EC Comics, formally known as Entertaining Comics, was a hugely successful American publisher specialising in horror, science fiction, crime and military fiction titles. The comics published by EC stood out from their competitor’s work due to the complex and twisting story lines and the high quality of the writing and artwork. Unfortunately, after the Committee on Juvenile Delinquency criticised horror comics as contributing to delinquency and crime in 1956, EC stopped producing all of their comics titles and concentrated instead on the hugely popular Mad magazine.
Educational Comics
Somewhat surprisingly, EC Comics started off as Educational Comics, a publishing house set up by Max Gaines in 1944 to publish science, history and Bible comics to sell to churches and schools.
Although the Educational Comics idea did not ultimately work out, Max Gaines had already secured his place in comics history with the work he did on Eastern Color Printing’s Funnies on Parade and on Dell Publishing’s Famous Funnies: A Carnival of Comics which is now considered to be the first American comic.
EC Comics
After Max Gaines died in 1947 his son William took over the company and changed its name as well as its direction. Now known as EC Comics, William Gaines concentrated on the publication of high quality horror, suspense, science fiction, crime and military fiction series. The EC titles were aimed at a slightly more mature audience than many of the popular superhero times of the time and were characterised by unusually high quality stories with surprise endings and fantastic artwork.
EC Comics pioneered the idea of forming relationships with regular readers through letters to the editor pages and a fan club, the National EC Fan-Addict Club.
The Decline of EC
Throughout the 1940s the comics industry had attracted criticism for the content of their books and the impact that the work might have on American youth, but the problem only came to a head in 1948 Doctor Fredric Wertham wrote two influential articles, “Horror in the Nursery” in Colliers and “The Psychopathology of Comic Books” in the American Journal of Psychotherapy, which blamed many of society’s ills on the comics industry.
In response to the criticisms in Wertham’s articles, an industry watchdog, the Association of Comics Magazine Publishers, was set up but it met with little success due to a lack of support from within the industry.
In 1954 the publication of Wertham’s book Seduction of the Innocent and the heavy criticism levelled at the comics industry by the Committee on Juvenile Delinquency resulted in a huge decline in the sales of comics and in many companies going out of business.
William Gaines suggested to other publishers that the comics industry should band together to fight censorship and restore the industry’s image. The Comics Magazine Association of America and its Comics Code Authority was formed but unfortunately for Gaines, the new CCA code forbid the use of “horror”, “terror” or “weird” in comic book titles. The code was strictly enforced and, when distributors refused to handle his titles, Gaines had to cease the publication of the three EC horror titles and the two SuspenStory titles on 14 September 1954.
Gaines shifted the focus of EC Comics again, this time towards more realistic titles such as M.D., started submitting titles to the CCA and also renamed the surviving science fiction titles but the move was not a commercial success. Sales continued to dwindle and, after EC’s national distributor went bankrupt, Gaines ceased publication of all of the EC titles except for Mad.
Incredible Science Fiction #33 was the last of the EC Comics.
Reprinting EC
Despite declining sales, EC Comics did have many loyal readers and, over the years, developed quite a cult following and as early as 1964 popular EC titles were being reprinted.
Since 2006 Russ Cochrane and Gemstone Publishing have been releasing a series of excellent reprints called the EC Archives. The titles currently available in Archive format include Weird Science, Tales from the Crypt and Shock SuspenStories.
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