“BANJO LESSONS?” A COLUMN ABOUT EC COMICS, PART 10

Let“s begin with a disclaimer and a friendly warning. While many comic books publishers put out horror tales and crime comics during the 1950s, there is a reason why the stories that were created during this period at EC Comics still connect with readers today and have done so over the years since The Comics Code Authority put a stop to what was EC“s most fruitful period by the end of 1954. Surely, most comic fans are able to name a handful of publishers that churned out some of the most gruesome tales once horror became the thing to do if you worked in the industry in the early 1950s. There were Atlas Comics and Harvey Comics and Fiction House and Avon, all of which had some impressive artistic talent working for them, and even a hero as patriotic as Captain America got into the horror game once superheroes fell out of favor with readers after the war. And though some of these old tales have seen a resurgence of sorts with their own reprints series dedicated to them, especially since many of the artists soon found career making opportunities when the superheroes staged their huge comeback in the early 60s, artists like Steve Ditko, Gene Colan and Don Heck, neither the stories nor their publishers had the impact that EC Comics had and still has. One of the reasons why this is the case has to do with the talent. Whereas any competitor of theirs had maybe one or two great artists working for them who mostly did the lead-in story with the remaining pages handled by less experienced or less dedicated journeymen, EC Comics had assembled a most impressive bench of topnotch craftsmen by 1952. Some veterans of this still very young industry like Reed Crandall and Graham Ingels, others hungry up-and-comers like Al Williamson, Wally Wood or Frank Frazetta. On top of that, EC“s publisher and his editor and main writer Al Feldstein hired some of the most unusual illustrators whose idiosyncratic styles would go on to show generations of artists what was possible in sequential art once you took pencils and inks like a chainsaw to traditional storytelling. With ease and this early into their respective careers, cartoonists like Harvey Kurtzman and Bernard Krigstein showed an array of artistic choices that were dramatic and often poetic. Readers took note that these books from EC were special. The second aspect that was responsible for the impact and longevity EC Comics would ultimately have, were the narratives themselves. Not only were these tales highly reflective of the time in which they were created, most of them still hold up today as the saying goes. And herein lies the problem, because often good intentions turn out differently than intended or expected. It goes to the credit of men like Bill Gaines, Al Feldstein and Harvey Kurtzman (who worked as writer, artist and editor on EC Comics“ humor and war titles) that they were not content with putting out simplistic tales of good and evil but that they strived for something far more educational, and thus, by extension, more controversial. And this is where the disclaimer part comes in. While many of their wide-eyed, eight-year-old readers, boys and girls, ate up every new story with fervor, these tales about the cruel headmasters at gothic boarding schools who treated their young charges dismally, the older men who were two-timed by their much younger, desirable wives who they treated like a trophy, beasts from alien worlds that gorged on humans like we were cattle, the metamorphoses of bodies and minds, and the racist robots you encountered in the tale “Judgment Day”“, today, and even back then, as adults, we view these stories with different eyes. And perhaps we should and need to. However, what we see or what we think we see doesn“t remain constant. But it isn“t that these stories change. The words and the art remain unaltered, though newer reprint methods might adapt the color scheme. The players in these stories put on their show for us according to the script they know and in the only way they know. The readers, us, we go through many transformations with every new year. As we grow older and times change with us or time leaves us behind, we become less able to apply this wide-eyed stare we possess as youngsters, and we no longer want to. We expect that much from our adult selves. We task ourselves with looking deeper, hunting for the hidden meanings and by doing so, we not only deconstruct these two-dimensional characters who live in four-colored worlds in which they must perform their pathetic dance every time we check out any particular story, but ultimately we are going to discover something, an image or a word or a combination thereof, that solely seems to exist to offend us, or which we think must be offensive to others, for this is the nature of art that dares to raise its head into the wild and is about to leave the safe space of pure entertainment. But by its nature, art must be offensive. And we“re there to pass judgment if any of it still holds merit. What we will find hard to believe, though, and thus ignore in our assessment, these stories live in their own little bubble, and we the observer will not only bring our own perspective to them, but one that is very much shaped by time itself. “Judgment Day”“ is a very simple story. That it exists in the science fiction genre makes its message feel less imminent and personal, or so we think at first. Originally published in Weird Fantasy No. 18 (1953), this story by writer Al Feldstein and artist Joe Orlando take us on a tour to a faraway world which is inhabited by technically advanced, sentient robots. Tarlton, an astronaut from Earth, is sent to check up on Cybrinia, the planet of mechanical life, to learn if its population has developed “a society worthy of inclusion in Earth“s great galactic republic.”“ The man from Earth is greeted with much fanfare by Cybrinia“s citizens who“re most eager to show off their accomplishments, for him to deem the world they have built worthy of inclusion. And why shouldn“t they feel that their place is right next to Earth in this most prestigious organization? Was Earth not their own birthplace as Tarlton himself even now reiterates? He who is a “representative of [their] original creators”“: “Thousands of years ago, we placed a small handful of you upon this planet. This small handful was given the know-how to build more of you.”“ Thus, to convince Tarlton that indeed they have developed a perfect society during these millennia long past, the man in the bulky space suit is shown around by one of the orange robots. And lo, as his escort offers plenty of proof as he takes the emissary from Earth on a guided tour through one of Cybrinia“s major cities, these robots have evolved in the best possible way their designers could have hoped for. Indeed, the machine men have been able to create a vast array of technical wonderments, even machines to make more of themselves. However, there is a small problem. Among the original robots there were not only orange robots, but some were blue, identical in design to the orange ones, except for the color of their outside coverings. What about them? From his escort Tarlton learns that these robots live in what is referred to as “Blue Town”“. Surely, they can visit this place which is located on the south side of the city, but they better not ride in the car Tarlton“s guide had been provided with. There“s a mobile-bus going to that place, and on the off chance that some of the orange robots would need to use the public transport system, they conveniently have a section to themselves at the front of the bus. There is even a sign to remind you that you are supposed to sit in the back if you were one of the blue sheathed mechanical men. As for “Blue Town”“ itself, Tarlton quickly discovers that the nice, gleaming, modernistic buildings and the bright avenues have given way to dilapidated tenements and roads badly in want of repair. The factory where the blue robots are made is depressingly underfunded. Still new robots are built, all of which are identical to their orange brothers and sisters as they are all based on the same original design without any modification, only their design came with a blue casing originally. But apparently, on this world, this is what matters, as one of the blue automations explains to Tarlton: “The sheathings make that difference to the orange robots”¦ It limits us to menial jobs”¦ sends us to the rear of the mobile-buses”¦ places us in different recharching stations, forces us to live in a special section of the city”¦”“ And there is still more, as Tarlton learns that once the blue robots are assembled, the latest models are placed in an educator after testing, “only this educator is ”˜blue“ educator! It hasn“t the advantages of the ”˜orange“ educator”¦”“ It is by means of their educator that the blue robots learn about their place in this society. Though this is a free society, with the robots free to make their own choices once they“ve put in some hours at the assembly line, Tarlton concludes that the choices of the blue robots are severely limited. Ultimately, Tarlton“s judgment can only go one way, it must only go one way. Such a world that is not inclusive is not ready for inclusion in this republic.

And this is where the aforementioned warning comes in, a double warning, actually. The first warning starts with a question. What are we to make of such a story? When viewed through the eyes of one of the children of the Atomic Age, what is presented as “science fiction”“ is very much a reality, sans robots, of course. But like in the story, in this child“s world, the bus stops are segregated, and so are the drinking fountains and the schools, and the neighborhoods and the restaurants. And from the two-dimensional, four-colored world Tarlton passes his judgment like an angry god, only that he is not angry, but sad. He had wished for a different verdict for Cybrinia and its modern, technologically evolved society. Alas, he also judges the world the child lives in. A child might identify with one of the orange robots, but it might also see its own face reflected on the gleaming sheathings of such a robot, and that mirror image to be glimpsed is one that belongs to a blue robot. What will this child, any child for that matter, make of this little sci-fi yarn that lacks any action or gore or blood? There are no knives at play here and no guns, no one is wielding an axe or another instrument to do some dismembering, there are no man-eating sharks that will feast on the wicked, or in the moralistic world of EC Comics, the gorgeous, two-timing wives and their not so secret lovers. It“s a boring tale, really. Still, this tale makes you feel less good about the world you live in, and as the child grows older it might get offended that without any warning the story is like a trap. You came for a science fiction yarn about cool looking robots on a fantastical world, robots doing some wild stuff like they usually did in other stories, but you are being preached to instead. There is this man who is send from Earth that tells you that no, if you do not accept machine men of all colors into your brave new world of shiny appliances, you are not worthy for inclusion yourself. In fact, you“re the outcast. As an adult you might be either offended by how simplistic this parable depicts the highly complex, complicated subject of race relations, or you are offended that here is a character who is very much lecturing you. This is how Tarlton“s escort feels at least, who is not offended by what his society has wrought, but by Tarlton“s stance about it. The orange machine man thinks the man from Earth has wronged him, and thus he complains bitterly to the emissary who has become a juror and a judge: “You are lecturing me as though all this were my fault, Tarlton! This existed long before I was made!”“ He sees no fault in his own action, since as just one robot, he cannot change his world. Nor does he, as any adult deconstructing this story might very easily point out, actually have the ability to move much beyond his original programming or he would ask Tarlton why the original designers had given them this flaw from the beginning. Why had they seen it fit to create two versions of robots in the first place, one set orange, the other set identical, but simply colored blue? What were they to their creators who had long hence died? What sort of cruel joke had these mysterious overlords wanted to play on them? But this is where the first warning comes into play. This story, like most parables, does not hold up once it is brought too close to the light. The thin newsprint pages allow the light to pass through and they give up their secrets far too easily. If you look at these pages against the sunlight, you see what is on the other side of each page. And what is on the other side is an answer that comes too easily from these pages and from the concealed lips of the judge from Earth: “Of course there“s hope for you, my friend. For a while on Earth, it looked like there was no hope!… When mankind on Earth learned to live together, real progress first began. The universe was suddenly ours.”“ Tarlton is pleased that his new orange friend quickly gets the meaning of his words: “”¦ and when we learn to live together”¦”“, yes, Tarlton continues: “The universe will be yours, too.”“ But once you move beyond the initial shock of how easy, almost naïve this solution appears to be, what you are left with, is not a communiqué of hope that Tarlton delivers to his escort, a man whose whole existence is based around following the program of his gods and evolving from that original code. What Tarlton holds out to him as if dangling something shiny on a string, is a reward. The orange robots will find a way to integrate their world, not because they want to or because they believe this is the right thing to do, but because they want to hold this prize that Tarlton has promised to one of their kind. And this is why this story and the good intentions behind it ultimately fail once you become its author and you add your own skeptical point of view as the outside observer, as this god who made these robots in the first place. You play this kind of cruel game that you experience in the world around you. But yes, there is a twist, of course. Once back in his spaceship, Tarlton, the emissary from an Earth that is like our Earth but several millennia and many evolutionary steps removed, takes off his helmet, and the writer has this to say: “Inside his ship, the man removed his space helmet and shook his head, and the instrument lights made the beads of perspiration on his dark skin twinkle like distant stars.”“ It is of course a curious thing that the man who came to sit as juror and judge over the orange robots, the man to fault them for their way and their errors is a black man. Strange for the fact that this is the same man who has just told one of the ruling class on a foreign planet that if they created an inclusive society, they“re going to be rewarded for it: “At that time all of our scientific advances, our glory would become yours”¦”“ Again, once you begin to unravel the first strand and start to pull on this one loose thread just a bit more, what you are left with are a comic book publisher and his writer, both from Jewish heritage, padding each other on their backs for how progressive, almost subversive a tale they have created. You can have all the riches in the world, all the scientific advances if only you“d pretend play racial tolerance. But again, do not misunderstand their good intentions. These two men, Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein, for their own personal reason, were nihilists at worst and unrepentant cynics on their best days. To them, “Judgment Day”“ was a powerful story with the right kind of message, spun from their corporate offices on 225 Lafayette Street high above the streets of Manhattan and from their homes on Long Island. And to be fair, there is something daring at play here. By 1952, the two men were like a well-oiled machine. Gaines would provide Feldstein with springboards, one sentence synopses or even a loose plot, enough for Feldstein to spin an eight-page comic tale from. They did this across all the genres that were featured in EC“s lineup at that time, crime, horror and sci-fi, with the exception of just a handful of the crime and horror tales, those artist-writer Johnny Craig handled, and the humor and war books which were Harvey Kurtzman“s domain, though Feldstein would pitch in from time to time. The other exception being the two-dozen tales they adapted from the works of writer Ray Bradbury, initially sans an official permission from the genre author who was well on his way to become an American Classic. Once they“d been able to get an incredibly deep bench of artistic talent on board, publisher Bill Gaines and his editor-writers, Feldstein and Kurtzman, were on a roll. After he had been chasing trend after trend when he“d inherited the company from his late father, EC Comics had suddenly become the little company that could. It was the competition that was following them now. Once their gamble to bet the farm on horror comics had paid off, and with the addition of other titles and genres, which all sold reasonably well except for their science fiction books, Gaines simply could have kept feeding the machine with more stories in that vein, tales about the things that go bump in the night and crime tales about nice men who swindled old ladies out of their life“s savings or handsome drifters with designs on lonely housewives. But it was not in their nature. Gaines, who had been on the receiving end of his father“s leather belt a lot as an unhappy child had just divorced from a loveless and joyless marriage that his mother Jessie had arranged between her only son and his second cousin Hazel Grieb. Feldstein, who had two young daughters with his childhood sweetheart who he“d married when he was just eighteen years of age, took his Surfcaster as an excuse to get out of the house he“d bought near Jones Beach and Fire Island. When they worked on the crime stories that filled the pages of Crime SuspenStories, these were no longer stories about gangsters who planned a big heist like some three years ago when Al Feldstein had begun to work on books like Crime Patrol (which continued the numbering from a series Gaines“ father had started shortly before his death in a boating accident) and War Against Crime!, but stories about ordinary people, husbands and wives, and first and foremost, these were tales about the new American nightmare that was suburbia, at least in their minds. The underlying fabric of the idea of the Nuclear Family was slowly rotting away like the body of one of those unfortunate undead in one of their stories with art by Graham Ingels or Jack Davis, and Gaines and Feldstein took it upon themselves to explore scenes from marriages gone awry. It goes to their credit that they added a dose of darkly funny satire to the proceedings while they made use of the plots and story ideas from any James M. Cain and Jim Thompson novel, or Ray Bradbury short story for that matter, they could get their hands on. To most eight-year-old boys or girls who were more than ready to explore their neighborhoods, hidden by the cloak of invisibility you possess only as a child and only at that age when the adults hardly pay any attention to you at all, kids who on a subconscious level sensed what was going on in these dream houses, these stories must have felt like apples of knowledge, though they already had an inkling and here was confirmation. It is no coincidence that other than the much younger wives of old, wealthy fools and the aforementioned drifters, often the younger brothers of their hubbies or some low-level, lower class business associate, children figured large in these stories. These were smart kids who were often powerless, more so than kids usually are, and they were caught up in some frightful situation or weird mystery, something that occurred in their gardens, with no fault of their own and little means to do something about it, because none of the adults would listen to them or took note of their anxieties. But in the end, these kids made it out alive since they were in on a secret. Adult lives, especially the dealings of men and women and how they interacted towards each other, all of this must have been an exciting and terrifying to observe at that age and during those days, and with the filter of young eyes and an EC Comic right next to you. And sure enough, Gaines and Feldstein more than delivered on the promises they gave you with those thrilling covers and strange splash pages that often opened in medias res with an image of a strange occurrence which had happened so suddenly as if to put you completely off balance. These stories sucked you in, and even as a child you got that there was more going on than what any other horror or crime comic offered. These were tales for grown-ups.

