Harvey Kurtzman

Al Feldstein

Jack Kamen

Wally Wood

Graham Ingels

Weird Science Volume 1 (The Ec Archives)

The EC Archives

Jack Kamen's precise, clean style was perfect subversion for EC Comics tales of seemingly normal men and women who cooly act on the rage, jealousy, and greed just below their glamorous façades. Kamen’s crime capers include “Forty Whacks” (Whatever became of that ax Lizzie Borden used?), “Contract for Death” (A suicidal man agrees to accept $5,000 for his fresh corpse, then changes his mind. But the contract fails to specify that the body has to be his…), “The Neat Job!” (Her “neat freak” husband drove her crazy, so when she chopped him up into little pieces…), “Just Desserts!” (A madman bent on revenge hosts a dinner for his victims … and the final course is a killer!) ― plus 20 more gripping tales of tension as only EC could do them!

And Other Stories

Forty Whacks

With his wholesome approach, Jack Kamen stood out amongst the grandguignol grunge, gritty realism, or futuristic dazzle of his fellow EC cartoonists ― but his brilliant editor/writer Al Feldstein found a way to exploit the surface innocence of his style with seemingly nice stories of romance gone horribly wrong, or future fantasies with an unexpectedly brutal twist. And nowhere did Kamen’s clean-but-lush graphics work better than in the stories he created for EC’s science-fiction comics. The title story, “Zero Hour” (one of three in this book adapted from works by Ray Bradbury), set in a Spielbergian suburban idyll, is particularly well served by Kamen’s surface innocence; “A Lesson in Anatomy” works similar magic, with its Mayberry-esque setting veering into alien-invasion terror. If there was any devil in Kamen, it came out in his loving depiction of the female face and form, and you could see why his hapless heroes were often fatally entranced with them ― as in “Punishment Without Crime” (Bradbury again), “He Who Waits!” (a scientist finds an extreme way of rejoining his eight-inch-tall inamorata), and “Miscalculation!” (the lucky recipient of a package from the future literally brews his own harem); even the supercomputer in “Only Human!” proves vulnerable to a beautiful woman’s charms. Zero Hour And Other Stories contains 22 classic EC yarns ― plus the usual all-new biographical, historical, and critical essays that have made Fantagraphics’ EC Library series the ultimate version of these classics.

Zero Hour

Joe Orlando

Jack Davis

Wallace Wood

Albert B. Feldstein

Johnny Craig

George Roussos

Howard Larsen

EC Comics are widely credited for causing the dissolution of the morals of kids and teens in the 1950s, thus playing a large part in the public outcry over comics that led to Senate hearings condemning the sex and violence within their pages. Dark Horse brings their usual high quality design and production to the creation of collector's editions of these seminal comics.

EC Archives Tales from the Crypt Vol 2

This volume of the New York Times’ bestselling series of superbly restored, classic crime and horror EC Comics re-presents the work of Jack Kamen, Al Feldstein, and Ray Bradbury. Grand Master crime novelist Max Allan Collins (Road to Perdition) introduces these tales, which include the infamous “The Orphan” one of the stories that got EC Comics into hot water during the U.S. Senate’s investigation into comic books. “The October Game” is adapted from the chilling classic short story by Ray Bradbury. A gruesome look at a malevolent Halloween party game perpetrated by a man who believes the child of his unfaithful wife is not his. In “Frozen Assets!,” a woman and her lover seal her still-living husband in a chest freezer. “Standing Room Only” ― a brother murders his twin sister and her husband, and disguises himself as her so he can inherit their estate. But then the estate lawyer makes a play for the “widow” ... “Three for the Money” ― A woman finds her husband dead ― with a knife in his back and a bullet in his head. The police arrest two suspects ― but to get a conviction, they must determine who acted first. Who actually committed the murder, and who stabbed or shot a man who was already dead?

Three for the Money

Stories in this volume include "The Martian Monster," in which a 9-year-old boy befriends a Martian in the woods and asks him to kill his stepmother ― but the "Martian" convinces him that it’s really his father who he should target. There’s sharp social commentary in "…And Then There Were Two!" (highly intelligent robots unveil a plan for world peace, but political opportunists launch an anti-robot campaign to discredit them) and "Prediction of Disaster!" (an astronomer concludes that our sun is about to go nova and tries to warn the world).

and Other Stories

The Martian Monster

Jack Kamen

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