"JACK KAMEN'S WOMEN“ A COLUMN ABOUT EC COMICS, PART 1

While this is a column about women (women in comic books to be specific), this is also a column about family, about husbands and wives and fathers and sons. Initially, children will look at their parents as a role model and as a yardstick by which they will measure their own success. The first baby steps, riding your bike sans training wheels, getting an A on your exam, hitting a home run in Junior League. And at a time when mothers more often than not stayed at home and Dad was the sole bread winner, the first idea about what you want to do as a career later in life, other than cowboy or astronaut, is to do what Dad does. That is as long as you have a home life that is nurturing and encouraging. That is unless your father not only looks at you with an expression of disappointment, even hatred in his eyes, if he notices you at all, but there is abuse as well. Not in a physical sense, and not in violent ways, but with that harsh off-hand comment that can destroy any child at a young age: “You“re a complete loser.”“ The implication being: “And you will never amount to anything.”“ Just take a look at yourself in the mirror! This is what a total failure looks like! This was horrible. Maybe small comfort could be found if your father was just some low light who worked the nightshift at a plant for tires or some such. Or if he was a drunk, unable to hold down any kind of work at all. Or a notorious gambler, and a bad one at that. With clenched fists and gritted teeth, you could swear that one day you would show the old man that he was wrong. You“d show the whole world. Especially those girls at your school who snickered whenever you walked across the schoolyard. Those few words had made you self-conscious, clumsy and awkward. Then there were the boys who had long picked you as an easy target. The words had made you eat more, had made you fat. This on top of you having to wear heavy, horn-rimmed glasses, your body told you that it was true. But it was even worse if your father was a success story. When you were eleven years old, your father had invented what would become the medium of choice among pre-teens initially, cheap pamphlets to be sold on newsstands and at drugstores. However, these books, that offered thrilling adventurers, girls that were always stylish, as well as anthropomorphic animals, had blossomed first into a viable business model and then, once comic books had captured the attention if not also the imagination of grown-ups and the mainstream, into a highly lucrative enterprise. There were radio plays and movie serials based on a specific type of heroes, the superheroes. The face of Superman was on the box of your corn flakes. While your father Max Gaines hadn“t conceived The Last Son of Krypton, metaphorically speaking, or had at least hired the two boys from the shtetl called Cleveland, however, he“d gone into business with the man who had. With the financial backing and the distribution arm of Harry Donenfeld, the publisher and CEO of National Allied Publications and Detective Comics, Inc., your father and Donenfeld“s friend and accountant Jack Liebowitz co-founded All-American Publications in 1938. And even though he had not been around when Siegel and Shuster or Bob Kane had pitched their ideas (in Kane“s case his and that of a much older and more mature Bill Finger), Gaines hired a psychologist for the panel they“d set up to make sure that the content of their books was properly vetted not to raise any concerns with the PTAs across the nation. And lo, the middle-aged, scholarly expert with the proper credentials, to lend credit and merit to their books, arrived with a pitch of his own. And thus, by coincidence or destiny, not only had Max Gaines come up with the look and design of comic books as a four-color, saddle-stitched newsprint pamphlet. Nor had Max simply gone on to establish a highly successful comic book publishing company, one that came with a well-oiled distribution machine which in and by itself guaranteed top-shelf space. No, he also had to have a hand in the creation of the first superheroine in Wonder Woman. No surprise really, that William Gaines didn“t want to have anything to do with his father“s line of work. It was a business for tough and clever guys, for winners. And those did not look like what Bill saw in the mirror, but like Donenfeld, Jack Liebowitz, and his father Max. Once he“d completed his military service, he wanted to finish his education and then work as a chemistry teacher. A nerdy, low-profile profession that suited the way his father viewed him and how he saw himself. Meanwhile, Max had sold his stake in All-American anyway. And while he claimed that he was certain that superheroes and superheroines had run their course and would go away now that the war had ended, and he would brag a dinner time about the ton of money he had made when selling his share to Donenfeld, his erstwhile backer, while Bill ate his food in silence and otherwise kept his mouth shut, some solace would come later. Max“s exit was hastened by Donenfeld, who had wanted to consolidate his concerns into one company. And Harry was the kind of man not even his father would stand up to. And while his role as publisher had awarded Bill“s father a very good life financially speaking, and by extension, to his mother and himself, Max had sunk all his profits from the sale into a new publishing endeavor. Sure enough, he would have the next big thing on his hands. Educational Comics, which meant bible comics. But this time, just this once, Dad had shot himself in the foot. While Max had been completely right, colorful superheroes were getting shunned by the new readers of this new age, The Atomic Age, except for Superman, Batman and Max“s discovery Wonder Woman, there was a cadre of popular heroes to replace them, ace reporters, police men, criminals, gangsters, beautiful woman with headlights the size of their head. And nothing clicked. Especially not Stories from the Bible or Picture Stories from American History. The former you got when you went to Sunday School, the latter sounded like a total bore fest when compared to gangsters firing their tommy guns as depicted in Crime Does Not Pay, a comic series from publisher Lev Gleason that had started in the early 1940s and was still going strong. And while the bad guys needed to meet their just deserts in the end, the comics offered all the kinds of thrills Educational Comics ostensibly did not. And if you wanted a nice, scantily dressed female detective to gawk at, there was always The Phantom Lady who was a superheroine in name only and a pin-up girl by nature. And if not, she was at least often drawn that way. It was the forbidden that sold like pancakes. But Gaines had not come this far in life to not see the writing on the wall. With sales tanking, he established an imprint with a slightly revised logo that read “Entertaining Comics”“ and featured funny animals, after all, those types of stories had played like gangbusters before there was a Superman. However, he wouldn“t live to see that this failed as well.