As subversive as these stories of those unfulfilled lives behind white picket fences and prim and proper front yards were in their own right, and such they were, Gaines, and by association Feldstein, were very restless with how they saw their world and society at large. To them, there were many ills that afflicted the American Way of Life during the early 1950s, and they were eager to address what they felt needed to be changed. More so, Gaines and Feldstein were willing to go to bat for what they believed in, though they also somewhat half-naively and half-foolishly believed that they had any say over what they could publish and who they could lecture about what. But by the mid-point of the decade they were no longer in a position comparable to that of Tarlton. Soon, their choices would become restricted. It isn“t without irony that “Judgment Day”“ and its troubled publication history would drive this point home to them. It was this story, that became the lightning rod for Gaines to tell that it was time to quit publishing comic books once and for all. EC published the issue with this story early in 1953. Only a few months later, the U.S. Senate established The United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency to investigate possible causes for an increase in violent crimes committed by teens and even children. Though chaired by Robert Hendrickson at its inception, a Republican from New Jersey, his Democratic colleague Senator Estes Kefauver from Tennessee soon took over. At the same time, letters began to reach the committee in which concerned groups of parents and representatives of church groups offered their two cents on who was responsible for the situation. Naturally those ten-cent comic books that were available to any youngster at every local drugstore and which offered some the most unspeakable tableaus of gore and dismemberment only a depraved mind could come up with, namely what was shown in most horror or crime comics. Chief among those voices that were only too eager to offer up their opinion on this matter was a renowned child psychiatrist. Dr. Fredric Wertham had begun to point to what he perceived as an unmistakable connection between comics and the increase of violence in children and teens as early as 1948 when “The Saturday Review of Literature”“ had published his rather graphic article “The Comics”¦ Very Funny!”“ Even though not many people paid much attention to Dr. Wertham“s dramatically worded concerns, let alone parents who were busy with other things like getting a second car and paying down the mortgage on their dream home in the suburbs, Reader“s Digest soon called. The good doctor hastily penned a second piece which received a much wider circulation. He wasn“t the only person to find that articles on this subject were getting traction in the media. Moreover, Dr. Wertham had the credentials and the methodology to back up such claims, or so it would seem. That there was an investigative panel set up and by the United States Senate no less, lined up nicely with the book he was working on which was to offer much of his research into the harmful effects of comic book reading. When “Seduction of the Innocent”“ hit bookstores in April 1954, Senator Kefauver had already scheduled three days during which the subcommittee wanted to take a more in-depth look into comic books and the publishers that peddled such nasty wares vis-a-vis juvenile delinquency with the first two days taking place in April, just two days after Dr. Wertham“s book became available to parents and every other reader. This didn“t go unnoticed by the industry in question which became aware that now a target had been put on its back. At EC Comics, Bill Gaines quickly realized where this was heading, or perhaps, he simple overreacted. It is small wonder, though that he would. His once highly successful father, industry legend M.C. Gaines, who not only was one of the inventors of the medium itself but who also had co-founded All-American Comics, the home of such popular superheroes such as The Flash and Wonder Woman, had instilled in his son from an early age on that he would be a life-long failure. And not only with words, but with each and every beating he administered. This only drove young William to indulge and over-indulge, as if an increase in body mass offered more shelter against his father“s leather belt, yet this only provided the man his friends called Max, and who his employees and enemies addressed as Mr. Gaines, with a much larger area to hit. But react Bill Gaines did. In what was a completely unprecedented move, Bill and his editor Al Feldstein wrote an editorial to sound the alarm. This editorial, which covered a full page with small, neatly typed printing, began to run in every issue published by EC Comics around this time. While his mother Jessie Gaines had not heeded his cries for if not help, then support when he was just a child, the adult and still unhappy, still over-indulging younger Gaines was hoping that this time his calls would not go unanswered. But deep down in his heart he knew, he was hoping against hope, but still he tried: “Comics are under fire”¦ horror and crime comics in particular. Due to the efforts of ”˜do-gooders“ and ”˜do-gooder“ groups, a large segment of the public is being led to believe that certain comic magazines cause juvenile delinquency, warp the minds of America“s youth”¦”“ In the same editorial, Gaines and his editor Feldstein even went on the attack, and why wouldn“t they? Was there not a conspiracy underfoot to get them banned? “Among these ”˜do-gooders“ are: a psychiatrist who has made a lucrative career of attacking comic magazines”¦ publishing companies who do not publish comics and who would benefit by their demise”¦ groups of adults who would like to blame their lack of ability as responsible parents on comic mags instead of on themselves and various assorted headline hunters.”“ Gaines and Feldstein did not mince words either when it came to how they rated the impact these various factions had. They were dangerous: “These people are militant. They complain to local police officials, to local magazine retailers, to local wholesalers, and to their congressmen. They complain and complain and threaten and threaten. Eventually, everyone gets frightened. He removes books from display”¦ This wave of hysteria has seriously threatened the very existence of the whole comic magazine industry.”“ What seems highly dramatic, and perhaps it was, showed how astute Gaines was in his assessment of what was going on. Despite being a ruthless, violent man, Max Gaines knew how the game was played. The initial popularity of comics was in no small part caused by the attacks from local legislators on the racier pulp magazines in the mid-1930s. Publishers soon switched to the much cleaner thrills that the new funny books offered which were as cheaply if not cheaper to produce. To avert any unwanted attention from meddlers who might feel that these four-colored pamphlets were to the detriment of children“s healthy development, early on, comic publisher had established a board of advisors from various areas of education and with the right kind of resume to placate the media and to alleviate any fear an overly concerned parent may have towards letting their kids read comic books. As the older Gaines“ luck would have it, one of these experts in the medical profession and child education Max Gaines and his partner Jack Liebowitz hired for All-American Comics, had a pitch of his own. Psychologist William Moulton Marston suggested that perhaps an all-powerful superheroine was exactly the right kind of new character to join all these male demi-gods that had begun to populate the medium which had then only existed for a few years. Wonder Woman, who Marston created together with artist H.G. Peter, became an overnight smash hit once she was revealed to boys and girls and the whole world in 1942. When Gaines sold his stake in All-American in 1944 and he went on to found a new company he called Educational Comics, he quickly adopted this principle. Max invited six luminaries from the field of education onto his advisory board, three of which boasted a “Dr.”“ in front of their names, two were university professors. When Max had died in a boating accident in the summer of 1947, his business manager Sol Cohen soon disbanded the panel of experts. Now his son may have wished for these esteemed educators to present an insurmountable wall against attacks from outside the industry and from within, but alas, still he could refer to a few leadings lights in his editorial, three in total, each with a doctorate as well, who had come out in defense of the comic book industry. He and Feldstein even quoted Dr. David Abrahamsen, a criminologist as their own expert witness albeit by presenting a few statements from the esteemed man“s book “Who are the Guilty?”“ in the editorial: “Comic books do not lead to crime, although they have been widely blamed for it”¦ In my experience as a psychiatrist, I cannot remember having seen one boy or girl who has committed a crime, or who became neurotic or psychotic”¦ because he or she read comic books.”“ In closing, Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein pleaded with their young readers: “Wherever you can, let your voice and the voices of your parents be raised in protest over the campaign against comics. But first”¦ right now”¦ please write that letter to the Senate Subcommittee.”“ But with “Seduction of the Innocent”“ selected by the Book-of-the-Month-Club and being excerpted in “Ladies“ Home Journal”“, Gaines knew he needed to do more. Thus, he offered his testimony on the matter on the same day Dr. Fredric Wertham was to appear in front of the Subcommittee. In choosing this path and doing so while he was hopped-up on diet pills and caffeine, EC“s publisher poorly misjudged who his real enemy was. When he made light of Dr. Wertham during his opening statements, this only showed how ill prepared he was to grasp the whole situation. His real opponent was not Dr. Wertham, who knew how to present his questionable research into comic book violence and its influence on young, impressionable minds in the most sensationalistic manner. It were the statements Gaines made when he was questioned by the Senators, chief among them Senator Estes Kefauver that doomed him and well-nigh the whole industry. Estes Kefauver had become a star during the televised hearings on organized crime earlier in the ”˜50s. For a short time, he was even a contender for the highest job in the country, that of the President of the United States. Who was a man like Gaines to him? He was just another greedy and irresponsible peddler of smut, one of around twenty who put out around six hundred and fifty comic books on a monthly basis. However, Bill Gaines biggest enemy in that room on April 21, 1954 was Bill Gaines himself in that he attempted to defend the indefensible.

