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| - Entertaining Comics, more commonly known as EC Comics, was an American publisher of comic books specializing in horror fiction, crime fiction, satire, military fiction and science fiction from the 1940s through the mid-1950s, notably the Tales from the Crypt series. In 1954-55, censorship pressures prompted it to concentrate on the humor magazine Mad, leading to the company's greatest success. EC was privately owned by Maxwell Gaines and later, during its period of notoriety, by his son, William Gaines. It was eventually absorbed into the same corporation that later purchased DC Comics and Warner Brothers.
- When Max Gaines died in 1947 in a boating accident, his son William inherited the comics company. After four years (1942–46) in the Army Air Corps, Gaines had returned home to finish school at New York University, planning to work as a chemistry teacher. He never taught but instead took over the family business. In 1949 and 1950, Bill Gaines began a line of new titles featuring horror, suspense, science fiction, military fiction and crime fiction. His editors, Al Feldstein and Harvey Kurtzman, who also drew covers and stories, gave assignments to such prominent and highly accomplished freelance artists as Johnny Craig, Reed Crandall, Jack Davis, Will Elder, George Evans, Frank Frazetta, Graham Ingels, Jack Kamen, Bernard Krigstein, Joe Orlando, John Severin, Al Williamson, Basil Wolverton,
- A short-lived but influential publisher of Anthology Comic books. EC Comics, aka "Entertaining Comics" and "Educational Comics", was founded in 1944 by Maxwell Gaines with the aim of producing fact-based comic books aimed at churches and schools. After his death in 1947, his son William Gaines inherited the business, producing comic books in typical genres: western, crime, romance. Starting in 1949, the younger Gaines began introducing the "New Trend" series focusing on horror (Tales From the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, The Haunt of Fear), crime (Crime SuspenStories), realistically depicted war (Two-Fisted Tales, Frontline Combat) and Science Fiction (Weird Science, Weird Fantasy). The horror, science fiction and crime stories almost invariably had a Twist Ending. EC made extensive use of
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| - A short-lived but influential publisher of Anthology Comic books. EC Comics, aka "Entertaining Comics" and "Educational Comics", was founded in 1944 by Maxwell Gaines with the aim of producing fact-based comic books aimed at churches and schools. After his death in 1947, his son William Gaines inherited the business, producing comic books in typical genres: western, crime, romance. Starting in 1949, the younger Gaines began introducing the "New Trend" series focusing on horror (Tales From the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, The Haunt of Fear), crime (Crime SuspenStories), realistically depicted war (Two-Fisted Tales, Frontline Combat) and Science Fiction (Weird Science, Weird Fantasy). The horror, science fiction and crime stories almost invariably had a Twist Ending. EC made extensive use of the Karmic Twist Ending before The Twilight Zone ever aired. (They stayed clear of the Cruel Twist Ending.) A combination of evocative (if sensationalistic and florid) writing and excellent art by some of the top comic book artists of the time, combined with outreach to the fans, quickly caused EC's sales to skyrocket. In addition to a strong theme of often gruesome poetic justice, EC's titles often tackled social issues of the day, especially in their science fiction and suspense books. EC was not shy about "borrowing" ideas from prose stories and were caught at it by Ray Bradbury, but they were able to negotiate a settlement, and published several fine and very faithful authorized adaptations of his work. This was also the birthplace of a little comic book called Tales Calculated to Drive You Mad, a satire and comedy title. Its first issues sold poorly, but it soon found enough of a following to inspire a number of imitators, including one published by EC itself (Panic). But it was Too Good to Last. A groundswell of outrage from the Moral Guardians of the mid-1950s led to a Congressional investigation of possible ties between comic books and juvenile delinquency. To protect themselves from possible government censorship, the comic book publishers established the Comics Code in 1954. William Gaines, although he'd initially been in favor of the idea, felt the code adopted was far too restrictive and gave the Code authorities too much opportunity for Executive Meddling. After distributors refused to carry comic books without the Comics Code Authority stamp, Gaines reluctantly signed EC up to the service. This required canceling several series, some of them the company's best sellers, as the magazines' very titles violated the Code. Despite a valiant attempt at a "New Direction" focusing more on social realism than horror, EC remained blacklisted by many newsdealers, and found itself too frequently clashing with the CCA executives. Gaines tried to carry on the tradition of adult-oriented stories with the Picto-Fiction magazines, but they didn't sell. Notoriously, EC was told to change the ethnicity of a character in a reprint of the classic Does This Remind You of Anything? story "Judgment Day." This was the last straw, and the story was reprinted unchanged in the final comic book published by the company. The black-and-white Mad Magazine, which had switched from the comic medium for reasons unrelated to the Code, ultimately became the sole surviving EC publication and went on to decades of success. But the influence of EC has continued through multiple reprints, homages by subsequent horror and SF writers, a pair of early-'70s British feature films, and the television series Tales from the Crypt.
- Entertaining Comics, more commonly known as EC Comics, was an American publisher of comic books specializing in horror fiction, crime fiction, satire, military fiction and science fiction from the 1940s through the mid-1950s, notably the Tales from the Crypt series. In 1954-55, censorship pressures prompted it to concentrate on the humor magazine Mad, leading to the company's greatest success. EC was privately owned by Maxwell Gaines and later, during its period of notoriety, by his son, William Gaines. It was eventually absorbed into the same corporation that later purchased DC Comics and Warner Brothers.