The obese, sweating man with the crew-cut and the black-rimmed glasses was exactly the kind of loser his father had predicted he would turn out to be as an adult. Hopped up to his eyeballs on diet pills and too much caffeine, Bill Gaines took the stand before the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency in 1954 not because he had received a subpoena, but because he had believed he was man enough to defend the whole comic book industry from attacks that mainly came from the man whose body heat still lingered on the very seat he sat on now. He served as an expert and had offered his testimony only an hour prior, with his damning accusations still echoing in the chamber and the ears of the spectators. He had just published “Seduction of the Innocent”“, the seminal guide for comic book witch hunters. He wasn“t the only one of these raving armchair pundits of morality, but “the psychiatrist who hated comic books”“, was the most famous and most well respected. Small irony could be gleaned from the fact that Dr. Fredric Wertham wasn“t so much against comic books, but anti-violence. But Bill Gaines“ books were among the most violent ones out there. The Senate Hearings were not about comic books, but when it seemed that the kids of The Greatest Generation were not alright, he had offered an easy cause for this behavior in some youngsters. The violence (and the sexually charged imagery) comics offered to young, impressionable readers, especially the mix of those two, were to blame. And thus Dr. Wertham and his ilk targeted the whole industry that fabricated those potent four-color tales, and teachers and parents agreed. Even Gaines own father seemed to concur. Max was there when Chief Counsel Herbert Beaser had his eyes trained on Bill, if not in body, but in spirit. It seemed like Max had risen from his grave like one of those ghastly undead in their horror tales. With this specter pointing one finger right at him and ghostly lips mouthing his words: “What have you done, loser?”“, his son had to be reminded of how Max had cleverly placated society“s early criticism by hiring William Moulton Marston, and the psychologist had known better than to use his real name once he started to write comic book stories. Maybe some of that self-righteous indignation Bill imagined in Max Gaines“ imagined face, came from the outlandish comparison Wertham had made, who was prone to hyperbole: “Hitler was a beginner compared to the comic-book industry.”“ Max was Jewish. And so was Bill, and some of the creators he had hired. But Bill had no time to dwell on the sentiments of the dead who wouldn“t stay dead, because the Subcommittee had just now let their attack dog off the leash. While Beaser and he had been discussing what qualified as good taste and thus was suitable to be put into a comic book aimed at young children, Senator Estes Kefauver very dramatically pointed at a blow-up of one of their covers that rested on an easel to enlist the maximum of outcry from those present during the hearings. It was Johnny Craig“s cover for No. 22 of Crime SuspenStories published in the same year. Craig had not been hired by Bill, but by Max in the late 1930s when he“d still co-owned All-American Comics. Craig, who by all accounts was meticulous in everything he did, but also took his sweet time, worked as an office boy, basically. And if he saw an art board, it was to rule the page, but other than that he kept the files in order. When he“d returned after the war in 1946 and he found that the older Gaines had started a new publishing business, Max re-hired him to continue with this kind of work. But Johnny“s and Bill“s lives were changed on that fateful day in the late summer of 1947 when M.C. Gaines died in a boating accident. Bill was reluctant to get involved in his late father“s business affairs. While he was reticent to voice his real motives, he could easily point to the fact, with some satisfaction perhaps, that after all it was a failing enterprise. If he did get involved, wouldn“t a share of the blame fall on him once they had to shutter the doors? And on the other end of the equation, if by some unforeseen miracle he did manage a turn-around, praise would go to Max. He had built the company, and in the unlikely case of success, everyone would say that Bill had inherited a nicely cushioned nest. It was a lose-lose proposition. But after some convincing by his mother, and after he had taken stock, he decided to give it a go. It was an anemic line of publications to begin with. Maybe in an effort to recapture some of that magic he“d had with Wonder Woman, Max Gaines had established a new superheroine with Gardner Fox and Sheldon Moldoff. However, the first issue of Moon Girl and the Prince would only see print after his death. And it was to be the only issue. Bill kept her around, but he immediately changed the title to simply Moon Girl. While the initial creative team stayed on, Gaines gave one of the stories in issue No. 2 to the guy who had been biding his time until he finally could show off some of his artistic talents. The six-pager “The Rustlers of the Ransom Gap”“, written by Fox, became the first showcase for Johnny Craig. When Bill decided to start a new title called War Against Crime, which was him riffing on the highly successful Crime Does Not Pay, Craig Â managed to get another tale, the five-pager “Portfolio of Death”“. This time around, Gaines let him write the yarn as well. And in Moon Girl No. 5 (1948), based on a script by Richard Kraus, the artist tried his luck with yet another genre. In “Zombie Terror”“ he tackled a horror tale for the very first time. As for Moon Girl, this series saw another name change (Moon Girl Fights Crime) and then another one (A Moon, a Girl”¦ Romance). While Moon Girl Fights Crime No. 7 (1949) sported a fantastic cover by Moldoff, a fierce street brawl with the camera high up and in the distance, and countless characters, police officers, gangsters and Moon Girl and her beau, almost like a menagerie of dramatically rendered stick figures, its next incarnation featured a new cover design that would become iconic in many ways. While another crime title which Gaines had begun in 1948 (Crime Patrol) already showed an earlier, unrefined version of his new trade dress, with A Moon, a Girl”¦ Romance No. 9 (1949) readers saw a design that would point them to this line of comics, which would soon reach a level of quality not seen since the day of The Golden Age of Comics. And while Craig had no story in this issue, by that time his artwork adorned the covers and interior art of Crime Patrol. In a fitting twist for an artist who had followed up his first tale, which had featured a superheroine, with a horror story, his artwork was on the cover when this series changed its name as well. Bill Gaines was still chasing trends, but when his new editor suggested that they could try their hand at horror comics, Crime Patrol became The Crypt of Terror. And in Craig, Gaines had found his first star artist, who was also a very fine writer. Craig would write all his stories and he would draw twenty-nine covers for The Vault of Horror and twenty-one for Crime SuspenStories, including the one that got them into trouble.

Maybe it was destined that the company Max had founded in 1944 and which was now run by his son Bill, and very successfully so, was nearly done in by the man the father had employed as a hired hand around the office and the son had helped to develop into a star in the industry. And to the same degree crime and horror comics had made him and Craig a success, this was what had landed Bill in hot water. Maybe it was his own feelings of inadequacy, this sense of shame for not being good enough that Max had instilled in him from an early age and the guilt that came with it, that had made Bill to volunteer to the ordeal of giving testimony. After all, he had made himself available to the Senate Subcommittee at his own discretion. And the sense of guilt was all encompassing. But Gaines was ready to assume all of it, for his own person, his company and the industry at large. The heavy-set publisher, who had always found comfort in food, had begun his testimony by reading a statement, to shoulder the blame. But he also wanted to express how defiant he was, and how sick and tired he was of the people who pointed their fingers at him: “I was the first publisher in these United States to publish horror comics,”“ he started his statement with pride in his voice. “I am responsible, I started them. Some may not like them. That is a matter of personal taste. It would be just as difficult to explain the harmless thrill of a horror story to a Dr. Wertham as it would be to explain the sublimity of love to a frigid maid.”“ He was, however, not correct and he knew it. While there had been horror elements present in many comics even when Max was still the co-owner of All-American Comics, and even superheroes like The Batman had encountered vampires and the like, Eerie from Avon Publications was considered by many as the first genuine horror comic that presented original content. Its initial try-out issue predated Craig“s first horror tale in Moon Girl No. 5 by nearly a year. But it only got worse from there. Once he had inserted himself into the oral questioning between Beaser and Gaines, Senator Kefauver began to dominate the interview. He picked up on the idea of “good taste”“. By pointing at the cover by Johnny Craig, the US Senator began: “Here is your May 22 issue. This seems to be a man with a bloody axe holding a woman“s heap up which has been severed from her body. Do you think that is in good taste?”“ And goaded into responding in a way even Senator Kefauver couldn“t have come up with had he prepped the witness to say exactly what he wanted to hear, Bill had this to say: “Yes sir, I do, for the cover of a horror comic.”“ There was an audible gasp in the chamber, and the discomfort of the people present only grew when, after a dramatic pause, the Senator pressed on: “You have blood coming from her mouth.”“ It was this interview and the most shocking headlines of the evening newspapers, which read “Comics Publisher Considers Severed Head In Good Taste!”