The 10 Greatest EC Comics Stories

Epic Comic Book Wednesday
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[@ellesse3862]

EC had a great roster of talent, some of the artwork is fantastic, my favourites are the Science and Fantasy collections.

[@allenrobinson9890]

All that Al Williamson and Wallace Wood art! Beautiful stuff!

[@buckocean7616]

@@allenrobinson9890 Two of the greatest for sure. I hope you've seen the one where they gave Woody free reign to draw whatever he wanted, and they created the "story" around his art. He had a really hard life and died way too young. His EC work is just gorgeous stuff, and he did so many spot illustrations for the SF magazines that were magnificent as well. Al Williamson was the baby of the bunch, but what an incredible talent. His alien landscapes were second to none. Later in his life he was doing the Star Wars newspaper strips. When I was young, I used to copy their work to try to capture some of their magic in my own work. Also, with Al you had some greats like Roy Krenkle and Frazzetta pitching in to finish deadlines so they could go out and play some ball.

[@warlockofwordschannel7901]

The brilliant creators of the EC line enriched the genre of Horror comics.

[@bizarrebraincomics7819]

Oh! All great selections. Would be hard to select the 10 best EC stories because they are all so good. Love them. 💕

[@PeculiarNotions]

It's always good to hear about EC.

[@BookBlather]

That Taint the Meat is making me think of Tender Is the Flesh 😳. I’ll need to get a hold of one of these volumes at some point. Great video, Mike!

[@stretmediq]

That reminds me of a grocery store in Arkansas called The Mad Butcher kzbin.infoR03KQD4lenA?si=WYjJoY64Km6dnjS_

[@stephennootens916]

EC Horror comics are one of those things I always wanted to read. What little I know about the work they published it was pretty great.

[@GrammaticusBooks]

You have the greatest comic book collection on planet earth! Going to go looking for some EC comics this weekend!

[@michaelk.vaughan8617]

I don’t know…you have a bunch of hidden gems I don’t have.

[@glockensig]

Speaking of old.....when you said wonderful, wonderful work....my mind flashed on Lawrence Welk! You may be the Lawrence Welk of horror!!!!

[@michaelk.vaughan8617]

I need to get a bubble machine.

[@sleestack13]

Not sure if you have it or not, Michael, but a relatively recent EC collection called "Home to Stay" has ALL of the Bradbury adaptations done by EC throughout the years. It's a good one.

[@brianjkinney]

I was going to comment the same thing. Plus it's an oversized edition with just inks, no colors. It's a great edition to have.

[@michaelk.vaughan8617]

I saw that one come out. It looks fantastic.

[@TheDukeofMadness]

I often wondered if Arch Oboler and EC comics were in cahoots.

[@jscottphillips503]

I never read EC Comics. They predated my own comic era in the Silver Age of the early’60s. But I grew up on Mad Magazine, which I still credit for getting me into the career path I followed. I knew of Johnny Craig because he drew the first Iron Man comic I ever bought (issue #2) and thought he was the best comic book artist I had seen up to that time. Unfortunately, he left Iron Man after issue #3, and I don’t think I ever saw him again. Looking forward to your video on him.

[@michaelk.vaughan8617]

You NEED to read some Weird Science! The ART!

[@BooklessPete]

❤love EC!

[@inanimatecarbongod]

I thought you might have "Foul Play" at the top of the list, but I think your actual number 1 is a good pick. There's a video on here about that one which is really good.

[@allenrobinson9890]

Here to up vote the Johnny Craig episode! Also that Artisan Edition is probably my most looked at book. Hugely influential!

[@sgriffin9960]

Oh my gosh, I have to add the baseball story to my collection of baseball books! It sounds fabulous! ⚾

[@michaelk.vaughan8617]

It is!

[@dreamakuma]

Oh we getting that EC action! I stand by EC made the most influential comics of the 20th century.

[@stevezeidman7224]

I wasn’t a real comic book kid. I read the occasional Superman. I never knew who published what. But, I bought this comic that had “The Tell Tale Heart” and “Space Warp”. I imagine this was EC. The Poe story was great. “Space Warp” was about the first interstellar flight using a “Warp Drive”. This was pre Star Trek and they used that term. They visit Alpha Centori. However, they didn’t account for relativity. They come home and realize 1000 years had gone by. The end is appropriately horrible.

[@tbritz13]

I learned to read with EC comics. I was born in 1953.

[@gcpoulides]

You got me into EC comics, my favorite is the one with Santa 🎅🏼

[@michaelk.vaughan8617]

That was a good one!

[@RonDale-jy8et]

Marvel always said 'ya gotta draw like Kirby .k.a "House style"!!

[@ObscureBookAdventures]

Indeed, indeed. EC Comics is the best in publishing horror comics back in the day. Yesterday I read an article about Al Williamson that was published in one of the EC comics back in the 1950s. Did you know that one of his hobbies was photographing naked women and collecting of nude models? lol. I'm also going to read and review some EC horror comics for Horror Mayhem

[@michaelk.vaughan8617]

That does make my hobby of making BookTube videos seem less interesting.

[@buckocean7616]

@@michaelk.vaughan8617 We don't know what Roger does in his spare time though. 💀💀

[@ObscureBookAdventures]

@@buckocean7616 🤣

[@brianjauch9958]

Gasp! Choke!