- When Max Gaines died in 1947 in a boating accident, his son William inherited the comics company. After four years (1942–46) in the Army Air Corps, Gaines had returned home to finish school at New York University, planning to work as a chemistry teacher. He never taught but instead took over the family business. In 1949 and 1950, Bill Gaines began a line of new titles featuring horror, suspense, science fiction, military fiction and crime fiction. His editors, Al Feldstein and Harvey Kurtzman, who also drew covers and stories, gave assignments to such prominent and highly accomplished freelance artists as Johnny Craig, Reed Crandall, Jack Davis, Will Elder, George Evans, Frank Frazetta, Graham Ingels, Jack Kamen, Bernard Krigstein, Joe Orlando, John Severin, Al Williamson, Basil Wolverton, and Wally Wood. With input from Gaines, the stories were scripted by Kurtzman, Feldstein and Craig. Other writers including Carl Wessler, Jack Oleck and Otto Binder were later brought on board. EC had success with its fresh approach and pioneered in forming relationships with its readers through its letters to the editor and its fan organization, the National EC Fan-Addict Club. EC Comics promoted its stable of illustrators, allowing each to sign his art and encouraging them to develop idiosyncratic styles; the company additionally published one-page biographies of them in the comic books. This was in contrast to the industry's common practice, in which credits were often missing, although some artists at other companies, such as the Jack Kirby-Joe Simon team, Jack Cole and Bob Kane had been prominently promoted. EC published distinct lines of titles under its Entertaining Comics umbrella. Most notorious were its horror books, Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror and The Haunt of Fear. These titles reveled in a gruesome joie de vivre, with grimly ironic fates meted out to many of the stories' protagonists. The company's war comics Frontline Combat and Two-Fisted Tales often featured weary-eyed, unheroic stories out of step with the jingoistic times. Shock SuspenStories tackled weighty political and social issues such as Racism, sex, drug use and the American way of life. EC always claimed to be "proudest of our science fiction titles", with Weird Science and Weird Fantasy publishing stories unlike the Space opera found in such titles as Fiction House's Planet Comics. Crime SuspenStories had many parallels with Film noir. As noted by Max Allan Collins in his story annotations for Russ Cochran's 1983 hardcover reprint of Crime SuspenStories, Johnny Craig had developed a "film noir-ish bag of effects" in his visuals, while characters and themes found in the crime stories often showed the strong influence of writers associated with film noir, notably James M. Cain. Superior illustrations of stories with surprise endings became EC's trademark. Gaines would generally stay up late and read large amounts of material while seeking "springboards" for story concepts. The next day he would present each premise until Feldstein found one that he thought he could develop into a story. At EC's peak, Feldstein edited seven titles while Kurtzman handled three. Artists were assigned stories specific to their styles. Davis and Ingels often drew gruesome, supernatural-themed stories, while Kamen and Evans did tamer material. With hundreds of stories written, common themes surfaced. Some of EC's more well-known themes include:
* An ordinary situation given an ironic and gruesome twist, often as poetic justice for a character's crimes. In "Collection Completed" a man takes up taxidermy in order to annoy his wife. When he kills and stuffs her beloved cat, the wife snaps and kills him, stuffing and mounting his body. In "Revulsion", a spaceship pilot is bothered by insects due to a past experience when he found one in his food. At the conclusion of the story, a giant alien insect screams in horror at finding the dead pilot in his salad. Dissection, the broiling of lobsters, Mexican jumping beans, fur coats and fishing are just a small sample of the kind of situations and objects used in this fashion.
* The "Grim Fairy Tale", featuring gruesome interpretations of such fairy tales as "Hansel and Gretel", "Sleeping Beauty" and "Little Red Riding Hood".
* Siamese twins were a popular theme, primarily in EC's three horror comics. No fewer than nine Siamese twin stories appeared in EC's horror and crime comics from 1950-1954. In an interview, Feldstein speculated that he and Gaines wrote so many Siamese twin stories because of the interdependence they had on each other.
* Adaptations of Ray Bradbury science-fiction stories, which appeared in two dozen EC comics starting in 1952. It began inauspiciously, with an incident in which Feldstein and Gaines plagiarized two of Bradbury's stories and combined them into a single tale. Learning of the story, Bradbury sent a note praising them, while remarking that he had "inadvertently" not yet received his payment for their use. EC sent a check and negotiated a productive series of Bradbury adaptations.
* Stories with a political message, which became common in EC's science fiction and suspense comics. Among the many topics were lynching, Antisemitism and police corruption. The three horror titles featured stories introduced by a trio of horror hosts. The Crypt Keeper introduced Tales from the Crypt, the Vault Keeper welcomed readers to The Vault of Horror and the Old Witch cackled over The Haunt of Fear. Besides gleefully recounting the unpleasant details of the stories, the characters squabbled with one another, unleashed an arsenal of puns and even insulted and taunted the readers: "Greetings, boils and ghouls..." This irreverent mockery of the audience also became the trademark attitude of Mad, and such glib give-and-take was later mimicked by many, including Stan Lee at Marvel Comics. EC's most enduring legacy came with Mad, which started as a side project for Kurtzman before buoying the company's fortunes and becoming one of the country's most notable and long-running humor publications. When satire became an industry rage in 1954 and other publishers created imitations of Mad, EC introduced a sister title, Panic, edited by Al Feldstein and using the regular Mad artists, plus Joe Orlando.
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