“, that nearly did EC Comics in. While many publishers hastily began to clean up their act, the EC Comics brand had become toxic. The irony being, that the cover wasn“t the worst thing one could say about this issue. Crime SuspenStories No. 22, like most of the prior issues, was as far removed from EC“s earlier offerings like War Against Crime or Crime Patrol as was possible. These were not tales about career criminals or any other types of gangsters. And these were not tales that featured heroic cops as their heroes. In fact, these were tales without any heroes or heroines for that matter. The issue at hand had a story in it, which introduced readers to a young guy who was a boring and clean cut as they come, but who stole money from an old woman in his job as an accountant. Another tale was about a husband of a beautiful young woman who pretended that he had lost his eyesight so he could claim that he shot her by accident when he“d heard somebody entering the apartment. He did this to inherit his late wife“s money of course. Then there was a yarn about a woman who was married to an older, wealthy guy who kept her like a prized object. She and her lover conspired to kill him and to make it look like an accident. And then there was the lead story, the one for which Johnny Craig had designed the cover art. This tale, by Gaines, Al Feldstein and artist Reed Crandall, which was called “In Each and Every Package”“, was like all the other stories readers had come to expect to find in a series like this one, or in any of EC Comics“ other books, like Tales from the Crypt, The Haunt of Fear, The Vault of Horror or Shock SuspenStories, which featured four comic stories each per issue (and a short text feature to comply with Postal Service regulations). And each and every story went far beyond the purview of any regular horror or crime story as well. Bill had developed Max“s failing line into something else entirely. It hadn“t happened overnight, mind you. There was some experimentation at first, some chasing of trends, with Bill blatantly copying other publishers“ output. Though Bill was incorrect or misleading when claiming that he had originated horror comics, however, at this point in time, EC Comics was a renowned entity among its young readers in how much their colorful and highly violent offerings across many different genres differed from those of other companies. There were actually two reason for this. Gaines, in no small part thanks to his editor Al Feldstein, who was a veteran of the industry and much respected, had recruited an incredible artistic talent pool which they“d dubbed “The Usual Gang of Idiots”“ when they“d started a satire comic in 1952. The second reason being how subversive the stories were. Here was a tale about a married couple with a perfect marriage it seemed. There was success, the right car in the right driveway, which was in a nice neighborhood. This was a story about the obvious and the hidden. While the things the couple owned, had made their lives comfortable, the woman had gained weight. Bertha was not this shiny trophy any longer a successful man was expected to possess. And while her husband pretended that he was still in love with her, behind her back he was having an affair with another woman, a secret affair, hidden like Norman was hiding an axe behind his back from his wife Bertha when the story began. And as he was violently killing his wife, and he then even dismembered her torso in the bathtub, he kept on talking to Bertha, even while he was burying the carefully wrapped up pieces of what had once been her body in the garden of their lovely house which was located in a perfect neighborhood: “Sally studied your voice from secret recordings I made”¦ she watched you from afar”¦ studied your mannerisms, your walk, your every movement”¦ last month, I took your portrait and gave it to Sally and she went to a New York to a plastic surgeon.”“ He revealed to his slain wife where his scheme was heading: “When we get back from my vacation, Sally and I will live here as man and wife. She will be you Bertha and no one will ever know that the real you lies buried in neat little packages beneath our back yard!”“ Had Beaser, Kefauver or all the reporters and parents bothered to look beyond what was on the surface, they would have found a story that hit strikingly close to every home. After all, this was a tale about the American Dream. If you worked hard, you could afford all the things and amenities that came with it. You“d marry a nice woman, and the two of you would live in a little house in a well-kept neighborhood. It was all about appearances, though. If your life started to show some cracks or your wife stopped looking attractive, you“d exchange her like you“d replace a car with too much mileage. There was an ironic twist, of course, also something that Gaines and his team had established. When Norman and Sally are picked as contestants on a game show on a live broadcast and they win the top prize, they learn that the three thousand dollars they“ve won are being buried in Norman and Bertha“s back yard as part of the treasure hunt. This was the game of life, and this was what Norman“s life-long treasure hunt had yielded him. This was a dark satire. And whereas maybe not every young reader picked up on what lay buried beneath in this grim portrait of a marriage and lives gone wrong, other than on a surface level, the boys and girls who read these stories, sometimes at night under the sheets with a flashlight, still very much got a sense of how real this was.

The comic book industry had changed in many ways. Some were exactly like what Max had predicted. Superheroes (and superheroines) had fallen out of favor with this generation of readers. Superman and his friends expressed a confidence that meshed nicely with young readers in their teens who were from what would become known as The Greatest Generation. Like the creators of these stories, who weren“t much older than the readers themselves, they had grown up with an optimistic worldview despite many hardships. And they would not have been wrong to believe this. Once the Second World War had come to an end and The Greatest Nation on Earth had proven victorious, young men received the opportunity to move up on the social ladder, for many a first in their families, by going to college on the G.I. Bill or by finding interesting and well-paid jobs in a booming post-war economy. This fundamentally changed society. This was a time when the Middle Class began to emerge across America. Cars were affordable to young couples who moved out of the cities and into suburbs which offered new model homes. While men worked in the city, where there were offices, women were expected to stay at home to raise their kids. And while the men were free to roam the bars and clubs after work with other men, the women, who had gotten a taste of a working life and true independence during the war years when they“d been part of the war efforts on the home front, could only pray that they“d married the right kind of guy, one who would not stray too far from home despite the many temptations. Some women, who were bored out of their minds began to look around as well. There were also unattached women who were frowned upon, who had freedom, but were told to find a man. Unmarried women moved out from their parents despite not being married and searched for a career of their own. But while all of this was going on, the kids were not alright. This was the next generation who had no first-hand experience of the hunger and the poverty that had come during the years of The Great Depression, and to whom war was a thing that happened in the far distant country called Korea. These were the children who had everything and who lived sheltered lives in whatever suburb their parents had made a down payment for a house in. But it was also the time of the Cold War, of nuclear armament and possible extinction from radioactive fallout. And while at their schools they practiced duck and cover drills, the kids weren“t blind to what was going on in their neighborhoods at a time when getting a divorce or an abortion was still considered a cardinal sin. In a way, this generation, this baby boomer generation, was a lost one. Death or something worse could come from something as unknown and unseen as the power of the atom and having wealth while the rest of the world had so little, caused a tremendous sense of guilt. And through it all, these kids of The Atomic Age, in days before television truly took hold, read comic books and there were many more girl and boy readers then there had ever been before. They wanted comic stories that on an allegorical level were reflective of how they perceived the world around them. Almost like fairy tales that told you what happened after the prince and the princess had gotten married and moved to a suburb. Like their parents had, these kids grew up fast, but while their minds and bodies developed, the lack of hardship and economic necessities robbed them of any genuine outlet. Having a paper route or doing some light gardening work was not the same as working on a farm or in a coal mine when you were a pre-teen. It is small wonder then, as the years went on, that their tastes in their entertainment changed accordingly and dramatically. As long as the shiny appliances in the kitchens of their parents“ homes and the chrome of the new cars still held their sheen and their parents and older siblings looked attractive, kids wanted romance comic books and teen romance books. And once these kids were in the thrall of puberty, what became attractive for them was a hyper-real depiction of the male and female form. Men were dashing, but in a bulky, muscular way while older boys were handsome and athletic. Women, and even teen girls came with the body of a top heavy, impossibly long-legged pin-up model. When comics hurried to meet this new trend, and most superheroes were quickly phased out in favor of enterprising teenagers, there was one publisher to rule them all. And his name was Victor Fox. When Fox had seen the sales numbers of books like Superman when working as an accountant for Harry Donenfeld“s publishing empire, he“d quickly set up his own publishing company under the fanciful name Fox Feature Syndicate while all Fox had was an office with a telephone. Contracting comics packagers Eisner & Iger, who ran a studio which provided publishers with on demand material from various artists, he put out superhero titles to quickly capitalize on this trend. However, once he ran into trouble with Donenfeld, he switched gears. With a new editor in place, none other than Captain America co-creator Joe Simon, he began to contract talent who worked freelance for various outfits. Knowing that kids would eat up all kinds of books that offered more (more being more violence and over-the-top sexiness in the female characters), once he jumped on the teen romance trend near the end of the 1940s, Fox hand-picked the one artist who could deliver a mix of whimsical and quirky teen love stories, while depicting teenage girls as busty pin-ups that came with legs that were made for stockings and high heels. Fox and this artist, who worked under the name Bill Brown on a title called Junior and as Jed Duncan for Sunny, presented what surely would have raised the concerns of many parents had they been paying attention. Branded as “America“s Sweetheart”“ the young Sunny provided an onlooking boy with a nice upskirt while she was ice skating. Junior Hancock“s girlfriend Deena who would make even today“s supermodels envious with her full bust, hourglass figure and legs that were a mile long, had a propensity for showing off a lot of skin or the tops of her stockings.

