The Page that Changed Comics Forever

Comic books changed forever in 1955 when Bernard Krigstein's most famous story appeared in Impact comics #1. But a few years later he'd quit comics for good. Why did one of the most important and influential creators spend most of his life as a high school teacher? Let's find out.
The story goes through Marvel, DC, and EC comics, and features cameos from Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Al Feldstein, William Gaines and many other comic legends.
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Buy comics by Bernard Krigstein and other EC greats!
amzn.to/3GmMEZS - Messages in a Bottle, Comic Book Stories by B. Krigstein
amzn.to/3KJz0ma - Choke Gasp! The Best of 75 Years of EC Comics
amzn.to/406jRzP - The Best of EC Stories Artisan Edition
amzn.to/43sKYYL - The EC Archives: The Vault of Horror Volume 2
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Sources
Messages in a Bottle Comic Book Stories by B. Krigstein, specifically the notes by Greg Sadowski
Master Race & Other Stories by Bernard Krigstein, introduction by Greg Sadowski
Stan Lee and the Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book by By Jordan Raphael, Tom Spurgeon
Choke Gasp! The Best of 75 Years of EC Comics
Ballbuster: Bernard Krigstein’s Life Between the Panels, New Yorker Article by Art Spiegelman
Squa Tront
www.nytimes.com/2018/11/16/ar...
www.cbr.com/ec-comics-bernard...
www.cbr.com/bernard-krigstein...
www.vulture.com/2018/04/frank...

[@svb1954]

I remember Mr. Krigstein as one of my instructors at the High School of Art and Design in New York City, way back in 1970. He was one of the best art teachers I ever had. Mr. K never talked down to his students, was incredibly upbeat and assured us that doing art of any kind was both an adventure and an experience. After his bad experiences in comics and illustration, you would think he would tell us differently, but he didn't. It wasn't his way. I wanted to get into the comics business back then (unfortunately, I didn't get any further than working freelance at Warren Comics' production department) and I didn't know about Mr. K's comics career until the late 1980s, when I came across a portion of his Master Race story in Print magazine. Maybe it's just as well I didn't tell him of my aspirations of becoming the next Neal Adams. On the other hand, it would've been one hell of a conversation. I guess I'll never know.

[@RockoEstalon]

Stan Lee being against any form of "non-safe" storytelling is so on brand.

[@KittyHerder]

Becoming a "high school" teacher is not the same as becoming an art teacher at the High School of Art and Design. I went in there as a sophomore and had to submit a formal portfolio and take an art exam. The standards to get in were high. The teachers were excellent and many of them were experienced professionals in the various art forms before becoming teachers. I went there in the early 1970s. I don't recall Krigstein, but there were other amazing people like Hollingsworth, Glicksman, Ferguson and so on.

[@briancross7835]

In 1984, I was 8 years old. My mother was a schoolteacher and would often receive books for her classroom from donors, book companies, etc. One day, she came home with a large, hard-bound book called "A Smithsonian Book of Comic Book Comics". Since I liked comics, she gave it to me rather than put it in her classroom. This book was INCREDIBLE. Not only did it have both Superman and Batman debuts, it had many other examples of comics from a variety of genres from the '30s to the '50s. "Master Race" was included in this collection. And.., wow. I don't think I've EVER read a comic or graphic novel that packed so much into just 8 pages. It is an absolutely brilliant and terrifying story that is impossible to forget. Thank you for sharing this story with us.

[@bumbleguppy]

How heartbreaking he didn't get to see that museum event. What a story, thanks for telling it.

[@carmillachoate]

"and that EC supernerd who spent a whole issue talking about Kriegstein? His name was Art Speigleman" That's honestly the kind of twist that is surprising because I should have seen it coming. Almost poetic in it's perfection

[@Hermitstatus]

Those four panels of the man falling in to the path of the passenger train are phenomenal in conveying human emotion. You can practically feel every ounce of pain and desperation in the character with each panel.