The second warning: don“t let other people tell you what you can see and what not, especially when it comes to art. Words and pictures are magic in that they hold a special power. People who crave power themselves know this. Once he had been established in his position of power and holding court over all things comic books, the man nicknamed “The Comics Czar”“, Judge Charles Murphy, made sure, that no political statements could be made in these four-color pamphlets aimed at children. After Gaines“ well-intended, but mostly poorly worded testimony had forced the industry to act quickly, he was very much at the mercy of a group of comic book publishers led by DC Comics and Archie Comics, who established a self-regulatory body, the Comics Magazine Association of America, the same publishers he“d alluded to in his editorial. While a prior attempt to form any such organization and to set forth a set of guidelines to govern the content of comic books had failed, ironically EC Comics had been a founding member but had quickly terminated their participation, whereas publisher Dell had refused to join right away, now it was a matter of survival for some of the smaller publishers such as Gaines“ own outfit. Though Batman and Superman had been named in Dr. Wertham“s book, DC Comics and especially Archie Comics were a clean enough act, but they also knew that EC and their ilk was hurting their bottom line. Knowing full well that with the new rules that would be set forth in the Comic Code Authority they would take much of the bite out of their much more lurid competitors, they lobbied these new guidelines into effect and pushed for a non-nonsense figure of authority, a man who was beyond reproach and thus would serve as the CMAA“s spokesperson to the public. Judge Murphy, Mr. Comics Code Authority, soon became a nemesis for Gaines and company. Forced to abandon their horror and crime comics by the end of 1954, the bulk of books that made up their vastly successful New Trend Line, Gaines announced a publishing initiative that was designed to fit to the changed times. The so-called New Direction titles were for the most part a bland affair, hardly distinguishable from the wares of their competitors save for the quality of the artwork, but all of these books now carried the Code“s seal of approval which ensure that at least they“d get distribution. The only remnant from their prior offerings was a re-branded and much cleaner Weird Science Fantasy (low sales had made them merge their sci-fi books into just one title). Now with its new name Incredible Science Fiction, most of the creativity and thought-provoking ideas which had garnered Weird Science and Weird Fantasy a small, but very loyal readership, had to be left behind. Bill tried anyway and when a year later he submitted issue No. 33 to the CCA to obtain approval from Judge Murphy, the issue was promptly rejected. The issue included a story drawn by Angelo Torres. “An Eye for an Eye was imaginative, beautifully drawn and poetic, but Murphy flat-out refused to allow it. He“d demanded many changes prior to this from Gaines and company during the preceding months, but in this case, he didn“t even suggest any changes that could be made. Gaines had no choice but to withdraw the story. The story would first appear in 1971 when it was among the twenty-three stories selected by Robert Marion Stewart, a comic fan turned comic book writer and publisher, and Bill Gaines for The EC Horror Library, a one-shot hardcover published by Nostalgia Press. All of the other tales were reprints and all came from EC“s New Trend books i.e. books prior to the establishment of the Comics Code, with one exception. “Master Race”“, a tale by Gaines, Feldstein and illustrator Bernie Krigstein that dealt with the Holocaust, had miraculously found inclusion in Impact No. 1 (1955). Ostensible promoted as one of the New Direction titles, the first issue had been put out sans the Code“s seal prominently shown on its cover. Strapped for time, since he had a deadline to meet with his printer, Gaines submitted “Judgment Day”“ as the replacement for “An Eye for an Eye”“ as the fourth story to be featured in Incredible Science Fiction. This time around, Judge Murphy at least pointed out a few things he wanted changed. “I went in there with the story and Murphy says, ”˜It can“t be a Black man“”¦”“, Al Feldstein later recalled. Feldstein tried to explain “that“s the whole point of the story!”“, but the Comics Czar wouldn“t budge. Once Gaines learned of this development, he got on the phone with the judge. “I“m going to call a press conference on this. You have no grounds, no basis on this. I“ll sue you”“, he bellowed into the receiver. Murphy was willing to make a concession, but once again not without some reservations. “Well, you gotta take the perspiration off”“, he said according to Feldstein when Al was interviewed in 2000 for “Tales of Terror: The EC Companion”“ by authors Fred Von Bernewitz and Grant Geissman. Feldstein continued with his recollections: “I had the stars glistening in the perspiration on his Black skin. Bill said ”˜Fuck you“ and he hung up.”“ With his final FU to the Comic Czar, spoken with much exasperation and frustration, Bill made the decision to get out of comic. He briefly tried his luck with a line of magazines which re-told some of the earlier stories in prose with new illustrations done by some of the finest EC artists, not the original artists who had worked on the stories when they were published originally, but with the artists switched around. The Picto-Fiction line lasted only a handful of issues and some of the art commissioned for later issues, like a re-imagining of Feldstein and Wally Wood“s masterpiece “Came the Dawn”“, with new art by wunderkind Frank Frazetta, today only exists in fragments. Gaines, after he“d finally found something he was good at, despite the judgment his father had instilled in him as a boy, finally called it quits as far as comic books were concerned. He still had MAD Magazine to fall back on, though, and it was a smash hit. The fact that MAD“s initial editor, Harvey Kurtzman had made the suggestion to convert MAD from a comic book into a magazine even before the Comics Code, kept it out of the hands of Judge Murphy.

There is a certain irony in the fact that when Bill Gaines“ father had founded the company, EC stood for Educational Comics. This was when M.C. Gaines, the man who had been one of the inventors of comics, if not the inventor, and who was known for his good business sense and great timing, had believed that comics named Picture Stories from the Bible and Picture Stories from American History would turn out to be a success in a market place that in 1944 was still being dominated by extremely confident, highly patriotic, colorfully garbed men in capes and tights and girls who often wore considerably less clothing, but who were equally masked. Although he was many things, and many things all at once, Max Gaines, most certainly was no fool. Once Max Gaines and his business manager Sol Cohen discovered that these books, in fact the whole line of titles M.C. had created with good intentions or because he believed that such books would soon become the next hot thing, or perhaps with a mixture of both, were not selling enough units initially, he and Cohen soon created a completely different line of books, only these would be sold under a banner that read Entertaining Comics. Soon, crooks and police officers battled it out in titles such as International Comics, soon renamed International Crime Comics, while the covers showed impossible glamorous ladies in perilous situations and as silent observers, while two alpha males fought each other for dominance. Still, even as the first issue of International Comics hit the newsstands in the Spring of 1947, M.C. and Cohen were preparing more exciting wares for their main line, hoping Picture Stories from World History and Picture Stories from Shakespeare would find their intended audience at some point. While indeed Gaines tried to educate young readers, the books didn“t offer much else. Max did not intend for there to be any discourse when books on American History had parts with titles such as “Period of Colonization”“ and “Founding of our Nation”“. Nor did Max plan to educate any youngsters with his Entertaining line. Though these books would depict women as capable, despite the tantalizing way in which they got portrayed by the artists on the covers and in the stories themselves, a few of the ideas put forth by William Moulton Marston hadn“t gone by unnoticed and neither had the early success he“d had with Wonder Woman back at All-American Comics, these were escapist fantasies. His son Bill though, did something rather remarkable. Sometime in 1952, he began to use what by then was a comic book line which exclusively used the name Entertaining Comics, as a platform to advance social causes he felt strongly about. So much so that he voiced strong objection to Dr. Wertham“s misrepresentations of what his and Al Feldstein“s real motives were. During his testimony, the psychiatrist had pointed out the number of times they“d used racist epithets in one story. Once Gaines got on the witness stand right after the psychiatrist had offered his testimony, he had to set the record straight, in regard to this story, “The Whipping”“, from Shock SuspenStories No. 14 (1954), and every other similar story they“d created: “This is one of a series of stories designed to show the evils of race prejudice and mob violence, in this case against Mexican Catholics. Previous stories in this same magazine had dealt with antisemitism, and anti-Negro feelings”¦ and development of juvenile delinquents. This is one of the most brilliantly written stories that I have had the pleasure to publish. I was very proud of it, and to find it being used in such a nefarious way made me quite angry.”“ Bill pointed out that censorship of media was par for the course in Communist dictatorships and not only there. Even as early as 1940, when comics had experienced a meteoric rise in popularity, articles had appeared which argued that comics were “A National Disgrace.”“ As a reaction, not unlike the burning of the works of literature from celebrated authors organized under the fascist rule in Germany at the same time, comic book burnings were held across the United States. In 1954, only a few years later, here was a televised witch hunt trial, and Gaines was right in the middle of it. He had to be. Unfortunately, Bill was also on too much Benzedrine, and he soon lost his focus once the questioning by Senator Estes Kefauver began who deftly lured him away from the point on societal ills and the importance of freedom of speech he was making and who instead confronted him with what became EC“s most notorious cover, namely a cover depicting a man with a bloody axe holding the head of a blonde woman by her hair. Ironically, Gaines had stepped in prior to its publication to prevent the illustration from showing the severed neck of the victim as artist Johnny Craig had originally intended. Nevertheless, once the Senator tricked him into stating that in his opinion the cover was in “good taste”“, Bill never got the chance to explain what he“d had wanted to achieve once he“d decided to let Feldstein write stories like “The Whipping”“. As he“d stated earlier, before the Benzedrine made him drowsy and severely unfocused, they“d created a whole series of tales that dealt with some of the hot button issues plaguing the American Society and National Psyche in those days, and unfortunately to this day. Gaines could not know this of course, and most likely he was hoping for a better outcome when shortly after he and Feldstein had started yet another title for their popular New Trend line, they set out to create a type of tales that was different to what they“d done earlier, stories which were educational, stories that in function were not unlike the educator they“d introduce readers to in “Judgment Day”“, the difference being that Gaines and Feldstein“s educational stories were not intended to tell readers to simply accept the way the world was, but to go and change it. As Feldstein would show in “Judgment Day”“ just a year later, when Tarlton very overtly lets his mechanical escort know, that yes, one lone orange robot could help bring about positive change, the same was true for every boy and girl who read these tales. When they started their latest title, Shock SuspenStories though, this wasn“t on their minds right away. In lieu of a letters column, Gaines and Feldstein used the page in the first issue to explain why there was a new title in the first place: “Well! Here it is! The Magazine we HOPE you“ve been waiting for! This is E.C.“s latest effort and we“ve worked hard on it.”“ They then went on to explain that many readers had written in to request more yarns in the genre they enjoyed most: “Many of you wanted another science-fiction mag, you horror fans wanted another horror book and you suspense readers wanted a companion mag to Crime SuspenStories!”“ We decided therefore to make this new mag an ”˜E.C. SAMPLER“ and to include in it a S-F yarn, a horror tale, a Crime SuspenStory, and”¦ a war story”¦ all of you fans seemed to agree on one thing: all of you wanted stories to have the usual E.C. SHOCK endings!… So what could be more natural than to call the magazine SHOCK SUSPENSTORIES?”“ To reflect such wide-ranging type of content from across such diverse genres, Gaines and his editor-writer had assembled a deep bench of talent for their premier issue: Jack Kamen, Jack Davis, Joe Orlando and Graham Ingels. Then something changed. When readers spied the second issue at their local supermarket or drugstore, they discovered that here was a new element at play. Though they might not have been able to name it, what this was, was social commentary and it was right there on the cover by Wally Wood. With some soldiers parading far in the background who seemed strangely oblivious to what was going on at the center of this tableau, almost as if they were tin figurines or not at liberty to deviate from their orders or devoid of compassion, there was also a mob of people, though as depicted by Wood, these were no faceless men or women. What they were was a loose assemblage of individuals, perfectly rendered by the artist as such who also made each person look rather mundane. These were bank tellers, insurance brokers, car salesman, neighbors, homemakers and career girls. There were also two children present, a little girl who anxiously reached with both hands for the coat of the adult female standing next to her while she still looked on. And one fair-haired boy whose intent gaze betrayed his dark fascination with what was going on. These people came from all walks of life, and they were fathers and mothers, yet here they were, united by a common cause and almost frothing at the mouth while they were brutally mauling one who seemed like one of their own, another common man, except for the fact that he wasn“t. There were some men, attractive and rugged despite their business suits, who were punching and kicking him though he was already on the ground, his arms and hands stretched out to protect himself, but also in a gesture that was pleading with his savage assailants who called him “a dirty red”“. Still there was one man who spoke up in defense of this poor soul. He was an older fellow who tried to stand very straight, yet with many from the crowd pushing forward, he swayed like a brittle leaf in a storm. Undeterred by the hatred which surrounded him and everybody else, hatred that was swiftly born from righteous indignation and which in turn had begotten ignorance and violent deeds, this man who ignored the danger he put himself into, cautioned his fellow men, as he begged: “Stop it! Please! What you“re doing is wrong! Act like Americans!”“, though on this cover at least and in this powerful, visceral depiction there would be no change. It was America, alright, but in a Norman Rockwell dream gone wrong. This was neighbor versus neighbor, and brother against brother. What was any young reader to make of this? Grab your mother“s coat and still keep on looking? Or to derive some dark satisfaction from this apparent red agent getting what he had coming?