At the same time, Bill Gaines was still figuring things out. Gardner Fox, who had come from the pulps, which had their fair share of cover beauties, was not the type of writer he had in mind. Moldoff was a great artist, but he was casting around and eventually he would land on the radar of DC Comics. What he needed was an artist who could work fast and who could provide the kind of polish to take EC Comics further away from their humble beginnings as Entertaining Comics. And with teen romance as the new trend, why not hire one of the artists away from Victor Fox? Brown and Duncan turned out as one and the same guy, though, and there was no way he could match Victor“s rates, a cool one thousand dollars for a complete book. What he could offer though to the man who came to his office and who introduced himself as Al Feldstein was something that was unheard of in the industry, something only an outsider such as he would come up with: profit sharing. Now that sounded interesting to Al who unlike Bill, was married with two daughters. The men hit it off immediately. By sheer coincidence, their fathers had the same first name. But Feldstein“s father was a dentist by trade. Al Feldstein was nothing like Bill Gaines. He was handsome whereas Bill was not. And while Bill“s mother had convinced him to marry his second cousin Hazel Grieb (their marriage had just ended in divorce a year earlier), Feldstein had married Claire Szep, his high school sweetheart. Bill wanted to become teacher, Al had been drawing from childhood on. But Gaines had begun to develop a sense for the business, and he knew what was selling apparently. “Bill was impressed with the sexuality of the girls I was drawing,”“ Feldstein would later recall. Definitely, this was what Bill had on his mind. The men set up a contract in early 1948, and Feldstein went to work on a new title they wanted to call Going Steady With Peggy, though the cover looked like anything but. Peggy, in her bikini in a full figure drawing that made the most of her long legs, was the main draw. Not one, but four boys in beach trunks were seen in the background as they all tried to impress her by doing all kinds of calisthenics. While her debut story “Lashes for Lashes”“, done in pencil by Al Feldstein, wasn“t over the top or anything mind blowing, but a rather easy to follow teenage tale with six panels per page, it could have been a hit had it come out a year earlier. It hadn“t and it wasn“t to get published at all. Just a few days after he had signed his contract with Gaines, the publisher phoned him up nervously. He“d heard that teen romance books were no longer selling. Feldstein agreed to tear up the contract if Gaines had an idea what to do instead. They talked and then they talked some more well into the night. As the shadows grew longer and both men thought about their lives and about what was going on in the world, while Bill also took stock of the artists he had, namely Craig and a fellow who showed a lot of promise, Graham Ingels, he needed an editor, a good writer and more artists. Feldstein had the connections he hadn“t. And both, Al and Craig wanted to try their hand at writing their own material, but they were not idea men. But then there was a lot of anxiety going around. The Russians had the bomb and were ready to use it, it seemed. There was turmoil in China and Korea where the old order and the respective rulers were under attack from communistic rebels. America was trying to maintain the status quo, whereas it might not be long for the world. As kids, the Universal Monsters had scared them, those vampires and werewolves and the other undead. Then there was Avon with their Eerie comic. While they were tossing ideas around, there were still books to be put out. Not to let his new talent ride off into the sunset and to offset the blow caused by the cancellation of the Peggy series, Bill let Feldstein write and pencil one of the stories in Crime Patrol, which now also featured the artistic skills of Johnny Craig. And with issue No. 9 (1948), he had both Craig and Feldstein drawing as well as writing one tale each, with Craig doing the cover. Even though teen romance books had fallen out of favor overall, next to crime comics, books about romance remained in high demand. Feldstein and Craig (using the moniker F.C. Aljon), went on to share art duties on Modern Love which saw its first issue printed early in 1949. Together with Graham Ingels, he also worked on A Moon, A Girl”¦ Romance. Though Feldstein“s pretty teens had come with an overcharged sexuality, there was a forlorn seediness that quickly crept into his tales. Though his women still came with a glamorous sheen, this increasingly became a transparent put-on. But slowly, the band was coming together. When Bill Gaines published Crime Patrol No. 16 early in 1950, there were Craig, Feldstein (who also tried his hand at editing) and newcomer George Roussos on pencils working from a script by Feldstein. But more importantly than the arrival of this new artist, who in the long run would not work out for EC, were two further additions to the team. Marie Severin, an artist in her own right, provided colors for the first time. Severin also provided the colors for the final issue of A Moon, A Girl”¦ Romance, which also had a story with art by Harry Harrison. Like Roussos, the artist would not make it into the team in the long run, but his pencils were inked by a promising new talent named Wally Wood who wanted to try his hand at pencils and who then became a star. Then there was letterer Jim Wroten. He, together with his wife, would provide the highly distinctive Leroy Lettering for EC going forward. In fact, it had been a comment from the letterer that had made Feldstein interested in working for Gaines. Wroten had told him about the financial difficulties Fox was facing when he accepted Gaines offer. With many of their ducks in a row, Bill Gaines and Feldstein changed Crime Patrol to The Crypt of Terror with issue No. 17, which came out early in 1950. And with the next issue they had another artist who would not only become a star in his own right and next to Craig and Al Feldstein the only other writer-artist in EC“s camp, but he would shape the fortunes of the company in ways nobody could yet predict. His name was of course Harvey Kurtzman. But Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein, who were now very much running the show together, were not done yet. After just two more issues they changed the name of this new horror series to Tales from the Crypt, and with the new name came another artist who was recruited by Al, a guy he knew from his days when working for Fox. Jack Kamen. What he would bring to the table was a new sense of realism and naturalism that was slick and down to Earth at the same time. In Kamen“s art for EC there was the gleam of the consumerism of the new middle class who suffocated in ordinariness.

