Starting somewhat bumpily with plots which read like standard non-humorous EC texts (only with “funny” drawings) before proceeding to parodies of television shows, classic strips, and various DC and pulp heroes, these early stories were adorned with endless visual treats, immaculate artistry, a number of classic Hey Look! reprints and a set of outstanding covers and cover concepts. It is only in the case of Mad that EC manages to justify a degree of its reputation.Įnough has been written about the merits of these issues that I will not bother dwelling at length on them. Suffice to say, the judgements made by critics and readers in assessing their favorite art form are firmly entrenched in their childhoods. These are rose tinted lenses that have adhered so tightly to the eyes of most comics critics that they cannot be eradicated without immense difficulty. Some of the answers to this question are quite apparent, among them a blindness and mule-headedness born of nostalgia. The question for today’s readers is why a line consisting of “the best pulp fiction” and sometimes “a good deal better” is still considered among the best comics ever made. They were, at their best, mature conceptions totally explored, and with a constant attitude toward realism and honesty mixed in with the short, sharp crackle of drama.” What we can detect on cold hindsight is a young reader’s devotion, mixed with an instinctive understanding that the comics he was reading were still lodged in the ghetto of world art.Ī few decades later, the EC line occupies no less than 4 spaces in The Comics Journal’s Top 100 comics of the century list, a ranking exercise which should put paid to any claims that this magazine has an elitist stance. And, if specific individual stories were considered, many of them were a good deal better, both in originality and concept and completion of expression….If any popular writing deserves a claim as literature, this does also. “At their best,” he wrote, “EC was easily on par with the best pulp fiction available. Amidst enthusiastic descriptions of the EC office and its working practices, Stark managed to provide a fan’s eye analysis of the comics themselves. In 1956, on the imminent demise of EC Comics, Larry Stark, one of the company’s most ebullient young fans wrote a heartfelt elegy for the “best-written comic magazine line ever published” ( Hoohah! #6). Whatever people read or played with in their childhood not only seems in memory to have been the most beautiful and best thing possible it often, wrongly, seems unique.” “But have you heard anyone say, “Lord! When I was young, we didn’t have such nice games to play!” Or, “When I was little, there weren’t such wonderful story books!” No. Reprinted from The Comics Journal #250 (2003)
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