This was not the first time that a cover or a story from EC questioned the price of patriotism. Feldstein“s colleague Harvey Kurtzman often featured subversive war stories in the titles he edited, wrote most of the stories for and for which he even provided complete artwork or at the very least layouts or sketches, often painstakingly detailed and meticulously planned, and of course, he expected whoever worked on these stories to follow his breakdowns to a T. More so than Feldstein and Johnny Craig, the latter having earned the privilege to write his own stories due to his talent and since his tenure at EC even pre-dated that of Gaines, Kurtzman knew how to subtly drill down to the core of what it meant to be a patriot and a war hero, and he did so with a lot of respect for the service men whose stories he told, yet he always knew how subvert your idea of where a certain story was going. Kurtzman was excellent at pacing, the quality that also made him an outstanding humorist. While Kurtzman“s plots were always much tighter than Feldstein“s, he well made up for it with unapologetic bluntness. “The Patriots!”“, the yarn for which Wood had created the cover, was not subtle. A man who seems to be sneering while a group of veterans marches by enrages the crowd that has gathered to show their support to these brave troops who fight in Korea to keep Communism from spreading. First one man hits him, then there are more, until he dies from this barrage of punches and kicks from the men who think him a Communist for mocking the flag and the courageous soldiers all of which were prepared to lay down their lives in order to defend liberty across the globe. Only when the slain man“s wife arrives on the scene, it is revealed that he himself was a veteran of the war in Korea and this is when these savages, these patriots learn the truth about him: “They did the best they could putting his face back together after the shell tore it off! Sob”¦only when he smiled”¦ it looked like he was sneering!”“ But even with this explanation offered, some from the wild crowd still persist. They could not have been this wrong, they are owed an answer: “why didn“t he take off his hat when the flag passed, huh? Why?”“, asks one man from the crowd who speaks as a proxy for everybody else who is part of this severely agitated and deeply offended gathering of proud Americans. The answer given by the man“s wife, now his widow, was as simple as it was obvious: “He didn“t know! He couldn“t see it! He was”¦ blind!”“ Though this story packed a powerful punch, not with its twist ending as was so often the case with EC yarns, but with a single striking panel. This panel showed the wife after she“d come onto the scene caused by the vicious mob. She was kneeling next to her slain husband. With her head raised, her eyes unnaturally big and tears streaming down her face, the woman stared at these ordinary men who had taken a life so callously. She demanded an explanation, these big, accusing eyes demanded it. What reason may have existed to justify this senseless, brutal act of manslaughter: “Why? Why did you do it?”“ The answer one of the men gave her in the same panel was likewise basic as it was wrong: “He was a dirty red, lady! Sneering at our boys just comin“ back from over there!”“ However, this story was nothing to write home about despite the good intentions that had willed it into existence. It was by far the weakest story in the issue which also featured a crime story with art by Jack Kamen and a science fiction yarn illustrated by Wally Wood, both tales from a clever script by Feldstein with input by Bill Gaines. The true standout was one of the rare horror stories that were actually based around the one day in the year that was ominous and foreboding, “Halloween!”“ Since it was drawn by arguably the best horror artist of the ”˜50s, Graham Ingels, it was an affair designed to frightened little kids and their older siblings alike. The artwork on “The Patriots!”“ is what lets the story down which entirely hinges on the reveal, so much so that on the first page Feldstein announced that there would be a twist. Though Jack Davis was a masterful artist in his own right and given the right material, his cartoony style was not the right fit for this very dour, down to Earth tale. Also, Wood“s cover which complimented the tale was one of his rare misfires. As dramatic as it looks, and that it does, sans the speech bubbles and the many words in them, the meaning of what is going on is completely lost. Yet a keen reader might have caught something unusual while perusing this tale. Even after announcing what type of stories EC“s latest series would offer, and going into detail in the editorial for the first issue about what tales readers wanted to see more of, this story was the first tale in a brand-new category, a classification that had little meaning to readers just yet. “The Patriots!”“ was branded as “A Shock SuspenStory”“, yet Bill Gaines and his writer-editor probably couldn“t have imagined that this story and those soon to follow would become known by a different name in the future, especially since they clearly hadn“t figured out where they were going with this. Today, not many remember that these tales were once labeled “Shock SuspenStories”“, named after the series, they appeared in, signaling that here was something new and different and very unique. One cannot overstate how groundbreaking these tales were that had such an inconspicuous beginning with “The Patriots”“, and their significance may have even increased over time. These stories, which are most commonly referred to as “the preachies”“ by comic book historians, were indeed not only unusual for EC Comics (even when considering that all the EC writers took their audience very seriously and they never wrote down to their young readers and that they more often than not were pushing the envelope with their subject matters), but across the whole comic book industry, especially at the time they were created. What is surprising though, that after the first lackluster tale, with the writer clearly still finding his feet when writing a story that didn“t fit into any genre, like horror, crime or sci-fi, a tale which on its surface was very much in the style of Kurtzman, only just not as good, astonishingly, right with the very next issue, all the puzzle pieces fell into place. After their initial, rather uninspired tryout story in Shock SuspenStories No. 2, their next attempt, which arrived in the subsequent issue, suddenly burst onto the scene fully formed. The time for fumbling around was clearly over and without so many words or formal announcements, the “EC Shock SuspenStories”“ had a mission statement, an overall direction and all the thematic building blocks, and perhaps most importantly, the right kind of artist to tell such stories. What then are the comprising, common elements that can be found in “the preachies”“ and which make each of the stories that came after “The Patriots”“ so powerful that they still resonate with modern audiences so strongly, maybe to a higher degree and on much more personal level than when these “preachies”“ were originally published? Famous director Steven Spielberg, who was six years old when Gaines began to publish this type of tales, put it this way in his foreword to a hardcover reprint edition from Gemstone that collects the first issues: “Perhaps the most interesting of all were the morality tales he introduced in Shock SuspenStories. For the first time, Gaines attacked subjects like racial and religious prejudice with stories like ”˜The Guilty!“ and ”˜Hate!“ These stories were aimed at the young readers of comic books and confronted these controversial topics head on. While most comic books were devoted to costumed superheroes, Archie and Donald Duck, Bill Gaines was using the medium to educate his audience like his father before him.”“ However, a valid point can be made that what Gaines and company were doing and the chances they were taking, at the very least they were running the risk of alienating their readers while also getting some parents all riled up, far supersedes any attempts or initiative to educate Gaines“ father Max ever made. Despite being a tough and shrewd businessman and a cruel father, M.C. Gaines wanted to please, as he was well aware of the ire comic books drew from certain groups of influencers. His son, though, was a man who was uncomfortable in his own skin, and thus Bill didn“t care if he made other people uneasy. Bill knew that the truths they were dishing out were inconvenient and that these were provoking stories which were made even more effective by the artist he and Feldstein would pick.