If artwork ever came with a high dose of caramel, so much so that just by looking at one drawing, your mind would immediately conjure up an image of warm apple pie with sugar on top, and vanilla-flavored ice cream melting from the heat of the crust and the caramelized fruit, served on a porch overlooking a street with old live oaks to both sides, golden leaves rustling in the wind and on the ground, it had to come from Jack Kamen. Of all the artists who made up the EC Comics bullpen in early 1950 (including a young Wally Wood who was still finding his own style and was working in tandem with future science fiction novelist Harry Harrison then), Kamen“s characters were the most attractive in an everyday kind of way. Whereas Wood“s men all looked like hero explorers initially and his women turned into bosomy supermodels, and Feldstein“s women always seemed to find ways to show off their impossible long and very shapely legs, Kamen“s artwork depicted the world of the mundane. But this was no longer a world of obvious depression and hunger as presented in literature in the works of Theodore Dreiser or Frank Norris and a world of very few haves and many have-nots. This was the superficially life of suburbia. His men were good looking like your doctor next door or a manager at a company who had played football during his high school years. And if the tale called for that, and they needed to look older, they all were older, distinguished gentlemen, that is unless they came from a lower class. And his women looked like many stay-at-home mothers did in those days if they had retained some of their teenage beauty. They were not movie stars, but attractive in their normality. And their commonness was familiar to any young reader. And while there were also the career girls, their prettiness spoke of their desire to land a man. But none of that was apparent from looking at Jack“s earlier work when he ghosted artist Matt Baker on titles for Fiction House, another publisher who had moved from putting out cheap pulp magazines into comics as well. They had kept what sold, namely presenting highly glamorized girls on their covers with as few clothes on as possible. Matt Baker, more so than Feldstein, was a master of what became known as “Good Girl Art”“, a misnomer to a certain degree since this was a euphemistic way to describe artwork depicting a beautiful woman with an ample bust who came with class, but who was glammed-up to the extreme and who was ready to be very naughty. Once Fox had acquired the rights to Phantom Lady he had asked Baker to re-design the crimefighter from the ground up. Phantom Lady was secretly Sandra Knight, the debutante daughter of a US Senator. African American artist Baker, a rare exception in a field that was mostly dominated by white men from a Jewish background, rose to the occasion. A holdover from The Golden Age of Comics, The Phantom Lady quickly began to look like a glamour model in and out of her costume, and her costume itself became much skimpier, allowing the beautiful heroine to show off her busty cleavage while her hot pants made the most of her long, naked legs. Baker would pose the voluptuous, scantily clad heroine, and most of the female characters he populated the series with in very provocative situations and pin-up poses which more often than not involved some form of bondage and physical violence. And like Jack Kamen had ghosted for Baker on some of his assignments on the Fiction House books, he did the same for him on Phantom Lady. While his contribution remains mostly unknown to this day, which is a testament to how well he was able to imitate Baker“s style, his artwork is in Phantom Lady No. 17 (1948), the issue that became notorious since its cover made it into “Seduction of the Innocent”“ (1954). And indeed, the heroine showed off her ample assets in bondage.

While Jack Kamen also worked on Science Fiction stories for EC Comics, this was after all the time when scientists were good looking guys who smoked a pipe and had a beautiful female assistant who wore a tight pencil skirt and high heels, this was a genre in which other artists excelled a bit more. Wood and Al Williamson and Joe Orlando. And his art was also a bit too clean and polished for horror tales when compared to the creepy stylings of Graham Ingels appropriately nicknamed “Ghastly”“ or the witty and wicked sense of humor Jack Davis brought to the table. But what arguably nobody did better than Jack at EC Comics was the sort of crime stories Gaines and Feldstein wanted to tell, not even Craig who still showed off a strong Will Eisner influence and who felt more at home in an urban setting it seemed. For Kamen the setting of suburbia seemed to come most naturally. Nobody than the artist of the American Way, the American Dream seemed better suited to depict the silent terrors of married life in one of the model homes of the new American middle class with their nuclear families. And in the stories Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein gave Kamen to draw, there was a nightmare in every dream house. There was a certain film noir influence, of course. Consisting of a loose collection of B-movies, the term is often associated with any crime film. However, in the true sense of the idea behind the expression, these aren“t detective or crime movies, but tales about relationships gone wrong. They mirror the post-war struggle in society caused by changing definitions of gender roles. Film Noirs depict the urban lives of ordinary people who find themselves in a new reality during the Second World War and the years of postwar America. Films based on novels such as James M. Cain“s “The Postman Always Rings Twice”“ (1934), which reflected the sentiment of the post-war years more than the Depression era, starring a platinum blonde Lana Turner. Or “Double Indemnity”“, published nine years later and made into a movie by Billy Wilder (who co-wrote the script with Raymond Chandler) which starred Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray. These were stories without heroes or heroines, like the outsider dramas of a Jim Thompson, whose books also had a profound influence on those Kamen illustrated comic stories. While Gaines and Feldstein infused their horror tales with a specific sense of humor, their crime stories post the days of Crime Patrol were about men and women and they terrors they caused each other in unhappy marriages. Stanwyck“s Phyllis and Turner“s Cora became the proto-typical Kamen women who called men “Buster”“ and who were scolding their husbands constantly. Cruel, conniving and utterly cold housewives who had married their Prince Charming or some well-heeled sucker, and who were disenchanted, dissatisfied and bore up to their eyeballs with their new lives in neighborhoods that all looked identical. As Al Feldstein put it bluntly: “We gave Kamen those stories where All-American girl and guy are married and then chop each other to pieces.”“ There was of course a certain irony that came with this. Other than Bill, who was divorced, and Al, who would file for divorce from his wife Claire, Kamen was happily married. Jack had two boys and two girls, and he was content with his life. However, this came with a price. The artist, like many of his peers who had known the times of the Depression and the years of the war, worked incredibly hard. He“d be spending endless hours at the drawing board, also on weekends, so much so, that he neglected his family life, as his son Dean (who grew up to become a famous inventor) would later comment. But that was what men did in the 1950s. These were the men of the Greatest Generation, and they got the job done. And in that, they were very much a product of their time. However, the product he produced was not geared at his contemporaries. Unlike the thrills and perhaps invitations for reflection that came from the cheap paperback novels by Cain and Thompson or the film noirs and crime films, which were intended for mature audiences, comic books were a medium first and foremost for kids, pre-teens and teenagers in their early teens. And this was where the true genius lay in what Gaines and Feldstein were doing. They created stories that seemed simple and a bit gory on the surface, but which had a lot going on that lay buried and was waiting to be discovered, like the bits and pieces of Bertha“s dismembered body. The creative duo had picked up on the anxieties of the children of the baby boom, children who had switched their reading habits from teen romance and crime stories about gangsters to horror tales of the most violent kind to crime stories that were about people who looked like their friends“ parents. Kid readers who saw what was going on and needed to make sense of it through fiction. This was what was truly subversive about EC Comics, and it is not even surprising that neither Wertham, Beaser or his colleague Estes Kefauver picked up on this subversiveness which came in form of a four-color newsprint pamphlet. David Hajdu aptly described what was going in these comic stories in his book “The Ten-Cent Plague”“ (2008): “To young people of the postwar years when mainstream culture glorified domesticity as the modern American ideal”¦ nothing else in the panels of EC Comics, not the giant alien cockroach that ate earthlings, not the baseball game played with human body parts, was so subversive as the idea that the exists of the Long Island Expressway emptied onto levels of Hell.”