[@charliedogg7683]

Like all your Best Of lists Michael, this one has some of the choicest stories ever published. You identify an essential element of EC, the company's promotion of its creators. Along the same lines as "Kamen's Kalamity" is the Wally Wood story "My World", which is both autobiographical and a tour-de-force in SF art. Amicus Productions, a UK film maker sometimes referred to as a second-tier Hammer Studios, made both "The Vault Of Horror" (1973) and "Tales From The Crypt" (1972) with a number of then well-known actors. I can't fault your choice for #1. I can think of several other stories I'd nominate as equals due to their excellence in writing and art but none of them have the social commentary and innovative illustrations of "Master Race", although "Judgement Day!" from Weird Fantasy #18/Incredible Science Fiction #33 comes very close. And just because I can: my #1 artist for SF stories is Wally Wood, for horror stories it's Graham Ingels, for crime stories it's Johnny Craig and for war stories it's John Severin/Bill Elder.

[@dreamakuma]

The big omission I gotta point out is Judgement Day. That comic is the other half of Master race in so many ways.

[@russworks2882]

Yes. Orlando's best art, too.

[@w.adammandelbaum1805]

I see that Roger reads Dusty Evski from the books behind him.

[@buckocean7616]

An impossible task. Too many to pick a top ten. I am thrilled that you made Master Race your number 1 though. It is, as you say, a masterpiece. The way Krigstein breaks down his pages to play with time and perspective is revelatory. If you had a top 25 would you have included Judgement Day? I'd love to see you do a separate vid about the circumstances and consequences of that one story. One of my personal favorites is My World, where they just let Woody loose. What an incredible pool of artistic talent. I actually prefer the black & white reproductions more than when they let the color overwhelm the gorgeous ink work. One thing that you didn't mention is that EC was actually pilfering Bradbury's stories, but when he found out he liked them so much that they reached some kind of deal. At least that's how I heard the story. Great subject !!!

[@davidsigler9690]

Al Feldstien was my uncle; great guy....I loved MAD Magazine.

[@russworks2882]

You're privileged to have known the guy. He was a fantastic artist, much underappreciated because of his epic career as an editor.

[@davidsigler9690]

@@russworks2882 Indeed on all accounts....and put up with my endless questions about MAD Magazine...lol. there is a youtube of him and Ray Bradbury....he lived quite the life....Bram Stoker Award and all.

[@MysteryandMayhem-gr7nn]

I have a few of the floppy EC reprints from a while back. I've read just enough to become a huge fan of Johnny Craig's artwork.

[@anotherbibliophilereads]

I am slowly acquiring the paperback versions of Tales From the Crypt by EC Comics. I bought volume 3 last night for Horror Mayhem before watching this video.

[@cesarcarlos75]

Hace you ever considered getting that giant book The History of EC Comics? I’d live to get it but being honest I wouldn’t know where to put it. It’s enormous.

[@michaelk.vaughan8617]

I would get it if I could.

[@scottpearson5644]

I have a copy of EC collection of Ray Bradbury stories. It is fantastic.

[@w.adammandelbaum1805]

This is all E C for you to say. These comics were ill gotten Gaines, a man outstanding in his Feldstein, who would do whatever Wally Wood tell him.

[@DDB168]

An excellent review of EC. The artwork and stories do look far superior to Marvel and DC. Stories 1 and 2 probably deserve their own video, as does a top 10 Frontline Combat stories 😉

[@dylantindall5573]

ASMR! quality pages.

[@russworks2882]

They were just so visually stunning. Feldstein's way of writing was often overdone, in my opinion, but he had an obvious love of Bradbury and Marvel (for instance) seemed to really struggle with their attempts at adaptations. So many of the better known EC episodes were just illustrated stories. Krigstein was really interested in advancing the medium by manipulating time and psychology with his page layouts and in fact would cut up the pre-lettered art boards Felstein gave him and redistribute dialogue or subdivide panels into kinetic slices that simulated motion, which is how Master Race came to be expanded into an 8 page story. Speaking of page layouts, I'm surprised you left out Harvey Kurtzman, who was a huge innovator and brilliant writer of Science Fiction and especially war stories. It's hard to underestimate the influence his Mad Comics had on comics worldwide and there were Mad stories that were even more advanced and mind-blowing than most of EC's output. Take "Mickey Rodent" which was a Disney satire that ultimately became the sort of meta-level, dimensional crackup vision that informed every multiversal crossover and genre satire in comics.

[@tonette6592]

Oh, I would love to see these. (Does Roger need an axe?)

[@michaelk.vaughan8617]

….maybe 🤔

[@brettrobson5739]

I suppose the purpose of these lists is to create discussion. At least you had Master Race at the top. Can't say I agree with most of the other stories, good as they are. What about There Will Come Soft Rains or The Flying Machine. You actually showed the splash for Food for Thought, a masterful Williamson/Krenkel collaboration.You could pick ten from any of their titles and come up with ten great stories. Besides having to leave Craig out, there was no Severin and no Kurtzman (arguably the greatest cartoonist of the bunch). They just had lightning in a bottle.

[@rickcroucher]

I found a book entitled KAMEN'S KALAMITY, I bought it right off.

[@stretmediq]

I heard Roger actually inspired some of the stories in Tales from the Crypt

[@michaelk.vaughan8617]

Probably.

[@user-rf6to7bl6l]

Hello Michael Hello. Rock Hudson did the Mars Chronicles in a miniseries in 1980 i recall ,if i am not mistaken. But the EC Version is much more powerful in my humble opinion

[@LuckyBastardProd]

.Kamen knew how to draw chicks, daddy-o. Doe eyed raven haired beauties but, I dug Jack Davis the most, Charlie and Taint The Meat is a classic. What can I say you don’t have Juvenile Delinquency without Rock ‘n Roll, switchblades, AIP films, and EC comics!