What is so remarkable: the first of the two tales Spielberg lists as examples is only Gaines and Feldstein“s second “Shock SuspenStory”“ and it“s a gut-wrenching tale that“s as tightly written as it“s fearless. It“s as haunting today as it was when it was published in 1952 in Shock SuspenStories No. 3. This story certainly must have been unsettling to readers of that time who came into it from the shocking splash page with which the preceding tale had ended, a crime tale, very naturalistically drawn by Jack Kamen who was a master at this type of yarn. But nothing could have prepared any boy or girl for what unfolded over the course of the next seven pages. The scene is set right away: once again there is an angry mob of people, those of a small town. This wasn“t any specific town, as the caption lets on: “This shameful story might have taken place anywhere in the United States. It could have happened in your town!”“ These men who have assembled outside the jailhouse, await the arrival of a suspect in a murder case. The victim of this crime is a woman, a white woman. The suspect who is brought in by Sheriff Humphrey Dawson and his armed deputies is a black man. He“s in handcuffs. Not only does he look guilty to the aggravated crowd, but they insult him and even spit in his face as he is led towards the entrance of the building. There can be no doubt really, since one of the townsfolk, Hank Barker, has put him at the scene of the crime. And the sheriff is convinced of the man“s guilt as well, and only reluctantly he agrees that they better make sure that the men outside don“t get any ideas and take matters into their own hands. This is when the D.A. arrives, an older gentleman who is well respected within this community. He surely has sway over the crowd which slowly begins to disperse at his say-so. The man does not bring any good news, at least not where Sheriff Dawson is concerned. Their case against the young black man is weak, and now there is even a lawyer “from some civil liberties organization”¦ on his way”“ to defend the accused. The sheriff does not welcome this latest development one bit. With sweat running down his face and a fat cigar in his mouth, he does offer a solution to this dilemma lest they run the risk of the defendant getting away from justice and punishment: “Then we ought to let the crowd get ”˜im before he goes to trial!”“ But the D.A. wants everything done by the book. He seems like a fair and decent man all things considered and in light of the fact that there is one angry mob at their door. He quickly warns Sheriff Dawson that he“d prosecute him “for failure to do your duty”“, and he strongly suggests that the prisoner is quickly moved from the local prison to the county seat where they have “a pretty strong jail”“ for his own safety, though when he takes his leave to prepare for the trail against the black man, he once again reminds Dawson that their case “doesn“t look too pat!”“ From there, things begin to move at the breakneck pace. When the defense lawyer from out of town arrives, it immediately becomes clear to the sheriff that there is a strong chance that he could get the accused man off the hook while at the same time, pressure mounts among the citizenry who complain with righteous indignation to Sheriff Dawson. He assures them and the local press that this man won“t get away: “Collins is guilty! He practically admitted it! No legal smart-alec from out-of-town is gonna get him off! Not while I“m sheriff!”“ When the day of the trial arrives, the sheriff and his men are tasked with returning the defendant from the county jail. Sheriff Dawson clearly has some ideas about that. He asks his deputy to stop the car on the country road and near a forest. It is in these dark woods that he orders Collins out of the vehicle while he is still cuffed. At first his deputies think Dawson is letting him go. So, it would appear, though Collins, who“s now on the ground and in the mud, is smarter than the deputies or smart enough not to start running. It is only when the sheriff pulls his revolver and he starts firing a few rounds at his feet, that the black man is left with no other choice. He makes off as fast as he can while he desperately tries to retain his balance with his hands still in the heavy chains of the handcuffs which dangle in front of his body with every hurried step he makes. This image of a shackled black man is potent and haunting, and even more so when with the next panel the defendant, now a fugitive from the law against his own will, is seen not from behind, but from the front as his body begins to fall to one side. Then, only one panel further, Collins lies in the mud again, but this time on his back. He is dead. The sheriff has shot him, and immediately he makes his men witnesses to an alternative reality: “You saw him make a break for it when we slowed down”¦ didn“t you, Jed and”¦ Phil? You heard me warn him?”“ Without fail, his men back him up as Sheriff Dawson knew they would. However, since this is an EC story, there is one final irony to be had. Once they arrive in town, they learn that the trial is off. As the D.A. explains it, the defense lawyer broke down the only witness. Hank Baker has confessed to the killing of the white woman. Collins was completely innocent. Though the D.A. still wonders: “Too bad he attempted to escape! Wonder what caused him to try?”“ What make this such a powerful story are its theme and the tight plot by Feldstein (once again with input by Gaines), but what elevates it beyond the level of a controversial, well-written comic book story into something that feels so real that it makes any reader uncomfortable is the art by Wally Wood, the artist who would illustrate many “Shock SuspenStories”“ going forward. To say that Wood“s realistic, often hyper-realistic, art style is extremely well-suited for this type of narrative is an understatement. Where for example Kamen still retained a clean, classical look for his artwork which made every character and everything look beautiful for the most part, Wood“s world was rough and dirty, and beauty was often soiled as well. His men had a weight to them which was not seen in the works of many other illustrators. But at this time, Feldstein and Gaines were still somewhat unsure of the full impact of a tale like “The Guilty”“, especially with their young audience. They saw the need to add an unnecessary coda to reiterate the point they had already made very eloquently throughout their grim tale: “Whether Aubrey Collins was innocent or guilty is not important! But for any American to have so little regard for the life and rights of any other American is a debasement of the principles of the constitution upon which our country is founded! ”“ Editors”“ It was a mistake they would not repeat. As they continued with this type of tales, they would trust the readers.

Though Wood“s male characters always needed to prove their manhood despite their burly appearance and their strong-limbed bodies, there was always something haunting about his women. They were all beautiful, yet they nevertheless seemed desperate and broken as well. And it is such a gorgeous, broken woman who lies at the center of the next “preachy”“ which came in the next issue. With this story, the publisher and his editor-writer once again turned their attention to police brutality. “Confession”“ from Shock SuspenStories No. 4 (1952) starts with an ordinary man in his late forties or maybe early fifties, a man who you saw in your neighborhood and who worked a very mundane nine-to-five job in the city, and a dead woman. As this ordinary fellow, Arthur Keenan drives his car through a deserted part of the city at night on his way home from work where he has put in some extra hours to pay the mortgage for his dream home as we might suspect, he once again notices his busted headlight. But Arthur is so tight on cash and so short on time that he hasn“t gotten around to have it repaired. Now such a minor detail will cost him dearly. Right there in front of his windshield and illuminated by the one working headlight, there“s a woman who lies in the middle of the road. She is very beautiful, and she seems hurt. Once he gets out of his car and gives her a quick once-over, the bespectacled man determines that she has been hit by another vehicle with full force and she“s badly in need of medical attention. He hurries back into his car and drives off hastily, however as bad luck would have it, this is the moment when a black-and-white police car makes it to the scene. While one of the police officers stays with the victim, the other chases after Keenan who they figure for a hit-and-run driver. First, we check in with the officer and the black-haired woman to learn that it“s too late for a doctor now. She has succumbed to the injuries she“d sustained when the unknown driver hit her with his car. Then we follow the other officer who motions Keenan to stop his car and who approaches the mild-mannered fellow with his service revolver drawn. Understandably so, officers Flagg and Riley haul him in for questioning. Keenan is not treated too kindly at the police station with everybody already certain that he is the one who killed that poor woman. Did he not make a break for it? Surely, he must be guilty, and the police detectives have ways to make any man confess. They badger the poor fellow while they also phone up their lieutenant to learn what they should do and how to proceed. Naturally, Lieutenant Staley tells them to get a confession and that he will be in soon, only now he“s waiting for his wife to return from the show she went to. She ought to be back in a short while. About that confession; Detective Becker and Detective Mason take Keenan into an interrogation room to put the screws on him, with Feldstein and Wood setting the scene effectively: “The room was dark, except for one brilliant light that hung above them! Arthur shook his head as they fired questions at him”¦”“ Now, the matter of the broken headlight comes back to haunt Arthur Keenan. And instead of working late as we had suspected earlier with an upstanding guy like him, Arthur was at a party, and he was drinking, though he claims he had only two drinks, which the detectives find difficult to believe. Then, with his refusal to admit to what they think he has done; things get physical and violent with one heavy punch to his stomach that lets his horn-rimmed specs fly from his sagging face. Both of the detectives are no pushovers and they pummel the older, unathletic man mercilessly. This is when their superior enters the room. But Keenan cannot expect any respite from Lieutenant Staley who“s just learned that the woman who was killed was his own wife. Thus, the beating the older guy receives from the two detectives is only getting more intensive when their boss breaks this news to them. Things got personal now. Wally Wood does an outstanding job with how he portrays the violence, and as readers we fell each punch as it lands on Keenan“s weak, defenseless body. However, like with “The Guilty!”“ we have a voice of reason. Detective Doyle calls Lieutenant Staley into another room to let him know that the lab report has just come back. Doyle advises Staley that the physical evidence against Keenan just doesn“t add up. The lieutenant is undeterred, even when Doyle now lists many details in the report that under normal circumstances would be seen as exculpatory evidence and conclusive proof that Keenan was indeed a man in the wrong place at the wrong time, but not to Staley. The police lieutenant is sure that they have the right man in custody and that Keenan will eventually confess, especially since he and his men now show him a lead pipe. And now Staley gets in on the action, though we don“t see it. Instead our perspective is that of Detective Doyle as we remain in front of the closed door to the interrogation room with the young police detective who seems to shrink into himself with every scream that he hears coming through the door, and there“s sweat dripping from his forehead. This time, there wouldn“t be a coda to tell readers what to make of this story. Instead we got this one panel with Doyle“s face to realize that these police detectives were not the good guys and that what they did was not cool or dashing. It was just wrong. But right as his commanding officer had predicted, Keenan signs a confession. Doyle is smart enough to play the political game and instead of questioning Lieutenant Staley, he congratulates him on his success: “Yes, sir! You did! Congratulations! I guess I was wrong!”“ Once again, one man could have made a difference, but he just didn“t. Doyle was right, though as we soon learn when Staley walks from the police station and into a store. When we next see him, Staley carries a wrapped package under one arm. We follow him to his nice house and into his garage, and we learn what“s inside this package. A new headlight to replace the damaged one on his car: “”¦ and, after cleaning his wife“s blood from his car, [he] began removing the broken headlight in order to replace it”¦”“ And this was how the tale ended.

