He staggers downstairs, and though Eloise has advised him against using the main staircase, he pushes his luck because being on the ground floor seems much safer. But surely, the final steps cannot support his weight and he nearly crashes into the staircase. She is there to comfort him and to alleviate his fear. Eloise“s attracted to the storm and the rain like he finds himself attracted to her. He wants to be with her, “I want to stay with you”¦ always!”“ And that is exactly what she wants for she has been alone for so very long. This is when he realizes that Eloise is dead. She has been dead for ten years when she died in the fire as well. Regaining his senses, Edwards bolts from the house and he makes it to the next town and to a hotel room. But Eloise is with him, in his thoughts: “I pace the floor nervously, sensing her perfume is with me, seeing her wonderous beauty though my eyes are shut”¦ knowing she is certain death!”“ He tried to write, but he finds he cannot string a sentence together. Her face is everywhere. “Memories of her are too strong… As long as I remain, I will never be at peace. I must leave”¦ I must go!… I must go back!”“ He drove back to the house and when he so much as stumbled from his car, there she was. Eloise was waiting for him. This was a powerful story that once again gave him ample opportunities to tell the story through the body language and expressive faces of the two characters as Carl Wessler did with his dialogue and captions. When the New Trend books went away in a fire like Eloise and her family had, only in their case it was the fire of indignation and of comic book burnings, their ghost lingered. When Gaines tried his luck with the New Direction line, he worked as an editor, writer, artist and cover illustrator for Extra!, which ironically was a newspaper/adventure title. He hung around for the Picto-Fiction magazines as well. Then he was gone like Edward. Yet like his and Wessler“s character, or like Bob Mitchum“s Jeff Markham, he“d been called back, back to the house that comic books had built for better or worse. Soon he was using his real name again. In 1967 and 1968 he began working for DC Comics and Marvel Comics respectively. It was the house where he belonged.

Author Profile

Chris Buse

A comic book reader since 1972. When he is not reading or writing about the books he loves or is listening to The Twilight Sad, you can find Chris at his consulting company in Germany... drinking damn good coffee. Also a proud member of the ICC (International Comics Collective) Podcast with Al Mega and Dave Elliott.

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