“ Kamen put the scripts he got into sugary images that came with unusual angles and a dramatic contrast between light and shadows. However, something changed. Like gender roles seemed not as clear cut anymore, morality was shifting as well. While often the innocent found a grim end by those who transgressed, they too would not get off scot-free. And their punishment was often presented in an ironic twist ending. But when Gaines and Feldstein started a new series titled Shock SuspenStories in 1952, EC Comics began to reach a new level of maturity. Once again there was new talent that had come aboard, gifted and well experienced artists like Reed Crandall and George Evans, and writers like Otto Binder and Carl Wessler. But as the new title progressed, something became more noticeable: The transgressors were not always punished. Initially created as a kind of sampler which united different genres, Shock SuspenStories offered some of Gaines and Feldstein“s best work and likewise that of their artists. And while this series also generated the now famous “Preachies”“ i.e. slick morality tales about current social topics that resonate to this day with the way Gaines, Feldstein and artist Wally Wood tackled themes like racism and bigotry head-on, in those stories Feldstein gave Kamen to draw, there were no winners, no easy endings. Nobody got redeemed. There were only losers. Case in point, Shock SuspenStories No. 3 (1952). In “Just Desserts”“ readers met a regular looking bloke named Bernard who was hosting a dinner party for his guests. As the tale unfolds from Bernard“s perspective, Kamen illustrates in flashback scenes what Bernard is talking about in front of his guests, who included his pretty, young wife and his handsome best friend. With surprising candor, Bernard airs all his grievances and affronts he supposedly received from those five very publicly. There is the nurse who got distracted when a stranger chatted her up and because of that and because of her, Bernard little son died. Then there is his former partner who was trying to ruin him business. And when he begged his aunt for money, not only did she reject him, but she told him that she had always known that he would amount to nothing in life, words that could have been spoken by Max Gaines to his son. And of course, his wife Cora has been unfaithful to him the whole time. She“s been carrying on an affair with his buddy Irving. And while readers might have been shocked to learn all this, they knew there had to be some twist. As they turned the pages to see what more high drama the EC guys had to offer, there was not much more. Bernard had his say. What remained was a panel of the decapitated dinner guests. There would be no police sirens in the background. No officers stormed in to take Bernard into custody. No psychiatrist who told readers that he had snapped, that his mind was gone. No resolution. No easy answer. And this was how things continued. In issue No. 5 (1952) an older gentleman who looked kind and mild mannered not only murdered his obese, obnoxious wife of many years because she took away all his savings he had intended for a new model train, but he hacked her to pieces which he loaded onto the little cars of his model train track. His young neighbor and his little son saw the result of his fiendish handiwork. Again, there was no one to arrest him. Instead, the man was shown as happy and content.

Then it became obvious that Gaines and Feldstein reserved their cruelest punishments for the prettiest women. Career girls who were out for money or housewives who overstepped the line that told them that this was as far as their lives went. And Kamen gave it all the required sheen that fit to a world that was ruled by the prettiness of it all. The woman he presented in half a splash page with which he begun the lead-in tale to Shock SuspenStories No. 6 (1952), “Dead Right!”“ (once again, a Gaines, Feldstein and Kamen co-production with colors by Marie Severin), looked a lot like Sandra Knight. Wearing a bathing suit in which she revealed much of her exciting figure and her long legs, she indeed resembled Phantom Lady. But she was a few years older and she was no wealthy debutante without any worry in the world. She was Cathy, a jaded, single career girl who saw the clock ticking by and taking away her best years. Unless it was the clock that hung in the parlor of Madame Vorna, a fortune teller. She had set her clock back so that Cathy would overstay the time on her lunch break, and she was fired from her job exactly like the old clairvoyant had told her she would. Even a woman as hardened by the big city life as Cathy was, she was now on the hook, especially when Madame Vorna told her about the guy she would meet, a man who would soon come into money. But this being an EC comic, readers knew they had to brace themselves for what was to come. There was indeed a guy already in the proverbial picture, namely in that half splash page, a guy who was trying to take Cathy into his arms while he had a self-satisfied grin on his face and the still beautiful woman recoiled from him in terror. He was not one of the handsome gentleman callers Sandra Knight received, young men with a prep school look who came from money. This guy was obviously working-class material. Since he and the attractive, dark-haired woman were on vacation at some beach resort, he was wearing his swim trunks. But he was ugly. His hairline was high, and he had an over-comb which did not cover the balding spot at the back of his head. And he was fat, really massive in size with a big potbelly to boot and rolls of flesh hanging from his sides. Obviously, this man was uneducated and too dumb to take good care of himself. Or he simply did not care that he was a slob. There was something unnatural and foul with such a guy embracing a beauty like Cathy. But then there was an easy answer to it. This guy had to have money. Though the room they were in at the resort had long gone to seed. But when he had asked for a date and Cathy had discussed the matter with her fortune teller, Madame Vorna had confirmed her worst fears. He was the guy who would soon inherit a large sum of money. Surprisingly, the elderly gypsy could even specify the exact amount to the cent. Twenty-five thousand dollars, which sounded a lot to her, and which was a lot in the early 1950s. In any case it was enough cash to put up with such a guy. But she had to make sure. When Charles Mano asked for her hand, she asked him point blank about his family. Yes, there was an uncle who owned a factory. This and the encouragement from the clairvoyant were enough to convince her to tie the knot. But the time seemed endlessly long. Theirs was not a happy marriage, even though Charlie remained blissfully oblivious to her ulterior motives when she“d agreed to marrying him. But Cathy refused herself in any way she could, and in the most important one. But then it happened. She went to a public cafeteria on her own. Immediately she got the sense that the serve staff looked at her strangely. These weren“t the obvious glances men had awarded her most of her life, but noticeably less so in recent times. It turned out that she was the one millionth customer of the restaurant. As such, Cathy was rewarded with prize money. The check she received was to the amount of twenty-five thousand dollars. Now with the cash in hand, she had not forgotten about Madame Vorna“s predictions. But the old woman had been wrong. It was she who got that money. And she was more than ready to leave her man and a loveless marriage. But she had to tell him first what she thought of him: “I mean I“m leaving you, you crumb. I don“t need you now! I“m walking out! Thanks for three months of perpetual nausea! Love! Hah! I can“t stand being near you!”