“Hate”“, the other story Stephen Spielberg name-checks in his preface, appeared right in the next issue, and this time Gaines, Feldstein and Wood tackled the theme of antisemitism. When a new family moves into their neighborhood, John Smith and his friends don“t take to this development too kindly. But who was our protagonist? Al Feldstein had the answer: “Your name is John Smith. You“re an American with a good American name! You“re a churchgoer”¦ a family man”¦ a respected member of your community!”“ Wood does not portray this man who has just put a note on his new neighbors“ door as some monster. John Smith looks rather ordinary and a bit dull in his blue business suit and with the glasses that make him a stand-in for Superman“s alter-ego Clark Kent. He isn“t unattractive, and he is young like his blonde wife Mary who is very pretty. But what does the note say that is directed at another young couple, Dave and Ethel Gold? Dave Gold reads it to his wife while the movers are unloading their furniture and John and his friends are watching from a hiding place like some schoolboys who have just played a prank on one of their teachers or another adult: “It, it says, ”˜Don“t move in”¦ Jew! You“ll be sorry! We don“t want Jews in this neighborhood!“”¦”“ But still the movers are bringing in the furniture. Once John is back at his house which is not far, he is still seething with anger. His wife tries to calm him down with her very own observations: “They look like nice people, John! Maybe they“ll be all right, perhaps”¦”“ But John will have none of it: “Perhaps, nothing, Mary! They“re Jews! They“re no good!”“ John, like many men during these days takes the train to commute from the suburb where he lives to his place of work in the city. And his neighbors do the same. They are all friends and now they are united by a common concern. The Golds. What if more of their kind moved in? There might be very real economic consequences, as John explains to his neighbor Ed during the ride: “No telling what“ll happen to our real-estate values if that happens!”“ Something had to be done. But the time for writing threatening notes had passed. What came next was physical violence as the men were waiting for Dave Gold one night and gave him a severe beating. Dave was now more careful. He avoided the men whenever he could, yet he and Ethel didn“t move. But Ed had a solution. They“d be burning down the Golds“ house. And with Ed, this was not just talk, he got the gasoline and John and one of the other guys were all in. The men didn“t care much if the couple was at their residence when they began to torch the wood structure, in fact they counted on it. Maybe John was thinking that they“d have a chance to get out of their house before the fire reached them. But with the greedy flames working their way up, up to the couple“s master bedroom on the second floor, they had no escape route other than to risk jumping through the window. Though the fire is brought under control soon enough, there is no relief. From the ambulance doctor John Smith learns that both of the Golds are dead. Still John rejects any accusations made by his wife Mary. It was an accident, he says. All he and the boys wanted to do was to scare the Golds into moving away from their neighborhood. Mary begins to cry upon the realization that her own husband is responsible for the death of two people, yet John cannot console her, he has to justify his actions and in doing so, John must admonish Mary instead: “Don“t go soft, Mary! They were Jews! We don“t want Jews! They“re no good!”“ This is when John Smith“s mother arrives for one of her regular visits. To his dismay, his own mother tells him that she is ashamed of him when she learns what“s been going on. Then Ma Smith begins to tell John some details about his own heritage she had no intention of ever revealing to him. Her tale comes at a very inconvenient time for John, though, since Ed walks into his house unannounced to let him know that the authorities have been asking questions in connection with the Golds“ demise. Ed overhears what John Smith learns from his mother. John was adopted. Both of his parents died shortly after his birth. And they were Jews. This changes everything, for John and for Ed. John is haunted by images of the Golds being trapped in their house and then jumping to their deaths. With Ed spreading the word, he has become a pariah. The men he called his friends look at him differently now. They even refuse to sit in the same compartment with him on their train ride. His little son gets beaten up by the other kid who call him “a Jew-Boy”“. It is John who now finds a letter on his door that says that he and his family aren“t wanted in this neighborhood. And it is John who now receives a merciless beating from the other men. Maybe it is a coincidence that Spielberg referred to this story when he wrote the preface and maybe it isn“t. Spielberg has never made a secret out of the fact that the entertainment he was exposed to as a child of the 1950s has had a huge influence on his work. “Jaws”“ is a monster B-movie right out of the ”˜50s. “Raiders of the Lost Ark”“ bears all the hallmarks of ”˜30s movie serials which were shown on television and at theaters during that time. Though some of Spielberg“s newer films, like the emotionally devastating “Schindler“s List”“ or “Munich”“, a very unusual film in his impressive oeuvre for how brutally torn, savage and sexual charged it is, come from a place of personal history as well as general history, there“s a strong influence from other sources just as well. Especially “Munich”“ with its moral shading and its meditation on revenge and justice shows the influence Gaines and company had on him with their stories about moral. These stories themselves were not without precedent. When with the next issue and their next “Shock SuspenStory”“, Gaines and Feldstein and artist Wally Wood turned their attention to the Ku Klux Klan, they were not the first to do so in popular media, though “Under Cover”“ might very well be the most famous of “the preachies”“ they ever did. There is the cover for one. Of course, with an artist like Wally Wood, who was getting famous for the manner in which he draw very sultry women, also some of the most voluptuous ones, there“s a tantalizing aspect to the cover which also harkens back to the way women were often portrayed on the covers of comic books during the Second World War when heightened female sexuality was mixed with images of sadistic foreigners wielding instruments of torture. Only, in this case, and very ironically, the sadist who looms on the cover and who is in a position of power, is an American, one who wants to bar foreigners from “mixing their blood”“ with that of any white woman. Yet he and his cohorts won“t show their faces for the hoods they“re wearing with their white robes. The young woman who is at the center of the cover and who kneels at feet of the big, hooded man, is exposed in more ways than one. Her face is bare. She wears a flimsy nightie which clings to her shapely body revealingly. Both her hands are tied behind her back with rope. She is in a submissive position and since she has scorned these men, though she is white, there must have been some act of transgression. With the way a lot of the EC stories went, young readers were indeed primed for some victim blaming since women were often up to no good in the stories that Feldstein and Craig concocted, especially the crime stories which used James M. Cain“s novels with their femme fatales as their template. Indeed, the woman, Suzy Carson, had been seen with “that trash element in our town”“, thus she is sentenced by “the Black Vigilante Society”“ to one-hundred lashes!”“ Suzy is tied to a tree by the men and the “grand master”“ begins her punishment as he tells her: “This will teach you to stay with your own”¦ kind”¦”“ However, there is a reporter who is hiding close by and who observes what is going on. This is when Gaines and his writer Feldstein tip their hand and show from where they“ve got the idea for the story. In 1946, human rights activist Stetson Kennedy infiltrated the KKK and other racist organizations. In order to harm the Klan in the most critical way with what he had been able to learn about the ways in which these vile men operated in the shadows, Stetson didn“t turn to any news outlets or law enforcement, but to the producers of the very popular Superman radio program who were actually thrilled to use The Man of Steel as a force for positive change and education in the real world. Soon, the sixteen-part serial “Clan of the Fiery Cross”“ was set up with Stetson brought on as a consultant. The serial ran from June to July ”˜46 and turned into a boon for the show and its main sponsor Kellogg“s who the Klan unsuccessfully tried to intimidate with a boycott. Reportedly, the serial had a negative impact on the Klan“s recruitment after Superman himself had told his listeners that these were the bad guys. This was not how “Under Cover”“ played out. When the young woman dies from the brutal whipping, the leader removes his hood when he tells his men to get rid of her body. This is when some of the members become aware of the reporter who has witnessed everything and who now can identify the “grand master”“. He makes a run for it, and initially, he manages to escape the hooded gang. They catch up with him at his hotel while he“s trying to place a call to the F.B.I. The men beat him badly, all the while he keeps insisting that he hasn“t been able to make out their leader“s face. After he wakes up in a hospital room, he“s interviewed by two agents. He“s more than ready to let them have his report. Indeed, he can identity the “grand master”“, the man who killed the girl. The two agents pull their guns and shoot him dead. And this is as far as Gaines and Feldstein were willing to go. With one caption they quickly rein in any ideas a reader might get. These were of course “phony F.B.I. men”“. The doctor who had supposedly treated the reporter after the beating was “phony”“ as well. It“s worthwhile to point out that the reason why Stetson Kennedy hadn“t approached the government or the police with what he“d been able to learn about the inner workings of the Klan was rooted in his belief that the Klan had been able to infiltrate these organizations. Gaines wasn“t willing to make any claims of foul play, not just yet.

What Gaines did, however, was to defend the story “The Whipping”“ during his testimony in front of the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency less than two years later. Though it“s lost to time if either Al Feldstein or Jack Oleck wrote the story which appeared in Shock SuspenStories No. 14 (1954), it does play out similarly to “Hate!”“ from the outset. Once again, the residents of a suburb are dismayed when a new family moves into their neighborhood. The difference, this time around it is a Mexican-American family and our main character Ed is much older than John Smith. And he has a teenage daughter. Once again, the men in the community are up in arms about their new neighbors and these men also say they are worried about the economic effects this might to cause. But they aren“t prepared to let anyone see their faces. If they formed a “vigilante society”“, and they wore hoods and robes, as one of the guys now suggests, they could take matters into their own hands without having to fear any form of reprisal from the regular police or other law enforcement organizations. But other than Ed and his two friends Willie and Phil none of the neighbors they approach with this idea is willing to go that far. Then Ed learns that his daughter Amy has been seeing Louis Martinez, the teenaged son of the Mexican family. What“s even more shocking to him, Amy is neither ashamed nor makes a secret out of it. Ed quickly spreads the word around town that his daughter has been molested by one of the Mexicans. Surely, he knows what words to use to get his male neighbors all riled up. Now the men are willing to don the white hoods and robes. Under the cover of the night, Ed and the neighbors sneak to the residence of the Spanish Catholic family and steal into the house. They grab the young fellow from his bedroom upstairs and with a blanket over his head and tied with ropes, they carry him to a nearby forest where Ed takes out his leather belt like Bill Gaines had seen his own father do so many times when he was still a little boy. Ed beats their victim with the belt and all his anger and hate flows freely from his mind and his heart into his arm as he lands blow after blow. Again, there is one among the crowd who tries to talk some sense into Ed and the men who just stand there and let this happen. Then, Ed“s victim lies dead at his feet. This is when Louis comes onto the clearing in the forest where they have taken the person they clearly mistook for the lad. When Louis lifts the still warm body from the grass and into his arms and he removes the sheet, Ed learns the painful truth. He“s killed his own daughter. She and Louis got married in secret, and she was waiting for her new husband when the men had grabbed her in the dark house and his dark bedroom. When Gaines defended this story against any claims made by Dr. Wertham in his earlier testimony during which the good doctor was heavily implying that EC was publishing stories that promoted bigotry and racism, with the psychiatrist even calling out the exact number of supposed racist epithets used throughout this one story alone, the publisher was well within his rights to suggest Dr. Wertham may not have read this tale at all or not carefully enough. It“s likewise fair to say that if he had, this only showed how fast and loose he was playing with what was in these stories and what he himself brought to them as a reader. And it does betray how disingenuous the psychiatrist was when he was stating his opinions as facts. Violence, either racially or sexually motivated, was indeed an issue in most of these stories and stories from other publishers, but especially where “the preachies”“ were concerned, violence was never shown as a means to solve a problem but rather as something cowards resorted to who hid behind masks or in a crowd. Violence and threats of bodily harm were used by figures of authority to retain their position of power. Through the next dozen of issues of Shock SuspenStories, Gaines continued this trend of serving up his very own brand of moralistic tales. The label “A Shock SuspenStory”“ was eventually dropped when more often than not an issue might feature not just one, but at least two stories that fit into this category. It became apparent, that Gaines and Feldstein were moving away from the idea of a “genre sample”“ that they had initially said Shock SuspenStories would serve as. And as seen with “Judgment Day”“, this type of story would not be limited to this one series. The fact remains that when we look back at these stories from the middle of the last century, we also see our present, because the sad reason why most of them are still relevant and still resonate comes from the fact that things haven“t changed that much as far as racism and religious intolerance are concerned or the theme of sexual abuse, a topic Gaines confronted head on in one of their most chilling tales right around the time he offered his testimony to the Senate Subcommittee, a story that seems very current this many years later. “A Kind of Justice”“ by Carl Wessler and Reed Crandall from Shock SuspenStories No. 16 (1954) uses many elements from “the preachies”“, going back all the way to the very first story in that particular vein, “The Patriots”“. There“s the righteous mob of concerned, riled-up citizens that eventually kills an innocent man with red-hot abandon, there“s a sheriff with his own ideas about upholding and enforcing the law and we again witness how the police forces a confession out of a man, not by presenting their evidence, but with their fists and clubs. What makes this story so powerful though, is for one its subject matter. This was a story about sexual assault. The victim: a sixteen-year-old girl who made the mistake to get into the car of the wrong person while she was waiting at a bus stop on her way home. There is soon some victim blaming by her parents who cannot figure out how this could have happened to their daughter, but never by the writer. This is one of Wessler“s best scripts. Every word feels true: “She“d been waiting alone”¦ and the next moment she“d not been alone. He“d appeared out of the darkness and she“d seen the look on his face. He“d forced her to the old shack by the quarry. She“d pleaded and screamed. And now it was over”¦ But it would never be over for her”¦ because she“d never forget”¦”“ Equally powerful is Reed Crandall“s art, right from the very first panel, which shows the victim Shirley Hansen on the floor with her back against the wall, one of her hands covering her face in shame. A man is seen standing to one side, with his back to the reader and his face towards Shirley. His left arm is visible in the panel, yet his hand isn“t raised, nor is he making a fist with his fingers in a threatening gesture. He doesn“t need to. But he tells Shirley Hansen one thing and that alone is enough: “You tell anybody”¦ and I“ll kill you!”“ There is nothing exploitative about this story. Shirley is never sexualized by the words carefully chosen by Wessler or Crandall“s art which does veer into the territory of horror with the artist“s use of heavy shading near the end when he depicts the crazed-out mob that is out for the blood of the young drifter who gets blamed for the crime. When the real perpetrator is revealed in the last panel, this doesn“t represent some clever ironic twist like so often in earlier EC stories, it only emphasizes that by this time, two years after “The Guilty”“, Gaines was more than willing to go all in. And we even don“t get the full impact at first. When Sheriff Judson offers Shirley a ride home, this looks alright, despite the fact that we“ve witnessed that he allowed his deputy to beat a confession out of the man the police want for Shirley“s rape. And we“ve seen that this burly man with the crew cut and the paunch was ok with stepping aside to give the folks from the town, led by Shirley“s own father, access to the police station where this drifter Eddie Nichols is being held, with his own men following his lead by not shielding the defendant, in effect signing the vagrant“s death warrant by doing nothing. Still we are fine with Sheriff Judson driving the girl home, so Shirley doesn“t have to see what“s going on like her own father wanted her to. Judson is the Sheriff of this community and he is respected, and throughout the story, he is mostly presented as “the good guy”“, the voice of reason. He even tried to talk some sense into the men loitering outside the station. It“s only when he and Shirley are alone in his car that he takes his mask off. With Shirley he can be his true self, she“s seen his face. But he knows she wouldn“t tell a soul. With them this close, Sheriff Judson praises Shirley and he reminds her of what he“d said to her earlier: “You were smart not to talk, Shirley! Remember! You tell anybody”¦ I“ll kill you!”“ And a fearful Shirley knows how to answer, but she also pleads with him as she knows what comes next with such a man. She“s learned her lesson and she“ll never forget: “I won“t tell. I promise! Please, Sheriff! Please”¦ don“t”¦”“ With a man in a position of authority, a man held in high regard by everybody, a voice of reason, abusing his power, who was left to defend the defenseless? Who was left for Shirley Hansen?