[@Pepperdove]

We read Maus in English class when I was in 7th grade (1991). It was literally life changing, it made an incredibly challenging topic completely accessible to us while never watering down the content. I started reading the Sandman series a few years later, another feat of visual storytelling

[@jotakux7489]

The tragedy of not being allowed to live up to your potential, heartbreaking and all too relatable.

[@RSEFX]

I found that issue of IMPACT laying on the ground en route home from the grocery store maybe 4-ish years after its publication. I was about 10 then. It had a GREAT impact on me, mostly due to this particular story. No idea why/how this issue wound up (face up in perfect condition) in an overgrown empty field near where I lived. Odd. As kids in the 50's we all knew a lot about the holocaust, but this story reminded me/us about haunting memories that would tail the survivors throughout their lives.

[@kittypost3929]

1:05

[@YootoobSteve123]

I can't tell you how much I enjoyed and appreciated this video on so many levels. He was a brilliant storyteller AND painter. He was an instructor of mine at Art and Design and one of the few I remember fondly and vividly. One of my inspirations to become a professional.

[@tzvikrasner6073]

The fact that this is the man who inspired Maus (and, to my mind, parts of Watchmen, given that the Black Flag comic that intersperses it is in the EC style) is just amazing. It's like saying that Glacier (a WCW wrestler who retired after a few years to teach just as Krigstein did, and even ended up having Cody Rhodes as one of his students) is responsible for the current form of professional wrestling.

[@dddaaa6965]

I can't believe this is the first video on this channel, how is that possible? This was incredible

[@Mr.Nichan]

I remember Scott McCloud in "Understanding Comics" (1993) marked something like this as a feature of Japanese comics that differed from the American Comics he knew, and theorized that American comics had adapted to not waste panels because they were published in shorter forms, while Japanese comics were published in longer forms, but he also suggested some kind of difference in artistic philosophy between "the West" and "the East". That being said, he mainly talked about the much higher frequency in the Japanese comics he considered of "aspect-to-aspect" transitions, where panels show different parts of the same scene without any real temporal relationship between them, whereas your example is "moment-to-moment" transitions (though I think you more generally consider any case where multiple panels are used without words or wit the same words), which he measured as very rare in both American and Japanese comics, with the exception of some he called "experimental comics", like "Skinless Perkins", though slightly more common in Japan and actually in the first example of Japanese comics having different panel-to-panel transitions he showed.

[@reprintranch]

Matttt, you have hit ONE MILLION views with a Bernard Krigstein video. To me, as a longtime Krigstein fan, this is about as surreal as it gets, and also incredibly heartening. Congratulations, thank you and best wishes for continued success. :)

[@rafatopolski7628]

This was great! It is worth noting that Fantagraphics is doing amazing job reprinting those great old comic masters in their EC Artists Library line. There's a volume called Master Race and other stories, reprinting Krigstein's masterpiece.

[@user-cd3jj2ji5x]

Without a doubt one of the greatest comics ever printed. While praising Krigstein's artistry lets not forget that it was Al Feldstein who wrote all of that incredible dialogue. Krigstein broke it down in an incredibly imaginative way but unless Feldstein hadn't written this incredible prose it wouldn't have had the same impact. This wasn't ancient history when written. Most of the EC artists and writers had been in the service during World War 2 and it was fresh on their minds. Who knows how many other great stories would have been produced without the hysteria of the times leading to the comics code and censorship. On the other hand there are always the great artists who remain true to themselves even when it's not popular to do so. EC lives!!! Howard Schwartz

[@ronniestanley75]

The most interesting aspect to this story, to me, is that movies back then we're nothing like this. They were mostly narrative with no real effects. They narration is where all the suspense and drama came from, just like a radio show. So, this wasn't just some guy mimicking a modern action or horror movie, because there was nothing like this. His style is where most of the action cut sequences and picture frame movie styles come from. I imagine that this did inspire a lot of people.

[@CalebSylvest]

Brilliant storytelling. I had not heard of B. Krigstein until now. The motion of the faces on the train in M.R. reminds me of 'Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash' and other work by Giacomo Balla. Krigstein was a fine artist so he probably knew the work too. It would be interesting to know about the artistic influences that led to his comic style.