“ This was when Charlie lost control of himself and he picked up a knife. He killed Cathy. But as it turned out, in the end, Madame Vorna had been correct. It was Charles Marno who inherited the money Cathy had won. The entire twenty-five thousand dollars. Cathy“s husband died shortly after he“d received the inheritance. He died in the electric chair. Here was a twist for all you young readers! And a similar outcome could be found in the Kamen illustrated story that appeared in Shock SuspenStories No. 8 (1953). It was another story in which a mild-mannered and somewhat naÃ¯ve guy, who had a very nerdy hobby, was turned into a cuckold by his much younger, much more attractive wife and his brother who was handsome, virile and all-manly. A potent and irresistible combination for his sister-in-law Sally it seemed, who Eric had not met before he stopped by to visit his older, successful bother. The younger brother looked like the American Dream personified, a good looking, healthy young man with the body of an athlete. He was the exact opposite when compared to Charles Marno. He looked fantastic in swim trunks. And Sally, his brother“s wife came with a body that gave the impression that she was born to be wearing a tiny bikini. Sidney though, the older brother would not be seen as going near the pool he had in the garden of his large house. He had lost most of his hair, and he considered collecting rare fish an exciting hobby. But whereas Eric had the looks, his brother was an American success story. While some of this surely sounded familiar to long-time readers, this was not how this tale began, which might very well be one of Kamen“s best (and in no small part to how Marie Severin“s amazing colors complemented his artwork which included some beautifully rendered scenes of Eric and Sally in the pool at night). Right from the very first page though, there was a sense that this was an especially vicious story. There was Eric at nighttime as was stumbling towards the main house. He was wearing his trunks and his lean and muscular frame was all bloody and full of scratches. And he was missing one arm. This tale did not come with the label “A Crime SuspenStory”“, but the word crime had been replaced with the word horror. But this story did not feature any werewolves, a vampire or ghouls. However, it came with the deadliest of the species, namely a femme fatale. Yet she was not a mysterious woman in an urban setting but lived directly in the neighborhood of an affluent suburb. Eric never stood a chance, and neither did Sidney. As she spun her net around the younger sibling, he did wonder why she had married a man who clearly was not in her league and who was twice her age. “I don“t know. Perhaps he offered me security”¦”“ To which Eric replied: “”¦ and so you“ve had all you wanted, eh? Is that the story?”“ Sally“s response comes a bit too quickly, though: “Yes, Eric! Up till today that is!”“ But he isn“t all that she wants, if at all, that is.

Though it seems like a bit of a plot convenience that he requires sleeping pills which his wife prepares for him, there is more to it. Sidney is a collector of live trophies. He boasts about his valuable collection of rare fish to Eric, and about an especially beautiful specimen, “”¦ the only one of its kind in captivity. I“d say it“s worth roughly six hundred dollars!”“ Almost as if he was a small child, there is Sally to remind him that it is time for him to put his toys away and to go to bed. Sidney doesn“t live a full life, he collects. He measures the things he owns according to their monetary value. This is what gives him pleasure, to own something that has value to others, something he can put in a box and looked at. This is what he“s done with Sally. She on the other hand wants freedom, which doesn“t require another man, but money. This is what money represents to her. While the objects which are alive in Sidney“s house, those things he invests in, keep him from finding sleep, because there is always the next big thing out there he wants to add to his collection, the next thing he needs to possess, Sally doesn“t seem to require sleep. As she walks around within the confines of her cage like a tiger, she is plotting her escape. Though Eric is truly shocked when Sally suggests that they kill Sidney and make it look like he overdosed, he is too far gone to put up any real defense. After Kamen has presented Sally and Eric during their nightly swims in a very romantic and playful manner, indicating that these two belong together and that this is a romance like in the romance comics, once the deed is done, there is one panel that gives it all away. While Eric“s face is pointed towards the readers and he has a worried and guilty expression, Sally appears behind him in a medium shot. Her upper body is leaned back as if she is already distancing herself from him. Sure, she will keep him around, for a while, but not as an addition to a permanent collection, the look on her face says otherwise. This is Kamen“s very best rendition of Barbara Stanwyck in “Double Indemnity”“. But this being a story by men, in the end, male dominance had to assert itself in the most primal way. While the now slowly dying Sidney was seemingly oblivious to the affair going on in his very own house, though in his feverish final minutes Eric suspects otherwise, the latest addition to his menagerie had arrived a few hours earlier. Out in the dark swimming pool there is man-eating shark. When a triumphant Sally races Eric to the pool, all he hears are her dying screams. Naturally, without checking the situation, he jumps after her, making it out barely alive, then walking back to the house Sally had locked behind her. And with him now dying, this tale of infidelity and captivity fell shut. If Sally and Eric“s death was either an accident or some underhanded counter-scheme of Sidney“s is never addressed again. This however was not the case in the tale that had appeared in the preceding issue. “The Beauty and the Beach”“ from Shock SuspenStories No. 7 (1953) ends with a double homicide and there is no ambiguity in that. What makes this story so remarkable however, is the reason for these killings. Up to the violent twist there is no crime committed that would have been punishable by law. Bernard, the narrator in “Just Desserts”“, could have made a strong case in court against the young nurse who had neglected her duties which in turn had led to the untimely death of his little son, or against his former business partner Julius of whom Bernard had learned that he had conspired with a client to wipe him out financially. And while this was a story about two married women, they had not been unfaithful to their respective husbands like Cora had when she engaged in an affair with Bernard“s best friend. And yet, the murders in “The Beauty and the Beach”“ are presented in such a way that seem to provide satisfaction to the readers while the two authors seem to tell readers that this sort of glee was alright since these two women got what they had coming. Usually, this sort of “schadenfreude”“ was reserved in any story by Gaines and Feldstein (or by Johnny Craig) for those truly evil people who had behaved utterly despicable throughout the story and who met a demise that seemed fitting (and often ironic). This trend in shifting moralities that had been creeping into the tales in EC Comics of late was perhaps the consequence of what Gaines and Feldstein had started when they had moved away from stories about career criminals and cops and robbers and into the front yards and living rooms and bed rooms of suburbia or at least suburbia how they perceived it. While this certainly wasn“t the only EC story in which they did this, it“s still interesting however, that Gaines and Feldstein present two different chains of events which unfolded very similarly, with each of these two separate narrative strands focused on a married couple each, the husband and the wife. It is equally remarkable that the husbands in this tale are representative of character tropes that aren“t far removed from Gaines and Feldstein themselves respectively. But first and foremost, it was a tale about women as seen by men. The story opens with a splash page that is split right in the middle. Readers are introduced to two couples. There are the Hiltons, John and Mary, who have two kids (absent from the first panel). John is a fairly good-looking guy, but as ordinary as they come. Mary is a dark-haired beauty. And then there are the Percy and Ginger Fullman. And while Mrs. Fullman is a beautiful young blonde, who seems much younger than her husband, Percy is anything but a “full man”“. Whereas John is decked out in swim trunks and not afraid to show his skin, Percy is fully dressed, and he wears a hat and glasses. He blames an allergy to the sunlight, but he is clearly uncomfortable with revealing his body. And while he is awkward right away, the dialogue between John and Mary establishes quickly, that she considers him a nerd, too. He is a stamp collector and like with Sidney and Sally in the other story, Mary feels that he views her as part of his collection, as something he owns. Both women are wearing bikinis that feel modest when viewed through a contemporary lens, but which are revealing enough to cause both men discomfort, especially with the way the women present themselves, both being fully aware that there are plenty of men around who gawk and admire their looks. While their respective husbands are getting irritated by all this attention from other men that is directed at their wives, they are not only ineffectual when they try to convince their spouses to stop with their parading around in front of these other men, the husbands are immediately belittled by their wives who are clearly enjoying the glances they receive.