There is the common misconception among many comic book fans that once the Comics Code Authority was established near the end of 1954 and EC was forced to abandon their horror and crime comics and they eventually got out of the business of publishing comic books altogether in 1956, that there weren“t any horror comics around for a long time. This is not correct. Publisher like Atlas Comics and DC Comics kept on publishing tales of the supernatural which often featured horror themes. While there couldn“t be any vampires or werewolves anymore, there were still witches and other magical or mystical beings. What did happen, though, these kinds of stories, which had become heavily sanitized with this new set of guidelines put into place, soon fell out of favor with the next generation of readers coming in. Maybe because the tales got a bit dull, but most likely for the fact that with the Space Race soon capturing the imagination of adults and kids alike, there was a renewed excitement for All-American heroes. Thus, by the late-50s, the superheroes returned, not as jingoistic war heroes fighting the evil powers of the Axis, but as proponents of the Space Age and the belief in the gleaming wonders of modern technology. But still, even throughout these years, horror titles were being published. Though Atlas Comics, soon known under their new name Marvel Comics, got out of the horror game eventually when these new, brighter superheroes gained in popularity, publishers like Charlton Comics and DC Comics still offered titles with horror themes, like the latter“s “House of Mystery”“. Incidentally, its complementary title, called “House of Secrets”“ started two years after the Code“s introduction. By the end of the next decade things began to change. While earlier in the 1960s the idea of free love and peace were accompanied by an interest in magic and mysticism, with even a renowned and then respected psychologist named Timothy Leary praising the virtues of psychedelic drugs to reach a higher level of consciousness and self-awareness, it took only a few years before things got dark. Magic became black magic and mysticism was not a thing you dabbled in for enlightenment but to find spells and invocations to call upon demons and the devil himself for your materialistic advancement. Naturally, and within the limitations set by the Code, horror comics soon started to explore these darker themes as well, albeit, they were not the first to do so. Jim Warren, a publisher of horror and science fiction movie magazines, started a black and white magazine with original comic book art centered around horror themes in 1964. Creepy, which very much adopted the EC Comics formula, they even had their own horror host in a fellow named Uncle Creepy, soon had a companion title in a similar magazine called Eerie (the name of the first ever horror comic). Many of the artists who had been working on the EC books when the Code was introduced and even for a while after when EC put out its New Direction line, soon began working for Warren. Even Johnny Craig, who“d left comics for good and was working a well-paid job in an ad company, eventually returned. However, when Warren introduced a third horror magazine, Vampirella, he began to mix sex appeal and eroticism with horror in a way this was done in the Hammer movies that hailed from Great Britain. Comic books couldn“t match the content Warren offered, since magazines, aimed at older audiences and displayed on the high shelves with the other adult-themed publications and not on spinner racks, were ostensible not under the purview of the Comics Code Authority. But when Warren over-extended himself, and he couldn“t pay his creators any longer or not on time, DC was able to snatch up that talent. In 1969, they started a new horror title called “The Witching Hour”“ with which they emulated the EC Comics formula Warren had also adopted for his magazines. Like with an EC title, each tale would be narrated by a host, and like with Vampirella, a female host (indeed, Johnny Craig had introduced a beautiful female host in one of the last issues of The Vault of Horror when Gaines had made him an editor). Why not have three hosts instead, three witches, with the ironic twist that one of the three, the one the other two thought of as extremely ugly was in fact gorgeous? The true irony being, that either by coincidence or by design, creator Alex Toth used a concept that Otto Binder and Reed Crandall had come with for their Blackhawk series in Military Comics, when in issue No. 15 (1943) they had introduced three witches called Trouble, Terror and Mystery. The first two of these looked a lot like what we think of when we imagine a witch, and they looked like Toth“s Mordred and Mildred. Mystery, who kept her face hidden, revealed herself to the readers eventually, and she was an incredibly beautiful Japanese woman. Toth“s third witch was Cynthia, the stepsister, who was a beautiful, hip and happening young woman who wore the latest hip fashions and who was clearly in the book to tantalize young male readers. With Jim Warren in financial straits, DC hired Wally Wood and Al Williamson away from him, who together with editor Joe Orlando and rising stars like Neal Adams gave “The Witching Hour”“ a distinctive EC vibe, a bit darker in tone than what their older titles like “House of Mystery”“ were like, but clean enough to pass the Code, which had begun to loosen some of its restrictions. In turn, Warren had to bring on new artists from Europe, mostly from Spain, as replacements, artists who were either fairly new to comic books or interested in making name for themselves in the American market and who were willing to work on the cheap. But Warren had also lost his editor and main writer Archie Goodwin due to his financial troubles. Whereas DC hired the writer who had made quite an impression after he“d joined EC near the end of the New Trend, Carl Wessler, Warren recruited young writers from either England or the States. Among them was a young man named Bruce Jones who had made his professional debut when he wrote and illustrated a horror story called “Point of View”“ for Web of Horror, a short-lived black-and-white magazine put out by Major Publications in response to the success Warren was enjoying with his own line of horror magazines. A child of the 50s, as a writer, Jones showed the influence reading EC titles had had on him. Yet Jones was acutely aware of what was happening in the American society he now experienced through the eyes of a young adult. In that, his writing was the next logical step in the development of horror comics. He was at his best when he didn“t copy what had come before. The dichotomy of being a child of the 1950s and a hippie in the early 1970s in his early twenties, with an eye to not only American culture but European art as well, can be traced throughout his work and this approach to storytelling had already matured in 1974 when he was working for Warren and Archie Comics at the same time, the latter getting in on the new horror trend. This was the year when Jones wrote his arguably most famous story, “Jenifer”“, which was illustrated by Bernie Wrightson. Whereas the tale itself deals with obsessions, and in that it betrays the influence “Deadly Beloved!”“ must have had on Jones, a story written by Carl Wessler and illustrated by Johnny Craig for The Vault of Horror No. 39 (1954), it is the artwork by Wrightson which most clearly ties it to what has come before. Wrightson, this early into his own career, is paying homage to this great role-model Graham Ingels who was the horror artist in residence at EC Comics. Despite Wrightson“s art being a bit slicker than Ingels“ and Jones being a more modern writer than Wessler, the story could have run in any EC comic circa ”˜54. However, Jones“ tale “Demon Kiss”“, which appeared in Madhouse No. 96 from Archie Comics as part of their Red Circle line and with a cover by Gray Morrow, shows how modern both his writing and his own artwork could be. The art itself is hugely influenced by the work of Spanish illustrator and comic book artist Esteban Maroto who worked for Jim Warren at that time on Vampirella and other horror themed material. In the story, Valaria Lewton, a nice play by Jones on the name of the movie producer who was responsible for a string of seminal psychological thrillers and horror films for movie studio RKO back in the 40s, is a rather plain young woman until she uses black magic to invoke a demon to give her fame and fortune as a Hollywood star. The writer-artist even throws in a visit at the zoo as a tip to the hat to producer Val Lewton“s most famous film “Cat People”“ (1942). Valaria becomes a hip and happening young girl who is seen in stylish mini dresses and tight jumpsuits, or only dressed in a towel, but there is a price to be paid for all this fame and glory. Still, Jones cleverly mixes in a healthy dose of humor, all of which makes this story feel like something Gaines and Feldstein might have come up with and for which they would have gotten Jack Kamen to illustrate it. But Jones“ story is of the now.