This tale and the way Jack Kamen renders these two women in their bikinis with plenty of other guys in the background (in Ginger“s case in the foreground as a surrogate for any young male reader) provides a nice counterpoint to where it all began, namely with Gaines and Feldstein“s discarded plan for Going Steady with Peggy. However, the way the artist presents his two beach beauties, the loss innocence in those intervening years becomes even more apparent. While Feldstein, in his own artwork, had Peggy show off her body in a sexualized manner that was intended to tantalize male readers, this rendition of a similar scene, now doubled-up and five years later, seems almost cynical by comparison. Both, Ginger and Mary are not teenagers who are exploring their own sexuality (though Ginger does look decidedly young, especially when compared to her husband) and the ways in how their looks and bodies affect men. These two married women seem hardened by life and what they do is highly calculated. As Mary even points out to her husband: “Well, a girl likes to know she hasn“t lost her appeal to others and that her husband can still get jealous!”“ And when John tells her that he is worried about what other people might think, and he actually spells out to her that he is concerned that other men might be fantasizing about her, what he is saying is that he is troubled by how other men might rank his manhood, and that perhaps Mary is fantasizing about all those other men who are looking at her. Percy Fullman represents a classic example of a henpecked husband. Since he is unattractive and awkward (and it does not take a leap of imagination that if he is not a direct stand-in for Gaines, he certainly does share characteristics with the publisher), and his wife is young and beautiful, the scales of the balance of power are decidedly tipped towards Ginger who keeps bossing him around. While John is looking after their kids who seem of little concern to Mary, and Percy is fetching Ginger some sun-tan oil, Mary Hilton is now approached by the publicist for the beauty pageant “The Most Beautiful House-Wife in America Contest”“. Likewise, Ginger is chatted up as well. This man introduces himself as a director for the advertising company that represents “Bronze-Burn”“, the makers of the brand of the sun-tan oil she had sent her husband to get for her from the concession stand. As he explains to her: “I“d like you to become ”˜The Bronze-Burn Girl“! I“d like to build a big advertising campaign around you!”“ Initially, the two women are worried about the reactions of their husbands if they agree, but what each of the men offer is too tempting. They accept, yet delay telling their respective spouse, knowing full well that they“ll disapprove. While John, who has some sway over his wife, at least he imagines he has, immediately gets angry, even pointing a finger at her to imply that he is the man of the house, Percy is highly dismissive and unsupportive. But as it turns out, it is not their decision to make. Whereas Mary just stands there and lets herself be admired, Ginger poses her body in a bikini in all kinds of seductive ways for the cameras. Subsequently, John gets some grief from a co-worker who has seen some pictures of his wife in the papers. With his wife now travelling from one beauty contest to the next, he is relegated to the kitchen to prepare dinner for the kids. That he is wearing an apron now further illustrates the loss of his manhood. Both men are eventually fed up. Almost violently they confront their wives and they demand loudly that they put a stop to this. But to no avail. The message is neither lost on the husbands nor the readers. The women have achieved what Sally could only achieve by killing her husband Sidney. Both women are earning more money than their respective husband, thereby gaining financial independence and freedom. Both men resort to murder, and in an especially cruel way that reflects their anger. John forces Mary at gunpoint into the basement where he throws her into tank which contains a sticky, clear liquid, melted plastic from his place of work it turns out. Percy, wielding a long knife, ties his wife up with rope and places her under an array of heat lamps which will slowly burn her to death. Like the model train fan in Shock SuspenStories No. 5, they proudly present their handiwork to other men and the readers by the end of the story. This was less of a shocking twist but two macabre tableaux in the style of the notorious Le ThÃ©Ã¢tre du Grand-Guignol. It“s also quite telling. Once women found means to assert themselves, bad things were about to happen. This wasn“t a horror story in which readers were supposed to cheer when an evil headmaster, who had been exceedingly cruel to his charges, got hacked to bits and pieces by the students in imaginative ways and in ways that were humorous and well-deserved (within the fairy tale world such stories existed in). This was one of those stories set in one of those clean and fairly affluent suburbs with their new model houses that all looked near identical. Now these twisted tales had a cynical, misogynistic bent to them. The two transgressors were severely punished though they hadn“t committed a real crime, while there was no punishment (at least not in-story) for those who dealt out such harsh and fatal penalties. In the end, nobody was innocent, not even the readers whose lingering gazes had contributed to the demise of the two female leads as well. But this was the conundrum, the Catch-22 the story seemed to propose. If men (or boys) weren“t staring at the female form for their own private pleasures, these women would have no incentive to parade around. And if these two women hadn“t done this in the first place, to elicit any such stares and thereby rendering their own husbands ineffectual and near-impotent, the husbands wouldn“t have seen the need to kill them in order to keep them away from other men. Then again, this story was reflective of its authors“ male insecurities, whereas the artist made matters worse by drawing two of his most beautiful women. And still, through it all, these stories were geared at young readers, since comic books were predominantly read by children. Ultimately, it wasn“t the drawing of a severed head on a cover by Johnny Craig that had caused the demise of EC Comics. It all came from those early comments Max had made about his son. The deep-seated insecurities his words had planted in Bill, had led to some brilliant stories which easily stand the test of time, stories that were ground-breaking from an artistic point of view and in how subversive they were and still are. But what began to show up more and more in these stories, a readiness for cruelty with abandon and the mistrust towards women who asserted themselves, who acted freely and who were aware of their power, was what brought about a cover such as the one for Crime SuspenStories No. 22, a cover that was ultimately approved by both Al and Bill, a cover which Bill considered “in good taste”“. If “Beauty and the Beach”“ seemed unnecessarily cruel with its shock ending that was merited by nothing other than a perceived lack of male dominance, the worst was yet to come. Al and Bill had identified the culprit for the crisis of suburbia and the threat to marriage as such. Women who wouldn“t accept their traditionally subordinate roles of housewives. With America“s masculinity under attack, EC had a perfect solution. You needed men who looked like they were drawn by an artist whose male characters were the manliest men ever. Luckily for them, they had such an artist in their bullpen. Bill and Al were ready to serve these women a proper comeuppance.

Author Profile

Chris Buse

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