By the end of the 70s, the comic book landscape was changing dramatically. True, there“d always been entrepreneurially minded individuals who were buying up larger quantities of comics directly from any given publisher at a preferred rate to sell them directly to readers or small comic stores via a distribution network they had built. Small bookstores which sold second-hand paperbacks and old comics had been around for a while, but when smaller mom and pop stores were phased out to make way for huge retail outlets, these bigger stores had little interest in keeping low margin comic books on their shelves. Also, the way distribution was set up, publishers had to accept return shipments on unsold units, which more often than not was half of the entire print-run. Thus, the big two comic book companies at that time, a much bigger Marvel Comics and old stalwart DC Comics, began casting around if there was some merit in selling new comic books through specialized stores. Since the small comic shops didn“t have the same leverage major distributors had, publishers were in the position to make sure that these stores wouldn“t be able ship back any unsold product. Books shipped to a comic shop would de facto be non-returnable. Though distribution wasn“t the issue on a wholesale level, the proliferation of these comic shops across the country was still too small to fully absorb the entire volume put out by Marvel Comics or DC Comics, let alone their combined output, in addition to the print-runs from smaller companies. Also, publishers still wanted to see their titles displayed at strategic points of sale. In other words, the direct market was not a full-fledged alternative just yet. But little by little, Marvel and DC began to build up relationships with these stores directly, yet careful not to violate any deals made with their distribution network and existing retailer base. The two major comic book publishers simply couldn“t risk upsetting the apple cart i.e. a system that been in place for more than thirty years. But herein lay a chance for smaller print-run publishers. Fans were going into these stores anyway when hunting for back issues (at that time regular reprints of older books were non-existent for the most part), and now they were being trained that you could find new books from Marvel there as well, perhaps you could even set up your own pull list with the store being able to get you any new book you wanted on a monthly basis. If you were a just an also run, and you could not get a deal with a major distributor, perhaps you could sell to the stores or to an equally small wholesaler who sold to stores. This change in the market gave rise to independent comic books publishers, more often than not companies that had begun by putting out fanzines or magazines that were geared towards the collectors market. Kitchen Sink and Last Gasp, formerly publishers of all kinds of fanzines and underground comix, began putting out anthology titles that featured stories that were less about drug culture or the sexual revolution, but offered mind-bending science fiction stories for more mature audiences. Magazines with trippy names like Death Rattle and Slow Death felt like you were listening to the latest progressive rock album while you lit up. Since independent publishers didn“t seek distribution via regular channels or wanted to see their books displayed at a store that families or kids went to, they needn“t worry about the Comics Code. At the early 1980s, these magazines had once again transformed. They were now comic books and in color again, but on better paper than most other comic books. If you were sick and tired of superheroes and you wanted a slicker, more daring and more adult product that featured tons of violence and some gratuitous, full frontal nudity, here was the right kind of product for you. And clearly, most store owners did not mind selling these books to kids as well, though some titles soon featured a disclaimer on their covers: “Recommended for Mature Readers”“. It was during these days that the Schanes Brothers began their business. In 1971, with both of them still teenagers (Steve was seventeen and Bill just thirteen), the Schanes had started Pacific Comics as a mail-order business to sell back issues. Then they had moved into distributing original art as portfolio sets, with each set highly limited and signed by the artist. Now, at the end of the decade, they wanted to get into publishing and distribution. In what seemed like an impossible mission, they approached the King of Comics himself. Jack Kirby had effectively retired from comic books three years earlier, but here were these kids who were fans of his work and who offered him something none of the major companies he had worked for during his long career had ever offered: he“d retain full ownership and all copyrights for any new character he“d create for them and they“d even help with licensing agreements for use in other media or overseas publication. With Kirby coming on board, soon other talent signed up with them, like then fan favorite Mike Grell. Based in San Diego, PC soon was printing around 500,000 comic books per month, and they had a sales volume of over 3.5 million dollars per annum. Meanwhile, Bruce Jones had met writer-editor April Campbell with whom the writer struck up a romantic relationship and a business alliance. They started their own company, Bruce Jones Associates, and approached Pacific Comics with a proposal that was not unlike what some of the old creators had done during the birth of superheroes. With their own shops in place, these creators assembled complete books for publishers to give to their printers and distributors. Likewise, Jones and Campbell would package complete titles for the Schanes. And since the 80s saw a huge interest in 1950s nostalgia, why not try to start an EC Comics revival with a modern bent? There could be a horror title like Tales from the Crypt (Twisted Tales), a sci-fi anthology like Weird Science (Alien Worlds) and even a crime book with a film noir vibe like Crime SuspenStories (Somerset Holmes). The Schanes Brothers liked the sound of that, and in 1982, Twisted Tales began its run. And if ever there was any doubt where Jones was going with this, he wrote most of the stories and he and Campbell got some of the best talent to provide the covers and interior art, the cover for Twisted Tales No. 1 by Richard Corben immediately let you know: zombies were back and so was that old flavor of EC Comics, albeit Jones and most of his artist were adding a huge dose of 1980s misogyny. But still, also story-wise, a lot of what Jones was doing harkened back to the mid-1950s. Many tales either took place during that time or featured artwork that was evocative of the 50s. And every so often, he simply ripped off a whole plot or one of the ironic twists from Gaines and Feldstein“s work some thirty years earlier. Case in point a story called “The Well”“ which appeared in Twisted Tales No. 4 (1983). Visually it is one of the best stories in the entire series. The art is handled by John Bolton (who also worked with Jones and Campbell on another story for Twisted Tales), a master illustrator from England who was five years younger than Jones, and most likely he“d missed out on EC Comics original run, though now there were some reprints available. Set in 1954, we are introduced to a young couple who has moved into a new house, their first own house we assume. While they are making out, there is a strange noise. Mark, the man of the house wants to find out what“s going on and with a flashlight in hand he goes exploring the grounds while his wife follows him anxiously. There is an old well, and very much like the explorer-hero of an old movie serial, Mark lowers himself right into the well with its rope. Once he is out of sight, his wife can no longer hear him. Carefully, she enters the shaft of the dark well to look for her husband, and she soon discovers a tunnel with warm water that runs up to her lower thighs, but she can walk in the water just fine. She begins to wade through the tunnels which are illuminated by the light from her flashlight. This is when she discovers Mark“s brutally mauled body. He“s dead. Then a creature attacks her from behind and she blacks out. In true 1980s style, her long skirt gets torn to shreds in the process. Her nether regions are exposed to the readers“ eyes. Obviously, she simply forgot to put on her panties. While she frantically tries to escape from the dark tunnels, she discovers another body. A naked woman whose lower torso is torn to pieces. And there are some smaller creatures and more bodies of women, all nude and in various stages of either decay or mutilation. Then she learns why. They smaller monsters are feeding on the dead women. After she had blacked out during the initial attack, she knows she can“t let that happen again or she“s going to end up as the creatures“ next victim. Finally, she manages to find her way back to the spot that offers escape via the well, and the rope with the bucket at its end is there, waiting for her to climb up. But she is wet, and the rope is wet, and she isn“t able to get a good grip on it. Then there is a voice at the other end of the well, and she can see that much time must have passed since there is daylight, too. The voice belongs to man who is calling down to her. The distance doesn“t seem that far and all he needs to do is to pull the rope up and her with it. That he does and once she is out of the tunnel and in the opening of the well, there is a loud scream. He can hear it, too, which means she hasn“t imagined the whole thing. The creatures are real, the huge one that had attacked her and so are the little ones, those that were feeding on all those human bodies. The man who has pulled her to her safety says he works for the municipal gas company and he explains that there are gas leaks along those underground tunnels. This is when she pulls some matches from her skirt which are still dry. One match is enough and the well and the tunnels beneath are destroyed in a massive explosion. Time has passed when she opens her eyes and she comes to in a hospital. There is a nice young doctor. She can tell that he and the nurses took good care of her. With a smile the young physician lets her know that she needn“t worry. Her baby is developing nicely. Her pregnancy is news to her. Her husband was sterile.

Jones took the twist at the end from one of Wally Wood“s most famous science fiction stories, “Spawn of Mars”“, which first appeared in Weird Fantasy No. 9 (1951). This tale however, written by Al Feldstein with story input by Bill Gaines, was a love story. When a scientist goes missing during an expedition to Mars once they send out a landing party, the other crew members fear for his life, especially the young woman who is along for the mission and who is in love with him. But then he returns right before their ship is about to depart. Ken and Jean get married and they share a happy life together, however Jean“s husband can no longer hide his sark secret from her. He is a Martian and he fell in love with her when he saw her for the first time on Mars. He took his chance and killed Ken and replaced him, using a power that makes Jean see Ken and not the creature he really is. Jean tells him that this doesn“t matter to her. She“s in love with him. She“s, but also, she hasn“t believed a single word he“s told her. It is too fantastical. Jean is sure that Ken suffers from some kind of post-traumatic stress when on Mars he“d been captured by these horrible creatures. Then they are in a car accident. Ken is injured and subsequently killed and for a moment she glimpses a gross-looking, multi-tentacled creature in his place since Ken can no longer sustain the hypnotic suggestion, he“d created around himself. In a hospital, she learns from a nurse that she is with child. As talented as Bruce Jones was as a writer, “The Well”“ works mostly because of John Bolton“s art, which does convey a strong Graham Ingels vibe without him ever copying the other artist. This makes for a story that is steeped in atmosphere as well as gore, the latter par for the course in the 80s. The story is also very misogynistic. So is Jones and Bolton“s second team-up, “You, Illusion”“, which saw print in Twisted Tales No. 6 (1984). However, this is a much better story and the artwork is fantastic. Though “The Well”“ is brutal, sexist and gets right into your face with its detailed depiction of mutilated, naked bodies, it did little to prepare readers for what came next. For issue No. 5 of Twisted Tales, Jones wanted to present his own version of “the preachies”“, but even for a talented writer such as Jones, and that he was, any attempt at what Gaines, Feldstein, Wood and, by extension, creators like Carl Wessler, Joe Orlando and Reed Crandall had achieved so masterfully, was really a tall order. And, time had moved on and readers were more educated and also perhaps more sensitive towards any such subject matters. Maybe this was why editor April Campbell chose to run a special editorial to go with the story, to make sure their intentions were not misunderstood or construed in something else entirely like Dr. Wertham seemingly had done with his peculiar critical reading of “The Whipping”“. April Campbell wrote: “It would be going totally against my own personal nature and the editorial policy of my publishers, Bill and Steve Schanes, to print any story promoting racism, sexism, or bigotry in any form”¦ I don“t believe there is a mature reader in the world who would misinterpret the strong anti-racist stance of ”˜Banjo Lessons“ as advocating bigotry simply because some the characters are bigots.”“ She then goes on to say that when she read the story “in script form”“, she felt strongly about it. Perhaps this is where some of the problems lie, that of the tale and its author“s good intentions, which aren“t the issue. Jones“ approach is, however. “Banjo Lessons”“ from Twisted Tales No. 5 (1983), a story that was never reprinted, tries to achieve too many things. Jones tries to make a statement against racism and cruelty. And he wants to do it in a way that pays tribute to what Gaines and company did in the 1950s. Those stories talked about their time. But this isn“t a story about or set in the 80s, but a story set in the 50s. Jones deliberately chooses a time that specifically evokes the period in which EC published this kind of stories, and intentionally, he picks an artist who“s riffing on Wally Wood. During the 80s, there“re two artists who heavily use Wood“s style as a template for their own artwork. Mark Schultz, whose Xenozoic Tales for publisher Kitchen Sink will make him a star in his own right only three years later, and Rand Holmes who comes from underground comix. Whereas Schultz sticks to the raw masculinity and the exotic vistas the artist was wont to depict in many of his fantastical sci-fi tales, Holmes clearly favors an exaggerated, cartoony interpretation. The result, in the story, is a pastiche of an EC tale not only in the script, but in the artwork as well, yet viewed through a cracked lens. “Banjo Lesson”“ begins with an act of animal cruelty at a barbecue party among a group of friends and neighbors. This triggers something in one of the guys who almost casually grasps a loaded rifle and brutally kills his three friends in a shockingly gory manner in front of their wives. The violence is gratuitous and extremely mean-spirited. One man is shot in the crotch, another man is shot through his mouth in his head with the back of his skull exploding as his brains are blown out, the third man is thrown on the barbecue grill and goes up in flames. When we see the killer next, this man Sim, he“s in jail talking to his lawyer who looks like your standard issue good-looking Wally Wood male with glasses, a pipe in his mouth and a trench coat worn together with a loose fitting suit that still betrays that he has the physique of a running back. As the lawyer starts to unravel the history the men had with each other, there“s some excitement, since the “why did he do it?”“, “why did the normal, quite guy lose it?”“ approach allows for some rich storytelling opportunities. Especially with Sim clearly suffering from post-traumatic stress, he himself doesn“t know the answer, a trope often used in psychological thrillers. At first, we are led to believe that this is a story about a dog called Banjo who the men took along during one of their hunting trips in the mountains during winter. However, when the defense lawyer interviews this man“s widow, she doesn“t recall that they ever owned a dog with that name. Now, why might that be? The lawyer is sure that Sim“s own mind is keeping him from recalling the truth. But when he breaks him down on the witness stand, the whole truth comes out. Banjo was in fact a young, naïve black guy. And not only does Jones throw in racism and cannibalism as the two main themes once the business about the supposed animal cruelty is revealed as a figment of Sim“s tortured mind, this being the 1980s, he throws in the kitchen sink as well, in this case, homosexuality and homophobia. Sim didn“t remember what had happened when the men were snowed in on their hunting trip years earlier, because he was deeply ashamed that one of the men had seen him sharing a bed with Banjo, the boy who was murdered and whose body they used for food since they were all starving. April Campbell was right: this story was written with good intentions. Jones is neither a racist nor a bigot. However, what he wants to achieve, is lost in the flashy art and his inability to make any meaningful statement that goes beyond the most obvious clichés. Apart from some editorial mistakes, there aren“t any real characters in this story. These characters are actors who act out a script that is clearly written by a writer who tries to recreate stories he read when he was eight years old, but who fails to recall that what made the “preachies”“ so impactful was not the shocking twist nor their controversial themes. When “Banjo Lesson”“ was published, readers didn“t take too kindly to Jones“ tale, especially readers who knew the EC tales. Perhaps, they had simply understood their lessons a bit better. These are stories about people who are real. These people are us and we are them. Still, we can unlearn to be them over time. Lessons we can learn from “the preachies”“.

Author Profile

Chris Buse (RIP)

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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